INTERNATIONAL GENEALOGICAL INDEX

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is working on an ongoing project to build an International Genealogical Index (IGI) by extracting birth, baptism and marriage entries from records worldwide. It’s useful if you’re trying to trace someone who moved around a lot or you’re trying to work out which one of several indexed registrations is the one you’re looking for.

What information they contain

The first six columns are the ones you can use to locate parish records.

• Column 1: surname and first name.
• Column 2: name of parents or spouse.
• Column 3: gender (M = male; F = female; H = husband; W = wife).
• Column 4: event (A = adult christening; B = birth; C = christening; D = death or burial; F = birth or christening of first known child, in lieu of marriage date; M = marriage; N = census; S = miscellaneous; W = will or probate).
• Column 5: date of event.
• Column 6: place (town or parish).

Where to find them

Family History Centres from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints allow the the public to see the registers, though a small fee may be payable.

The IGI is also available at the Family Record Centre in London for the whole country (on microfiche) and online at www.familysearch.org.

County record offices or local studies centres may have microfiches for your county, neighbouring counties or even the whole of England and Wales; the library of the Society of Genealogists also has copies.

Potential difficulties

There may be transcription errors. The IGI doesn’t contain every single parish register entry before 1837, and not all records are complete. And note that the IGI is copyright – if you wish to publish any of the information in print or on a website, you need to obtain permission.

STREET DIRECTORIES

Street directories are covered in more detail in Chapter 3. As well as using directories to trace the history of a building, you can use them to corroborate details from the census returns for the occupations – particularly after 1841 when occupations are listed on the census returns. They’re probably more useful for larger urban centres, but you should still find a list of private residents and tradesmen in villages or towns. Obviously this doesn’t cover the complete population of an area (servants and labourers are rarely included), but if the person who lived in your house was a tradesperson or seen as part of the local clergy and gentry, they may well be listed.

One problem with villages and smaller towns is that the street address or house often isn’t given before the 1890s: this is probably on the basis that the population was still so small that anyone could tell you where (using our mill as an example) John Mann the miller lived.

See Appendix 3 for a list of the millers in Attleborough, which was helpful in pinning down who worked where and finding out who had been involved with Attleburgh Great Mill.

ELECTORAL REGISTERS

Electoral registers (sometimes called the Electoral Roll) record the names of people who are entitled to vote. They are arranged in order of electoral division, polling district and then alphabetically by voter or street. The series of registers starts in 1832, when they had to be deposited with the Clerk of the Peace. They contain the names of people who were eligible to vote (though house numbers and names are not always noted) and collections of the registers are held in local studies libraries and county record offices. Some will be original; others will be on microfilm or microfiche. Other archive sources that have copies include the British Library; the National Archives; and the Society of Genealogists.

Not all registers survive. Because they were large and took up a lot of storage space they were often thrown away when they were no longer current.

Earlier registers will be smaller because fewer people were entitled to vote. It’s worth noting the dates of enfranchisement.

• From 1832: in the boroughs all male householders (i.e. including tenants) of land worth at least £10 a year, and in the counties owners of property worth at least £10.
• From 1867: in the boroughs all owners of dwelling houses and occupiers who paid more than £10 in rent a year, and in the counties all male householders of property worth £5 or who occupied land and paid rent of more than £50 a year.
• From 1884: all owners of dwelling houses and occupiers who paid more than £10 in rent a year (so this is most men over 21).
• From 1918: all men over the age of 21; all women aged over 30 who were householders or wives of householders.
• From 1928: all women over the age of 21.

It’s also worth remembering that not everyone registers to vote, so electoral registers will never be complete: just because someone isn’t listed, it doesn’t mean they didn’t exist, because they might not have registered to vote.

There are also poll books, which are published records of how people voted (before 1872, when the secret ballot was introduced). They are arranged by parish; poll books for towns often give the person’s occupation.

Again, not all poll books for an area will be available, but it’s worth checking the available ones against the records you have.

The poll books didn’t shed any light for me on the owners of the mill in Attleborough.

WILLS AND PROBATE RECORDS

Wills are the documents by which people dispose of their property after their death. From the early 1500s to around 1750 an inventory (known as a probate inventory) of the deceased person’s estate was filed with the will. The probate inventory was needed to assess the charges of the probate court.

Until 12 January 1858 probate (the proving of a will) was handled by the church courts; after that date they were transferred to a civil court. There is a printed calendar compiled for England and Wales annually listing all proved wills, i.e. those made legally valid.

The Statute of Wills 1540 meant that males over the age of 14 and females over the age of 12 could make a will; after 1837 they had to be aged 21 to make a will. Wills couldn’t be made by lunatics, prisoners, traitors, heretics or slaves. Married women couldn’t own property until the Married Women’s Property Act 1882, so they could only make a will if their husband consented.

If someone did not leave a valid will, there may be an administration grant. This may tell you who had the grant to administer the estate, but probably won’t tell you much else. The administration act or grant is also likely to be in Latin. (For example, research in the record office indices showed that there was a grant of administration for the Attleborough miller Thomas Syer in 1668 – but all the grant told me was that Thomas died intestate and the administrator was Gulielmo Syer, i.e. William Syer.)

The format of a will tends to include the following.

• A statement that this is the last will and testament of [person’s name] of [address] in the parish of [parish name] – sometimes the occupation is included; there is usually some information about being of sound mind, and some religious wording (for example, in the will of Robert Sparke, he says ‘first and formost [sic] I commend my soule into the hands of Almyghty God my maker and redeemer’ and requests his body ‘to be buryed in the church yard of Attylburgh’).
• The appointment of executors (named, sometimes with addresses, occupations and relationship to the deceased).
• A statement of how debts and funeral expenses should be paid.
• A statement of how the estate will be distributed – the spouse is listed first, then children, then others. There may be specific bequests and information about how the property would be divided up if one of the beneficiaries dies before the person who made the will.

Administrations contain the name of the person appointed to administer the estate (usually a widow, child or brother, though sometimes a creditor), and the date will give you an approximate idea of the date of death.

The indexes to wills and administrations give the dates (and sometimes places) of death of the named people.

Calendars of wills list:

• the deceased’s name;
• the date of death;
• where and when the will was proved (or administration was granted);
• the name of the executor (or administrator);
• the value of the estate (usually the figure before payment of debts or funeral expenses; and it may be listed as ‘effects under £50’).

The calendar may give the occupation of the deceased, executor or administrator, and in the second half of the nineteenth century it may also list the addresses of the executor or administrator and any relationship to the deceased.

Probate inventories list and value household furnishings and other goods that belonged to the deceased (except for land and buildings), often room by room. They would also list farm animals and equipment, items used for trade, the contents of shops, clothing, debts owed and debts due. In 1529 an Act of Parliament meant that if the deceased’s possessions were worth £5 or more an inventory had to be made for the church authorities. Earlier inventories tend to be more detailed than later ones.

The printed calendars of proved wills are on microfiches in county record offices; they are also available at the Family Records Centre in London and the Probate Search Room. Copies of proved wills before 1858 may be available in your local record office; for example, Norfolk Record Office holds wills and administrations proved from the 1370s to 1858 on microfilm. Inventories would be held with the wills, usually among the church court records in county record offices.

Copies of wills and administration granted by civil probate registries in England and Wales since 1858 are held in the Public Searchroom, Principal Registry of the Family Division, 1st Avenue House, 42–49 High Holborn, London WC1V 6NP. You can try contacting your local probate office to see copies of wills and administrations from 1858 to the present, and your local record office or local studies department may have microfilm copies of the indexes to wills and administrations in England and Wales from 1858.

If you’re looking for a will or administration grant between 1796 and 1903 you can start with the yearly indexes in the Family Records Centre (series IR 27), or with the registers which record death duty payments (series IR 26). The registers show when and where a will or administration grant was made. Scottish death duty registers from 1804 are in the National Archives of Scotland (reference IRS 5–14).

Some pre-1858 wills (particularly those of wealthy people) were proved by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). These wills, together with administrations granted by this court, are held by The National Archives and can be seen on microfilm at the Family Records Centre (National Archives) in London. You can search indexes online from the 1300s to 1858 at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline although there is a small fee to view the digital images of the wills.

Death duties

There are three sets of records known collectively as death duties:

• legacy duty – this was payable between 1796 and 1949;
• succession duty – this was payable between 1853 and 1949;
• estate duty – this was payable between 1894 and 1975, when it was replaced by Capital Transfer Tax.

The records of the legacy duties 1796–1903 are held in the National Archives. However, from 1904 separate files, based on individuals, were kept by the Inland Revenue and destroyed 30 years after the files were closed.

The registers for the legacy duty on wills proved in county courts can be searched online at the National Archives’ website www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/search.asp for a small fee.

You may find some succession records in local archives. I found two succession duty records relating to Frederick Wright (owner of the cottage in 1892), for property inherited from his uncle George. The format is usually:

• Register [letter] of the year [year] folio [folio number].
• An account of the Succession in Real Property of [inheritor name] [county name] [occupation] upon the death of [name of the deceased] who died on [date] the Predecessor under the last Will and Testament of the said [name of the deceased] late of [town name] aforesaid dated [date of will] and proved on [date will proved] in the District Registry of [city name] of Her Majesty’s Court of Probate & delivered by [inheritor name] of [town] his successor.
• Property details – including ‘gross rack rental or annual value’, saleable value, whether it’s freehold or copyhold, tenant names, tenancy terms [e.g. ‘from year to year’].

Succession duty registers may be of some use in helping you to track down relevant wills. Unfortunately, the records above related to other property than Mill House, so they weren’t worth following up.

Some difficulties with wills and probate records

Fewer than one in ten people made wills or had them formally approved, and death duty registers only record estates that are liable to tax (i.e. were worth over a certain amount). It’s also worth noting that probate grants or letters of administration were often dated several months after the date of death, and until 1898 the value of the estate in the calendars is for personal effects only, not real estate.

INSURANCE RECORDS

If you have an original fire mark plaque on your house the reference number will help you trace the policy entry in the company’s records. For the most part the records to the major insurance companies’ records aren’t indexed, so it would be very difficult to trace a former policy. Local record offices may have partial indexes for local companies, and there is also an unpublished index for the Sun Fire Insurance Company, for 1710–31, in the Guildhall Library in London.

BANKRUPTCY RECORDS

If you know that someone who lived in your house was declared bankrupt you may be able to find more information in the bankruptcy records.

Until 1841 you could only be declared bankrupt if you were a trader (i.e. someone who earned their money by buying and selling things – by the late eighteenth century this included craftsmen) and owed more than £100; in 1842 this figure was reduced to £50. If you didn’t qualify as a bankrupt you were termed an ‘insolvent debtor’ and could be put in prison indefinitely. From 1861 insolvent debtors could apply to be made bankrupt.

Bankruptcy notices appear in the London Gazette, The Times and in local newspapers.

The bankruptcy records are held in the National Archives for London cases. Records for cases 1842–69 will be held in local record offices among the records of bankruptcy courts, and records from 1869 will be with the records of county courts in local record offices.

There are Registers of Petitions for Bankruptcy for 1870–83 in the National Archives in series B 6/184–897, listed alphabetically by the bankrupt’s surname.

Frustratingly, even though I knew John Knights had been made bankrupt in 1783, I was unable to trace the information any further than the notice in the local paper.

COURT RECORDS

Civil

If you know that someone who lived in your house was involved in a lawsuit you may be able to find more information in the civil records of the court.

Although the common law courts were held in Westminster, trials in civil disputes were usually held locally by the circuit judges. Records of quarter sessions, petty sessions and county courts are usually held in the local record office.

Criminal

If you know that someone who lived in your house was involved with a crime you may be able to find more information in the criminal records of the court.

Criminal trials took place at the assizes twice a year from the thirteenth century until 1971, when they were replaced by the crown courts.

Assize court records are held at the National Archives. They tend to be written in Latin before 1733 and don’t give much detail about the accused. Just to muddy the waters a bit, the names given may be aliases and the occupation and address of the accused may also be suspect.

To find the case you want to look at, you need to know:

• the name of the accused;
• the county or circuit where the trial took place;
• the date of the trial.

Survival of assize records is patchy because when the files got too large, the assize clerk simply destroyed them. However, you may find printed calendars of prisoners and their offences in your local record office.

Assizes in London and Middlesex were held before the Lord Mayor before 1834, and from then in the Central Criminal Court. Some of the records are held in the National Archives and many can be accessed online at www.OldBaileyOnline.org.

There are criminal registers for England and Wales 1805–92 (held in the National Archives in series HO 27) which give details of the place of trial, verdict and sentence. There are also calendars of prisoners tried at assizes and quarter sessions from 1868 (held in the National Archives in series HO 140, but note that these records may be closed for 75–100 years).

Transcripts of assize proceedings don’t tend to survive, but local newspapers, especially in the nineteenth century, often reported cases verbatim. (See Chapter 10 for more details about newspapers.)

Some Latin abbreviations continued to be used after 1733, including:

• ca null – catalla nulla, no goods to forfeit;
• cog ind – cognovit indictamentum, confessed to the indictment;
• cul – culpabilis, guilty;
• ign – ignoramus, we do not know (no case to answer);
• non cul nec re – non culpabilis nee retraxit, not guilty and did not flee;
• po se -ponit se super patriam, pleads not guilty and opts for jury trial;
• sus – suspendatur, let him be hanged.

There may also be prison records held at the local record office, which may include calendars of prisoners, gaol books and minutes.

Given the legend of the mad miller who murdered his wife, I hoped to find some kind of evidence in the records. However, the only record I could find of a murder in Attleborough was that of Samuel Alden by his wife Martha in 1806 – and Samuel had absolutely nothing to do with the mill. It’s possible that one of the millers before the nineteenth century was the murderer, but I couldn’t find any documentary evidence. There are various printed calendars of prisoners for Norfolk from 1693 onwards, but I could find no mention of anyone from Attleborough in the records between 1693 and the murder of 1806.