Family Historian User Group

This is a suggestion for Nick, if he ever finds time on his hands ( ) and has the inclination to add to the features of AS.

Having just spent an evening entering data from the National Probate Calendar and creating Probate facts and sources and ‘ancillary’ facts, it occurs to me that this is the type of task AS is good at. I am not sure how useful it would be for records from other countries, but in the UK the information contained in the National Probate Calendar from 1858 to 1996 has a fairly standard format and often contains details that can be used to create new facts or confirm existing ones. As it is free to search the calendar it can be a great way to get exact dates or addresses without ordering certificates. (Post 1996 information is limited unless you pay to see the will).
https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills (also available on Ancestry)

Details in the calendar vary over the years but include some or all of the following:
Full name of deceased
Residence of deceased
Occupation of deceased
Date of death
Place of death
Date and place of grant of Probate
Name(s) of executor(s) or administrator(s)
Occupations and/or addresses of executors/administrators
Relationship of executors/administrators to the deceased
Value of Estate

I am sure you have other things to do with your time Nick, but if you have a ‘To Do’ list is this worth bearing in mind?

Thanks for all the work you have put into AS over the years!

I already use AS to enter Probate records using the death entry method with a suitable Autotext template (Which I can post if anyone is interested).

I then manually change the source created to Type=Probate and manually add the probate location , date and value of estate and link to the same source.

Maybe that is worth adding to the fhugdownloads:ancestralsources|> Downloads and Links ~ Ancestral Sources downloads along with your usage instructions?

Yes, half way through the evening I did wonder whether it would have been quicker to devise a variation of the standard death entry. But by that time I decided it would be quicker to complete the remaining entries manually. Maybe next time I will try John's approach. I would be interested to see the template you use, John.

Probate Calendar Entry Text template is:

{KEYPERSON.SN.CAPS} {KEYPERSON.GN} of {KEYPERSON.RESIDENCE.ADDRESS}, {KEYPERSON.RESIDENCE.PLACE.SHORT} died {DATE} at {ADDR} {PLACE} Probate {REF} {DATEREGISTERED.DAY} {DATEREGISTERED.MONTH.FULL} to {REGISTRAR}. Effects {OTHER}

{Registrar) holds the probate granted to text in it's entirety.
{REF} holds Probate at
{Other} Holds the Value of the estate
{Dateregistered} Holds the Probate date

Source title needs manual modification, and the autotext might need slight modification

John, just to be clear, having used that technique, does AS cite the Probate Source against a Death Event rather than a Probate Event?

Do you then run the Change Any Fact Tag Plugin to convert the Death Event to a Probate Event in FH?

Or do you simply Add a Probate Event to also cite the Probate Source?

This approach is a good start, but I can see that there will often be a lot of extra manual entries to make. In some cases the deceased's residence and the death fact might already exist in FH (although perhaps not with a precise date) and all the new information obtained from the Probate record will need to be added. As far as I can see, the Probate event needs to be created manually, and there are sometimes other nuggets of information like the occupations and addresses of executors.

However, the majority of people in my file did not leave a will so the number of probate entries to handle is far fewer than census and BMD events and I can cope with it!

Re "Value of estate" - this may be too much information but the meaning of that phrase changed over the years. Assuming that we're talking about England & Wales, my interpretation of Mark Herber's book is that the phrase means:
- 1858-1880 approximate gross value of personal estate;
- 1881-1897 exact gross value of personal estate;
- 1898 on, real estate included unless subject to a settlement or held in trust.

I usually adjust my Note against the Probate event to add this clarification.

That's a refinement that had passed me by, Adrian!

Another problem with adapting the standard death entry process in AS is that (just to be awkward!) although I use Method 1 sources for deaths etc when I have a certificate, I decided a while ago to use Method 2 for probate. I decided not to bother to keep an image of the individual entries in the calendar, so I have a single source record for the National Probate Calendar, with appropriate 'where within source' and' text from source'. I also keep the text in the note field for the fact so that it appears in the main part of narrative reports. So I would need to set up AS differently if I used its death entry option for probate.

I use As method 1 to create the probate source for date (and often place) of death, and then manually add the probate event, and value of estate on the wills and probate tab, citing the already created source (Now changed to type [Probate]). I also have created a witness of "Probate" and manually add these to the probate event.
I do not need to use the change any fact plugin, as there are no facts to change

One of the things I like to do when using printed sources such as the probate calendar, electoral rolls, directories, and other things like that, is to check the front pages of the book for information on how the book is arranged.

For some eras, there is a statement at the very front of the volume saying that if a place of death is not specifically mentioned in the entry, the place of death is the deceased's residence. I only discovered this recently, so one of the things on my To Do list is reviewing ALL my previously-collected Probate Calendar pages to check them against the place of death that's already in the database.

I haven't yet made a systematic review, so I don't know for which range of years this might apply.

I blame Ancestry for getting me into the bad habit of only downloading the relevant page. If I had been accessing the physical books, I would have discovered this right away.