Build Your Family Tree: A Guide For Canadians With Local And Global Roots

by Lynne Butler

Overview

Take your geneaology research to the next level by completing your ancestral story with historical will and probate records. Often, when you research your family tree, you can find only basic facts about ancestors, such as birth, marriage, and death dates. Sometimes, you can figure out a bit more from these records such as their religion, occupation, and names of some other family members. While all of these facts are crucial to your research, they do not paint much of a picture of your family members as people. For those who want to dig deeper and really get to know their ancestors, Build Your Family Tree explains how a will or probate record can offer a much more robust image of lives lived and legacies left. Wills are underused in genealogy research. This may be because many family genealogists use primarily online sources for research and most wills are not found online; it could also be because the documents are usually in old, unfamiliar, handwritten script and are not easy to read. With a little work, you could uncover some surprises or a treasure trove of information. Even genealogy enthusiasts who are willing to look for wills may not fully appreciate just how useful probate and related records can be. In this book you will find an explanation of what sorts of probate records exist and where to find them. You will find definitions of the terminology used in probate records, including latin words and phrases and legal terms that are common to this type of resource. Once you know what is in a physical archive and how to view those records, you are able to take your information about your ancestors to a new level. The story of your family could be different than you imagined. Are you ready to find out how?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770405363
Publisher:	Self-Counsel Press, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/2022
Series:	Reference Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lynne Butler has worked in estate planning and law for over 25 years. She is a frequent speaker on will and estate matters, and has been a Learning Group facilitator for the Wills and Estates module of the bar admission course in Alberta. Lynne is the author of Self-Counsel titles 'Protect Your Elderly Parents', 'Alberta Probate Kit', 'Estate Planning through Family Meetings', 'Succession Planning Kit for Canadian Business', 'How Executors Avoid Personal Liability' and 'Contesting a Will without a Lawyer'.

Table of Contents

Introduction - A rich source of info - Find new info as well as confirm facts/guesses - Beyond the basic birth, marriage, death dates - Helps fill in a robust picture of an individual - Gives you new paths to explore What kind of information can you to find in wills? - Names of children - Surnames of married daughters - Names of son’s spouses - Other relationships: grandchildren - Other relationships: siblings, nieces, and nephews - Adopted (formally and informally) children - Step-children - The deceased’s religion (Leads to parish, church records) - Occupations o Esquire o Gentleman - Clues about wealth, occupation, hobbies - Birth places/immigration - Family properties Other hints in wills: - Name of executor - Names of witnesses - Date and place of signing - Groups/affiliations (Masons, guilds, churches, professional associations, volunteer groups, service/veterans groups) Women’s wills - Married Women’s Property Act - Husband’s name and occupation What can we find in probate records? - Stories in applications (can be very detailed explanations of family arrangements) - Names, addresses, relationships - Inventories o Indication of wealth o Name and location of property o Personal possessions provide clues What are the various types of probate/administration and why does this matter? - Probate of will - Administration where there is no will (especially good for finding details of when various family members passed away) - Latin abbreviations - Legal seals What resources about wills and probate are on different sites? - The “big” sites (ancestry, familysearch, rootsweb, find-a-grave, etc) Going beyond the big genealogy sites to find wills, death and family info - Canada records - Provincial resources o Vital stats o Local histories - Historic sites re special groups, e.g. Acadians, war brides, veterans, etc - Family name websites - Fonds/correspondence from public figures or collectors - Military and service records - Town/city archives - School/university archives and yearbooks - Newspapers – legal notices - Newspapers – local articles, announcements, social columns, - Obituaries - Law case reports - Land records/maps - Prison records - Charitable organizations (particularly records of donations from estates) Researching archives in person - Tools (notebook, family tree chart, camera/phone) - Bring pencils not pens - May find photos Books about the geographic area, the deceased’s type of work, events such as labour movement or suffrage, etc Searching current court records in Canada - How modern courts are structured and which level deals with probate - Search methods for wills records by province Search tips - Various spellings of names, places - Phonetic spellings - Deciphering old, handwritten documents - View original (or image of original) rather than transcript - Start broad, then narrow it down Terminology used in wills and probate records - Testate/intestate - Heirs/children - Devise/bequest/legacy - Imprimus - Messuage - Executor/executrix - Testator/testatrix - Per stirpes - Issue - Relic - Real property vs personal property

Preface

Tracing your family tree can be a project so immense that it keeps you busy for several years. It seems the more information you find, the more you want to find. Detail by detail, you put your family ancestry puzzle together. Each new tidbit of information leads to another avenue of exploration. Sometimes, though, you can reach a dead end. You may not be able to discover a name that would allow you to continue your family tree. Or perhaps you have a name but there are two or three people with the same name and you don’t know which one is your ancestor. And often you know for sure that someone is your ancestor but you would like to know more about him or her than simply the dates they were born and died. It can be really satisfying and intriguing to fill out the details of an ancestor’s life. The more you explore genealogy, the more you learn about different sources that can help you advance your family tree. In this book, we are going to take a look at using wills, estates and probate records to learn more about your ancestors. We’ll dive into what you can learn from wills and from probate court records and where to find them. We’ll also go into depth about exactly which clues you can pick up to lead you to further names and information. These records can be a rich source of valuable new information and can be crucial to confirming guesses you may have made. For many of our ancestors, we can find only the basic facts, those being birth date, marriage date, and death date. While those are crucial to building your tree, they do not necessarily paint much of a picture of your ancestor as a person. In this book, we will discover how a will or probate record can fill in a much more robust picture of an ancestor. These records can reveal an ancestor’s religion, birth place, occupation, wealth, associations, business ownership, and locations of family property. Of course, you will also find facts such as names of immediate family members, names of their children’s spouses, and names of children who predeceased them. If you want to create a fuller picture of an individual ancestor, his will and the record of his probate are excellent places to start. Wills are underused in genealogy research. This may be because many of us use primarily online sources for research and most wills are not found online. We will look at the larger web sites in this book but we will also go way beyond them into smaller, specialized websites you probably have not thought of checking. We will also discuss the many valuable sources that are not online and how you can access them. This is where you will find your research taking leaps and bounds forward! Once you know what is in a physical archive and how to view those records, you are taking your information about your ancestors to a new level. The underusage of wills may also exist because the documents are usually in old, unfamiliar, handwritten script and are not easy to read. You may be unwilling to put in the work to figure out what a will says unless you know that it contains a treasure trove of information that can be uncovered. We will provide some tips on dealing with those difficult documents. Even genealogy enthusiasts who are willing to look for wills may not understand how useful probate records can be. In this book you will find an explanation of what sorts of probate records exist and where to find them. You will find definitions of the terminology used in probate records, including the latin words and phrases and legal terms that are common to this type of resource. Throughout this book you will find examples of actual wills and probate documents that illustrate the various types of information that you can find using wills and probate records. You will learn about various sites to visit and what to search for when you get there. The download that accompanies this book is packed with links to sites that you can search for yourself, as well as useful forms to streamline your searches. The focus in this book is on Canadian researchers. We will demystify the Canadian courts and the language of Canadian wills and probate records. You will find detailed information regarding sources in each province and territory. However, in recognition of the fact that our country is not very old, we will also delve broadly into international sources that focus on wills and probate. Canadians’ roots extend all over the world. Many searchers can use Canadian records to find only two or three generations of ancestors and must then turn to records from their family’s country of origin. You will find several useful explanations, ideas, and links in this book for accessing and understanding records from other countries. You will find links and descriptions for websites that will help you find your ancestors in countries other than Canada. They are divided into general geographical areas, then within those areas they are listed alphabetically by country. Later in this book, each country (or in some cases, groups of countries) has its own discussion. You will find that the availability and quality of records varies widely from place to place. Countries in some parts of the world have had their boundaries changed by war or other events. Records have been lost due to fires, floods, conflicts, and changes in government policies. We have located and identified as many reliable sources of records as possible. There are hundreds of international genealogy sites that offer records such as birth, death, and marriage but they are not included here unless they also offer registries of wills, probate documents, inheritance registries, or similar records. While those other sites contain important genealogical facts that you will no doubt consult along the way, in this book, listings are restricted to estate-related sites in order to help you narrow down your search. That is not to say we have been overly restrictive; we have included some resources that are not actual probate documents but that are related, such as records of accidental drownings in the Yukon, prisoners hanged in Ontario, and individuals who perished in the Holocaust. We hope you will find information here to advance your family tree. Happy researching!