Wills and Testamentary Papers 

Once the date of death an ancestor has been discovered, it is worth finding out whether they left a will.  Wills contain not only the name, address and occupation of the testator, but also details of the larger family network, such as cousins and nephews.  Many wills also include the addresses and occupations of the beneficiaries, witnesses and executors. It must be borne in mind, however, that the vast majority of people did not make a will.  

Between 1536 and 1858, the Church of Ireland was responsible for all wills and administrations in Ireland. The Probate Act of 1857 transferred probate authority from the Church of Ireland to the newly founded government probate districts.  The Church of Ireland subsequently transferred their wills and administrations to the Public Record Office in Dublin. Although most wills from before 1900 – some dating from the early sixteenth century – were destroyed when, in 1922, the Public Record Office was bombed during the Irish Civil War.  Luckily, will indexes and administration indexes survived and copies of most wills after 1858 were preserved. 

WILLS BEFORE 1858

Prior to 1858 the Church of Ireland was responsible for administering all testamentary affairs.  Ecclesiastical or Consistorial Courts in each diocese were responsible for granting probate and conferring on the executors the power to administer the estate.  Each court was responsible for wills and administrations in its own diocese.  You can use Brian Mitchell’s A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, which has county maps that associate civil parishes with Church of Ireland dioceses, to identify the diocese in which your ancestor lived.  Researchers should also bear it mind that when the estate included property worth more than £5 in another diocese, responsibility for the will or administration passed to the Prerogative Court under the authority of the Archbishop of Armagh.

Indexes to those wills destroyed in 1922 are available on the shelves of the Search Rooms at PRONI and the National Archives.  These are useful, for although the will cannot now be produced, the index contains the name and residence of the testator and the date that the will was either made or probated.  Occasionally the testator’s occupation is given.  The NAI also holds Inland Revenue registers of wills and administrations, 1828-39, containing abstracts of wills and administrations for 1828-1839 (indexed in separate volumes which cover the period 1828-1879; for the years 1840-1857) and.  Charitable Donations and Bequests will extract books containing abstracts of wills which made charitable bequests, 1800-1961 (there is a separate card index for the period 1800-1858 in the Reading Room).

You can also consult the Eneclann CD-ROM, Indexes to Irish Wills, 1484-1858 which can be purchased online at Ancestry.com or at www.eneclann.ie .  This CD-ROM contains over seventy thousand entries from surviving wills, administrations, transcriptions, and abstracts. 

WILLS 1858-1900

 From 1858 district probate courts took over responsibility for wills and administrations from the Church of Ireland.  The twelve probate registries created at the time were: the principle registry in Dublin and eleven district registries in Armagh, Ballina, Belfast, Cavan, Cork, Kilkenny, Limerick, Londonderry, Mullingar, Tuam and Waterford.  The wills of wealthier members of society tended to be probated at the Principal Registry.  

The district registries retained transcripts of the wills that they proved and of the administrations intestate that they granted before the annual transfer of the original records (20 or more years old) to the Public Record office of Ireland in Dublin.  The original wills were destroyed in Dublin in 1922 but the transcripts copies in will books survived.  These are now on deposit in the NAI and PRONI where they are available on microfilm for the period 1858-1900 (MIC/15C).  Each volume contains an alphabetical index. 

There is not a comprehensive index to these post-1858 wills and grants.  However, there are bound annual indexes called ‘calendars’ at both the NAI and PRONI.  These calendars are of value to genealogists since they provide the name, address, occupation and date of death of the testator as well as the names, addresses and occupations of executors, the value of estate and the place and date of probate.  Each if you have only an approximate date for the death of an ancestor it is worth looking through a number of volumes in the hope of spotting an entry giving details of their will.

A consolidated index to the calendars, 1858-77, is available in the NAI and at PRONI.  This gives the year and the registry where the will was probated.  The Ulster Historical Foundation has an index to the calendars covering the period 1878-1900 on its website.  This index gives the date of death and county of residence.  Access to the index is available to members of the research co-operative, the Ulster Genealogical and Historical Guild.

PRONI also has a card index to post-1858 surviving wills and will abstracts.  This index is most useful when looking for a copy or abstract of a will probate at the Principal Registry in Dublin, which would have been destroyed in 1922 without a transcript being made.

WILLS FROM 1900

 The NAI holds original wills and administration papers lodged in the Principal Registry since 1904, and in most District Registries, outside Northern Ireland, since 1900.  PRONI has in its custody all wills for the districts of Belfast and Londonderry from 1900 to, at present, the mid-1990s, and Armagh from 1900 until it closed in 1921.  After 1900 the original wills and their associated papers are available filed in a separate envelope for each testator.  If the person did not make a will there may be letters of administration that give the name, residence and occupation of the deceased as well as the name and address of the person or persons appointed to administer the estate.  Post-1900 wills are found by using the annual will calendars located in the reception area at PRONI.

 An index to printed Irish will calendars 1878-1900, which includes surname and firstname of testator, county or overseas country of residence and death, date of death and year of probate on around 151,000 individuals for all of Ireland, is available to members of the Ulster Genealogical and Historical Guild at http://www.ancestryireland.com/database.php?filename=db_wills