Tuesday 29 April 2014

Soldiers' Wills online collection completed

While the pre-1901 census fragments and the census search forms have received bundles of attention in the run-up and final release on the NAI's Genealogy website yesterday (see blogpost), the digitisation of a collection of soldiers' wills has quietly been completed and uploaded to the same site.

This collection holds the wills of Irishmen who served in the British army in the 19th and early 20th century. These wills were made by non-commissioned soldiers who were encouraged by the army to make a will before leaving for active service. A small number of these wills relate to men who went to the South African (Boer) Wars of 1898-1902. However, the majority of the collection dates from the First World War.

With the entire collection now online, free, researchers can search and view digitised images of all the surviving original wills.