Wednesday 8 May 2013

Calendars of Wills & Administrations 1858-1920 are now searchable!

The National Archives of Ireland (NAI) has made a major update to its online Genealogy website with the Calendars of Wills and Administrations, 1858–1920.

For the first time, users can search by the name of the deceased person and also by name of executor/beneficiary. The Calendars give details of principal family relationships, and assets of which the person died possessed. They have previously been available only to personal visitors to the NAI's Reading Room.

The indexes are linked to digital images of the original calendars. In the examples I've just checked, whole pages of the calendars appear in the images.

Up to 1917, the Calendars cover the whole of Ireland, but since 1918 they cover only the 26 counties in the Republic; those indexes covering the six counties of Northern Ireland since 1918 are in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). The Calendars of Wills and Administrations for Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry are searchable online at PRONI's website.

Calendars for Wills and Administration from 1922 to 1982 remain searchable on the main National Archives website.

So where is 1921? It appears that the records for 1921 have not been microfilmed and were not, therefore, digitised. The NAI hopes to digitise these in the future.