As part of my research into family history I have come across a substantial number of wills – some used to check facts, some used to challenge hypothesised relationships and some used simply to try to find references through people in the same place at the same time (the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack approach).

You should be able to search for wills and documents using the table below. Happy hunting!

Where the TAGS column has a number in it, this identifies that the testator was a direct ancestor of my daughter and, by working backwards from the first character, it shows 1 (father) or 2 (mother) in preceding generations. The number of characters represents the number of generations back from my daughter.

Using the numerical code, I can quickly tell whether an ancestor is a maternal (starts with 2) or paternal (starts with 1). A paternal great grandfather (all on the male side) would have the number 111, whereas his wife would be 112.