I have been working through some old wills (pre-1830) from Cornwall. A few specific properties (“Tenements” and “Estates”) have been passed down, multiple times, and I’m wondering how best to record this. These are “named places” mostly in the Parish of Lanlivery but a few in other parishes. See Crift, Trethevy and Carmeers on the following:
An event can only have one place attached to it. The probate of the will occurred at the court in Lanlivery in the cases I’m dealing with. Should I create a “Bequest” event for each property and give appropriate roles to the testator and the beneficiary? Other than the date of probate, is there a good way to ‘tie’ this event to the Will and/or Probate events?
Rather than creating a leg event, I would create property events. One for the initial purchase then one per transmission. The place of the event does not change(1). The description then carries the information indicating that it is about the initial purchase or the legacy or the inheritance of the good. For lenleg, the roles indicating who does what: donee, legatee.
(1) Ideally, in v5.2, it is the place (or places) which is the object of the event, which is bought, transmitted, sold, etc…
Donee translated by Google from French donataire (receiver of a donation from someone, the donor)
Legee from french légataire (beneficiary of a bequest)
I am currently creating Probate events for the settlement of each will. There are often gifts of money or other items (“gould ring”) that go to specific individuals. I share the Probate event with each recipient and add a Note or Attribute that describes what they received.
I would like to be able to have specific Places for each property to get some sense of who was connected to each at certain times. Note that is never going to be perfect. Many of the wills indicate that the ‘rest and residue of my estate’ goes to the Executor. I believe that in some cases that includes one or more properties but they are not specifically listed or identified. So far, I have not found a way to tell if additional properties were purchased or sold during a person’s lifetime. I can only record the ones that are specifically mentioned.
How about using events with date spans (from/to) instead of single dates? You could use Property events for the owners, and Residence events for people living there (including the owners, if applicable).
Organize places? I don’t know, maybe not. I already use a lot of things in places but I would revise my property events to indicate them as I described above. I also have lot of historical events in Events just waiting for v5.2 to be hung up in their place to cross them with anyone who may have experienced them or heard of them. And I probably have other “to do in v5.2” notes that I don’t remember when answering that most likely have to do with locations.
I’d love to use date spans but I just don’t have enough information. Other than the wills, a few BMD records will mention that so-and-so resided at a specific named place. Most of the time, the records provide evidence that the person was living in the parish but don’t specify exactly which property. Nonetheless, I’d like to capture what I can.
