Wills are legal documents detailing the wishes of deceased persons as to the division of their property and chattels. Administrations are legal documents setting out the decisions of a court as to the division of the property of individuals who have died without making a will.

Wills

These are a particularly valuable source of genealogical material. They can contain detailed information on relationships between many members of a family group along with other information on residences, occupations and general circumstances of the family.

Until 1858 the church was responsible for proving (i.e. establishing the validity) of wills. From the Reformation until 1858 this meant that the Church of Ireland, as the established church, was responsible. Within each Church of Ireland diocese there was a Consistorial Court which proved wills of those who had been residents within the diocese and whose property was also within the diocese. If, however, the testator’s property in another diocese was of more than £5 value, the will was proved by the Prerogative Court which was the responsibility of the Archbishop of Armagh. This, for example, could occur if the testator had land which straddled the border of two dioceses. Furthermore, if the testator had property in England, the will was also proved in the English Court at Canterbury and a copy proved in Armagh.

From 1858 the power to grant probate was removed from the Church of Ireland and vested in a Principal Registry in Dublin with eleven District Registries.

Most of the original wills were destroyed in the fire at the Public Records Office in 1922. The records which are now available are of three types:

• wills - these are the wills which survived the PRO fire, copies of the original wills, wills deposited in other archives and post-1922 wills.
• will abstracts - many local or family historians have examined and made notes on the wills concerned with certain families or areas over the centuries. Depending on the purpose for which they were made, the abstracts will vary in their detail.
• will indexes - the PRO had a set of indexes which were used as a guide to finding the wills in their collection. The indexes to Consistorial wills survived the fire although some were damaged. These are arranged alphabetically by family and Christian name and give the address and year of probate (and, in some cases, the occupation). The Prerogative will indexes are arranged alphabetically by testator’s name and also give the address, occupation and year of probate. They are in two series, the first, up to 1810, and the second from 1811 to 1857. There is also a post-1858 Wills Card Index and bound annual indexes called Calendars recording the name, address and occupation of the deceased person, the place and date of birth, the value of the estate and the name of the person(s) to whom the probate was granted. It is important to recognise that the date of the will is not the date on which the will was made, nor the date when the person died, but the date of probate, that is, the date when the will was officially proven in the Probate Registry of the High Court. It is normally several months after the person died but can be many years. All of the will indexes are located in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

Administrations

If a person died without making a will, the Consistorial and Prerogative Courts, and later the Principal Registry and District Registries, had a responsibility for deciding on the distribution of the deceased’s property to the family and to creditors. Having made its decision, the court acted by appointing an administrator (usually a next of kin or major creditor) to look after and distribute the estate of the deceased in the manner set down. The administrator entered a bond for a sum of money as surety that he would do so (administration bonds). Most of these records perished in the 1922 fire but the following are available:

• administrations - the Prerogative Administrations of 1684-88, 1748-51 and 1839 and the Consistorial Grant Books are available at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
• abstracts of administrations - abstracts of many of the pre-1802 administrations were made and are in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. These abstracts contain the deceased’s name, address and occupation, the date of grant, and to whom made. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury also granted administrations and those for 1828-39 are available in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
• administration bonds - no original bonds survived the fire. However a damaged copy of a grant book, into which the grants were copied, survives for Derry and Raphoe (1812-21).