Some wills if you are interested

[Lensgirl]

Hi

hopefully i will have attached a few word documents of wills which i feel really lucky to have been able to get.

What i have is John Bowkett 1781, John Bowkett 1820 and his wife Mary (formerlly Gunter) 1824 and John Bowkett 1841.

If anyone would like to take a look at the originals drop me an email and i will gladly send it to you. Im confused on some words, so would be great if someone else could take a look at them!!

Mary's will is 4 pages long and i dont actually understand it as she leaves everything to her niece, but im guessing that her husband Johns will left everything he owned to their children upon her death so she didnt need to mention that.

A bit of family info: John Bowkett who died in 1841 was my 4x great grandfather, his parents were John and Mary, and John was his father. There is a lot of money left in these wills, so where is my portion!!:D

Something else that confuses me is that the last John leaves things to his grandson Allen, yet there were several living children before him so not sure why they got nothing (typically one of those was another direct grandparent!!)

If anyone can suggest the next moves after this (other than putting in dates, places, names into my tree programme) i would be grateful too.

Also, if anyone can shed light on whether the name mentioned as Mary's mother is her maiden name or married name would be great. There is no will that i can find online to help with this.

I got these all from the Gloucestershire website, and only cost £11 for the lot. Took about 3 weeks to arrive, but did order just before xmas so is understandable.

Happy reading

[Little Nell]

Hallo Robyne

Haven't time today to look at these, but in answer to why some children might be overlooked in favour of another (or of a grandchild) it might be that the other children were already well off, or provided for some other way.

[KiteRunner]

I haven't got time right now but I will try to have a look later. But in the meantime, it might be worth pointing out that sometimes people left some of their children or grandchildren out of their will if they had already given them their share of the money / property, for instance, when they got married. As for why Mary would leave everything to her niece, presumably that would be money or property that had not been left to Mary by her husband but most likely left to Mary by somebody else, so in that case Mary would be able to decide who got it.

[Lensgirl]

Thanks both. Mary was left a house of some kind by her mother, which was handed down to her neice

[KiteRunner]

Also, if anyone can shed light on whether the name mentioned as Mary's mother is her maiden name or married name would be great. There is no will that i can find online to help with this.

I assume you mean this part:
my late mother Margaret Nicholls widow deceased

in which case it is definitely the name that she had when she died, not her maiden name. But of course, it could be that she was married more than once, so it doesn't necessarily mean that Nicholls was Mary's maiden name.

Still not got much time to go through these, sorry, but I will PM you my email address so that you can email me the originals and when I have time I should be able to help fill in some of the missing words.

[Olde Crone Holden]

In my experience, where a grandchild or grandchildren "get the lot" it is because the children got theirs when their father was still alive.

And in the case of a woman leaving a Will in those days, she could only Will what was legally hers (that she had brought into the marriage).

I do love Wills, they often speak volumes and have the last word from beyond the grave.

"And to each and every one of my daughters I leave ten pounds of good sterling money, excepting my daughter Mary who borrowed £10 in 1784 and has not repayed it"

"But for my brother John's part I leave the sum of (???two pounds???) to the church that they may pray for his forgiveness and redemption from sin"

OC

[Anne in Carlisle]

I've got a couple of wills where the person has left proportionally more to a family member (or members) who were obviously less well off eg. parents had died when they were young; or, father apparently deserted them and went to Australia!

Anne

[Lynn The Forest Fan]

I only have one will, my great grandfather's and I was really shocked to discover that he had not left my grandmother anything, despite her husband being a executer. he left everything divided between his other 5 daughters, leaving out his only son as well. I can only imagine that grandma & her brother had already been given their share.

[KiteRunner]

Mary's will is 4 pages long and i dont actually understand it as she leaves everything to her niece, but im guessing that her husband Johns will left everything he owned to their children upon her death so she didnt need to mention that.

A bit of family info: John Bowkett who died in 1841 was my 4x great grandfather, his parents were John and Mary, and John was his father. There is a lot of money left in these wills, so where is my portion!!:D

I've just sent you an email, Robyne, having finished Mary's will (plus I already did the John 1778 one last night) and I think I can clear this bit up now - Mary and John did not have any children together so if John had children then they must have been by a previous wife. It is very unlikely that Mary had any surviving children by her previous husband either as they would surely have been mentioned somewhere in her will (the niece inherits everything she has to leave including all her personal possessions, and is named as sole executrix, and it is stated that there was no "issue" from Mary's marriage to John Bowkett.)