Tuesday 2 June 2009

Cruwys Morchard wills and inventories

I have added another set of transcriptions to the pages of Genuki Devon. The latest transcriptions are abstracts and catalogue entries for the wills and inventories which are held in the Cruwys family archives at Cruwys Morchard House in Devon. The transcriptions can be found online here. Some of the wills in the Cruwys Morchard collection are now the only surviving copies. As Devon researchers will know, the Exeter Probate Registry was bombed in World War II and all the wills stored there were lost. It is unfortunate that the original Cruwys Morchard wills are still in private hands and are therefore inaccessible to the public. I hope that one day it will be possible to have these records digitised or microfilmed so that they can be made available to interested researchers. I would be particularly interested in seeing the two original Cruwys inventories.

My latest contributions to Genuki Devon were in response to the announcement of the new Devon Wills Project. This resource is now growing very rapidly, and if you have any ancestors from Devon it is well worth checking out. I have already transcribed a number of Cruwys/Cruse wills along with a few wills for some of the other Devon surnames I am researching such as Dillon, Westcott and Acland. The links to these transcriptions are now all included in the new consolidated index.

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