RLP 336: England Probate, Court, and Manor Records with Jessica Morgan

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 336 England Probate Court and Manor Records with Jessica Morgan. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (42s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi to everyone listening, Welcome to Research Like a Pro. Hi Diana, Mom.

Diana (51s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (53s):
I’m great. What have you been working on and reading lately?

Diana (58s):
Well, I just finished reading the Genealogist Guide to Researching Tax Records by Carol Cook Darrow and Susan Winchester. So it’s just a thin little book. You were the one that clued me into it and it goes all through different types of tax records and I use those all the time in my research, but there were some tax records there that I’d never heard of before. So it was pretty fun and I love how she gets some ideas about how to find these and at the very end, you know, the summary just says basically you’re just gonna have to reach out and figure out where these are because they could be any place in archives, they could be digitized or just in the repository. So it’s up to us to figure out where the tax records are.

Diana (1m 40s):
But it’s such a handy little book to give you ideas.

Nicole (1m 44s):
Great recommendation. Our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series for January, is going to be presented by Susan McKee, who is A Genealogist specializing in Irish research and is a member of the Seattle Genealogical Society. So this will be a fun class. She’ll be talking about her case study Using Irish Naming Convention to Discover the Family of Thomas Delaney in the Mid-Nineteenth Century in Ireland. So we hope you’ll join us for our Research Like a Pro Webinar Series for 2025. And the topics she’ll cover are Ireland, Queen’s County, Mid to Late 1800s, Irish naming Convention, Catholic Parish Registers, Civil Registration, 1901 Census of Ireland.

Nicole (2m 26s):
Also, we have the Research Like a Pro with DNA study group coming up in February, 2025. And you can register now and if you’d like to be a peer group leader, please let us know, email us or apply on our website and be sure to join our weekly FamilyLocket newsletter that comes out every Monday to receive news about new blog posts, podcast episodes and any coupons we have running. And as for upcoming conferences, we’ll look forward to seeing many of you at RootsTech in March, March 6th through 8th.

Diana (2m 57s):
Well, thank you for going through those. We are excited to have Jessica back. Jessica, how are you doing today?

Jessica Morgan (3m 5s):
Doing great, Thank you very much.

Diana (3m 8s):
We had Jessica with us for our previous episode number 335 where we talked all about different types of records in England besides the traditional baptism, marriage and burial records that we generally use. And today in this episode we are going to talk about more of those records that we can use to either add more context to our ancestors’ life or to further their ancestry and discover more people on the family tree. So first of all, let’s talk a bit about wills and Probate. This is something that we use all the time in any type of research in the United States.

Diana (3m 50s):
We use this as much as we possibly can and I’m so curious to learn about what wills and Probate in England might look like. I do know that not everyone would have a will and it was uncommon for the average farmer or laborer to go through the expense of creating it because you know, they usually didn’t have as much property or wealth to bequeath. But I have heard that many people can be mentioned in a will even if they are not the ones who actually wrote it. Let’s divide this up into timeframes and talk about 1858 to more current.

Diana (4m 32s):
And so Jessica, what can you tell us about the Wills and Probate from 1858 and why is that a special year?

Jessica Morgan (4m 39s):
So that’s a special year because that is when the Probate registry in the British government took charge of proving wills and administrations. So before that it was the responsibility of the Church of England. So when the British government took charge, they created an index which is called the National Probate Calendar. So if you have an ancestor who you suspect left a will post 1858, then it’s really easy to find out if they did and how much they left and some good information like that because you can just go to the National Probate Calendar, which is a database that’s available on Ancestry and many major genealogy websites.

Jessica Morgan (5m 21s):
And the Probate calendar includes the following information that you can find out: the name of the deceased, along with their address, and the date and place of the Probate, and the name of the principal heirs ,and the total value of the property. So again, this is searchable on Ancestry. If you just Google National Probate Calendar Ancestry, you’ll get to it and then you can use the information found in the calendar to order your ancestors’ original will through the Probate registry, which is www.gov.uk/search-will-probate. Basically if you Google Probate Registry England, you should be able to get to there so you can put in that order using the information you got from the National Probate Calendar.

Jessica Morgan (6m 8s):
And copies typically are very inexpensive. I believe they cost like a pound 50 sterling. So yeah, definitely worth checking out.

Diana (6m 17s):
Thank you for giving us that resource and, and in the blog post you wrote about this, you have an image of a sample page and I noticed that it does give you some details like dates and places and some family relationships and occupations so you can really see if this matches up, what you know about your person in that calendar. So that looks like a really helpful resource.

Nicole (6m 41s):
When I was researching Thomas Bradley, I ordered his will and it was listed in the calendar and then I ordered it. I don’t remember how much it cost, but I just remember being so excited when it arrived and transcribing that and learning so many things who he had left his money to and he left like a chair to his servant and like loved his cottage to his grandson. It was really neat. And of course we wanna find any of the records we can about our ancestors, but I especially love finding wills. Well, Jessica, tell us more about pre-1858 wills.

Jessica Morgan (7m 14s):
Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, before 1858, that’s when wills were held by the Church of England, specifically by the church’s ecclesiastical courts. So there’s a certain hierarchy within the courts that can be a bit complicated and feel a little overwhelming, but really handy map on family search. If you just Google like family search map, it will take you to a page on family search that has a map of England and you can type in your parish name and that can give you the outline of your parish. And then there is a tab for jurisdictions and it can give you the jurisdictions and specifically the court that your ancestors will would’ve been under given the parish that they lived in at the time.

Jessica Morgan (8m 3s):
But just a quick breakdown of how the courts work. The top court was the prerogative court, which is basically York or Canterbury York covered most of Northern England. Canterbury typically covered either all of England or Southern England. Below that is diocese and then below that is the arch deacon or the peculiar court. And peculiar courts were kind of more of those unusual boundaries that maybe kind of fell out or straddled between two counties. That’s usually what that covered. But again, if you go to FamilySearch Map, you should be able to quickly narrow down the name of the ecclesiastical court that your parish belonged to.

Jessica Morgan (8m 45s):
From there you can be able to go on to the FamilySearch catalog and search that court’s name in the FamilySearch catalog. Then you should be able to find out if the Family History Library has wills regarding that court. ’cause again, the the wills aren’t categorized under parish. If you search for your ancestors’ parish name, you’re not going to get a will collection. You’re only going to get it under the court that your ancestors’ parish belongs to. But yeah, you can get a lot of really good information from wills and they carry very similar information that you’d expect to find in like American wills, like names of relatives, names of heirs that are inheriting items or property value of property.

Jessica Morgan (9m 28s):
Just a lot of really good helpful things that again, if you have an ancestor who left a will in England, which is definitely less common than over the US where where practically everyone had a will. Again, less common in England, but if you do have an ancestor who had a will, then you can get a lot of good genealogy information from that. And again, just using that family search map is a great way to track down what the name of the court that your ancestors will should be found under.

Nicole (9m 57s):
Oh, fantastic resource. I have used that map for civil registration districts and things like that, but I haven’t used it for the court jurisdictions. And all of the jurisdictions in England are somewhat complicated. It’s, it’s not super straightforward. So that resource is very helpful.

Diana (10m 15s):
I agree that is the best map for jurisdictions for England. I wish every country had one like that or the family search had something like that.

Jessica Morgan (10m 23s):
I know, yeah.

Diana (10m 25s):
Well there’s a fun example in the blog post you wrote about a will that was really early is for 1656. And when I first looked at that I thought, I can’t read this that well ’cause it’s written really fancy old handwriting. And I actually put it into AI and asked Claude 3.5 sonnet to transcribe it and it did a great job reading that. I was so impressed. But just a couple of things that it said it, it does give so many relationships talking about the brother and the wife and the son. So you know these wills are just so well worth your time to track down. And this one was fun because it was nuncupative, which means it was spoken, not written and probably ’cause he was too ill to write a formerly witnessed will.

Diana (11m 11s):
So I’m always fascinated to check out the wills. Well something else happens when somebody dies and that is a death duty. So what is this all about in England? So

Jessica Morgan (11m 23s):
Death duties can be really valuable because essentially they were taxes on estates of the deceased when they were probated. So the wills were then copied and created into abstracts then saved into the death duty records. They basically are abstracts of what the original will said. And the reason why these can be so valuable is because there are places in England where the wills have been destroyed and do not exist. For example, if your ancestor lived in Devon Somerset or Cornwall before 1858, those Church of England recorded wills were destroyed during the bombings of World War II.

Jessica Morgan (12m 4s):
So those are no longer available. However, the death duties, which were the taxes on those wills which created these abstracts of those wills, they do exist for those counties. So it’s a very important resource if your ancestor is from, again, Devon Somerset or Cornwall. So there’s different taxes that were taken out. So there’s different types of death duties. There’s like the legacy duty which covered personal property succession duty, which covered land and estate duty covered everything the deceased owns. So if you see those terms, that’s basically what they mean. But yeah, more detailed records can be found after 1812.

Jessica Morgan (12m 45s):
And National Archives has a great guide on how to look for death duties and find my past has an index to death duties, which covers 1796 to 1903. So yeah, very good. If your ancestor belonged to a an ecclesiastical court where the wills had been destroyed.

Nicole (13m 3s):
What a great record replacement. And this is so helpful to know that the Wills were copied over and kept with the death duty records.

Diana (13m 13s):
Right. Well let’s move on to something that is similar to Wills and Probate and that’s Court Records and this is something that I like to use in the US and I think it’s really interesting that a lot of the US terminology for Court Records as we go through these, they’ll sound familiar, came from England from these original courts. So let’s start off talking about the quarter sessions and maybe you can give us some ideas about what that is and what kind of records could be in that type of a court.

Jessica Morgan (13m 46s):
Yeah, absolutely. So quarter sessions, we’ll talk about those first. Basically there are different tiers, different types of courts that handled different types of court cases. So the first one is quarter sessions, which date back as far back as the 13th century and most recently as 1972. So again a big swath of time. And so the quarter sessions was a court that was held four times a year and basically covered everyday business or grievances. Anyone could attend the quarter sessions. So those are kind of the most popular go-to records for ancestors because regardless of the social status, anyone could attend this court.

Jessica Morgan (14m 27s):
So you can get a variety of different records from quarter sessions. Basically it includes lists of justices and bailiffs and constables. It contains in indictments and depositions, bonds and complaints, testimonials, licenses for various occupations. Like if your ancestor was a was a tavern keeper or an ale housekeeper, you could find a license for them within the quarter sessions, removal orders for paupers if they needed to be evicted back to their home parish because they couldn’t provide for themselves. Just a whole litany of different things can be found in quarter session Records is a just a very really interesting resource.

Jessica Morgan (15m 10s):
So quarter sessions records are typically kept in the archive of their respective county and you can use the keyword field in the FamilySearch catalog and search for a county where your ancestors parish was basic. So basically a county name and quarter sessions, if you use that phrase, so like Shropshire quarter sessions, then the FamilySearch catalog can give you everything that that county has in their own quarter sessions and you can check out if your ancestor is listed in there. Find My Past also has a good searchable database covering Northamptonshire, Shropshire, Surrey, Wilshire and Yorkshire. They have quarter sessions for all of those counties.

Jessica Morgan (15m 52s):
Again, it’s, it’s a very large court system that covered everyday incidences from everyone regardless of class. So that’s a worthwhile resource to check out for your ancestor.

Diana (16m 3s):
Oh great. Thanks for telling us about those. I really had no idea. And looking at the catalog, I see that there are quarter session papers for West Kent for where those Kelseys are. So I’m finding there’s going to be a lot of resources if I want to dig into that family. How interesting.

Nicole (16m 21s):
Wow, I am just gonna have to dig into this. I kind of want to go look at the ones that are on Find My Past just for ideas of what the records contain, but the ones I want are for Lincolnshire. Because that’s where Thomas Bradley was listed in the newspaper as being in the quarter sessions because he was accused of manslaughter. So I’m gonna have to go dive into the archives there Lincolnshire Archives, here I come. Well let’s talk about Chancery court. What is that and how is that a little bit different from quarter sessions?

Jessica Morgan (16m 51s):
Yeah, well Nicole, if you have ancestors who are more on the wealthy side, if they had like inheritance or land, you might find them in the Chancery court as well because a chancery court basically was a nationwide court that covered disputes over inheritance lands and debts. So it’s specifically like for the wealthy class, the Chancery court was concerned with in 1875 it was absorbed into the high Court of justice, but before that point, Chancery Proceedings belonged to the Chancery court. The proceedings were sorted into bundles by the name of the chancellor involved. And it has a lot of good information.

Jessica Morgan (17m 32s):
It has affidavits, depositions, petitions, court funds, all sorts of really good information. So if you have an ancestor that you know had a certain amount of wealth or property, chancery Court Records are a very good resource to check out. They are held at the national archives and there is an index to Chancery records covering covering 1386 to 1558 in an ancestry database entitled England and Wales Criminal Registers. So if you search the England and Wales criminal registers database on Ancestry, then you’ll get some chancery Court Records inserted in there as well. So yeah, very good resource. If you have ancestors who came from a certain amount of wealth,

Nicole (18m 13s):
Oh that makes sense that they would have a different court for that kind of thing. And it’s good that there’s an index and I’m curious how many names in their indexed or if it’s like an OCR type of thing. I’ll have to go check it out.

Jessica Morgan (18m 27s):
Yeah, for sure.

Diana (18m 27s):
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Diana (19m 14s):
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Nicole (19m 23s):
Okay, well our next type of court is the Assize court. So tell us more about that.

Jessica Morgan (19m 29s):
Yeah, so the Assize Court is a really interesting one. It goes back to the 13th century and existed up to 1972 and they were basically periodic criminal courts that heard cases that were too serious for the quarter sessions. So if your ancestor appears in in these Court Records, it’s for a very good reason. They were replaced by the Crown Court along with quarter sessions in 1972. There’s different jurisdictions within the Assize court that covers different counties, but the Assize court, if you go into the records themselves, you will find prison books basically names of prisoners with the verdict and sentence.

Jessica Morgan (20m 9s):
You’ll have order books like orders made by the judges, sums paid to sheriffs. You’ll have indictments, you’ll have depositions, even some criminal biographies can be found in there. And as well as appeal registers. And many of the Assize Court Records are held at the national archives and you can also access them through that Ancestry database I mentioned before, the England and Wales criminal registers and also the website, the Old Bailey, B-A-I-L-E-Y is a great database covering those criminal court cases. So again, it’s always worth taking a look if you suspect your ancestor was not very well behaved, their name may appear in Assize’s court.

Jessica Morgan (20m 53s):
And again, that is for the serious crimes. So you might uncover some very interesting information through that.

Nicole (21m 1s):
That’s helpful and there’s some good resources you mentioned. Thank you.

Diana (21m 6s):
Well let’s talk about our last type of courts and that is the ecclesiastical court.

Jessica Morgan (21m 13s):
Yep. So the ecclesiastical court basically dealt with matters related to the Church of England. So every three to four years a bishop would visit a diocese and basically address any court matters that were submitted by the parish church wardens. And sometimes if a diocese was too populated like London, then you’d have a, a Commissary court handle the proceedings. So if you see a title that says Commissary Court, that means it’s held by the Commissary court assigned from a bishop. If you see a Consistory court, that means that it was presided over by the bishop himself. And then any locations outside the bishop’s jurisdiction was called a Peculiar court.

Jessica Morgan (21m 56s):
So ecclesiastical Court Records, you’ll find different records related against specifically to the church. So any violence against clergymen, defamation and perjury, adultery and illegitimacy, marriage licenses, professional licenses, tithes, and also wills and probates, which we had discussed just earlier. So yeah, again, these are, these are records that are aside from the wills and probates and like adultery and illegitimacy, most of the records are related directly to the, to the Church of England. But define these records, just determine the name of the court, your parish, your ancestors parish belonged to, again using that FamilySearch map site.

Jessica Morgan (22m 40s):
And then go to the FamilySearch catalog and search for that court name, search it using the court name, ecclesiastical court, and then you’ll get specifically the records that FamilySearch has for that ecclesiastical court. And some are also held at the archives of the parish’s respective county. So yeah, it’s, it’s a really good court your ancestors’ name might pop up again for in terms of like wills or marriage licenses or or adultery instances. So yeah, it’s last but definitely not least, it’s a very large court.

Diana (23m 15s):
I think it’s so interesting for all of these. So find them, you’re recommending we go to the FamilySearch catalog and search for that specific name in the keyword field because often I just go to the place, then I go down and look under Court Records. But it sounds like this is perhaps a better way to search using the keyword. Is that what you have found?

Jessica Morgan (23m 37s):
Yes, because if you’re searching, say for your ancestors parish, then a lot of times Court Records won’t pop up because the Court Records belonged to a, to a larger court that involved a ton of different parishes, not just your parish. So you’re likely not going to necessarily get that court name if you search just in the FamilySearch catalog only for your parish. And if you search for the, the larger like county, just everything that’s under a county, you’re gonna get tons and tons and tons of of hits that you have to sift through to find the right court. So I’ve always found it more efficient to use something like FamilySearch maps to get the specific court name and then you can plug that in and just very quickly see what records are available for that court that your parish was a part of.

Diana (24m 32s):
Oh, that’s such a great tip. Thank you.

Nicole (24m 35s):
Wow. It makes me want to always click that link in the FamilySearch catalog that says part of, and then gives you a larger jurisdiction that it’s part of.

Jessica Morgan (24m 45s):
Yeah, yeah, those are always worth investigating.

Nicole (24m 47s):
Okay, we’re moving on to another record type that I know absolutely nothing about. So I’m excited to learn about this. Tell us what are Manor Rolls?

Jessica Morgan (24m 57s):
Yeah, so these are definitely less known, but they’re so important for people who are trying to break past that 1538 year. So people familiar with English research, 1538 was when Henry VII’s mandate took effect, basically saying that all the Church of England parishes needed to document the baptisms, Marriages and burials that took place in their parish. So before that year, before 1538, there was no obligation to record those things and a lot of religious denominations just simply didn’t. So without the Parish records that we are just so reliant on in the 1800s, 17, 1600s, basically one of the most essential records for before that year, before 1538 are Manor Rolls.

Jessica Morgan (25m 51s):
They are records pertaining to a given estate because everything back, you know, in the 1500s and earlier property and rule of law would often revolve around the estate that your ancestor was part of. Basically they are the most reliable resource if you want to look for your ancestor before 1538. So yeah, the estate matter was the unit of local administration and so yeah, it’s gonna have its own court proceedings, it’s gonna have its own taxes, it’s, it’s really gonna capture the day-to-day life of the estate’s inhabitants and it’s gonna provide the most useful information about your family.

Jessica Morgan (26m 34s):
So what you can find within the Manor Rolls is specifically the manor court papers. The Manor court, its duty was to regulate the responsibilities and relationships between the manor lord, his steward and bailiff and the estate’s inhabitants. So the manor Lord acted both as the landlord and like the landowner and the judiciary for his own estate. So he would oversee, he or she would oversee matters such as rental fees, elections of locals, officials, land surveys and so on. So he was the landowner and he was the judge. So there was two different types of courts that were held within a manner.

Jessica Morgan (27m 17s):
There’s the court lead and the court barren. So court lead would handle basically criminal cases, so assaults, petty crime, poaching, those things that would occur on the estate manner. After the 17th century, this court started to decline in importance and that was taken over by the justices of the peace. So post 1600s you start getting other courts, like the Assize, court handling crimes. But before that, the court lead of the local manner was responsible for hearing criminal cases. And then the other court court baron, that was the court that handled land transfers, tenant services, disputes between tenants, disputes between the tenants and the man or Lord.

Jessica Morgan (28m 2s):
So basically land transactions and the, and the less severe cases were heard by Court Baron. So this is probably where you’re going to get some good information for your ancestor if they transferred their land or if they were involved in, in any disputes, this would be a great place to look for your ancestor. So records for both courtly and court barren are held in the same collection usually often together for their respective manner. And we’ll talk about how to find these manner roles in a little bit. But when you get your hands on like the, a digital copy of the manor role, typically it begins with a date, the type of court held, whether it’s courtly or court barren and then the name of the Lord and steward of the estate.

Jessica Morgan (28m 47s):
And it should be noted that if a tenant who owned or rented property, if they died, their heir would appear in court and pay a fee to the manor Lord to take over that property. So that’s a really great way to piece together earlier generations. ’cause oftentimes property would pass from like from father to son, from one generation to the next. So if you’re seeing your ancestor coming and wishing to pay the fee to take over the land from so and so with the same surname, then that’s probably an earlier generation and that’s a way you can build your ancestry back during medieval times where you don’t have those parish registers available.

Jessica Morgan (29m 28s):
So it’s a great way to build your tree going back into the 1500s. 1400s, even 1300s.

Nicole (29m 36s):
It’s amazing that those are even available and that we can go that far back in England.

Jessica Morgan (29m 43s):
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Diana (29m 43s):
Well you hinted that you’re going to tell us how to find these and what to do with them as we’re trying to do our research.

Jessica Morgan (29m 52s):
Yes. So basically you have to start out with knowing which the parish, where your ancestor lived, and then if you’ve got that, then you can go onto the National Archives website. Again, this is the the British National Archives and they have a database called the Manor Documents Register. And Manor is of course M-A-N-O-R. So Manor Documents Register is a database where you can type in a specific parish and maybe you need to do like parish and a county that it’s in. It will give you a list of estates that would’ve covered that parish and if those estates have records that still exist.

Jessica Morgan (30m 32s):
I’ll throw out an example. I had recently typed in Stokely Parish in Buckinghamshire and the results I got was that that parish was covered by four manorial estates. It was Fowler’s Manor, Stokely Grange Manor, and Little Coat Manor and Stokely Manor. So there’s definitely records out there. And so it kind of raises the question of, okay, if this parish was covered by four manorial estates, like which estate did my ancestor belong to? And that’s where locating like early county maps and contacting local archives who have a better idea of how those estates were laid out can give you a good idea of like, which manor is, is the most relevant for your research.

Jessica Morgan (31m 13s):
It’s really great to get in touch and and to just figure that out. But if your parish only falls under one manor, the Manor Documents registered database provides a list of surviving records for that manor and the archives where they’re held, along with even a reference number. So you can contact that archives with a reference number and see if you can get your hands on a copy of of those Manor Rolls. And alternatively Manor Rolls are often held by county archives or trusts or the National Archives. And sometimes it requires like contacting staff or making an in-person visit. Sometimes these things haven’t been digitized and requires you going in person to see these things, but you should be able to glean all that information through the Manor Documents Register database.

Jessica Morgan (32m 2s):
It’s kind of hit and miss, not, not all estates from Medieval England have surviving Manor Rolls, but that database on the National Archives is, is a great way to, to find out whether or not records exist for the estate that your ancestor would’ve lived on and just how accessible those records are. It may be that you need to hire a local genealogist to go retrieve those matter rules for you. ’cause sometimes Manor Rolls are held by a trust or by a like a private third party and they’re not necessarily available to the public. But again, you can get all that information through the National Archives. You should be able to, if you get your hands on a copy of a Manor Roll, then congratulations.

Jessica Morgan (32m 50s):
But also it’s important to know that up until 1732 most Manor Rolls were recorded in Latin because that was the language of of record back in that time. Fortunately, you don’t need to be fluent in Latin to know what these records say necessarily, but you should familiarize yourself with common terms and phrases that would’ve been used in Manor court documents. Unfortunately, there are glossaries of Manor terms and Latin terms that Manor Court Records would’ve used, and those are easily accessible online if you clear the first hurdle of procuring a Manor Roll, and then the second hurdle of getting some good Latin glossaries and familiarizing yourself with the most common terms.

Jessica Morgan (33m 32s):
The third final hurdle is that the Manor Rolls were also written in Secretary Hand, which is a writing style used by English scribes in the 15th to 17th centuries. There are tutorials online that can teach you how to read Secretary Hand, but Diana, you mentioned popping in that earlier will into an AI database. I’d actually like to hear, hear more about that because it’s possible that they might be able to, it might be able to translate something that’s in Secretary Hand possibly.

Diana (34m 1s):
Oh, I bet you anything that it can. In fact, I’m thinking that maybe Transkribus would have a model for that. I haven’t checked that, but Transkribus has models for all sorts of different languages and different time periods.

Nicole (34m 16s):
Yes.

Diana (34m 17s):
So that would be fabulous, wouldn’t it?

Jessica Morgan (34m 19s):
Yeah, I’ve, I’ve never tried that, but I would be very intrigued. Reach out to us basically if anyone who who comes across a Manor Roll and and tries Transkribus, we would love to hear your experience.

Diana (34m 32s):
AI is opening up research for us in so many places that we were daunted like this one. If it could help us to read that really old writing in a different language, how fabulous.

Jessica Morgan (34m 45s):
Yeah, that would be so amazing.

Nicole (34m 47s):
Wow. I, my mind has been blown this episode. Thank you Jessica.

Jessica Morgan (34m 50s):
Yeah, of course.

Nicole (34m 51s):
I think we’re all just dying to take our family lines back to through these Manor courts. Wow.

Jessica Morgan (34m 58s):
Yeah, I think it’s so tempting to just sort of throw your hands up in the air when you hit that like 1538 mark and be like, okay, well I can’t do anything now because there’s no parish records. It’s definitely more difficult and you’re not gonna get as much information necessarily, but it’s not impossible. There are definitely tools and ways that you can try to, to continue pushing your ancestry back.

Nicole (35m 22s):
For sure. And combining this with Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests can really bring about some cool results, I’m sure.

Jessica Morgan (35m 32s):
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a whole nother topic.

Diana (35m 34s):
Oh,

Nicole (35m 34s):
Wonderful. Well, Thank you for doing this series, everyone listening. If you want to review what you’ve learned here, definitely read Jessica’s blog posts. There are five in the series that talk about all of these different record groups beyond the basics of birth, marriage and death records in England. So take a look at those and you’ll see some examples of the records. We talked about two, so you can see some images of the originals on the blog posts,

Jessica Morgan (36m 3s):
And I highly recommend Ancestral Trails by Mark T Herber is a really great resource for, especially in talking about Manor Rolls and the use it has in in doing British genealogy. So yeah, very, very good resource. There are a lot of really good resources out there.

Diana (36m 20s):
Well, you’ve given us a jumpstart on researching in England without the things we’re used to. So Thank you so much for being on the podcast, and Thank you for writing the fabulous blog posts.

Jessica Morgan (36m 29s):
Of course. Thank you for having me today.

Nicole (36m 30s):
All right everyone, we’ll talk to you again next week. Have a good week. Bye

Diana (36m 36s):
Bye.

Nicole (36m 33s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.