Citing Inland Revenue Wills Series, 1812-1857 (Devon, England)

By RobynR on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 02:30

Forums

Dear Editor,

I have had the pages of this particular document for over five years now, and I have lately been revisiting prior research to validate certain statements to show with evidence for the same; as well as looking for any "new" sources that I did not consider back then in 2017.

This is the first time I have attempted to cite this particular document.

It's an "official" transcribed copy of a will dated in 1828, from Devon in England, that is held in the local archive in Exeter. For background information, originals of nearly all wills proved in Devon perished during an air-raid on Exeter in 1942. So the transcribed copy is as good as it gets (and am very grateful for that, because there are so many I would like to obtain, but virtually impossible because of the air-raid). Moving forward....

The online catalog of the archive provides some information about these records @ https://devon-cat.swheritage.org.uk/records/1078

I was looking at EE 10.31, Basic Formats: Loose Papers, but I am unsure if any of the examples actually "fit" the citation for my document. I don't know who created this record, other than on the last page (13) it states This a true Copy of the Original having been examined by us ......presumably some law clerks.

Images of this will have been filmed by FamilySearch, and the URL is https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939F-PF7P-5 : I was not provided with the 1st page shown and the last page is image 2074.

So, this is my attempt for the full reference note:

Transcribed copy of original will of John Cowlen of Sampford Peverell, Devon, dated 1 May 1828; Records of the Legacy Duty Office, 1812-1853, Inland Revenue Wills Series, 1812-1857, file 1078/IRW/C/1284; Devon Heritage Centre, Exeter. Images supplied by email from Devon Heritage Centre, 20 April 2017.

I am still trying to work out what I should have the source list entry.

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Robyn

 

 

 

Submitted byEEon Tue, 07/05/2022 - 09:14

Robyn, I agree with you that 10.31 doesn't fit well. 10.31 is for loose papers created at the county level (local level in the U.S).  However, the Legacy Duty Office to which the Devon Heritage Centre assigns those records was a national-level agency. At the national level in the US and the UK, the archives have different organizational schemes.

At https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9364 we find a catalog description that discusses the Legacy Duty Office. While this discussion focuses on the registers created from the wills, it does help to explain what we are dealing with:

From 1812 the Legacy Duty Office staff themselves undertook the task of recording the entries in the registers, in a more concise form than before, from the copy wills and accounts of administrations submitted by the ecclesiastical courts.

What we don't know is what happened to those copies once they were entered into the register. That would seem to be what the Devon Heritage Center maintains.

Have you looked at EE 11.60 (National Government Records > England: Military, Probate & Taxation Records  > Emphasis on the original record)? At p. 632, you'll find two examples of UK wills or transcripts belonging to or maintained within different agencies of the UK national government.  

You are very close to following that pattern. The only difference is the placement of the file ID, which would come immediately after citing the document when we create a citation that moves from smallest-element to largest-element.

         1. John Cowlen Will Transcript, Sampford Peverell, Devon, 1 May 1828; 1078/IRW/C/1824; Records of the Legacy Duty Office, 1812–1853, Inland Revenue Wills Series, 1812–1857; Devon Heritage Centre, Exeter. Images supplied by email from Devon Heritage Centre, 20 April 2017.

The Source List Entry examples for those Thomas Bomford and John Peace wills will given you a pattern to follow for your Source List Entry.

Submitted byRobynRon Tue, 07/05/2022 - 22:22

Thanks for suggesting EE 11.60, I am not sure why I missed that one.

I have another question.

In the example given on p. 632 for 3. John Peace (emphasis on the original record), there is no semi colon after the document identifier, but you have separated it with one in your suggested reference note. So I was curious about that. 

I am unsure why they did not send the covering page (as shown in the images @ FS), but what I do have is images produced from the original will transcript, held at the Devon Heritage Centre (formally Devon Records Office), and in colour!  

 

Submitted byEEon Wed, 07/06/2022 - 07:35

Robyn, re your second paragraph, it's really a toss up where to place that semicolon for the break between the document and the collection because the document number also includes the collection number. Ergo, should the number belong

  • in the same layer with the document ID, with a semicolon after?
  • in the layer with the collection ID, with a semicolon before it?
  • in a separate layer to itself, with a semicolon before and after?

11.60 uses the second approach. For consistency with 11.60, replace the semicolon in my last message with a comma.

Re paragraph three:  Aha! So the Devon Records Office has the originals. I'm wondering now if all the originals were sent back to the county level, and when.

 

Submitted byRobynRon Wed, 07/06/2022 - 16:10

Many thanks for getting back to me.

Yes, the Devon Record Office in Exeter holds the "originals" of the transcribed copies. I read somewhere, that most of these records (that were originally held at the National Archives in London), were deliberately destroyed by the Government, at some point in time. But because the blitz over the Exeter (1942) resulted in the "huge" loss of wills and probates, the ones for Devon, Cornwall and (I think Somerset?), were sent back to the local county archive, to replace some of what they had lost. The TNA still holds some other "registers" that contain very short abstracts of wills that were probated during 1796-1811, amongst others. Those ones appear to cover all counties in the UK, and are worth seeking out. I did get one for a Devon ancestor (where the will did not survive) and it named the relationships of all legatees and what they received. Certainly better than nothing :-) It makes me think about all of those "burnt" court houses in your part of the world. Tragic.