General Chat

My grandmother and her siblings were left inheritance in a will which she benefited from when she was 21 (about 1906) and I cannot fathom who she inherited from or which side of the family it may have been from. Any ideas on how to further my search?

Check through your tree to find anyone who died in the early 1900’s. Then, I am afraid, you would need to buy all the wills.

You may not need to buy the wills. For wills before 1996 the probate site gives details of beneficiaries. So if you do as names said and put the surnames of people who died in the early 1900's, you can see if your grandmother was a beneficiary.

This site is only for England and Wales.

https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/

Andysmum wow I didn't know about that, it could solve a mystery for me.

One of my wife's ancestors was an engineer and his house was palatial. I thought he must have been big in his field so I googled him expecting to find he built bridges or something exciting, but Google has never heard of him. So I assumed he had inherited it from somewhere, didn't know where so I moved on to the next ancestor. I'll have to look him up again using your tip.

Those records only give the name/s of the person/s to whom probate is granted. If a will has been made, it would be the executor/s who apply for probate to administer the wishes written in the will.

If there isn't a will, the closest living relative can apply for a Grant of Administration.

You need to purchase the actual will to find the beneficiaries, through the site Andysmum has posted.

If there was no will, only a Grant of Administration, you may get no detail of what happened to the deceased persons estate, just the name of the person/s granted the right to administer it.

Sometimes you might get a Grant of Administration with will.

My great great Grandfather died (without making a will) shortly after his Father who had made one.

Wife/daughter in law was granted the right to administer her husbands estate (no idea what she did with it) and to administer her father in laws estate as per his will as her husband was no longer available to sort his Father's will as named executor.

And even if you do see the will with all the beneficiaries named, unless they were left a fixed amount, you can't always tell how much they actually got.

Surprisingly, Google doesn’t know everything about everyone. The engineer ancestor may not have done anything extraordinary in his work life but seems to have done very well for himself. You need to look at his will. He may have come from a well to do family which allowed him to train as an engineer.
Certainly look at his parents as he may have inherited something from them.

Obituaries in local newspapers are often helpful as well. I have one lot of ancestors who were lead miners. Through the generations they progressed from ordinary miners to mine owners and one was an area supervisor. By then they were well enough off to pay quite a lot towards the cost of building a new methodist chapel in the village. All this was shown in great detail in the various obituaries.