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the Appleby one-name study and DNA project
the Appleby one-name study and DNA project
Surnames covered in our DNA project:
APPLEBY, APPLEBEE,
APPELBY, APPELBE
plus any other variants
LINKS
The current banner shows Alnwick Castle, in Northumberland - a county in the far north east of England, bordering Scotland. This region is home to a number of Appleby lines - and our DNA project has confirmed genetic connections between several of these, which also match lines in Canada, USA and Ireland.
Appleby Wills and Probate records
For some of our more distant ancestors, wills can provide more information than any other documents, and even the more recent wills can often throw up surprises!
It is always worth locating wills for as many people as possible in your family tree, and on this page I hope to point you in the right direction to find some Appleby Wills and Probate records.
For copyright reasons, I am not able to publish actual images of any of the Wills that I hold on this website, but I will summarise as many as possible and add links here. This is a task where I need as much help as possible, as it is very slow going - so if you hold copies of any wills, I should be most grateful if you could send me transcripts (or at least summaries of the main details) for inclusion on this site.
Master Index of Known Appleby/bee Wills and Administrations, I have recently updated this list showing the location of as many APPLEBY wills as I can find (we hold copies of quite a few of them!) - so the list now has over 1800 entries though some are duplicated where a will is held in two separate locations (now 90 pages! - enlarge to read and see notes below)
Applebys in Death Duty Indexes (coming soon) - this is a job still in progress and is also very slow going - volunteers with access to Find My Past who would be prepared to undertake this work would be most welcome
How to obtain copies of Wills and Administrations listed on the Master Index
Before you go off hunting for a copy of any of the wills listed, check the first column on the spreadsheet to see if we already have a transcription, image of the actual will, or a summary of its contents!
The Wills listed on the Master Index as being held at the National Archives in their 'Documents on-line' collection can be purchased for £3.50 per will from the National Archives website. They can be downloaded as soon as you have made the payment via a secure system.
A few of those listed on the SEAX website are available FREE online, others have to be ordered (details on how to go about this are on their website).
The Wills and Administrations detailed in the Probate Calendar can be ordered online from the Government Probate website You need to know the exact year of death for anyone who died after 1996, but for those who died between 1858 and 1996 athough you have to enter an approximate year to start your search you can move to earlier or later years very easily. Each Will costs £10 regardless of the number of pages it covers.
The Wills listed under the 'North East Heritage Project' are rapidly becoming the most accessible yet: this project, which is part of a Durham University research project, has now made thousands of wills freely available in image format on the Family Search beta site. Search for your ancestors on the University website, and simply follow the links to view (and print or download) the wills from the Family Search site. Any that have not yet been digitised you may need to purchase from Durham University.
If YOU possess any Appleby wills yourself, I would be very grateful if you would contribute transcriptions (or at least summaries) so that they can be included in the new section I am currently preparing. Most original wills are copyright, so it is not usually possible to include images of the wills themselves - however, if I have a copy of a will belonging to your family line, do contact me at
UPDATED!!
sue at applebyDNA.org.uk