Oswyn Murray Wills

In 1942 the Exeter Probate Registry was bombed and all the Devon wills were destroyed.

Before the war Sir Oswyn Murray had made abstracts of a number of wills for families in which he had an interest. The abstracts are in a number of volumes in the Westcountry Studies Library and provide a source of information for some lucky family historians, a source which the LDS has microfilmed in its entirety.

The table below lists the Oswyn Murray LDS films, indicating the names each film covers, and providing accesses to the indexes that have created to date.

The wills are arranged in alphabetical order by surname so no index is required if you visit the library. Rather, these indexes are being created for those of us who can't visit the library, but who instead are using the LDS films of these volumes.

Many of the wills were proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). These wills are available on-line from The National Archives. Also the wills & admons are available on film from the LDS. Most admons contain no more family information than the abstract and before 1733 admons were usually in Latin.

PCC and Nuncupative wills are noted. The latter were made orally and written down later by the witnesses.