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WOMEN'S WILLS
Following from the mentions, in the November issue, of Cambridgeshire (‘Around Britain’) and wills (‘Eureka Moment’), I wanted to share my experience of Cambridgeshire wills.
My great great grandmother was Susan Rule, born in the Cambridgeshire village of Balsham in 1818. With the aid of the parish register transcripts made by the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society (chfhs.org.uk), the Rule family can be traced grandmother Elizabeth Rule, who was buried there, a widow, on 4 April 1589. The burial register spells her name Rewle, but this is clearly the same name when you allow for the idiosyncrasies of rural accents.
The parish fell within the probate jurisdiction of the Bishop). That for the diocese of Ely runs to three volumes, but is easy to use, being organised by surname, given name and date. So you can quickly check if an ancestor from the area left a will proved in that consistory court.
