Wills & Probate Indexes, & Irish Street Directory & Almanac Now Online

Will I find my Annie O'Brien and my O'Brien and Lennon families this weekend?

Annie (O'Brien) Vaughan is seated and 3rd from the left.

Every Friday, Findmypast releases thousands of new records online. This week's Findmypast Friday release includes wills  and probate indexes as well as Thom's Directory, an Irish street directory and almanac, spanning the years 1844-1900. 

If you have Irish ancestry and have begun researching it (like I have), you know just how difficult it can be with a lack of records. And street directories can help to place your ancestor in a time and place between censuses. 

And the UK wills and probate records and abstracts can also be very helpful too. Abstracts can reveal spouses, children, etc., and also give you names of witnesses who may or may not have been related. 

Take a look at what they added: 

• Oxfordshire Wills index 1516-1857
  
• York Peculiars Probate Index 1383-1883
  
• Somerset Medieval Will abstracts 1385-1558
  
• Hertfordshire Probate records index 1415-1858
  
• England & Wales published wills & probate indexes 1300-1858
  
• Surrey, Prerogative Court of Canterbury will abstracts 1736-1794
  
• London & Middlesex Will Abstracts 1700-1704
  
• Lancashire Wills Proved at Richmond 1457-1812
  
• London, Court of Husting will abstracts 1258-1688
  
• Thom's Directory 1844-1900
  

So, if your roots take you back to Ireland or the UK, you'll want to check out all these new records as well as all of the Findmypast online records since it's a FREE weekend starting today. Plus, if you have roots across the pond, but don't know how to get started, then you're in luck. They have a free live broadcast tomorrow to help you out.

And since Thom's Directory is for Dublin and my Annie O'Brien was born there and I've been needing to isolate all the O'Brien's and the Lennon's for this time period *and* since Findmypast is FREE this weekend, I think I'll forego sleep and delve into Findmypast into the wee hours of the weekend. (Time to dig out that old street map of Dublin I found online. Oh, Annie, Henry, James, and Jane...I'm coming for you.) Do you have O'Briens and Lennons in your family tree? Are we related? To read more about my research exploits with Annie et al, visit my personal (and very neglected) Family Stories blog. 

~Caroline

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