UE Loyalist lineages: Now easy to research online for free! Part VII

The seventh in an eight part series to help people with potential UE Loyalist lines access the wealth of documentation available online for free, as well as offline sources that can provide further evidence linking generations.

Step 6: Search wills, obtain evidence linking generations

I'd hoped to expand my knowledge about wills across Canada, and retrieve more of them, while writing up this post, but the last few months did not unfold as planned. I do have extensive experience working with Ontario wills though, and have applied my training and experience as an archivist to identify will collections across the country. While I've personally used the Ontario and Saskatchewan probate files, I strongly suspect there are more will series out there than those identified below. So, this step is comprehensive but likely not complete at this time.

Hopefully, by the end of Steps 4 and 5, you have several UEL related names as well as place information.

Given that UELs were compensated with land (typically 200 acres), there is a strong tendency for property transfer records to exist for most of the individuals in the first three generations. Typically, there is a will for the UEL (unless they died very early), possibly his/her widow/er, their male children, sons-in-law, some daughters, and grandchildren, that either went through probate or was registered with a land transfer process at the municipal level.

Primogeniture was not the normal practice and therefore it is common for younger sons and daughters to be listed in the will. Depending on timing, the daughters may be referred to by their married names, either in the will or in the probate process documents, and this can prove a link between generations for those early 19th-century people whose baptism and marriage records have not survived.

Canadian wills and will indexes are not (yet, fingers crossed) generally available online. Quebec does not have a history of English Common law and therefore wills are handled differently there. Definitely check what is online first (if you are fortunate to have family from these jurisdictions within the given time span) as these are by far the easiest wills to access:

• Nova Scotia Probate Records, 1760-1993 (1,395,009 images, some indexes by county on reels)
• Saskatchewan, Probate Estate Files, 1887-1931 (1,903,391 images, database indexed)
• Manitoba Probate Records, 1871-1930 (802,992 images, indexed within the reels)
• British Columbia Estate Files, 1859-1949 (783,176 images, limited indexing)

The next most accessible wills are those which were handled by a centralized or regional probate or surrogate court and which have been indexed by name, allowing the will to then be ordered on microfilm. Unfortunately, only the following indexes have been posted online so far:

• Early New Brunswick Probate, 1785-1835 (database index of published abstracts)
• Ontario Probate Court Records - Surnames A to G (pre-1859)
• Ontario Probate Court Records - Surnames: H to N (pre-1859)
• Ontario Probate Court Records - Surnames: O to Z (pre-1859)
• If you find a person in the above Ontario Probate indexes, the Archives of Ontario website provides instructions for ordering microfilms via interlibrary loan; however, it may be easier to order the film to your local Family History Center from the following collections: Probate registers, 1793-1858; and estate files, 1793-1859; Probate minute book, 1795-1847; probate record books, 1789-1901; probate estate papers, 1858-1900; index, 1877-1953
• Ontario Surrogate Court Index 1793-1858
• In Ontario after 1859 you need to get access to the right index for the right county (and at the right time: the court clerk would use an indexing book until it was full, then start a new one, so the indexing is in unpredictable 10-20 year stretches, if it exists at all). In the 1980s June Gibson transcribed the indexes by county, sorted alphabetically by last name, up to 1900, and they were published by Generation Press. Many libraries have copies of these publications and they are much easier to use than the microfilmed index books, so if the will you need is post 1858 and pre-1901, start by searching library catalogues you can easily visit for "Surrogate Court index 1859-1900 June Gibson" (plus the county you need). The indexes are also still in print (both paper and e-edition) and available from Global Genealogy, so you might find buying a copy is cost effective. Once you have the will number, you can figure out how to order the right Ontario Archives or FamilySearch microfilm that contains the actual probate or administration file.

There are also centralized or county court probates which are indexed and available on microfilm:

• Prince Edward Island. Probate Court. Probate records, 1807-1958; indexes, 1786-2000
• Ontario surrogate court indices going beyond 1900 are retrieved by using the county-specific finding aids for "Post-1859 to 1970" on the Ontario Archives website then figuring out how to get access to the right county index microfilm either through Ontario Archives or through FamilySearch. For FamilySearch, search the catalogue for the county of interest and then check what they have available under probate. For example, Prince Edward County has a testator index up to 1947 available on one film. The availability and means of indexing by the clerk is highly variable by county and you won't always find there is a good index, although the actual probate files are often available up to 1930 or so.

If you have not found someone in the above indexes, a will may still exist, but it is likely tied to some sort of localized land transfer process or was really only handled privately within the family. In which case you want to ask people with expertise about the locality or the family, if they know of any other will records. More than once I have searched for a will in the collection I expected it to be in, found nothing, then discovered by googling that someone else had an original private copy and had transcribed it to the internet!

Was John Holland the biological great-grandfather of Richard III?

Rumours have persisted for more than six hundred years that John Holland, Duke of Exeter, was the actual biological father of Richard of Conisburgh, who was legally the son of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York.

The recent archaeological investigation of the remains of Richard of Conisburgh's grandson, King Richard III, concluded the patrilineally inherited Y-DNA of the skeleton does not match that of putative male-line living relatives. Of the 18 birth events which could misrepresent paternity, the birth of Richard of Conisburgh, paternal grandfather of Richard III (and Edward IV), is strikingly suspect.

While rumours of non-paternity were a common slander serving political ends, there are, aside from the Y-DNA results, historically notable anomalies in Richard of Conisburgh's relationship with his legal father, Edmund of Langley, and his elder brother, Edward. Edmund of Langley left Richard of Conisburgh, ostensibly the second of only two sons, out of his will. Edward also ignored his brother as a potential heir.

Edmund of Langley remained married to Richard of Conisburgh's mother, Isabella of Castille, until she died aged 37 in 1392. However, in the seventeen years after Richard was born, while both Edmund and Isabella were believed to be healthy and fertile, there were no more children, strongly suggesting they were estranged.

It tends to be considered a historical fact that Isabella had an affair with John Holland (maternal half brother to King Richard II). In her will she left her estate to King Richard II and asked him to give her son Richard an annuity of 500 marks. This arrangement is not inconsistent with the possibility that Richard of Conisburgh was the King's half nephew, and she knew the King was more likely to protect the interests of her "favourite" son, perhaps even against interference from her estranged husband.

The Y DNA haplotype of Richard III's skeletal remains was identified as G-P287. Trying to investigate the Holland family using wikipedia, thepeerage.com and some google searching, it seems clear that no Y-carrying descendant of John Holland exists (his legitimate male line seems to have died out with his grandson, and of his three illegitimate sons the "Bastards of Exeter," I could find evidence only that one had an heiress).

The same is true for his brother, Thomas. However, intriguingly, there is an unsourced statement on the wikipedia page of his nephew, Edmund Holland, suggesting that Edmund's remains may have been recovered archaeologically on Île Lavrec, Île-de-Bréhat. In which case, if autosomal DNA can be recovered from both those remains and those of Richard III, they should be compared. If they are Edmund's remains (and assuming Richard III's biological father was Richard Plantagenet), there would be, at minimum, a second cousinship once removed between the remains. Richard III's father's maternal great-grandmother was Alianore Holland. However, if John Holland is the biological great-grandfather of Richard III, there would be an additional first cousin relationship (twice removed), leading to increased shared autosomal DNA, and the Y-DNA haplotype of Edmund's remains should be G-P287.

The only caveat is the possibility of another non-paternity event striking the five birth events between Edmund Holland and Richard III.

However, this mysterious Internet attestation that the remains of Edmund Holland may be in hand could also be misguided or false (I could find nothing definite about a Lavrec dig by googling, and the find may also be old and contaminated). If so, that would leave, as the next best option, testing the closest available male line descendants of John Holland's male line first cousins. And they do appear to be out there:

Obviously, over twenty-odd generations, the probability that some other paternity event in the line is not what it appears to be goes way up. It is possible John Holland himself was not even a Holland. However, that does not mean the investigation wouldn't be worthwhile. I've shown one descending branch in the Holland tree, approximately the most senior one, but there are several other offshoots. It is a very interesting family and people have been working for hundreds of years trying to figure out how some potential branches fit into the complete tree. By testing living descendants of branches that meet up farther and farther back (a triangulation technique that effectively worked to identify the Somerset Y type for several generations) the validity of the Y DNA inheritance can be demonstrated between certain points on the tree and branches can be slotted together.

Given that the Somerset lines did not match, researchers have apparently gone even farther back than Edward III trying to find Plantagenet Y DNA carriers many generations removed from Richard III, including through purported illegitimate early Plantagenet lines. Compared to that, working down from Robert de Holland may be a relatively pragmatic thing to try, even just for elimination. For all we know, the South African Hollands have already tested their Y DNA and identified their own haplotype (in which case, please let us know if it is or is not G-P287...)

I've been following the Richard III investigation for about two years now. For me, the last few months were not conducive to writing blogs (I expect to get back to my Loyalists blogs and some case studies shortly). As soon as the old blogging brain muscles had some energy though, this is the post they wanted to produce. On some level, what fascinates me about the Richard III Y DNA results is the possibility it may ultimately reveal something fundamental about animosities during the Wars of the Roses. A modern-day biological investigation really could unlock something important about major historical events from six hundred years ago.