Hi all I just posted this to the Clwyd list in reply to a marvellous find by a fellow lister, three cheers!!!, and thought (as I do) it might be useful for posting on our Shropshire list as well. You can apply this to our list by substituting Wales for Shropshire, and the Diocese of Lichfield, Hereford, or St. Asaph (according to location) within your area of research. These are all to be found on the FH library catalog under place name Shropshire. Scroll down to probate records. "Wills can often be a marvellous way of breaking through the insurmountable brick walls. A couple of years ago I spent some time scrolling through the maze of a great number of microfilms of probate obtained for viewing at a local LDS library, hoping for an odd success. To my surprise I found more than I was looking for in this fascinating journey of many, many months - in fact, I think it really took about two years of my time, attending the LDS centre every week or so. Eventually I found Jones & Roberts wills (naturally, there were hordes of wills for those surnames) that fitted my family during the period I searched which was about 1750-1857. Most microfilms only covered four to five years so that sure was a lot of films! There were some very humorous wills I laboriously transcribed in which the deceased had given something to a family member, then in a codicil had taken it away. (Obviously fallen out of grace!) Some wills were enormous - 20 pages or more - and others were simply less than a third of a page and of little use except that they gave the address of the deceased, date of death, and to whom probate was given to - usually the spouse. The surprise in many cases was the amount of wills left by labourers and farm hands. I am aware that many researchers don't bother with probate because they think their folk were too poor to leave a will. You just might be pleasantly surprised! Anyway the big blessings were when the deceased named all of his/her sons and gave all the married surnames of daughters (often giving their husband's name as well) also their addresses at the time of making the will. Bingo! In a number of cases this led me to finding lots more families and their descendants. The films I perused were found on the website of www.familysearch.org within the family history library catalog. We are all familiar with putting in a place name on the catalog and bringing up available microfilms for a particular parish, but when we type in Wales instead of a parish or town, a host of other records comes up, including probate records. As most of my research at that time was centred on Llantysilio, Llangollen, Gresford, Wrexham etc. I clicked into the probate records for the Diocese of St. Asaph, Episcopal Consistory Court. But you need a lot of patience and a lot of time to tackle this. I doubt if I would attempt such a task again, but one never knows, the infectious madness of genealogy research may strike at any time! Anyway, I am very pleased with my results." Good luck Graham Melbourne Oz PS. type in Shropshire in place of Wales!