1640 Will and testament help

[khalliday181]

I am not really sure where to start with this. I am having trouble picking up anything from this and zooming in does not help. I hope some of you experts will be able to help or give advice how i can enhance the quality.

If you do well i have 2 more pages like this 

[GR2]

Not so easy to read on the screen! These wills are pretty formulaic in many parts.

'The Testament Dative and  Inventar of ye gudes geir debtis soumes off money and ....quhatsomever....'

The document is not a will in the sense that the deceased is actively bequeathing his property. It is an inventory produced by executors. You will get some dates from it and perhaps some relationships. In the margin on one of the pages you will find the 'quota', the 20th of the whole sum which had to be paid as a kind of tax.

Graham.

[GR2]

P.S. In the margin it says 'Umqle Niniane Halyday' ................... = Umquhile Ninian Haliday ............umquhile means 'the late'.

Graham.

[RunKitty]

Hi,

This is really hard to read!!  Here is a link to a book that has several examples of Testament Datives.  You can see the standard form and language.  The link goes to page 257 I think, but you can start a few pages earlier to get more examples from the early 1600s and keep going from there.   

http://www.rootschat.com/links/0bs4/

See also
http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/research/testament-dative.html

RK

[PrueM]

You should be able to zoom in on the screen when you view these on SP...unfortunately as they are low-resolution images there's nothing you can do to make them clearer once they're downloaded like this. 

If there is an option to purchase a hard copy of the document, that's probably worth doing.  It should be much easier to read than the digital one.

Cheers
Prue

[khalliday181]

Thanks for the help guys, especially RunKitty. That is a great link to work from.

[HannahJ]

The National Archives of Scotland Scottish handwriting website might help if you're still struggling:

This covers the letter forms: http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/1hour.asp
This covers testament datives: http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/18cTIntro.asp

As a tip, look out for the word 'item', which precedes each item listed in the inventory - it helps to break up the text into something more meaningful!

Kind regards,

Hannah