Yorkshire record sets added to Ancestry

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) has added three new record sets for Yorkshire, England:

Yorkshire, England, Quarter Session Records, 1637-1914
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=6065

Quarter Sessions were so-called because they met four times each year. The court was presided over by the Justices of the Peace, the most important officers in local government. They had both a civil and a criminal jurisdiction, and before 1888 they also had an administrative function. Civil cases usually appear in the court’s order books and criminal cases in the indictment books. The West Riding Quarter Sessions was a peripatetic court which moved around the county. Cases for Wakefield, Halifax, Huddersfield and Bradford were heard at the West Riding Quarter Sessions. Leeds, as a large town, had its own Court of Quarter Sessions which was separate from the main county court. Due to boundary changes, some areas now covered by Leeds Metropolitan District will have been heard in the West Riding Quarter Sessions.

Source: West Riding Quarter Sessions, Indictment Books, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield, England.


West Yorkshire, Roman Catholic Oath Records, 1714-1787, 1829
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=8632

This collection contains lists and certificates of Roman Catholics failing to take the oaths of abjuration, allegiance and supremacy which were a part of an act passed by parliament in 1715.

Source: Roman Catholic Oath Records. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.


Yorkshire, England, Probate Records, 1521-1858
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=5246

This database contains a collection of wills, letters of administration, and inventories from Yorkshire, England, for the years 1521 through 1858. Prior to the 1857 Court of Probate Act, which took effect in January 1858, wills were proved in ecclesiastical courts.

Source: West Yorkshire Wills and Probate. Archdeaconry of Richmond: Probate Records. RD/AP1. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Morley, Leeds, England.

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.