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Our late member Dr. Kenneth Mitchell was a prolific transcriber and indexer of genealogically valuable material relating to the Hexham area and Tynedale.
One of his manuscript indexes lists the Wills of Hexham/Hexhamshire people which he identified from the complete indexes of Wills proved at York and held by the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research there.
Dr. Mitchell's index covers the years 1688 to 1799 and is prefaced by his own warning - "The list is one I found worth making for my own use; I have attempted to search out from the 1688-1731 index, and from the calendars 1732-1799, entries referring clearly or possibly to Hexhamshire, my net growing wider as the work neared completion. This is a matter of accepting entries recognised as clearly local, rejecting others clearly not local and cannot be regarded as likely to be complete, nor can every entry be guaranteed as local. Acomb, for example, may be the village near Hexham or the suburb of York City - in this case, lacking any indicator such as 'N'd' or 'S John Lee', one gambles on the name of the deceased, or indicates doubt by '?'."
A bound copy of Dr. Mitchell's index has been available for some time at Newcastle Central Library.
See the NDFHS Sales Page.
This article was first published in the NDFHS Journal, Volume 19, Number 3, Autumn 1994.
Scanned and edited by Phil Thirkell
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