Wills & Testaments of the Franklin Expedition

This category contains all the wills of the Franklin Expedition that were administered before or during 1856, and are therefore available through The National Archives’ records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. It is possible that wills are missing, despite being administered before 1856, due to being made on other ships

The majority of the wills have been transcribed from the probates noted in the above mentioned records. Exceptions to this are the wills of Sir John Franklin and Charles Osmer, which were both transcribed from the originals.

Every will has two different transcriptions. One ‘direct transcription’ or the text as it was exactly written down, acronyms and mistakes unchanged. The other is ‘adjusted for readability’ with added punctuation, capitalisation and resolved acronyms. More details below.

About the Publications

Types of text you will see:

Normal text = normal text, written in legal hand. In normal wills this is cursive.
Bold text = titles/subtitles; in the probates this is often the first line and ‘proved’.
Italicised text = text written in cursive for the probates; different handwriting/filled in (like a form) for actual wills.

Changes to the body of the text in adjusted versions:

Capitalisation can be changed with the changes marked by square brackets.
Acronyms are resolved, including names where possible.
Any misspelled words are corrected, also marked with square brackets.

Wills & Testaments of the Franklin Expedition

Blanky, Thomas

Collins, Henry Foster

Couch, Edward

Crispe, Samuel

Crozier, Francis Rawdon Moira

Fitzjames, James

Franklin, Sir John

Goodsir, Harry Duncan Spens

Helpman, Edwin James Howard

Le Vesconte, Henry Thomas Dundas

McDonald, Alexander

Osmer, Charles Hamilton

Peddie, John Smart

Reid, James

Stanley, Stephen Samuel

Thomas, Robert