I’d very much appreciate an opinion on a will. (This query is only answerable if you have access to the original India Office wills, which I have on FindMyPast. I’m not sure if they’re otherwise accessible.)
I was trying to discover whether James Herbert Lea born in Tezpur, India, in 1867, had any children. I haven’t managed to track down any baptisms in India or England. (I think that if he’d had children he would certainly have had them baptised because his mother was daughter of a rector and his cousin became Archbishop of Canterbury.)
James Lea married Nellie Grace Chadburn in Dacca in 1893.
He died in London in 1911. He left a will, written in India, but with the available document extracted in England.
The will is longish and extremely tedious, but the first page or so suggest that he was probably childless. He mentions his brother and sisters. Certainly parents Richard and Elizabeth Lea and brother Harry Kenilworth Lea tally with straightforward records (eg 1911 Census of Earley, Reading.)
However, the will goes on to mention a married daughter, and sons and even a wife with a different surname! It would seem that at some point a clerk may have copied part of another will into it. (This may be between pages numbered 44 and 45 in this record). Possibly the clerk had just gone onto autopilot.
Dave