Old legal and record term 1600s-1900s
What does et al mean in an old deed?
In a record, et al is Latin shorthand for and others, trimming a list of parties the clerk did not want to copy again. The names behind et al are usually heirs. The full list survives in the case file or the earlier deed the shorthand points back to. You will meet it in deeds and court records, mostly 1600s-1900s.
Where it appears: deeds, court records.
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FAQs
Where will I see et al in the records?+
Mostly in deeds and court records, 1600s-1900s. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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