Old legal and record term 1662-1800s
What does settlement examination mean in old court records?
A settlement examination was the sworn interrogation of a poor person to establish which parish owed them relief, taken before removal to it. Examinations are accidental autobiographies: birthplace, apprenticeships, marriages, and every move, sworn by ancestors too poor to leave other records. You will meet it in court records and parish registers, mostly 1662-1800s.
Where it appears: court records, parish registers.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see settlement examination in the records?+
Mostly in court records and parish registers, 1662-1800s. 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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