The probate inventory as a source for economic and social history

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Abstract
The probate inventory is a business document in which economic values are assigned to listed items to facilitate division among heirs and assessment of estate duty. The age, marital status, occupation, place of residence (and sometimes details of the surviving spouse and children) of the deceased are entered in it, but its prime purpose is to list all portable or fixed goods and chattels though in practice certain items were exempted. The manual used by the officials responsible for compiling probate inventories (hereafter referred to as valuers, bouppteckningsförrättare) indicated that worthless trash could be disregarded and that minor items of small value could be described under a collective heading. Clothing usually appears as a single item, but other than that each individual object had to be listed separately.1 There is a risk that a few objects regarded as trivial and valueless may not have been individually listed.

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