Trust Sederunt books
Family trusts
Family trusts were usually administered by solicitors, and the records of old-established legal firms may include hundreds of minute books of these trusts, sometimes for several generations of the same families. These are usually referred to as ‘sederunt books’, and in practice contain copies of the papers relating to the administration of the trust, not only minutes of meetings, but also copies of accounts, correspondence and other documents. Elsewhere in the UK these would probably be a loose bundle of papers, labelled and tied with red tape, but Scottish legal practice was to transcribe them into bound volumes. The trusts might arise from marriage contracts, or occasionally from sequestrations (a form of bankruptcy) or from some form of personal incapacity, such as mental illness. Much the commonest type, however (well over 80 per cent), are executries, trusts created normally by a trust disposition and settlement.
Contents of trust sederunt books
A sederunt book will normally begin with a transcript of a trust disposition and settlement. The creator of the trust will appoint a small number of members of his family and friends as his trustees, and convey to them all his property, heritable and moveable, to take effect on his death. He will nominate them as his executors, and if appropriate appoint them as tutors or curators of any children who are minors at the time of his death. The disposition will then proceed to declare the purposes of the trust, normally to provide an income for his widow and children, particularly any unmarried daughters, and will end with a general power to the creator to revoke the disposition at any time during his life. He might also later alter it in detail by one or more codicils, like those to a will, and these will also be transcribed into the sederunt book. The sederunt book will continue with a note of death (perhaps many years after the date of the disposition) and continue with trustees’ agreements to act and minutes of their meetings. A full inventory and valuation of the estate of the deceased at the time of death would be necessary for confirmation purposes. This will be transcribed into the book and may well include a room-by-room inventory of house contents. Thereafter the main contents will be the minutes of meetings of the trustees, usually increasingly formal, and perhaps only quarterly or even less frequent, accounts and copies of correspondence. The trust may wind up in less than five years, but where children are involved, it might well continue for half a century or more.
Location and use of trust sederunt books
Sederunt books are rare before about 1820, but as a record type were still being created in the 1920s and 1930s, and individual trusts continued much longer. They survive among the records of long-established Scottish legal firms, many of which have been deposited in Scottish archives. The largest collections are held by Glasgow City Archives and the National Records of Scotland. They are perhaps of greatest value for those (including business historians, biographers, local historians, and, occasionally, family historians) researching individual business and professional figures. In addition, trust sederunt books are an excellent source for those researching the Victorian middle class, both at the level of prominent entrepreneurs, manufacturers and professional men, some of them historical figures in their own right, and also of the more typical small tradesmen and shopkeepers. They will give details of their assets, perhaps including their businesses, if they were still in business when they died, and the inventories are of interest for the material culture of their homes and daily lives. Glasgow City Archives, in conjunction with Glasgow University, has pioneered the use of trust sederunt books in the study of decorative arts and house interiors by undergraduate students of fine arts.
Contributors: Andrew Jackson, Robin Urquhart (both SCAN 2002); Olive Geddes (National Library of Scotland 2002).
What does the word ‘sederunt’ mean?
‘Sederunt’ is a Latin word, meaning ‘there sat down’, i.e. when a record of a meeting begins ‘sederunt’ followed by a list of names, it indicates that those named sat down to hold a meeting or to form a court.
Are trust sederunt books a good source for the study of middle class women?
Along with testaments, trust sederunt books are valuable as sources of information on the property and lifestyles of middle class women, and provision for them by family trusts. A small proportion of trusts were set up by women (which are obviously useful for studying women who owned and disposed of property in their own right), while the majority of family trusts will deal with provision for widows and children of the person who set up the trust.
Are trust sederunt books a good source for family history?
Bear in mind that the proportion of people who left trusts is small, and the proportion of trust sederunt books which have survived from the 19th century is even smaller. If you are fortunate to find a sederunt book surviving for an ancestor, then it will be a valuable source of information, but principally about his property and lifestyle. It is unlikely to give you information about the family which is not available from other sources.
How do I find out if a trust sederunt book survives for a particular individual?
What you are hoping for is that the sederunt book(s) for the individual, family or trust you are interested in survives among the records of a firm of solicitors (or, less likely, within family or business papers) deposited at an archives service which is open to the public. The National Records of Scotland, Glasgow City Archives and the National Library of Scotland all hold large collections of solicitors’ records. Other local authority archives and university libraries and archives also hold smaller collections.
Most archives services have cataloguing systems available online and you should start by using these systems or Your Scottish Archives to search for the name of the individual, family or trust. If you do not find anything and you have some evidence that the individual or family used a solicitor and set up a trust, contact the relevant archives service and ask for assistance. Always remember, however, that many solicitors have not deposited records with an archives service and that only a few people set up such trusts, so be prepared to be told there is nothing relevant in the collections.