1819 George III Fort William Probate Document Last Dutch Bengal India Resident

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1819 George III Fort William Probate Document Last Dutch Bengal India Resident:
$495.00

For your consideration is an original 27 November 1819 Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, Bengal, Ecclesiastical Side Order for Probate, issued during the reign of King George III and the Regency of George, Prince of Wales, in the estate of Johannes [surname unresolved], deceased. Measuring approximately 8.25 by 12.5 inches, the manuscript is written in a formal chancery hand in black ink on laid paper and retains its original administrative folds. The operative text records that Daniel Anthony Overbeek and Gregorius Herklots, two of the executors named in the deceaseds last will and testament, had been sworn in open Court to administer the estate faithfully, pay debts and legacies, prepare a true and perfect inventory, and render a proper account of their executorship before the Court.

The two executors give the document unusual historical importance. Daniel Anthony Overbeek (17651840) was the final Dutch Resident of Bengal at Chinsurah, serving from 1817 until the permanent transfer of the Dutch settlements to British sovereignty in 1825. Gregorius Herklots (17681852) was likewise a senior figure in the Dutch establishment at Chinsurah and is documented as Fiscal there. Their appearance together before the British Crowns Supreme Court at Fort William places this probate proceeding directly within the overlapping Anglo-Dutch legal world of Bengal during the brief restoration of Dutch rule after the Napoleonic Wars.

The Court orders probate of the will to be granted to Overbeek and Herklots in their capacity as executors. The concluding judicial teste is issued under Sir Edward Hyde East (17641847), Knight, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at Fort William, who served from 1813 to 1822. The verso confirms the instruments legal character as an Order for Probate and records its filing in November 1819. The document retains its original red wax institutional seal of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, impressed with the crowned Royal Arms and surrounding Court legend; the seal survives substantially complete but with pronounced age-related cracking, compression, surface wear, and localized loss.

As an original George III / Regency-period probate order involving the last Dutch Resident of Bengal and the Fiscal of Chinsurah, the document is substantially more historically significant than a routine estate paper. It preserves a direct legal intersection between the restored Dutch colonial administration at Chinsurah and the British Crown judiciary at Calcutta only six years before the final end of Dutch rule in Bengal. The deceaseds first name, Johannes, is clear, while the surname should remain unresolved unless a sharper reading or associated probate record confirms it.