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 Archives 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); Olive Geddes (National Library of Scotland).

1. What does the word 'sederunt' mean?

2. Are trust sederunt books a good source for the study of middle class women?

3. Are trust sederunt books a good source for family history?

4. How do I find out if a trust sederunt book survives for a particular individual?