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William Stevens practised as a notary in Malta for nearly fifty years, from 1806 to 1854. He was the first of a small group of British notaries working on the island in the British Period, during a time of significant social and political change. In fact, this put him in a position to be able to record the activities of many mercantile and enterprising ventures by British and Maltese alike. His work was also extensive, but he was more than just a name and signature at the end of each deed.
As it turns out from his correspondence and those of his son William John Stevens, who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a notary in his own right, he and his wife, Giovanna, had fifteen children. The family was far-reaching, and travelled extensively, with his adult children working and raising their own children in Turkey, Ukraine, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, England, India, Ireland, Brazil, and Saint Thomas in the Caribbean (now the US Virgin Islands). Stevens himself was even imprisoned briefly in 1833, a trial that became the talk of the town, full of personal and political intrigue.
The archive preserves dozens of volumes of notarial acts written by both father and son. In recent years, they have become the focus of a long-running research project by Sarah Watkinson, whose connection to the Stevens family began with a brush and a curiosity.
The cover of R450 Volume 2, of Notary William Stevens, 1821.
Sarah first visited the Notarial Archives in 2012, not long after moving to Malta. What she found was not a pristine research library, but a building in poor condition. The roof leaked, papers were stacked in boxes, and many of the rooms were filled with volumes in various states of disrepair. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she felt drawn to the place. Encouraged by Dr Joan Abela, she began volunteering, carefully brushing dirt off centuries-old pages.
At first, she was frustrated. The early modern Italian was difficult to read, and her efforts to understand the handwriting led nowhere. Joan suggested she look at the English-language acts of the few British notaries who had worked in Malta during the 19th century. These included William Stevens, William John Stevens, and Charles Curry. With no catalogue in place, Sarah and a team of volunteers helped build a database.
Title page of R451 volume 1, Notary William John Stevens (son of William Stevens), 1831–1832.
Seal of Notary William John Stevens, from R451 Volume 2, 1833.
They started with William John’s volumes, as the handwriting seemed more legible. The first document she read, about a ship quarantined in Messina, felt disappointingly mundane. But the second deed caught her attention. It was dated 1831 and had been drawn up to protect William’s wife, Giovanna, from an “embarrassment” caused by her husband seventeen years earlier. The act was prepared by one son and witnessed by another. It raised questions. Why record such a thing so long after the fact? What exactly had happened? And why did the family choose to document it in this way? From that moment, Sarah was drawn into the story of the Stevens family, and the deeper she went, the more there was to find.
As the archive continued to be sorted and reorganised, Sarah came across boxes of loose documents. Among them were personal letters, notes, invoices, and scribbles written by William, William John, and other members of the family. These papers had likely been swept from an office desk after William John’s death. While the culprits are unknown, Sarah suspects his sisters. They were never meant for public reading, but for Sarah, they were a treasure trove.
The letters weren’t easy to read. Frederick, one of the sons, often wrote a full page, then turned the sheet sideways and wrote across it again to save paper. William John used extremely thin sheets that made the ink bleed through. The handwriting was messy. Spelling and punctuation were unpredictable. But what they revealed was remarkable. Here were the voices of a family that had lived across continents. Their joys, struggles, and daily routines were preserved in their own words.
These letters filled in the human details that the notarial acts had left out. They showed the emotional weight behind the legal documents. Sarah learned about the family’s travels, illnesses, arguments, and affections. And while she could not use these letters in her Master’s thesis, which focused on notarial content, they became the foundation of her forthcoming book instead.
A recent visit by descendants of William Stevens took place at the Notarial Registers Archive, where they viewed a selection of original documents linked to their ancestor’s notarial work. While it wasn’t the first time Sarah had met them, the timing carried a particular weight. With her book on William Stevens’ personal life nearing publication, the opportunity to share parts of the original material with his descendants felt especially significant.
The fact that a notarial attestation written in the 1800s could still hold personal meaning for his family in 2025 speaks to the lasting human relevance of these records. It also highlights the vital role of the archive, not just as a legal repository, but as a space where history remains connected to the present and open to discovery, interpretation, and even human connection. It also aptly demonstrates that the notary himself—his professional life, personal life, and relationships, and the networks in which he moved—is a valid subject of interest and research in his own right.
“People often assume legal records are dry or impersonal,” Sarah reflects. “But they can be incredibly rich when you know how to read them. Notaries didn’t just passively record legal transactions or events, but were active parts of those societies, with their own opinions, families, and conflicts. And all of that shows up in the margins, in the choices they made, in what they chose to record, and in the miscellanea that never made it onto the notarial acts.”
Photos from the recent visits of William Stevens’ descendants, together with Sarah Watkinson.
The story of William Stevens and his descendants is just one example of the kind of research that can come out of the Notarial Registers Archive. The archive holds thousands of volumes, many of which have yet to be fully explored. They contain records of marriages, debts, adoptions, business dealings, dowries, and disputes. But they also contain human moments. Behind every legal formula is a person. And behind every signature is a story.
For students, researchers, and scholars alike, the Notarial Registers Archive offers a rich and largely untapped field of study. Whether your interest lies in history, law, gender, migration, social relationships, or material culture, there is something here for you.
And sometimes, as Sarah’s work has shown, the story you end up telling is more surprising, more layered, and more personal than you could ever have planned.
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The story of the Notarial Registers Archive and the Notarial Archives Foundation start in the late 15th century, marking the beginning of a long and often tortuous journey.
It all started three years after the Great Siege, and two years into the building of Valletta, when Julio Bustra of Cyprus bought a plot of land at 217, St Paul Street. The following year, Francisco de Andrea de Minicuchi of Pisa purchased the adjoining plot at 24, St Christopher Street. Both built palazzi in the Baroque style, which would become popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the two buildings began their long life hosting a variety of users, ranging from shops to apartments and public offices. Eventually, they became the home of the Notarial Registers Archives, but it took more than 400 years for this to happen.
The Notarial Archives were originally established in 1640 by a decree issued by Grand Master Lascaris. Initially, half of the collection was housed in Mdina, while the other half was in Valletta. In 1850, the entire collection was moved to Valletta. Later, as the Second World War threatened to reach the islands, part of the collection was moved to the Auberge d’Italie, and the rest to a basement in St Andrew’s Street. When the latter suffered a direct hit during the war, burying volumes under debris, the collection was moved to the basement of Auberge d’Italie, separating the Registers from the originals and sending them back to Mdina, where they were safely stored in two rooms within the city’s bastion walls.
By the 1960s, the collection was split neatly into two: the original manuscripts found their home at the repository in Valletta’s Mikiel Anton Vassalli Street, where they still reside, while the Registers (copies which were faithfully transcribed from the original manuscripts at the same time the originals were written) and Bastardelli (drafts of notarial deeds) were taken to the palazzo which de Andrea de Minicuchi had built 400 years earlier in St Christopher Street.
After centuries of being uprooted and relocated, the Notarial Archive finally seemed to have found a permanent home in the two Valletta repositories. However, it would be another four decades before the collection at St Christopher Street would receive some care.
One Tuesday morning in 2002, Dr Joan Abela, who was then an undergraduate history student at the University of Malta, walked into the palazzo housing the Notarial Registers Archive and saw a sight that would forever change her life and the fate of that repository. She had been conducting research at the repository in Mikiel Anton Vassalli Street and wanted to access the work of the 16th century notary Placido Abela, but nothing had prepared her for the contrast between the two archives.
Not only was the Notarial Registers Archive open only on rare Tuesdays when someone happened to be there, but the volumes stored within it were in a pitiful state. Dust-covered registers and loose folios sat on wooden shelves or were unceremoniously dumped on the floor. Some volumes even had leftover debris from the war stuck between their pages. There was no order to the documents, and the palazzo’s dark, damp conditions were only accelerating their deterioration. Soon after her first visit, Joan returned to find garbage bags stuffed with loose folios, ready to be disposed of. Someone had presumably thought they were tidying up by doing the unthinkable.
Faced with this heartbreaking reality, Joan Abela stepped in, advocating for the archive and rallying other historians and professionals who would help her in her mission to save Malta’s paper heritage from being permanently lost. The sad truth is that, for decades, these manuscripts had been dismissed as not important enough to warrant their conservation. They had only been kept because the law states that notaries must keep copies of their deeds, but what Joan saw was six centuries of Maltese life at risk of being forgotten. Since the 15th century, notarial deeds and related documents have provided insights into the lives of people from all social classes. These manuscripts, which had been left to rot, contained precious information about the daily lives and relationships of both nobles and peasants, about slavery and trade, and even eye-witness accounts of historical events.
Three years after that fateful first visit to the Notarial Registers Archives, Joan founded the Notarial Archives Resource Council (NARC). This voluntary organisation was created to raise awareness about the state of the Archive and the importance of safeguarding Malta’s paper heritage. Its mission also focused on securing funding for the rehabilitation and conservation of the Archive and its collection. This was no easy feat. The archive was getting no help from the government, so the only option was to seek financial help from the private sector through sponsorships.
This is when NARC came up with an ingenious fundraising initiative: the Adoption Scheme. Through it, individuals and organisations could sponsor the conservation of specific volumes or entire series of registers of a particular notary. Where at first there was skepticism about the private sector’s role in this project, the lives and stories captured within the archive’s manuscripts convinced sponsors that this heritage was worth saving.
Meanwhile, Joan gathered a team of volunteers, including a professional book and paper conservator to help preserve the collection, while working relentlessly to garner more support. The team’s efforts were rewarded eleven years later, when the Notarial Registers Archive was awarded an ERDF Development Grant to transform the Archive into a centre of excellence. This included the restoration of the two historic buildings in St Christopher Street and St Paul Street, the installation of the first climate-controlled repository on the islands, a fully equipped conservation laboratory, a reading room, a museum, and other essential improvements.
By the following year, through the ongoing engagement of professionals, researchers, artists, students, and a growing team of dedicated volunteers, the Notarial Archives Resource Council (NARC) had evolved into an interdisciplinary community, reflecting the wide-reaching impact of the Archives and uniting people from diverse fields around the shared goal of preserving Malta’s written heritage.
Scenes from the collective effort to save the Archive, with volunteers and professionals contributing through conservation, cataloguing, research and superficial cleaning.
The natural next step was to formalise this work, with the NARC officially becoming a foundation: the Notarial Archives Foundation. The motto ‘ad servandum posteritati’—to preserve for posterity—was adopted, reflecting the Foundation’s mission to safeguard Malta’s paper heritage for future generations.
Finally, in 2023, in a historic moment, the Notarial Archives Foundation, together with the National Archives of Malta and the Maltese Government, signed a Memorandum of Understanding. This agreement granted the Foundation custody of the Notarial Registers Archive and the responsibility of managing its operations and transforming it into the centre of excellence envisioned over many years of work.
Today marks the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding that entrusted the Notarial Archives Foundation with the custodianship of the Notarial Registers Archive. Since then, many new projects have been undertaken and several milestones have been achieved, each of which is a testament to the vision and hard work of Dr Joan Abela, her team, and the many generous sponsors who stepped in to help.
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Ad servandum posteritati
