Where there's a Will

Probate Calendars for England and Wales have been online on various websites for the last couple of years. However Findmypast.com.au now has a fully searchable version of the Probate Calendars of England and Wales 1858-1959

What difference does that make you might ask. Well instead of being able to search just for the person who has a probate, now you are able to search for other names in the description.

So for example I am interested in the Thorn family of Chagford, Devon, so I could search for probates as illustrated below.

When I do this I get the following results:

I can click on the camera icon on the right hand side which will take me to the image and I can zoom in to to find the entry I am interested in. I can attach it to my tree if I want.

(For those who research in Devon, Anna Hoskins is the grandmother of Prof W G Hoskins)

So the search works really well, but here's where the power of the full text search kicks in. If I search without the T like this:

Then I get these results:

To save you scrolling up, I had 16 results and now I have 49 results. Now to be fair some of those results are for the place Thorn in the Chagford area, however there are also gems like this:

Here Ann Middleton's probate is being proved by her nephews John Hole Thorn and William Thorn. 

Genealogy magic... thanks Findmypast.com.au