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

Thomas Urquhart - Constable to Immigrant

There's new newspapers on Findmypast today, including some more for Aberdeen. My grandfather was born in Aberdeen and so I re-searched (I have searched before) for Thomas Urquhart my great grandfather (that's him in the top right photo on my blog header).

Now searching for Thomas Urquhart does have it's problems mainly due to a rather famous Sir Thomas Urquhart always filling the search results even though he died in 1660. Even limiting the search to 1900-1949, with a keyword of "Zealand" still brings up entries including Sir Thomas.

However further down the page there was an entry for my Thomas, which lead to the Aberdeen Journal, 24 May 1935.

So even though he had left Scotland 11 years previous, his death (which actually occurred in January) was reported in the Aberdeen newspapers.

I have details of his immigration to New Zealand, including the death of his wife.

Did I learn anything new... well yes... in particular the part about him being well known in the harbour and Rosemount districts.

I knew that he had been in the police force from the birth certificates of his children, so last year I contacted the Grampian Police Museum and got a wonderfully prompt reply including Thomas's career information from the Aberdeen Police register and a photo of him.

Having been a Mason, he was appointed to the Police force in March 1907 and resigned in July 1924. His record gave not only his date of birth, but that of his wife and all of his children (these being added to during his career). I also know what ailed him during those years with his leave for sickness being recorded.

He had one punishment recorded for which he was fined 10/-, for being "Drunk on duty at 2am on this date"... the date being 12 Nov 1918... I think we can forgive him.

Lessons learned:
1. Sources get updated all the time, it pays to try them again.
2. Follow blog's etc. for sources so that you know when updates are made. In this case Findmypast.com.au News lead to my discovery of new Aberdeen newspapers.
3. Look for news items not only in a country of death but also in a country of birth, allowing for time delays for the news to get home.
4. Check for more unique sources, in this case following his occupation as a police constable lead to the Grampian Police Musuem which lead to his career and family details.