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

I've finally found it.

Thank you FindMyPast!
Thank You South West Heritage Trust and Parochial Church Council!
Thank you to whoever indexed this record and got the surnames right.

With news of the new additions to the Devon parish record collection on the FMP website, I thought it was about time to have another look through for my elusive three x great grandparents, William Thorn and Mary Hill's marriage.

For my whole researching life (that's 30 years plus) I have known their children's baptism dates from the family bible that came to New Zealand with their son Edmund Hill Thorn, but never their marriage date. First child, John Hole Thorn was born in 1850.

Looking up the marriage indexes (on fiche originally and later on the internet) there was no marriage that matched for William Thorn and Mary Hill and specifically none in their home parish registration district of Okehampton, Devon.

So tonight I looked up marriages in Devon for William Thorn 1848-1850, with a keyword of Hill. Just one result appeared with the bonus of having an image attached.

How quick can you click on a camera button..... very quick, and there it was, after a 30 year search. There might have been some whoops of delight and my husband telling me to breathe.

A close up of the names and of course now that I see it, I can also see how William's surname has probably been indexed and wonder why I never saw it before.

Trying those marriage indexes again and "Yes" there it is:

Lessons learned:
1. Write surnames in your own handwriting - tidy handwriting, messy writing, swoopy loopy writing and then see what the letters look like.

2. Keep track of what is being released on websites for your areas of interest, they may include the brick wall breaker.

Database and files to update now... but I wonder what else I could find tonight.

Postscript: Of course now I have also worked out why my ancestor, their son, is called Edmund, which appears nowhere else in the family. The marriage took place at St Edmund's, Exeter.

It was a sunny day

I remember sitting in the sun on the verandah at Nana & Grandad's farm at Arahura with Mum. It must have been the late 1970's and she was just starting to look into the family tree.

She was showing me a page from the Cyclopedia of New Zealand about Edmund Thorn (a name that meant nothing at the time) along with a collection of letters. These letters were typed from the original letters that Edmund, his wife Anna Maria and his brother Ernest had sent home from New Zealand to Devon, England. A descendant of the English recipients had inherited them and had made contact with my great aunt (there will be more about this later).

It was from this collection that I started my addiction/passion for family history... thanks to Edmund Thorn.

This is my attempt to share some of my research with the rest of the family... the postcards of our past.