A bit of a moan...
After years of searching, I finally found a death cert for my 2x great grandmother Sarah Mitchell. She'd lived in W Yorks nearly all her life but skipped off to Sunderland to end her days!! Who knew!!
Anyway, I thought I'd look on the Probate Calendar on a certain FH website to which I subscribe to see if she just might have left a will. Imagine my frustration to find that the year in question - 1897 - and the initial letters K-M have just 3 pages (all surnames starting with K!!). The other years all seem to have hundreds of pages for that section, so, thinking this is obviously an error and needs reporting, I initiated an online chat (I hate them) with said website.
The (I assume, young) lady on the other end first asked me to 'bare with me' so I knew it was probably a complete waste of time. I resisted the urge to type back that I would politely decline to bare with her as I hadn't yet switched the central heating on - but I suspect the humour would have sailed over her head.
Despite me going on to point out that it was probably an error when the pages were microfilmed and therefore should be put right, she merely pointed out that all updates came out on a Friday and that I should look out for them!! I gave up.
Three questions:
1. Where do they get these people from?
2. Is it just Sod's Law that the year my ancestor died had to be the one with the missing pages, and those pages had to be for initial letter M?
3. Does anyone have access to the Probate calendar on another website and could do me a look up (probably have to be a PM) (assuming the pages actually exist) ?
And relax....
Jill
