I’ve been using Ancestry.com’s “probate database” (my title, not theirs) again and my recent experience brought to mind an additional frustration with Ancestry.com:

Update announcements that don’t tell what’s been updated.

Updates that are not announced at all.

I guess I’m simply never happy.

I searched the database extensively when it was first released, particularly for quite a few of my low-German relatives who lived in Adams County, Illinois. The last names are relatively unusual and I’m generally related to everyone in that location with certain last names. I know when I searched for Sartorius, Behrens, and Tammen families then that I did not get results that I were obtained earlier today. For all three surnames, I located probate case files for fairly close family members that were not there when the database ran live.

They must have updated the Adams County portion of the database or I was out to lunch when I searched it the first time.

I’m glad when they update, but I wish there’d be a little more detail about what’s updated. It reminds me that one should never assume a database at Ancestry.com is complete and that manual searches are still required.

It’s still somewhat irritating because if I don’t know what’s different how do I know if it’s worth my time to go back and search?

Because regular readers know that I am not going to rely on leaves to do the work for me.