{"id":1086,"date":"2015-09-13T00:57:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T00:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=1086"},"modified":"2015-09-13T00:57:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T00:57:38","slug":"an-estate-with-no-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=1086","title":{"rendered":"An Estate With No Name"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a reason why it is to the genealogist&#8217;s advantage to have as many indexes as possible to the same set of records. Redundancy is sometimes a good thing. There are times when the &#8220;new and improved&#8221; index is new, but not necessarily improved.<\/p>\n<p>The estate\u00a0of Ephraim Puffer from Middlesex County, Massachusetts, is a case in point. His name did not appear in the index to probate records on <em>Ancestry.com<\/em>. Varying his name did not help. Looking for all the Puffers did not help.\u00a0I <em>knew<\/em> he had a probate file in Middlesex County as I had digital images in my possession made from those records. Fortunately I copied the &#8220;file jacket&#8221; for his case file which contained the\u00a0case number. That was how I located his record at\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com\u00a0<\/em>in their &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=982\">probate database<\/a>.&#8221; I searched the database for his case number without his name.<\/p>\n<p>According to the\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em> index, Ephraim&#8217;s\u00a0estate was an apparently anonymous one. There is no name on the database entry as shown below:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1089 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/no-name.jpg\" alt=\"no-name\" width=\"660\" height=\"439\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/no-name.jpg 660w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/no-name-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The lack of a name\u00a0is even more clear on the &#8220;search results&#8221; that were obtained when I searched for the file number 18232.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/ephraim-puffer-fphs.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1088 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/ephraim-puffer-fphs.jpg\" alt=\"ephraim-puffer-fphs\" width=\"795\" height=\"469\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/ephraim-puffer-fphs.jpg 795w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/ephraim-puffer-fphs-300x177.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 795px) 100vw, 795px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m assuming at some point the entry will be fixed.<\/p>\n<p>If I was an uninitiated user of these records, would I have found this entry? Would I have thought to use the county&#8217;s index to these records (which <em>Ancestry.com <\/em>does have\u00a0available digitally right along with the probate records from this county)?<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Note:<\/strong><\/em> this is one of the examples I discuss in my <a href=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=1077\">recent webinar on the probate records<\/a> at<em> Ancestry.com<strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a reason why it is to the genealogist&#8217;s advantage to have as many indexes as possible to the same set of records. Redundancy is sometimes a good thing. There are times when the &#8220;new and improved&#8221; index is new, but not necessarily improved. The estate\u00a0of Ephraim Puffer from Middlesex County, Massachusetts, is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}