{"id":5770,"date":"2017-11-18T22:25:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T22:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=5770"},"modified":"2017-11-18T22:25:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T22:25:39","slug":"getting-at-the-first-page-of-thomas-rampleys-probate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=5770","title":{"rendered":"Getting at the First Page of Thomas Rampley&#8217;s Probate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5773\" src=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-james-dar.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"177\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-james-dar.jpg 440w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-james-dar-300x121.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" \/>I agreed to help a cousin with her Daughter&#8217;s of the American Revolutionary War application for our common ancestor, James Rampley. James is a qualifying ancestor based upon his patriotic service during the American Revolution. Not bad for a man who was sent to the United States as a convict from County Suffolk, England, in the 1760s. Establishing James&#8217; qualification is not the problem. Others have already established his service.<\/p>\n<p>Like me, my cousin descends from James&#8217; son Thomas Johnson Rampley. Thomas left his native Harford County, Maryland, for the wilds of Ohio in 1817. That&#8217;s likely where he died in 1823 leaving his wife Christianna with a family of children all under the age of twenty.<\/p>\n<p>The problem was that we needed to show that Thomas was deceased for the DAR application&#8211;or at least find a document indicating he was deceased. That&#8217;s where probate records from Coshocton County, Ohio, came in handy. The probate records for Coshocton County are online at\u00a0<em>FamilySearch<\/em> and at\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em>. Because\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com\u00a0<\/em>has an index to the individuals whose estates are being settled, I decided to use it to find the first petition involving Thomas&#8217; estate. That&#8217;s all I needed to establish his &#8220;dead by&#8221; date. I thought it would be faster.<\/p>\n<p>Several entries appear for the last name of Rampley in\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em>&#8216;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kqzyfj.com\/click-865524-10470501-1404254934000?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ancestry.com%2Fsearch%2Fdb.aspx%3Fdbid%3D8801\">Ohio, Wills and Probate Records, 1786-1998<\/a>.&#8221;As soon as I saw the entries, I was reminded of why I am not really happy about how\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em> displays the results for these records.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There&#8217;s no way to mark the ones I have already viewed.<\/li>\n<li>Not all entries have a date (that&#8217;s most likely because they indexed the names that appear on the index pages of probate record books).<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s no way to sort the results.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t have any idea what type of probate journal or case file the records are from until I look at them.<\/li>\n<li>Not every entry gets indexed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The navigation of the results is probably the largest frustration for me. I understand the limitations of indexes and know that it&#8217;s just something I have to work around.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5771\" src=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-probate-results-ohio.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"657\" height=\"553\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-probate-results-ohio.jpg 657w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-probate-results-ohio-300x253.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 657px) 100vw, 657px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In reviewing the probate and will book entries for Thomas that were indexed, the initial petition to begin adminstration on his estate could not be located. I knew it was there since I had a paper copy of it in my files and the initial petition to begin the administration is one of those documents that &#8220;should&#8221; almost always be around (if the records are extant).<\/p>\n<p>One of the entries for Thomas was not to an actual record in the book related to his estate but was to the page in the book&#8217;s own index (created by the clerk). In reviewing those page entries, I realized the first reference to Thomas likely was to the initial petition to adminstrate his estate.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5774 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-thomas-index-probate.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"836\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-thomas-index-probate.jpg 836w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-thomas-index-probate-300x134.jpg 300w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/rampley-thomas-index-probate-768x343.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 836px) 100vw, 836px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On pages 376 and 377 of that record book was the petition I needed. It was the earliest document related to Thomas&#8217;s probate and helped to establish his death date.<\/p>\n<p>A few additional comments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All but one of the references to James Rampley were to James son of Thomas Johnson. He wasn&#8217;t dead but was appointed guardian for some of his younger siblings.<\/li>\n<li>One reference to James Rampley was actually incorrect and should have been to Thomas J. Rampley.<\/li>\n<li>Always search the clerk-created indexes to the record books.\u00a0Modern indexers miss things. The original record clerks can miss things as well, but it is not as likely.<\/li>\n<li>Searching manually is always advised when you do not find what you are looking for.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I agreed to help a cousin with her Daughter&#8217;s of the American Revolutionary War application for our common ancestor, James Rampley. James is a qualifying ancestor based upon his patriotic service during the American Revolution. Not bad for a man who was sent to the United States as a convict from County Suffolk, England, in [&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-5770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5770","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=5770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}