Lucked Out Again - Ancestry.com Hint Found Amy Oatley Probate File

They say that "luck is the residue of design."  There's a certain amount of luck involved in genealogy research, and the "design" part is often the online family tree that a researcher puts on Ancestry.com, MyHeritage, Findmypast or another family tree system as "cousin bait."

In the instant case, because I put my family tree on Ancestry.com two years ago, Ancestry.com provided Hints for Amy Frances Oatley (1826-1864) recently, including one for a probate record from the "Connecticut, Wills and Probate Records, 1609-1999)" collection.

1)  Here is my "Hints" page for Amy Frances Oatley with the Hint in the "Undecided" list (Il'l explain why later!):

Amy Frances (Oatley) White (1826-1864) died 12 November 1864 in East Killingly, Windham County, Connecticut.  The date on the record is 1865 in the Hartford Probate District.  It's worth a look!

2)  I clicked on the link to the record, and the record summary appeared:

There are 17 pages in this probate file - these are the original papers.  That's good.  There are papers for a cover page, will papers, administration papers, petition papers, inventory papers, and account papers.

3)  I clicked on the green "View" button on the screen above and saw the first page image for this specific file:

I wanted to save the file pages, but I couldn't do it from the Hint screen above.  I went into Ancestry and searched for the record, found it, and was able to download each image to my computer file.  I then renamed the 17 images and put them in the right surname/family file folder.

4)  However, I did not attach this record, or the downloaded images, to Amy Frances (Oatley) White.

Why did I not do that?  Because this probate record was not for Amy Frances (Oatley) White (1826-1864).  It was for her mother Amy (Champlin) Oatley (1798-1865), wife of Jonathan Oatley (1791-1872), who died in East Killingly, Windham County, Connecticut on 8 February 1865.

Same name (but married, not maiden), same place, approximately the same death date.  A female who died before her husband died.

5)  Ancestry.com has not yet provided this record as a Hint for Amy (Champlin) Oatley (1798-1865) for some reason.  She has 11 Hints that include the Champlin maiden name and the Oatley married name.  Perhaps they will in the future.

A search for records for Amy (Champlin) Oatley from my tree person did find the probate record.  Hints are nice, they are low hanging fruit but are not always comprehensive - you really need to search for records.

I will transcribe the will in an Amanuensis Monday post in the near future.

Lucky me, huh?  My research over the past 28 years missed this probate record, but Ancestry found it and provided the Hint.

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