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  • RO research services

    Has anyone who's used these got any views on them - are they worth the £20 or so per hour, and how likely are they to find something that I wouldn't myself? I wouldn't usually consider it, but when I enquired of Essex RO I was told that the Overseers of the Poor's account book, which they considered the likeliest place to find a record of my illegitimate 3g-grandmother (having failed to trace her in the baptism register), was too fragile to be entrusted to an amateur so my only option if I wished to learn of its contents was to pay them to look for me. I've hesitated about doing so, not sure if it would be better to spend the £20 on a train ticket to go and have a look for her myself in any documents they will allow me access to (obviously the latter option relies on me both being in the UK and having free time, neither of which is the case at the moment). Any advice would be appreciated.

    Michael
    Michael, aged 1/4 of a century

  • #2
    It's a tricky one. They are professionals, and, as such, their time is chargeable - and probably helps the budget for the RO in question.

    If they find something useful, you'll feel it was money well spent. But they could spend the same amount of time, genuinely searching on your behalf, and come up with nothing of significance - and then you'd feel it was money wasted.

    If you have a specific time-frame, perhaps you could ask them to copy the relevant pages for you (or digital photo), irrespective of whether or not your target name appears? That way you'd have some kind of outcome for your investment - and you never know whether some other gem might be on the same pages - something you hadn't asked them to look for because you didn't know it was there to be asked for, or something, the value of which only shows up in later research.

    Christine
    Researching: BENNETT (Leics/Birmingham-ish) - incl. Leonard BENNETT in Detroit & Florida ; WARR/WOR, STRATFORD & GARDNER/GARNAR (Oxon); CHRISTMAS, RUSSELL, PAFOOT/PAFFORD (Hants); BIGWOOD, HAYLER/HAILOR (Sussex); LANCASTER (Beds, Berks, Wilts) - plus - COCKS (Spitalfields, Liverpool, Plymouth); RUSE/ROWSE, TREMEER, WADLIN(G)/WADLETON (Devonport, E Cornwall); GOULD (S Devon); CHAPMAN, HALL/HOLE, HORN (N Devon); BARRON, SCANTLEBURY (Mevagissey)...

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    • #3
      Michael

      If they will not let you handle the original document then it doesn't matter if you turn up in person or not - you will still have to pay them to search for, and extract, the information.

      I recently paid, I think, £25, for LancsRO to ferret out three bastardy orders. I already had the dates and the document numbers so it was really just a matter of retrieval and photocopying.

      Expensive if you look at it that way - but there is no way I can get from Cornwall to Lancashire for £25!

      OC

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      • #4
        At the very start of my research I had Norfolk RO look up a baptism for me, I gave them a two year time span and likely village - they charged me a tenner but included some other entries with the same surname. I think it was money well spent. How much is your time worth? plus the train fare and the aggro?

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        • #5
          Personally i'd pay it, because without it you won't know if it contains what you want.

          £20 isn't to bad, you could spend more (going yourself) and looking through the other records and still not find what you need.
          Vikki -
          Researching Titchmarsh and Tushingham

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          • #6
            You have a specific document which you can only get information from by paying, so I suppose you have to decide how much you need the information and how you would feel if having coughed up, the RO say they can't find what you want.

            But I have at various times paid £18 or £20 for an hour's worth of research at Cambridge RO, Norfolk RO and Warwickshire RO. I gave names and asked for baptisms and marriages and got my money's worth. I have since been to both Cambridge & Norfolk ROs, but at the time I paid for the research I wasn't nearly as experienced as I am now and would have not used my time as effectively.
            ~ with love from Little Nell~
            Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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            • #7
              When you consider it's less than the cost of 3 certs, and it's going to get you the info now, not when you can manage to organise it so you can get there, it's not really that bad. I was sent free, a spreadsheet with all the entries for my surnames extracted from a set of parish records, they asked for a donation to continue the work of transcribing records, I measured the donation by what the info would have cost me if I'd bought certs to get it.
              Come to think about it, I measure everything against the cost of a cert ...... "£4 for a sandwich! That's more than half a cert, I'll have a bar of chocolate to tide me over til I get home, that's half a cert paid for" LOL.
              Mavis
              Dust is a noun, never a verb;)

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              • #8
                Thanks for your responses everyone - the principal reason I'd been uming and ahing over it was precisely the one Christine mentions: that you feel you've got your money's worth if and only if the search yields a positive result. The precise date of birth and identity of the father of the child in question have been my major brick wall for the last three years, so if I was guaranteed to find them I'd gladly pay a damn sight more than £20 for it, but even if the search comes up blank I'd know it wasn't there (in which case it most probably isn't anywhere, and I'd have to give up and accept that only two people know the identity of the father and they've both been dead for 150 years).

                When I'm either home or in Coventry I could just about get to Chelmsford and back for £20. When I'm in Strasbourg I obviously can't!
                Michael, aged 1/4 of a century

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