Has anyone ever used an independent researcher ....

[askyourgran]

I have some notes of a family case at the Courts of Chancery going back to 1700's relating to a dispute about some land. I've looked at the early years of the case but latest amendments dated 1809 and 1810 are not available as the documents are stored offsite. Therefore I would have to travel to Kew to view the documents or hire and independent to do it for me at a cost of £20 for 15 minutes. It took me all night to make head or tail of the legalised jargon of the parts that I saw so I'm a bit dubious about employing this particular researcher at Kew. I would like to know the end result of all that but now dithering what to do for the best. Has anyone had work done for them?

[dotty.]

I used to be a paid record agent many years ago, did a few sessions at Kew in 1994/5. If you have done alot of the work already and you understand what else you need and where they are and how to interpret them, send for copies of them, when you say 'off site; do you mean they are in another archive? All you should need is the full catalogue reference number. If you want to try another local researcher look in the bck of family tree magazine where they advertise,

[askyourgran]

Kew have sent me the modern document references for each of the amendments, saying that there is no further information on-line, the documents are stored off-site. I'm hesitating as it's a long way to go and I haven't really got a hope of understanding what the final result means. It does say those sort of documents are usually looked at by legal researchers. If I need it to be treated under the freedom of information act I would have to re-send my request but a charge would be made for the research.

[dotty.]

by 'off-site' i think they mean the hard copy in the archive, they can still quote a price for an old fashioned photo-copy, the documents will be folio size and so not cheap but once you get them, as long as you have become familiar with the righting style and terminlogy anything you cannot understand technically you could post on here.

[Barmaid]

If you posted the bits you didn't understand on here, I will try and help. I know a bit about reading old legal documents.

Interestingly, I put one of my family names into a legal database I use and found a case report from the mid 1800s. It gave a whole LOAD of the family history and helped me confirm for definite who the father was of my ggg grandfather.

[askyourgran]

Thanks for your advice. (Isn't it annoying when you get an 'answer removed')
I got an e-mail from ARK (National Archives) giving me details of the new reference numbers to find the next three amendments plus there was three attachments and for some reason I can't open them. I did ask in Technology but I still can't see them. They didn't mention anything about being able to send photocopies. Barmaid I'll keep that in mind if I ever get further with this.