RootsChat.Com

I'm certainly no expert in this area. I do remember reading (and just found) this from Genuki:

"From 1851, the Registrar-General grouped together the census returns from those parts of Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey which formed the "metropolitan" area commonly called London - i.e. the built-up areas - as a separate "census county". This area was used as the basis of the area governed by the Metropolitan Board of Works and later formed with few alterations the new County of London when it was created in 1889. The areas covered include Paddington, Kensington, Fulham, Chelsea, St George Hanover Square, Westminster, Marylebone, Hampstead, Pancras, Islington, Hackney, St Giles, Strand, Holborn, London City, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, St George in the East, Stepney, Mile End Old Town, Poplar, St Saviour, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Camberwell, Greenwich, Lewisham and Woolwich.

The rest of the county remained under the name of Middlesex."
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/MDX/census

Doesn't this imply in 1841 it was under Middlesex (or Kent or Surrey for other areas)?

No . The Metropolitan Board of Works was formed in 1855 to properly organize the maintenance and development of roads, sewers, bridges, and eventually the fire brigade and parks which included the City of London, but the actual County of London was not formed until 1889. The Board of Works covered both the City and parts of Middlesex, but the former was never part of the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Board_of_Works

Anyone looking for someone in London in 1841 may have no luck unless you specify Middlesex, as it turns out all the parishes within the City of London are wrongly put by Ancestry in a Middlesex category. If you browse using the drop down boxes on the right in this link, you can see there is no 'London' under the 'County' dropdown box

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/8978/

On the plus side Ancestry seem to have restored the '& adjacent counties' feature in the search form .

harling + melba

its worth re-checking your Ancestry dna results as they are constantly refining categories and french is now included specifically

germanic also turns up quite a lot

also with dna tests you may be able to prove your connections to each other


this topic is  interesting  : looking forward to reading any further conclusions

my french neice wants to take dna  test .her ancestors are from beynac in dordogne region . a lot of the place names there end -ac

Ancestry has always had a French category, but I know from testing a person of 100% French ancestry, that it isn't very accurate in that it only covers a very small set of samples, and those are likely of French Quebecois, which is a narrow focus as emigration to Quebec was mostly from specific parts of France and hardly any from others. This person's France % has gone from 25% to 55% then back to down to 40%, with most of the rest varying Irish and British categories. It reflects the fact they have vastly more samples from GB and Ireland so these are the closest match for the DNA of many French people that the algorithm recognises. Their closest matches are also very small, about 30cM the largest. So for French people of mostly French descent unfortunately it isn't going to tell you much, unless you have ancestry from other countries or ethnicities where testing is much more common, or groups that recently emigrated to the US/Canada/UK/NZ/Australia etc which represent the highest amount of Ancestry testers.

Thanks, that is good news.

Also I am sure you are aware that many Suffolk wills were proved in Norfolk courts, due to Suffolk being in the Diocese of Norwich.

Yes, the index is now on Ancestry, but not images
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62679/

Some of the images are on Familysearch as discussed on this thread but some may be need to be consulted at a Familysearch Centre or affiliate
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=811168.0

I actually think they've gone off the deep-end and set about AI programmers on the site, and it's breaking it bit by bit.