The Blog Returns

My apologies to anyone who looked for the blog recently and found that it had been removed. Somehow I fell foul of the Google robots which look out for "spam blogs". Thanks to Jay for pointing it out to me, and to the Google reviewer who restored it over the weekend.

Clearly, I need to improve the quality of my writing!

I’ve been working on a couple of pedigrees over the last few weeks, in response to emails from other researchers. One had sent me the details of several certificates – since it’s a Monmouthshire/Breconshire family, I already have them in some of my files, so I have been adding the information from the certificates and checking where there are still gaps to be researched. I’ve also identified a possible earlier generation – but since it’s in that period just before the censuses, it’s going to be difficult to confirm the link.

The other pedigree relates to the family of a James Patrick Parry – the researcher had sent me an article he’d written about James. Unfortunately it is mainly in german, but there was sufficient information for me to recognise the family as being that of Gilbert Sidney Parry (author of the probate abstracts book), and of the Sidney Parry who drowned in the Serpentine. One of the references from the article relates to the "Topographical and Historical Account of the Parish of St Mary-le-Bone", which I then found on Google Books. This shows a burial of a William Parry in 1826, who is described as "of Montagu Square, and of Walton Hall, in the County of Suffolk". I knew about the Montagu Square address from his probate entry, but it’s the first time I have come across the Walton Hall reference. I am hoping that, that might help in researching the earlier generations – since there’s reputed to be a link to the family of Sir William Edward Parry, the arctic explorer, as well, and that’s another family whose pedigree becomes unclear in the 1700s.

Ancestry have now fully transcribed the civil registration marriage index for England and Wales from 1916 to 1983, so that will help me to meet the Guild’s requirements for collecting the BMDs. It will still be a long process to gather the full details though, and to match up the full names of spouses properly, especially given the number of marriages between Parrys and either other Parrys or other frequently occurring Welsh names.

I took a trip to North Wales last week and spent a couple of days walking around graveyards, so I now have a collection of Parry memorials to transcribe. It was a good learning experience – I must remember next time to take a tape recorder, just in case the inscriptions on the images are not sufficiently readable. It takes too long to transcribe them by hand whilst there, when time is limited to day trips.

Finally, having travelled all that way in search of memorials, today I discovered one closer to home, when we noticed that one of the plaques in the local park is for a Parry. An effective end to the weekend!

1911 census completed (sort of!)

The final areas of the England and Wales 1911 census were released earlier this month and there is now a total of 28,375 Parrys on the site. I have been collecting the entries for each area as they have become available but my file only has 28,055 in it, since the areas released earlier have now been amended. This is an issue with all of the census sites – initial transcriptions are rarely perfect so there is an ongoing process of error correction, making it difficult to keep an extracted file up to date. Some of the totals for the Welsh counties in 1911 have changed by hundreds so it will probably be quicker to re-extract them this time, rather than trying to identify the changes. I am hoping that such a large number of changes is due to errors with the uploading process, perhaps some areas missed out etc, and that future amendments will relate to fewer entries. Re-extracting the data will become increasingly difficult once I start adding further information to individuals or match up entries across years. Transcription corrections also have a knock-on effect for any derived information, such as statistical analysis or distribution mapping. Fortunately, given the number of Parrys there are, gaining or losing just a few of them should not make too much difference to the conclusions drawn from any analysis, so it may not need redoing. But it will be frustrating to know that is isn’t totally accurate.

If keeping extracted files up to date is one of the challenges of carrying out an ONS, then identifying the surname when it is mispelt is certainly another, especially with early records, when spelling wasn’t standardised. I have sometimes wondered whether I should be looking at spellings such as "Paris", for very early appearances of the Parrys in London, bearing in mind how the place would be pronounced in french. So I was amused to see the following, in the recent release of the Cecil papers on British History Online:
[1611–12, January 5]."A bill of charges from Brussells to London."
For rydyng from Brussell to Parys by coache eyght dayes and a halfe.25s
For dyet eyght dayes and a halfe.22s
For my Lord Imbassettors gardner to goe withe me two and from in Parrys to by my things—given him in Crowns.6s
From Parrys to Roane, coache hire.7s6d
For expences in Parrys for dyet and loging.li80
For porters hire in Parrys to carye trees abord the boat.30
For portters hyre in Roane and carrag by watter.43
Given to the boye in the house to laye my trees in the grond.10
Spent in Roan for aleven dayes and a halfe for dyetli86
For horse hire from Roan to Deepe46
Also given in earnest to the boatemaster from Parrys to Roane.30

I guess anyone looking for the city of Paris should be considering spelling variations as well!

There’s been some useful information sent to me by other researchers over the past few months, such as extractions from a number of Breconshire parish registers, and details of individual 1911 census entries. One of these was for a man known to be a performing pianist, yet he appeared in the census as the manager of a shoe shop in an area of what is now Birmingham. In the course of identifying where the parish was, I came across the Historical Streets Project, which could be useful for finding particular addresses in the early censuses.

There’s also been some links to follow up. One was a news report about the excavation of a WW1 mass grave at Fromelles, France, and the CWGC’s attempts to identify the bodies. The casualty lists of possible soldiers includes one Parry, from the Australian forces:
320 Private Parry Frederick 29th Battalion

Frederick is mentioned on the main CWGC site.
Name: PARRY, FREDERICK
Initials: F
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Private
Regiment/Service: Australian Infantry, A.I.F.
Unit Text: 29th Bn.
Date of Death: 19/07/1916
Service No: 320
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: 1.
Memorial: V.C. CORNER AUSTRALIAN CEMETERY MEMORIAL, FROMELLES

Any relatives are being encouraged to come forward to assist with the task of identification.

Other sites include one for Australian Honours, which has 80 Parrys, and the UK Surnames Genealogy Contact site which has 29 entries for people researching Parrys. A few of them I recognise but the others I should probably contact at some stage. There’s always a trade-off with doing that – time spent (which could be considerable, if I happen to have information on their family) against the information to be gained from the contact. That’s something I have been considering with regard to another method some Guild members use for contacting people – the social networking sites, such as Facebook. Facebook recently allowed the registration of usernames, which prompted discussion on the Forum. "Parry" as a username had already been taken but I decided to register ParryONS - the only benefit seems to be that it makes it easier for people to find me by using that in the URL, rather than a string of numbers, but I thought it was worth doing something. I don’t currently have a One-Name Study group on the site, since there is already a Parry Family Group and a couple of "fun" groups for the surname, but I sometimes wonder if it would be worth creating a closed group for the study, as a possible way of contacting some of the "younger generation" that frequent Facebook. But it’s that trade-off issue again.

I was surprised recently to realise that it was 2007 when I last worked on a particular census page for the internet. Everything takes a long time with a study of a high frequency surname. I did let my Ancestry sub lapse some months ago, in order to spend more time working systematically on the vital records, but the lack of complete census transcriptions elsewhere (and a half price sale) tempted me back. I have been concentrating on collecting some BMDs from FindMyPast’s parish records but, now that Ancestry’s records are accessible again, I shall also return to comparing their parish records to the BVRI2. I had always thought that Ancestry’s "England and Wales Christening records" (and the similar database of marriages) was the same as the BVRI2 but closer inspection earlier in the year indicated that there were differences between them. I therefore started to extract the BVRI2 entries as well, for comparison. There is the option to save files from the BVRI2 cdroms as either rtf or gedcom so, not being sure which would be best, I extracted a small number of entries using both. On conversion of the two files into spreadsheets using LDS Companion, I was surprised to find that, not only did I occasionally get differences in the results (eg the rtf method didn’t cope with accented words, so Thoós and Joós became Tho and Jo), but also some strange errors crept in on the gedcom version (loss of a couple of ages, a couple of grooms names appearing as if they were the bride’s father’s name). Also, neither of the converted files included comments such as "Husband previously married".

So it now appears that I may need to extract all entries using both methods and compare the results of that process first, as well as add back in any "previously married" comments, in order to make sure I have an accurate BVRI2 extraction, before I can then do a comparison of the BVRI2 to the information on Ancestry. It will probably still be quicker to do it that way, rather than checking all entries individually, since there are 3749 entries, but it shows how a "simple" task can end up being much more complicated than originally expected.

Fortunately the correspondence level has dropped recently (although I still have some long outstanding items for which I need to either put together, or check through, information). But there have only been four new contacts since the end of April, three via email and one by post. The postal one did involve putting together information on a couple of people, but it turned out to be a useful exercise. One of them was Roger Parry, a member of the Golden valley family from Herefordshire, but who was rector of Hinton Ampner, in Wiltshire. Searching for more information online, I was able to find a reference to his burial at Winchester Cathedral 18 May 1634, ae. 88. (on http://www.wargs.com/family/stratton.html). Another site indicates there is a note in the Hinton Ampner registers which states that, in 1576, "Roger Parry Parson of Hinton took Possession of his Parsonage the sixth Day of May, and did reade his Articles in the presence of Mr. Richard Beckensall, Robert Streeter & others." The site also mentions a note from the 1634 register of Hinton-Ampner. The original is in Latin, but the site author has translated it as "Roger Parry the Rector of this church who resided here 58 years died at Winchester where he was buried; he lies in the Temple of the Holy Trinity in the Bordal [?] Chapel, May 24th, in the eighty-eighth year of his life."

Obviously the original parish records need checking to confirm the entries but, when I eventually get around to writing some web pages about Parry occupations, it will be quite interesting to produce one about those in the ministry, considering the number of cathedrals with a Parry connection.

Continuing on the subject of occupations, a message on the Forum yesterday led to a site with details of EU farm subsidies – so I now have a list of around 400 payments made to Parry farmers. Comparing that to directory information will go on the "to do" list.

I also noticed yesterday that what is described on the BMD pages of Ancestry as "Marriages 1984 - 2005 (transcribed)" actually goes to a page entitled "England & Wales, Marriage Index: 1916-2005" – so they must be about to release the fullly transcribed records, as they did with the births. That will be a help (although I imagine I will still need to work through each quarter to add the spouses surnames, as I am doing with the mothers maiden names for the births).

And finally, I should have guessed I might be tempting fate to say how little correspondence there had been recently, since I promptly received an email relating to a new contact and also a second email from a new contact I’d answered two weeks ago.

Quarterly Newsletter!

A Guild member mentioned earlier this year that he had changed from producing a quarterly newsletter to writing a blog – given the length of time since my last post, perhaps I should be doing the opposite!

There has been activity on the study throughout the year so far. January saw the official release of the 1911 census. I’d already had a preview of this with a beta trial just before Christmas (not the most convenient of times, but it was an opportunity for a few surprise presents.) During the trial, I had collected all of the Parrys in the available counties. However, some of these needed re-doing after the official release, since the totals had changed. This will continue to happen, as corrections are made to the transcriptions – already some of the counties released in January are showing differences to the previous numbers of Parrys, so those need investigating. The census is also being released in stages – with all of England now completed but with Wales, the Channel Islands, and the overseas military, still to come. The current total for Parrys is 13,772 but I expect that will double by the time the whole census is released.

Another database released earlier this year was Ancestry’s transcription of the GRO Birth Indexes from 1915-1983, something previously available from them only as images. This makes it easier to collect the information and helps me move closer to the recommended ONS goal of collecting all BMD details. I am now systematically working through the images to check the transcriptions and add the mothers’ maiden names. One benefit of the searchable database is that it is now possible to easily identify other surnamed entries where the mother’s maiden name was Parry, although following such lines is certainly not a priority for me.

There have been several marriage challenges during the year, one of which unfortunately I was too busy to submit anything for, since there were about 80 entries to be checked. I am now involved in helping with the Birmingham challenge and it is interesting to see how the challenge principle is changing, as some people "adopt a church" rather than searching across a whole registration district, and others choose to either limit submissions or not carry out certain look-ups. As usual though, the results received have set me searching the censuses for more information, which has resulted in some interesting trails. Even with a common surname like Parry, some people stand out as individuals and "Pluvius Cambria Parry" is certainly one of them. With a father from Flintshire and a mother from Hertfordshire, I wonder whose idea it was to name him "Rainy Wales Parry."

Sometimes Guild members offer other look-ups and a recent "newspaper challenge" by Richard Heaton produced several references to a Mr Parry’s vocal performances, as well as a report of the theft of a cash box from a Thomas Parry in Ross. The box contained gold and silver worth £6, but also "a beer-house Licence, and two Receipts for insurance", so I hope there were no accidents in the pub while he got that sorted out. The relevant entry can be found on Richard’s web page.

On other occasions, information arrives unexpectedly, as a photograph of a Parry war grave recently did, thanks to Anni. Although only the initial is shown on the stone, his number allowed me to identify him as a Thomas Parry, who was born in Anglesea, the son of a Henry and Jane Parry. I was also able to find the family in the 1891 and 1901 censuses.

Correspondence so far this year has included 17 new Parry contacts, as well as ongoing discussions with several others. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit both the National Library of Wales and the National Archives for the first time (not that I actually found what I was looking for in either place, but I still collected a few Parrys.)

But there is one thing that has dominated my thinking since the 1911 census came out – the reason why my great grandfather should have found himself in Hereford County Prison. I’ve often wondered whether I have any "black sheep" in the family – but I hadn’t expected to find one quite so close to home.

Hopefully, it should make an interesting story - when I finally track down all the paperwork!

One-Name Study Blogs

There was some talk on the Forum recently about ways of publishing research on one’s ONS and blogs have featured as an attractive alternative to producing newsletters, or other printed material. There are now 33 blogs listed as being written by Guild members. It will be interesting to read through them to pick up tips – I’m always on the look-out for new ideas, especially on how to write interesting entries.

One of the difficulties with this blog is getting the balance right between meeting the purpose of the blog (which is to keep people informed about what is happening with the study) and making it something that people will actually want to read. I try to log down in Word what I am doing as I do it but, with having a largish study, many tasks take time to complete. This means the blog can turn into a list of half completed activities, forever repeating the same things as ongoing - but the alternative is large gaps between entries, especially when other (non-genealogical) activities also get in the way and delay the finishing of things.

Several other Guild members mentioned being too busy to keep their blogs going. But with December now here, and the end of the year looming, I don’t intend to see "updating the blog" on my resolutions list so it’s back to the listing of ongoing activities.

Keeping up with correspondence has been a major issue, with two records in the last few months. On the 18th August, I received emails from three new contacts - that’s the most on any one day. Then, starting from the 23rd October, there were ten new contacts in a fortnight (looking back, it was actually nine in 9 days to start with – I’m certainly glad that pace doesn’t continue throughout the year!)

It is always exciting to hear from other researchers. As with the marriage challenges, receiving new information is an opportunity to look into a particular family and often I can trace them through at least a few censuses. So that is a form of progress on the study, even if it isn’t particularly systematic.

One researcher sent me a certificate for a marriage in Nottingham in 1922. Because of the names used, and the family’s lack of movement from the village of Llanrwst, DEN, during the census years, it was possible to follow the family line back to the 1841 census, through three generations prior to the person marrying. Obviously the details do need further confirmation but it’s a good framework to work from (and an illustration of the usefulness of middle names).

Of the three new contacts in one day, one related to Monmouthshire, and two to Herefordshire, so all three connected to my area of particular interest. One descended from a family I already knew a little of – James Pritchard was left the property of Arkstone in Kingstone, HEF, by Mrs Mary Morgan (an heiress of the Parry family), on the condition that he took the name Parry. There is a reference in the London Gazette to the name change (Gazette Issue 12920 published on the 11 September 1787. Page 2 of 8 ) and several Parrys appear with Pritchard as a middle name around that time. There had not been much cause to investigate them before, although I had collected a copy of one of their Wills, that of Elizabeth Pritchard Parry who died in 1841. Now I had a reason to transcribe it, which confirmed the initial conclusions being drawn from the IGI, census, and the researcher’s own family stories, about what happened to the family in the early 1800s. The next stage is to produce a web page of the tree (but there’s at least three other family trees that I’ve promised to write first!)

Whilst searching for information about that family, I came across a reference to a book about Kingstone, by Delphine Coleman. As an informative account of the history of the parish, it also contains details about the Parry family, including an image of the Will of a John Parry who died in 1689. Further investigation is still needed to follow up the information in the book but it is a good example of how useful local histories can be. It reminded me of another book I came across a few years ago, at one of the Family History Fairs. "Past People in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire", by June Badeni, has an account of the Parry family from Easton Grey, yet another family to be followed up when time permits. I already have photographs of many of their memorials, having visited the parish church some years ago, and there is a pedigree relating to them in the sheets I obtained from Hereford library, although its accuracy does need confirming.

Another fairly new correspondent has copies of an indenture and two property deeds relating to their family, which should help in tracing them back further. And following up what happened to the other descendant lines had one of those "you’re never going to believe this…" moments. The researcher’s discussions with more recent owners of the property indicated that there had been descendants of the family in Canada and a search through an old address book turned up a couple of possible names. I found an obituary online in which those names appeared along with some others. Could this be the family? Then onto the researcher’s doormat fell a copy of a letter and newspaper cutting that another relative had just found amongst some family papers. Yes, it confirmed that the obituary was indeed the right family – and the researcher is now in contact with their cousins in Canada, a possibility not even suspected just three months ago.

Seeing people connect up with each other is exciting. Amongst the batch of ten new correspondents were two descendants of the "Colston Parry" family (view their pedigree here). With another one of those making contact during October, that means there are now at least eight researchers of that family, and the pedigree needs amending to include all of the new information. Hopefully, being in touch with each other will encourage them to further research to become the experts on their own family, a depth of knowledge that I cannot develop for the many individual Parry families.

Of course, things aren’t always that easy – one correspondent has so little information that they are totally stuck in the 1900s and will probably remain so until the 1911 census is released early next year.

Whilst trying to keep up with the new contacts, there is also continued correspondence with others. One of these concerns much earlier records – those relating to Griffith Appenrith of Calais, who died in 1553 and whose coat of arms some claim to be a more elaborate version of the "fess between three lozenges" Parry arms. He is referred to in the Middlesex pedigrees as "Apenreth or ap Henry" so a link to the Parrys is feasible. An important article with regard to Griffith is "The Welsh at Calais" by P.T.A. Morgan. Several of the references for this article relate to records held at Longleat and, when I first read it years ago, I probably dismissed the possibility of ever viewing these, since a research student had told me about the "exhorbitant fees" often required for access to private records. However, a recent discovery has made me think again – whilst searching for information on a book about Herefordshire speech that had been mentioned on a mailing list, I came across a book cataloguing papers from Longleat, which mentioned families such as the Talbots and the Devereux. Tempted initially by the book, since these are "Parry related" families, I then thought to check A2A and found Longleat listed. It appears that at least some of the records have now been copied so maybe viewing them will not be so impossible after all. Interestingly, as well as the Calais records, there are three sets of papers with references to Parrys - one of which is an Anthony Parry in the 1500s. Could this be the Anthony from Wiltshire who appears in the probate indexes? It would be funny if, as well as finding information that establishes Griffith’s origins, the papers also contain details that help to identify exactly how the Wiltshire Parrys connect to those of Herefordshire – something long claimed by researchers but not proven. That really would be an achievement.

For a family genealogist, such stretches of the imagination would be a "no-go", since it is important to work backwards step by step to firmly establish connections. But, for a one-namer, following up all such references to the name is important. In this case, they could shed light not just on the particular individuals but also on the origins of surnames, since there are Griffith families who claim to descend from Griffith Apenreth.

Which reminds me, I still haven’t finished the web page concerning the surname’s origins, a subject that another researcher enquired about just recently.

Talking of the web pages, following on from the difficulties with the web site in August, I registered two domain names, parryfamilyhistory.org.uk and parryone-namestudy.org.uk. Since the posting problems resolved themselves, the domains are currently pointed to the existing site but they should make it easier if I do need to move it in the future.

I did actually upload the full details of the probate abstracts, although the page is not linked in to the rest of the site, since I want to rewrite the whole probate section. They can be found here. I had made a start on converting the information into a spreadsheet for submission to the Guild Probate index but that still needs finishing. The probate index is another Guild initiative which will be very beneficial as more people submit information, since it will enable members to find their surnames where they appear within the content of Wills relating to people of other surnames.

The marriage challenges continue. Since I last posted I have received results from the following:
Lincoln MC - 2 found out of the 3 submitted.
Blythswood – 1 submitted and found. This is a challenge in stages so I have also just sent 3 entries for the stage 2.
Marylebone – there have been several batches of these and it has fascinated me to see how many marriages relate to people who have moved from Wales.
Eton – 5 found out of 5 submitted. This one also led to a helpful discussion about the use of "mail merge" in the production of certificates from excel files, so I now have some linked files to play around with.
Shoreditch stage 1 – another 100% result, with 27 submitted and all found. I’ve just submitted 13 for the stage 2 as well.
Tiverton – 1 submitted and found. Now this is an interesting one from 1902 – the family of the groom appear as PARRY in the 1901 census, but are PERRY in every census prior to that, a family originating in Devon, but with the groom’s father moving to Wales by 1871. Since the marriage took place in Devon, where the bride was also from, yet the groom remained as PARRY, could this indicate a permanent name change for the family?
Cirencester – 3 submitted. Two full certificates found and the 3rd, a Register Office marriage, had the spouse identified from a local index. The two full certificates are from 1841 and 1870 and, as I looked for related census entries, I realised that the Mary Elizabeth Parry marrying in 1870 was actually the daughter of the John Parry and Mary Coole, formerly Radcliffe, who married in 1841. So that’s a neat tie up between the results.

Although I have only had a small number of marriages to submit for those challenges, there are others ongoing that I won’t be submitting to because of the number of entries involved – for the two stages of West Derby, I have a total of 1153 marriages, and Toxteth has 180. However, for a challenge at Birmingham, there are several challengers working together who are tackling it a church at a time. Even though I have over 230 entries, they have said to submit them, so I have. I might actually be able to help with some batches of that one though, since Birmingham isn’t that far away, so I don’t feel too guilty. I was across there this last week, helping to identify some of the churches in Aston, by finding a few of my Parrys. But, in the long run, it may be more practical if I carried out a more local challenge myself.

It’s not just receiving Challenge results that can lead to furthering the study. In order to obtain details of entries for the Scottish challenge at Blythswood, it was necessary to purchase units from Scotland’s People. While I had those, I extracted the rest of the Parry details from the indexes there. Perhaps not surprisingly, there seemed to be a higher proportion of variant spellings of Parry in Scotland. However, searching for variants also produces more irrelevant results, since the variants of Parrie and Parrey pick up a place, Parrie in Edinburghshire, and an occupation of a "Parrey Cox Maker".

I already had the Scottish census details from Ancestry, which was a great help. If it wasn’t for Ancestry having transcribed so much regarding parents and spouses, it would have been very difficult to sort out some of the families from the SP indexes alone, where several occur together on a page. As one might expect with transcriptions, there are differences between the information on the two sites, with people appearing on one site but not the other. It is fairly easy to resolve the situation of those found on SP but not on Ancestry, by searching using place references and just a first name, or even no name. But it is not so easy the other way round. Funnily enough, one of the latest Marylebone certificates involved someone who I then traced to the Scottish censuses, which made it worth going back and purchasing a couple of the images. This revealed that a person listed on Ancestry definitely does appear in the census, so I don’t know what Scotland’s People have them indexed under. One good point about Scotland’s People though is that, if credits have run out, buying more re-instates them, so that is good to know.

I happened to be looking at the Warwickshire County RO’s site recently, which has Parrys in their databases for Victuallers (4 as victuallers, 6 as bondsmen), Tithe apportionments (21), and Prisoners (15).

I still haven’t followed up many of the databases that have been mentioned on the forum, but there have been a few:
Manchester’s unfilmed 1851 census had 179 Parry entries.
A preliminary look at an Australian newspapers beta site gave me thousands of results so that needs closer investigation.
An Irish Mariners site turned up two Parrys.
And a Guild member let me know there are two Parrys listed amongst the yacht owners in "Lloyds Register of Yachts 1969."

I also noticed that the Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1812-1834 were on Ancestry. I’m not sure how long they’ve been there. There’s 1704 Parry surname results and, using keyword, gives 2837 results because of owners with Parry as a middle name.
Another database it is worth using keyword for is the BVRI on A, which appears under "England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906" and "England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1940". This is not just because using keyword picks up Parry as a first name, but because it also picks it up in other contexts, such as maiden names of widows. (An example to explain - Hercules Richard Burleigh married Florence Peace in 1876. However, Florence’s father is shown as Samuel Billington Parry. It appears, from FreeBMD and CheshireBMD, that Florence Parry may have married Henry Peace in 1874.) These are entries that would be difficult to find on the cdrom version. The only problem is that it is necessary to visit each individual page to collect parental information, whereas that can be easily saved to a spreadsheet from the cd version, with the help of the LDS companion program.

Extracting BMD information is one of the main priorities of an ONS. I was recently sent a list of BMD details by a researcher and adding notes from those to my files indicated that I didn’t yet have all the relevant entries transcribed from the GRO. FreeBMD is becoming more up to date so that helped for some of the entries from the early 20th century. I also decided to have a look at the entries for 2005, which I hadn’t yet done. Using keyword, there are 707 marriage entries (about 350 actual marriages, since all entries are extracted at least twice when using keyword), 443 deaths, and 982 births. Not all the births are surnamed Parry, of course, since using keyword picks up those whose mother’s maiden name was Parry. However, with 558 actual Parry surnamed births, the population of Parrys does appear to be increasing – although I hardly think it’s doing so at a sufficient rate for Parrys to "take over the world", as a group on Facebook jokes.

Mind you, if they did, they could at least make it a legal requirement to record their own genealogy!

Another lost inscription and website issues

There’s been mixed results with regard to the Salisbury Cathedral records. Unfortunately, there is no record of Henry Parry’s burial. But although the burial register appears to go back that far, it is a later copy, so the fact that it shows no entry for him doesn’t mean there wasn’t one originally. After all, why copy a register unless it is in a state of disrepair? Perhaps some other contemporary evidence will turn up from elsewhere, otherwise it looks as if that query will never be resolved.

However, I did learn of an inscription that I didn’t know about before – it’s also “lost”, since the stone can no longer be identified, but at least I have the text for it. This was for Francis Parry, of the Close, Salisbury, who died in 1662, “a man universally esteemed, who in the maturity of life yielded to nature…aged 77.”

An abstract of his Will is in the probate abstracts book and he’ll be appearing in a sub-branch of the Golden Valley pedigree, once I put that on the web site.

I was going to say, “It’s been over two weeks now, with no progress on the web site problem” – but today’s check on whether I could upload anything succeeded! I was so surprised, I almost forgot what I wanted to upload. The DNA information is now on there, as well as a separate page for details of site updates. I haven’t added the rest of the probate abstracts yet – the whole probate area of the site could really do with some rewriting, so it’s a matter of deciding how much of that to do first. In some ways, the fact that I can now upload to the site again seems bad timing – I’d almost decided to take out a domain name and develop a new site because of the problems. Now I have to decide – shall I just “tweak” it or shall I go for a major change?

One of my contacts recently sent an article about Blanche Parry from the Birmingham Post – it’s a shame that, although the reporter had obviously seen Ruth’s book about Blanche, he’d still got her father’s name wrong (Miles was Blanche’s grandfather, not her father. Her father was Harry.) I wonder how many people were interested enough in the details to have now been misled.

I noticed the National Archives have the RN Officer's Service Records available. There’s 30 Parrys amongst them, including a few familiar names. It’s often interesting to look at how occupations run in families – I wonder how many of the Admirals and Commanders will turn out to be related to each other!

Thinking of “new”information, there have been several sites mentioned on the Forum recently, but I haven’t had time to follow those up yet. Perhaps there will be some good results to share in my next post.

Lost monuments and other activities

There have been several things I’ve set out to write about over the last few weeks but time has been flying by again.

We had a holiday and, although I hadn’t planned to do any research, I try not to miss any opportunities. So it was that I found myself in Owermoigne church, looking for a memorial to Leonard Parry, who was rector there when he died in 1614. In his Will, he asks that he be buried in the chancel, specifying the words he wanted to be carved upon a plain stone. However, there was a notice in the church porch with some of the church’s history and the only stone mentioned as having been in the chancel was for the rector who followed Leonard. The loss of some artifacts as well as a number of memorials to the lords of the manor and “former rectors and their relations,” was noted though, so it appears that events over time, especially the rebuilding of the church in 1882, have taken their toll.

At least I did find his name on the list of vicars.

Leonard was rector from 1567 – 1614 and it must have been an interesting time. According to the noticeboard, although the rectory is thought to have existed since the thirteenth century, most of the present building dates from the time of Elizabeth (who reigned 1558 – 1603). The villagers were well known for their smuggling activities in the past – with the squire and parson also being involved. Beams in the rectory dining room are reputedly from a wreck of the Spanish Armada (1588) and the rectory cellar contains a bricked-up window through which the parson used to receive his share. Oh Leonard, if only you could come back and tell tales!

Later we visited Salisbury Cathedral. Here, I hoped to find a memorial to Henry Parry, who was Chancellor & Canon resident when he died about 1570 and in his Will requested to be buried under the pulpit. But a search of the recorded tombs shows no record of him. Perhaps there will be other records, such as the registers, which will confirm his burial at least. That’s something still to be investigated.

But back in June, I wrote about the lost gravestones of a mayor of Coventry and his wife, Mary Luckman, formerly Parry. I also knew that a memorial plaque in Church Knowle to another Leonard Parry, who was rector in that parish until 1623, had been lost when that church was renovated. Considering these two "new" losses, it shows the importance of recording things as they are today, as well as researching the past - perhaps I should be doing more on the current Parrys, after all.

I’m still catching up with emails from when I was away. One of them was from a researcher whose ancestor, Abigail Griffiths, was a servant of John Parry of Ewias Harold. In 1724, he left her all his houses & lands in Longtown, Clodock, with remainder to her brother David. Mindful of a talk on “hidden kin” at the Guild AGM, I am keeping an eye out for anything which might indicate she was related to him – especially since there were several David Griffiths in Longtown by 1800, owning land near to my Parrys. In fact, the son of one of them married a sister of my 3xgt grandfather so who knows, perhaps the Griffiths and Parry families intermarried in the same way the Vaughans and Parrys in that area seem to have done, keeping property "in the family".

But as usual, I couldn’t resist doing a search for any new information which might have appeared recently, and I spent some time on the site of the Ewyas Lacy Study Group. They are in the process of adding manorial surveys to the site, which will be a great help in identifying the lands held by Parry families. The area is a “hot spot” for Parrys, so I could quite happily spend hours on this site, and the similar site of the Longtown Historical Society Archive.

I saw a second hand book recently that looked interesting – “Thirty Thousand Yesterdays,” by Ann Parry. Ann was David Lloyd George's last Welsh Secretary, and the book was described as being “full of political and social events of the era before WW2”. But it is a much more “personal” book than I expected, starting with her early years in Anglesey, and listing the entries from the family bible. Those have enabled me to identify the family in three censuses – 1881 at RG11/ 5593/30/5, 1891 at RG12/4679/96/10 and 1901 at RG13/5296/95/6. I’m looking forward to reading the book through properly.

At the moment, still being fairly disorganised with the study, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of what information is referenced to where. I happened to look at the help pages for the Parry mailing list & message board just before my holiday and was dismayed to realised they were directing people to the Perry DNA project - since they had been written before the Parry DNA project commenced and, at that time, Parry was included as a variant under the Perry project. Changing those was a priority once I returned home.

I would like to say that I have also now updated my own site to include the details of both the project at Family Tree DNA and also the DNA group at Ancestry. However, having got all the pages written, I now find that my ISP has problems with the upload server, which is preventing any changes. “It should be fixed in 4-6 days,” they say. So how come people on the cable forums have been complaining of the same issue for the past two months? I might not have been updating the Parry pages frequently over that time, so hadn’t discovered the issue earlier, but I may have to consider an alternative web site if it can’t be resolved fairly promptly.

Other news – I realised that I had missed the deadline for one of the marriage challenges. Fortunately I only have two entries for that district but it was a bit frustrating. I have now submitted details to three others with deadlines looming, with just one more to do. The Parry probate abstracts would now be on my site if I could upload anything. To go with them, I decided to put up the pedigree of G S Parry, who originally produced them. His pedigree appears on one of the LDS films – I didn’t find it myself, I just happened to be sitting next to an acquaintance in the local FHC some years ago as she was flicking through the film to find the item she had ordered it for, when she suddenly exclaimed “I’ve found a Parry pedigree”! I got a copy and filed it, only later discovering the connection to the abstracts. But I am glad I decided to produce his tree because it meant I got out my file of assorted notes and pedigrees that I have been sent over the years. The very next day, I received an email from a new contact who wrote to say that a 4 year old Doris Parry shown on my 1901 census listings was his grandmother. As I followed the family back through the other censuses, I realised something was familiar, so I picked up another set of sheets from the pedigrees file, relating to research carried out between about 1930-1950 by a Roy Edgardo Parry, regarding Parrys in Gloucestershire. Again, this had been sent to me some years ago by another researcher and I had filed it until the time I got around to working on pedigrees. Roy Edgardo Parry only turns out to be the brother of this researcher’s grandmother. Instant tree back to 1700! In trying to check who it was who sent me those sheets originally, I found an email from 2004 when a non-Parry came across my site and decided to let me know about the developing site for Longhope village, a place with a graveyard full of Parrys – guess where the family is from!

With another of the recent new contacts turning out to be a descendant of the Jones-Parry family that I have a pedigree on my site for, it seems like a lot of separate pieces of information might suddenly start fitting together.

Ongoing Projects

Why are some activities easier to do than others? At the start of the year, I wrote about trying to get some extractions or transcriptions done most days before dealing with any incoming mail. That tactic certainly worked with the probate abstract book, which was transcribed by March. The second stage of work on the details from the book, inserting tabs so that the information could be pasted into a table, was almost compulsive – the sort of task that is so easy to do in preference to anything else, that it’s probably a good job that, that is also now finished. The results have been pasted into excel and just need some rearranging and categorising to make them useable.

The process set me thinking about the different requirements of tasks on the study and how to achieve the most progress. There are many activities to be carried out for a one-name study. The primary task may appear to be the amassing of a large collection of data on the name. But that data then needs analysing, and conclusions developing from it, which should be published in order to advance research on the name. There will always be some overlap of these tasks, especially since one rarely finishes data collecting, as new sources become available. But for a small study, the bulk of the data collection can be carried out before the other stages and, in some cases, the study can effectively be “completed” – having traced everyone by the name back to an original source. There may be new developments to explore, such as the use of DNA for genealogy but, if you only have a few hundred names in any census, the basic work doesn’t take long.

For a large study it’s different. If you waited until all the basic data was collected, it would probably be your descendants carrying out the other stages! So it seems important to work on several stages at the same time.

Thinking about the nature of the activities, there are some which I describe as “mindless” - even if they take a long time to complete, it doesn’t matter since they can be picked up easily and paused at any time, and don’t take much effort to carry out. Other tasks require a bit of planning – perhaps they are still easy to carry out, but must be tackled in one go (eg where the data is only available for a limited time, or where any break in the extraction process would result in a different set of reference numbers and make it difficult to match up the data), or else they just require more thought in order to get them right (as when designing a web page to best explain a particular point). For most of these tasks, the final goal is known – it’s just how to get there that’s the issue. But then there are those tasks which require a great deal of thought and application, often without knowing quite what the final result will look like (as when I tried to find a way of mapping a modern Parry distribution with a program designed for 19c information).

So, for the different types of activities, it’s not just the time available that influences whether they get done or not – it’s also attitude. Do I feel like putting in that level of work, at that time? Am I up for a challenge, or do I just want something simple that will give quick results? I once read that it’s more effective to start a new project before finishing the previous one – the reasoning being that starting and finishing are the hardest parts and, if you finish a task without something else on the go, it gets harder to start something new. (Of course, it is important to ensure the original task does actually get finished!)

But, again, it's the principle of overlapping tasks, rather than tackling them consecutively.

So why this ramble about tasks? Basically, it’s the reasoning behind the structure of the ongoing projects list which follows. I’ve not really thought about the nature of the activities of the ONS in this way before – it’s just been a list of things to do, one after another. But structuring the activities, with priorities taking account of the nature of the tasks, could be a more effective way of making progress.

So, the ongoing projects:
The probate abstracts book is the main task but it has moved into a “thought required” activity, since the structure of the eventual database needs some consideration. And, although there are some simple corrections to be made to the original transcription before posting that onto the web site, page layout and linkage of related abstracts needs thought.
There are actually two new transcription tasks - census entries and BMDs. Since both of these will take a long time overall, having two provides a bit of variety. They are also both subdivided into smaller activities:
BMDs – the starting point is typing up the certificates received from the marriage challenges. As that moves into combining those with results already received in a variety of electronic forms, and submitting them to the Guild marriage index, the basic transcription task will become the civil registration indexes not yet transcribed.
Census – all of the index information is already extracted so this is the continued transcription of the additional details, starting with “my” three counties. Again, as this task moves into a “thought required” activity once a county is completed and the process of matching individuals across census years begins, the transcription will move on to adjoining counties.
The other current activities that require some thought are updating the web site with information on the DNA research, and with the “Fess families” details derived from the display in April.
And, while I’m doing that, the “serious thought” subject – how to connect up information on the web site so that people can easily find out what is available for any individual.

And now the projects are "in print", look out for their progress.

Three weeks ago, I said that, by the end of the week, I intended to have caught up with all the outstanding tasks. Clearly I didn’t achieve the goal, since I have only just posted the current projects list, but I also “failed” with regard to correspondence – probably the major difficulty of every large ONS and the reason that some people choose not to register their studies. Producing an initial response to people isn’t (usually) too difficult but, having had 25 new contacts since the start of the year, it is the later exchanging of information that can take up the time. And I still have several queries that had to be put aside about six months ago.

But setting the goal helped so my next one has to be catching up with that outstanding correspondence, whilst still keeping up with any day-to-day occurrences. And, while on the subject of those, here’s the news from the last couple of weeks:

I spotted a couple of Sir Edward Abbott Parry’s books on ebay. In looking for more information about those, I found an interesting article by Susan Watkin, detailing his work.
I received details of three more marriages from the Marylebone marriage challenge during June. There are 5 challenges to sort out items for, but none of them are places Parrys are common in so it shouldn’t take long.
I had a nice surprise when a Guild member took the trouble to send me a death notice from a newspaper – and then followed that with 13 17c marriages she’d found on a visit to the Westminster archives.
The Queensland Convict Transportation Registers were mentioned on the Forum – 58 Parrys and 1 Parrey transported. Details from the assizes will be a good subject to research at some time but that will have to go on a “future projects” list.

Finally, a couple of comments from correspondence:
Octavious is a fairly uncommon name – but I’ve had two queries recently involving it. The searches I’d carried out for the first query helped me identify information on the second promptly, despite the spelling varying between “ious” and “ius”. It’s helpful when things coincide like that.
I’ve also received emails from both new and renewed contacts regarding the Golden Valley family, which have resulted in me browsing the Patent Rolls for early information, as well as rechecking some of the coat of arms details. There are some contradictions in the reference works with regard to which families certain Parry quarterings have been ascribed to, so sorting that out will be part of the “fess families” research.