Isn’t it strange how, sometimes, the things that should be easy to find, turn out to be very elusive. Since the last posting, I’ve received messages from four new contacts, plus a renewal of contact with someone I was last in touch with in 2004. Two of the messages were easy to deal with – one was someone just starting out on research and wondering what to do. He’d already made a good beginning by contacting living relatives, and so it was easy to pass on details of my own page with sources for new genealogists, and a few of the other useful sites, such as the BBC, which has a "getting started" section. The second was a current Parry who’d come across my site and thought they’d write. Again, an easy one to respond to.
Two of the other contacts, strangely enough, were both looking for Parrys called Robert – unfortunately, not the same Robert! What with possibilities of name changes and second marriages for both of them, I knew they would not be very easy to identify. But we have made some progress.
But in the final case, the researcher very kindly sent me a tree going back to the 1800s. And can I find them in all the censuses? No!
Both of us have come up with the same possibilities for some of the entries but second marriages, possible mistranscriptions, and children being born just after census dates have "conspired" to turn what looked like being an easy task, into quite a search. Such is life. Good job I like a challenge.
Talking of challenges, I’ve finally submitted my (19) marriages for the Bristol challenge and suddenly there are three more challenges being announced on the forum. The kindness of Guild members in undertaking these challenges is really appreciated (even if I do have to get a move on to check the details for my entries before submitted them. That’s minor work compared to what they are taking on.)
Other news – I have updated some of the pages on my web site, to tidy up my Sources and Resources page, and to include the link to Ruth’s site. Ruth and I have also been "chatting" about coats of arms. The details of a Surname information site were posted on the forum, but subsequent comments by the experts (i.e. the one-namers who know their own surnames better than a general researcher would) indicate that much of the information is suspect (so I won’t even repeat the link!). Genes Reunited continues to grow – between the 9th – 23rd Feb there have been 1101 new entries for Parry (according to the "Genes New Names Alert"). I wonder how many of the submitters are actually researching or whether it is just people submitting their recent families?
And, finally, I discovered that the University of Wales, Aberystwyth has been granted the funding to put Bartrum’s Welsh Genealogies on-line. (BBC article) Brilliant news for those of us interested in the old pedigrees but who don’t live on the doorstep of the NLW. Mind you, with all the Welsh naming that is in there, I wonder how long it will be before "researchers" are publishing all sorts of pedigrees showing how their family connects to those in Bartrum’s work?
Perhaps it's a good job the project will take three years - that might give me sufficient time to identify some of the Parry families who genuinely trace back to them.
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