Rambling!

I thought it had been a quiet spell recently, but now that I have looked at some of my activities…..
- a link to an index of Methodist ministers and probationers who have died in the work was posted on the Forum – that contained 9 Parry entries and one Parys. All but one of them should appear in some of the censuses so identifying them in those is on the 'to do' list.
- a link was posted on the Powys list for the gravestones section on the Llanspyddid Community Website. There are three Parrys listed, so I spent some time looking for relevant census entries – found some intriguing links but establishing all of the connections is not easy so that will require some further work.
- another message reminded me of the Longtown Historical Society’s site. When I first searched for Parrys here, I found four pages of references, now there are 16. Clearly a site that needs returning to – especially since it is the parish where my own family were living in the mid 1800s. Aren’t I fortunate that my Parry ancestors lived in an area which now has some keen local historians in it!
- a couple of addresses were posted relating to the Gloucester Record Office and an online index to the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeology Society. There are over 100 Parry references in each, but I know I have looked at these sites before so need to check back first before extracting any more details.
- amongst various ongoing communications with Parry researchers, I also received emails from two who had not been in touch for several years. They’re both researching Parrys in Monmouthshire, largely in 'my' area, so that’s a promising sign for making more progress on the Parrys there during this year.
- had a look for some information on 'Parryville' after a link was sent to me by another researcher. I wonder if I’ll ever find out exactly how many places in the world are named after Sir William Edward Parry, the arctic explorer?
- Results from the first stage of the marriage challenge in Whitechapel district received (Thanks, Howard) – 11 out of 12 marriages found. To put that into perspective – if I was researching those particular families to the extent that I needed to know what was on the certificates, this challenge has saved me a minimum of £77 (or a lot of time searching through otherwise unidentified registers).
- four other marriage challenges have been announced so there’s a few other entries for me to sort out (fortunately none of the recent challenges are hot spots for Parrys)
- I went on an interesting 'sidetrack', when I was checking my one and only entry for the Epsom MC, a Robert Gee Parry. Since it is a fairly distinctive name, I decided to search through the censuses to put together the family. That was reasonably successful but, in the course of it, I began to wonder whether a lot of the 1851 for Manchester is missing. Why does something which starts off relatively easy, then become so much more complicated?
- Booked to go to the 'Who do you think you are?' show at Olympia in May which should be good. Any other Parry researchers planning to attend?
- yesterday there were problems with the search on Ancestry, which seemed a major issue for a while, since neither the .co.uk nor .com seemed to allow any searching. But it was possible to browse the new databases so I did that instead and found they now have Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1956. I thought that might be a useful source and, once the search facility returned, I found I was right - 566 Parry surnamed border crossings, and 32 with Parry as a first name. But there’s 1,235 with Parry as a keyword, so there must be many entries where a Parry is a contact, or next of kin, etc.
- Received an email from NAOMI, the 'National Archive of Memorial Inscriptions.' Although it does have 11 Parrys on the site, I don’t think I shall be purchasing the details, not at £4 per inscription!

So not a quiet few weeks after all – perhaps better described as a ramble, than an amble.

And perhaps I should try posting more often!