A quick summary

I’ve finally caught up with most of the backlog, which built up whilst I wrote the Colston Parry page. There’s been a few emails exchanged as a result of the page, but no-one has specifically started discussing the evidence needed yet.

Another thread started on the message board, concerning a family who ran a coal business. Once again, middle names have been helpful since two of the siblings were called Thomas Sparke Parry and William Valentine Parry, which are fairly unusual names. The researcher has created a tree on Ancestry for them (although for some reason it isn’t found by searching and currently needs the direct link - http://trees.ancestry.co.uk/pt/person.aspx?tid=1958178&pid=-1876262920 )

There are times when something brings home to me the enormity of carrying out a One-Name Study on a name like Parry – like looking at how many trees exist on Ancestry for the name. And one of the things pointed out at the Family History Show at Olympia was just how easy it is to connect someone else’s tree to your own now, if you think it fits. That might sound like a good idea but I imagine it could lead to a further proliferation of unproven pedigrees. Which is one reason for me not to worry about the number of trees available – since it’s better to stick with the established sources.

I’ve added the mailing list resources page to the Rootsweb List Pages WebRing which should help to improve its visibility (announcing the pages on the mailing list itself would probably also be useful!).

Results from some of the marriage challenges have arrived – 17 in total from Bristol, and 6 so far between Marylebone and Poplar. I need to make time to add all the details to my certificate list and to see if the information matches up to anything else I have.

Finally, last Saturday I attended the Guild DNA seminar. I still haven’t found any males amongst my own Parry family to take a test, but there are a few Parrys showing in the searchable databases. However, there’s probably a lot more "paper research" needed before it can be used effectively in Parry research.