Working together

One of my friends from the States asked recently whether a DNA sample would help with his branch. It is such a shame that he isn’t a Parry, since I don’t doubt he’d have become the second member of the DNA study. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he looks out for Parrys who may provide samples for me. Collaboration has been a recurrent theme as I’ve considered the events of the last few months. I had a pleasant surprise after thanking a Guild member for their work on one of the marriage challenges. It turned out that they’d noticed some Parrys in records they were working on, so I soon received a file of Parry marriages from Sussex. It sometimes happens that people send me files in versions that are more up to date than my programs will open so I have to request the details in an older version. But in this case, not being particularly technically minded, I didn’t even recognise the file type (an odt file) and none of my programs would open it. However, a search on the internet indicated that Google docs would do so. I’d not used that system before although I had viewed the spreadsheet a Guild member set up, in order to let other members view the entries for the challenge he was carrying out. It occurs to me that sharing files through the system could be a potential method for encouraging collaboration amongst Parry researchers, especially on things such as the census records, or civil registration and certificates. Since there are so many Parrys in those records, working together is possibly the only way even the basic information will be collected in less than my lifetime.