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!
