Companies seem to like releasing information on a Friday. Each week FindMyPast send out their “FindMyPast
Fridays” email, listing all their latest additions and, this morning, Gerald
Cooke, the Guild's Gloucestershire regional representative, also posted on the Forum
that Ancestry had announced various Gloucestershire records are now available
on their site. There's bound to be Parrys in those and perhaps I should start
scheduling Friday as a day for exploring new records.
However, are such records really “new”?
Last week's releases from FMP included Dorset parish records
and the British Merchant Navy, First World War Medal Cards, 1914-1925. As this fitted in with my intention to do
some work on WW1 potential casualties, I took a look. In doing so, I realised
that the source for the Dorset records was actually Family Search and, for the
Merchant seamen, it was the National Archives. Checking on the TNA site indicated that, not
only are these records available from there, but that the index information can
also be downloaded as a spreadsheet (up to 1000 entries). For a one-namer, this is obviously a much
more efficient way of collecting the data, than from FMP at twenty entries per
page.
This just shows how important it is to plan and log details
of research – so I don’t get caught out and waste time with a “new” dataset,
which I might already have from another source, and also to consider these multiple sources so as to identify the best
way of dealing with a particular “data collection” task.
I have spent some time this week collecting the index
details of all the WW1 related datasets on the National Archives. I'm not yet
ready to post about the casualties but, when I do come to do so, it seems
important to consider the wider context of how many other Parrys fought and survived,
or were otherwise involved in some way in serving their country. So that research is ongoing.
A couple of other recent points of interest:
-
one of my other hobbies is metal detecting and I noticed
from "Digging Deep", the latest news from the National Council for
Metal Detecting, that the Chairman of the Crewe & Nantwich MDS is a John
Parry.
-
Yet another descendant of the Colston Parry family has posted
on the Parry message board at Ancestry (I wish all the Parry families had so
many descendants interested in them!)
-
A Guild Newswatch item was received for a Meryl Parry
who passed away in January.
By a strange coincidence, when I just looked back at the
details of that Newswatch item, I realised that the hospice mentioned just
happens to be the same one that my final “round-up” item relates to. Yesterday, two
Guild members let me know about an old family bible, which had belonged to a
Parry family and has now turned up in a charity shop. The shop staff were trying to find
descendants. (Well, actually, one of the articles says "ancestors" –
don’t journalists know the difference?!!!)
The story can be found through the following two articles:
and the Wrexham Leader: http://leaderlive.co.uk/news/144071/178-year-old-bible-was-in-charity-shop-bag.aspx
I have looked for census information and can find the Parry family
at the house in Llanfihangel, Montgomeryshire, through every census. The bible was presented to the original
owner, a John Parry, in the late 1830s by John Owens, a minister from Llanuwchllyn and, based on
the 1851 census, it appears that, that’s where John Parry had been born.
The shop does now have contact with descendants of the
family so, hopefully, that’s one old bible which will be reunited with people
who will treasure it.
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