Guild Blog Challenge Post 3: The state of the study. And some Norfolk records.

Since I'm restarting research on the PARRY study after several years of relative inaction, I've been thinking about where the study is at, and what I want to achieve this year.  In particular the question I've been asking myself is, "Where do I start?"!

Part of the reason for the lack of progress over the last few years was that available time became short just as the study required some major time investment:

• My ISP had changed hands and no longer supported personal websites.  Uploading the site elsewhere 'as is' was a possibility.  However, with the availability of the Members' Websites Project, it seemed a better option for the PARRY information to be put online there.  But that required a website re-write, since I wanted to remove the 'non-study' portions.
• I'd decided to change my system of computer filing, so as to reflect the "seven pillars" approach to one-name studies, since that would make it easier for someone else to understand what's been done, as and when I can no longer conduct the study.  That required a re-organisation of many computer files, as well as devising a more systematic approach for how data gets integrated into the study.
• When I began researching, less information was available on the internet and what there was occasionally 'disappeared'.  This meant sources were often printed out, to come back to 'later', rather than being entered into a database at the time. Other documents, such as marriage challenge results, whilst always gratefully received, added to the "needs transcription" pile.  So there is now a quantity of paperwork which either needs scanning, transcribing, or I need to return to the original entry online (eg for census sheets printed whilst answering a query) and enter the details properly.

So, these major tasks are still outstanding. 

I was thinking about all this when Melody shared a link in the Guild Blogging Challenge for "The Genealogy Blog Party" at https://mydescendantsancestors.com/2020/01/genealogy-blog-party-organize.html?

Although I don't intend to join the party, this month's topic of "organise and prioritise" is clearly relevant for me. 

Most of us have probably heard a version of the quote, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, that “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” and I have long since been aware of the importance of planning before tackling a project - but I've still come to the conclusion that I need to improve my concept of what "planning" involves.

There are so many potential (and very interesting) aspects of the one-name study to pursue that it becomes easy to make 'plans' about what I 'can' do, or 'should' do - like "collect this data" and "analyse that data", "draw conclusions from all the data" and "publish the results" …….(one-namers can no doubt fill in the rest :-) ) 

But I came across a quote by Bill Copeland that made me realise I was missing important aspects of planning: “The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.”

So, translating all those 'plans' from just 'good intentions' to achievable, and then achieved, goals is what is required.  It's no good having a goal to "get the PARRY website back online", if I don't then consider what specific steps are necessary to achieve that - and then allocate some time to actually do them!  

There is a lot to be done with the study, but I need to accept that:

1.) PARRY is a fairly high frequency surname, so I will never accomplish everything.

2.) Life will get in the way at times. 
3.) Every little bit helps.

So, I need to prioritise the most important aspects, and then focus on achieving something towards those each day. 

While I think more about how to tackle the three 'big issues', it probably doesn't matter so much whether what I achieve is publicising the study or publishing results (as this Blog Challenge is helping me to do), or another aspect, such as moving some computer files to the new system, or scanning a few documents - or even just collecting some new data - as long as I am actually doing some research, that will be progress.

So, in that vein, I took a look at the emails received last Friday from FindMyPast and The Genealogist regarding their new releases.

FindMyPast had some British Army Service records and Kent parish records.  Both of those are likely to have quite a few PARRYs in, so I checked out the Genealogist's new records instead, which were for Norfolk.  Since Norfolk is a long way from Wales, I didn't expect there to be many PARRYs there.

Having initially used the phonetic search for births, I switched to an exact search instead - 74 records is a bit more manageable than 523!  I stuck with exact searches for the marriages and deaths as well, which gave me 73 marriages and  43 deaths.  Although it is possible that using an exact search means I miss some entries (eg any PARREYs), the overwhelming numbers of PERRYs make it impractical to extract all similar surnames.  I shall look for variants through individual searches, if I should discover specific people are missing, or it seems as if there are gaps in the information I have collected.

I had hoped to include more details about the results in this post - but, as is often the way, things soon became more time-consuming.  Some of the entries appear to be duplicated, so the originals need checking to see why.  At least two entries for spouses of PARRYs have variations to their names between the marriage banns and the marriage itself, ie Lucy Toynbee Bender vs Lucy Joynbee Rinder, and John Wade Ream vs John Wade Reeve.  Whilst not difficult to check, that checking all adds to the time needed to analyse the data.

There are other entries that probably relate to the same individual which are spelt differently, for example, these four different spellings:

William Bulkeley PARRY

William Bulkley PARRY

William Balkeley PARRY

William Bulkly PARRY

This one raises an issue I remember considering when I first started my one-name study and was attempting to match entries across different years of early census transcriptions - should I include "standardised name" columns for all entries, in all databases, to make it easier to match up potential entries relating to the same person?  And, if I do that for names, what about parishes of birth etc, using a standard gazetteer spelling for all places?  It won't help where the people themselves vary their birthplaces, but would certainly help with mistranscriptions (and is probably necessary if I want to do any mapping of births etc).

I wonder what other one-namers, particularly those with large studies, think about this?

Anyway, it is clear that, before I can publish any conclusions on the Norfolk records, I need to do some further research to confirm the accuracy of the data.  It will also be useful to compare what Norfolk records have been made available by the other data providers, as well, since I see Ancestry have several relevant databases, such as "All Norfolk, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535-1812" as well as "Norfolk, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1940".

Oh well, I guess that does give me an obvious topic for another blog post!