I finished my September post with a comment about how the update to the "Lloyd George Domesday Land Records" on TheGenealogist had prompted me to research a PARRY family that are buried in the cemetery in Potton, Bedfordshire, and how a post about them would become my topic for October.
However, for various reasons, I still haven't finished that so, with the month end today, this post is an update about some of the other activities from this month.
One of the things I have been considering, now that I reduced the volunteering I've carried out over the past decade or so, is how to get back into systematically collecting information relating to the PARRY surname. In September's post, I included links to the 'updates' pages for the main genealogical companies. All of the companies frequently update their numerous databases and, eventually, I would like to find a way to keep track of the numbers of PARRY entries in these but, for now, I thought I'd just keep track of the numbers in any new databases.
So, from Ancestry, we have, for England:
There were several new databases for the USA but only one, the Franklin County, Indiana, U.S., Marriage Records, 1821-1997 contained any PARRYs (4 of them.)
The 'News' page on TheGenealogist doesn't contain links to the newest databases, so one needs to either 'find' the records through their search page options, or save the links from the update emails. This month they added parish records for Waterford, Ireland, which contained one PARRY when using exact spelling, but more when using the default search, although most of them were PERRYs, so unlikely to be relevant to my study. It also appears that they have made the 1871 Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland fully searchable.
Again, the updates page isn't as easy to work with as it is on Ancestry (where there is a linked list of all the new and updated databases, and you can just click on the link to get to the search page). Here, each Friday's updates are under separate pages, so it is necessary to work through the various weeks, in order to identify the new items. But, once on the individual Friday pages, there are links to the search page for each database.
During October, the databases have included several with no PARRYs in them, for example, Suffolk, Coroners' Inquest Records, Czechia, Commonwealth War Graves and Monumental Inscriptions, Germany, Monumental Inscriptions, and the Dorset Adult Paupers Workhouse Register 1860. Even though there were no PARRYs in these, I think it's useful to see the range of information, both for the UK and abroad, that the genealogical companies are adding (even if I didn't find any entries that might help with my German ancestors in the German MIs either.☺)
Several of the links involved updates to existing databases, for example, burials for Eastbourne, St Mary (one PARRY) were added to a larger Sussex Burials database (currently containing 84 PARRYs), the Workhouse Guardians' Minute Books for Bourne (4 PARRY entries, potentially all for the same Eliza) were added to the records relating to the Lincoln Poor Law Union, and there were several updates to the newspaper collections (thousands of PARRY references!)
I'm not 'randomly collecting' this information, at the moment - since I'm coming back to the research after several years of other priorities, I still need to decide on the best way to handle larger databases, bearing in mind that, ultimately, the aim of the study is not just to 'collect data', but to connect that data together, building accounts of families, and drawing wider conclusions about the surname and the people who held it. Information from sources such as newspapers is better utilized once there is the 'framework' of a family to hang it onto.
But it can still be very interesting to explore some of the newspapers on the site - the TV Times has been included, and currently contains 610 PARRY references, from between October 1955-December 1980. If I see a PARRY mentioned on the television, these days, I often pause the programme and take a photograph (the wonders of modern TVs!) I don't post such information, since it relates to living people, but references like that, and those in the TV Times, will be good sources for helping to bring the study 'up to date'.
[FindMyPast has also digitised every edition of "Jackie", a magazine that ran from 1964 until 1993 - it does contains 29 references to PARRYs, but I think I shall be more interested in reminding myself of what I was reading in my early teenage years!)(there are 328 references to David Cassidy, 133 to Donny Osmond, ....... ☺]
Going back to the databases added by FindMyPast recently, the Leicestershire Monumental Inscriptions contained no PARRY entries, whereas the Leicestershire Electoral Registers 1836-1970 contained over two thousand! I treat the electoral rolls a bit like I do the newspaper references - there will be many entries relating to the same person, so it is better to wait until someone is included in a family tree, before attempting to trace their addresses through the years.
Finally, regarding the FindMyPast updates, I know of PARRYs who served in the Royal Navy in the late 1700s/early 1800s, so was not surprised to find some of them in two new databases - the British Royal Navy, Battle Of Trafalgar 1805 (8 PARRY entries), and the British Royal Navy, Battle Of Trafalgar Prize Book (6 PARRY entries). It looks like there's multiple entries for some individuals, and also the same person appearing in both data sets, so it will be interesting to look at those in more detail, especially since the next Guild Conference is going to be in Portsmouth and likely to have "some mention of ships." Even if I don't attend, such events are always a good incentive to investigate particular records, especially since the Guild is usually able to make virtually all of the sessions available for members to view online afterwards.
Talking of Guild events, on the 18th October, the Guild held a DNA seminar in Oadby, Leicestershire, which I very much enjoyed. The sessions began with a talk by Donna Rutherford, entitled "The Intelligent Genealogist: How AI is transforming DNA and genealogy research," which I found very useful, since I currently haven't specifically used any AI tools to help with genealogy. Donna also reminded us of how far we have come in the past 25 years (from those days when researchers even got banned from some Rootsweb mailing lists, if they mentioned DNA!)
Three of the sessions during the day were split, so that two talks could take place at once, either to cater for different interests, or for differing levels of knowledge. I attended the two talks by John Cleary, so I have a better understanding now of FTDNA's Discover Platform, and of both the WATO and BanyanDNA Tree Modelling tools.1 Hopefully, I shall make use of those next year.
I had been going to attend Karen de Bruyne's talk, entitled "Finding Jacob, from the Netherlands to Sumatra and back again: how I used DNA and traditional research to find where husband’s great grandfather came from" during the third split session. However, I was also sorting out some of my certificates, so that they could be scanned, and the details added to the Guild databases, and so ended up where the scanner was, which was in the same room as the talk by Melody McKay Burton, about "Getting started with an FTDNA project: Practical Steps." But again, although the PARRY DNA project has been running for some years, I found this a very informative session (and a reminder that I need to get more active with that project as well.)2
The day finished with another talk by Donna, "The Organised Genetic Genealogist: Chaos into clarity with structure, strategy & smart tools," followed by a Panel Discussion involving all of the speakers.
One highlight of Guild events, for me, is always the conversations that take place with other members, during the breaks, and I picked up several useful tips as a result of those.
I just need to put them into operation now!
It has also been very useful writing this post, about the updates on the genealogy sites, as there were some things I don't think I had appreciated about the search possibilities (for example, being able to search the FindMyPast newspaper collection for items added since the previous week, which is what the link on the updates page automatically fills in. That could be very useful for someone with a rarer surname, who might have previously collected every reference to their name, to then keep up with any new additions.)
Finally, in my "July's news" (which was posted in August), I mentioned that the records of the Home Guard (WW2) for Durham were available at the TNA and on TheGenealogist. Since I know this post here has been rather 'text heavy', I thought I'd end with a couple of photographs. I don't have any relating to the Durham Home Guard but, following a recent trip to Durham, I am able to include one of a memorial to the Durham Light Infantry, and then the second photograph is a panoramic shot across the river at Durham, including the Castle and the Cathedral.
