This month effectively began, and ended, with Guild related activities (a face-to-face meeting and a zoom meeting). But the middle consisted of research into the (almost) totally unrelated topic of various aspects of art during the Renaissance!
So here I am, again, on the last day of the month, trying to write a suitable summary of 'progress' on the one-name study.
The Warwickshire Guild members met in Meriden early in the month. For this meeting, I had said I would give a talk, mainly about Wills but also touching on paleography. This topic had come about after conversations at earlier meetings, when we had been discussing the difficulties with reading some documents, and Wills seemed to be a good way of tackling various styles of writing throughout the centuries.
There were a few times, as I was trying to prepare the talk, when I wondered what I had let myself in for, since I am by no means an expert on the topics. But it turned out to be a very useful experience.
I 'rediscovered' all the work I had carried out in the early years of the study, such as obtaining microfiche of some Welsh Diocese Abstracts through my local LDS centre, and photographing the probate calenders in Birmingham. Many of the indexes, and some of the full details, had then been transcribed and appeared on my (now offline) web site. I also had a web page with the full transcriptions of Gilbert Sidney PARRY's book "Genealogical abstracts of Parry wills, proved in the Perogative Court of Canterbury down to 1810 with the administrations for the same period" published in 1911.
I know many of these items are now available to search online, but I don't regard the time spent collecting them as 'wasted'. My intention is still to be able to link relevant records on my website, while retaining a sense of where the information came from. This is an "image" I have in my mind that, for me, is much easier to follow than the way many family history programs display information, within individuals' profiles.
In the end, my talk began by covering resources on the Guild site, particularly the useful information from the talk by Dave Annal, and the handout by Jackie Depelle, from the Guild Seminar in July 2023, called "Diving Deep into Family History Documents."
I then demonstrated how the discovery of the National Probate Index had enabled my Dad to break down a 'brick wall' in the early 1990s, in order to identify his great grandfather, and how collecting all the NPI entries from Birmingham had meant I found Administrations for some of my PARRY ancestors, even over 20 years after the person had died.
I contrasted the relationship information available from the Administrations of my, relatively poor, ancestors, with some of the other PARRYs in Herefordshire, such as Philip Parry, a property owner, who, in his Will, named five children, a son-in-law, and four grandchildren, two of whom were stated to be by his daughter’s former husband, and Joseph Henry Parry, an unmarried gentleman of Harewood Park, who named his cousin and several nieces in the distribution of his estate, worth over £80,000. I also considered how Wills were often like "windows" into their lives, demonstrating not just the relationships, but also the items, that they valued.
After covering a couple of other issues, (such as court cases following the proving of a Will in which a maid servant was made a joint executor with one of three daughters, and property left through another means prior to the Will, resulting in that beneficiary being barely mentioned in the actual Will), and a 'puzzle' (a Will proved in 1602, in the PCC, with a codicil, that seems to have been 'refiled' in Lichfield in 1672, minus the codicil, but with a seemingly unrelated 'legacy style' statement on the back), I ended the talk with one of my 'favourite' Abstracts - that of John PARRY of Wormbridge from 1575:
To the ch. my w. now goeth withal, if it be a man-child, all my lands in Wormbridge, Houghton, &c.; if it be a woman, all sd. lands to my d. Blanche, so that she marry such of the ss. of John Parry, of Dulas, as be tendered to her, before she is 17. If she refuse such marriage I give the lands to my second d. Sibyl, on the same terms, and if she refuse to my 3d d. Jane, and if she refuse, to the child that my w. goeth withal, and if she refuse, to my right heirs. My w. to have use of the land until she have levied £60 from the yearly value towards the preferment of each of my ds., at £20 the year. Res. to w. Maud, & daughters. To my base d. Katherine, £10. Wife & bro. Simon exors. Wit.: John Parry, of Dulas, the writer, Maud Parry, w. of testr., Simon Parry, his bro., Sir Griffith Parry, Clerk.
Read & published on Easter Monday, 1575, in presence of John Parry, of Moorhampton, Robt. Vaughan, Henry Catmage & others, and was confessed by the testr., being on his death-bed, to be his last will.
Dated 4 Ap. 1575; pr. 6 May 1575, by the attorney of Maud, the widow. (18 Pyckering)
It's difficult enough, having the three John PARRYs in close proximity - but things get even more complicated when one realises that records indicate it was the son of John PARRY of Wormbridge, who married the daughter of John PARRY of Dulas.
Perhaps the expected child really did turn out to be a boy!
It has been interesting looking at the new and updated records recently. I was a bit behind with collecting the totals, but found that Ancestry had updated several of the Cheshire Church of England parish records databases, near the end of August.
