Pondering some issues from the Guild Conference

Before I left the Conference, I was given some other Parry information – six certificates from St George’s, in Birmingham, transcribed by Guild members as part of a Marriage Challenge. Certificates are always a welcome addition to my collection, since they help to confirm the links between people. However, over this last year, I stopped submitting entries to the Challenges, since I didn’t have the time to check for mis-transcriptions in the index details, or look for the marriages on the IGI etc., before submission. I almost re-started this week, when there was a message on the forum about the forthcoming Lymington challenge – until I realised that it was actually a repeat and I already have the two marriages from there. Good job I am not quite as disorganised as I sometimes think, and my BMD files were marked up to show those entries as already found.

It’s over a week now since the Guild Conference and organisation and technology are probably the two main issues that have been on my mind since then. John Hanson’s talk, Researching and Recording a large ONS, was based on his work with the Halsted Trust (The Halsted ONS, I have just discovered, has two Parry entries in it :) ) Despite having heard Jeanne Bunting some years ago describe the difficulties caused by the multiple copies of pedigrees and research papers found when the Halsted study was taken over, I still don’t add a date to all my own printed information so that it is clear which is the latest version. This can easily be done by adding a footer to documents, with automatic text fields for either last saved, or last printed etc., so it is one of my goals to do this from now on and also to gradually work through my past files adding them.

Keeping a research log is another suggestion I have often heard but have never yet managed to maintain for long (a book on my desk only works if I am at my desk, a log on the computer only works when the computer is on etc.) I do have a spreadsheet for keeping track of correspondence but what alternative methods do people find successful as a research log? Is there a good piece of software (or a way of better managing the software I already have), I wonder?

Regarding useful websites – such sites often get mentioned on the Forum at a time when I am too busy to extract all the Parry details and, although I have tried to keep a spreadsheet of such sites, so that I can return to them later, I often find myself printing the web page as a reminder instead. But John mentioned taking screenshots or printing to pdf - since I invariable visit the website initially just to check if there are actually any Parrys, that’s a much more efficient system than having to remember the spreadsheet, then find/open it and copy the url across. (It might help avoid the mounting paper piles, as well!)

Another tip, having all the ONS data on an external hard-drive (and backing it up to a pc/laptop), seems a reversal of the normal way of doing things but actually could be more sensible. Having been developing the Parry study over a period of time, which has involved several computers (and other things stored on the computers), I’ve run into problems with filing systems and synchronisation between a pc and a laptop. So having the study data as a totally separate entity on an external drive could be a better solution for the future. I was planning to re-organise the data anyway, with a view to it being more understandable if someone needed to take it over, so this could be a good opportunity to pull things together into a totally new format.

Dick Eastman gave me more things to consider, in his talk on the Family History World in 10 years time:
What about archiving emails? Few of us write letters in the way that people did in the past, so how else will our descendants experience that thrill of reading something personal from us?
That issue is relatively easy to solve (both my online and computer based mail systems seem to have the facility to archive messages) but this next topic is more of a challenge:
As society moves towards being “online, everywhere, all the time”, working practices are changing and shared data is being transferred so that it is no longer stored on our computers, but is held on servers “out there”, in the “cloud”.

How will this impact on my methods for carrying out the study?

Many of us who began our family history during the last ten years or so would probably struggle to deal with a totally paper based ONS – and I won’t finish the Parry study in my lifetime, so the methods used need to remain relevant to the upcoming styles of newer researchers. At the moment, my website is static and not updated often enough. Shared information, available to all, has the potential to allow for much more collaborative working – something I’d obviously like to see happening with the Parry ONS, so that could be a very exciting development (if I can learn the technology!)

But…

Whilst working practices might change, how much will character and attitudes – if people pick the easy options now, isn’t that still likely to happen? We already see people happily linking into information and pedigrees, on sites such as Ancestry, with scant regard for accuracy. And contacts often pass on to me “facts” which I find to be incorrect. Sometimes it may only be a minor issue, such as reversed names etc - but that still takes time to investigate and clarify.

So how can any form of quality control be maintained when many people are all contributing to the same work in progress?

Dick did mention one possible solution, in the form of an “unalterable Wiki” – where information cannot be deleted so, rather than “correcting” what someone else has written, people would be able to add information and justify it, whilst still leaving the original in place so that future readers could judge all the evidence for themselves. This option does sound interesting - earlier this year someone on the Forum raised the question about using a Wiki for a one-name study site and there are Guild members already doing so. So perhaps some combination of a Wiki, linked to pedigrees built using a program such as The Next Generation or Second Site, which are designed for web sharing, is worth considering. I imagine it would be easier to update than my current web site, and more effective in engaging others to contribute.

But then, as well as the quality control issue, am I back to pedigrees spreading out over large areas so as to become unclear, or one person per page views that make it difficult to follow the various cousin level relationships, - the very reasons I deliberately decided to draw out my pedigrees in the first place!

As you can see, the conference has certainly left me pondering how to rise to the challenge of making the most of the technological advances, whilst still retaining the accuracy and clarity which (hopefully) are hallmarks of the Parry ONS.

(And that was just from two of the talks!)

Anzac Day

Recently, on one of the mailing lists, the War Grave Photographic project (at http://www.twgpp.org) was mentioned. This database contains 788 Parrys, including 23 Australians and 9 from New Zealand. A search on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site returns a total of 821 Parrys, with 34 from Australia, and 10 New Zealanders.

The photographic project includes graves up to the present day, and both sites include other surnames, such as Parryman, in the results, so more work is needed to clarify the overall totals, but the following is the list of those from Australia and New Zealand included on either or both sites:

Name, Rank, Date of Death, Age
A Parry, Sergeant, 20/02/1950, 30
Allan John Parry, Corporal, 23/12/1943, 27
Athol Wynne Parry, Gunner, 11/05/1915, 19
Benjamin David Parry, Private, 22/07/1942, 35
Bert Allison Parry, Lance Corporal, 02/03/1917, Age n/k
Charles David Parry-Okeden , Flight Lieutenant, 23/03/1945, 32
Charles Edward Parry, Corporal, 05/10/1943, 26
Charles Francis Parry, Private, 21/11/1942, 22
Claude Herbert Parry, Lance Corporal, 04/10/1917, 20
Cyril Strahan Parry, Lieutenant Colonel, 21/11/1947, 55
Edgar George Jarvis Parry, Staff Sergeant, 18/06/1941, 36
Ernest Parry, Private, 25/04/1918, Age n/k
Ernest Arthur Parry, Flight Sergeant, 29/11/1944, 19
Ernest Charles Parry, Captain, 06/10/1917, 31
Errol Vernon Parry, Private, 25/07/1942, 32
Francis Parry, Private, 04/04/1918, Age n/k
Frank Parry, Sapper, 11/08/1942, 38
Frederick Parry, Private, 19/07/1916, 20
Frederick Quiney Parry, Private, 19/11/1917, Age n/k
George Edwin Parry, Private, 30/05/1918, 28
George Edwin Parry, Private, 20/01/1945, 36
Griffith Martial Parry, Corporal, 15/04/1917, 24
Harold Leslie Parry, Leading Aircraftman, 11/01/1941, 25
Harry Leslie Parry, Second Lieutenant, 28/06/1915, Age n/k
Henry Parry, Private, 25/07/1916, 23
Henry Parry, Private, 17/06/1943, 38
Herbert Henry Parry, Private, 18/07/1915, Age n/k
Hubert Parry, Private, 23/08/1917, 19
Jack Alan Parry, Sergeant, 31/10/1942, 28
James Stephen Parry, Private, 09/06/1917, 21
John Parry, Private, 12/10/1916, 25
John Henry Parry, Private, 17/05/1941, 40
John Henry Parry, Private, 21/06/1941, 37
Joseph Stewart Parry, Sergeant, 29/09/1941, 26
Leslie Parry, Private, 01/09/1942, 33
Leslie Albert Parry, Private, 27/08/1943, 23
Morgan James Parry, Flight Sergeant, 16/03/1945, 22
Peleg Lloyd Parry, Lance Corporal, 15/11/1916, 28
Richard Walter Parry, Corporal, 26/04/1919, 34
Robert Duncan Parry, Private, 19/07/1916, 19
Robert Groves Parry, Private, 05/10/1943, 26
Ronald Wilfred Parry, Flight Sergeant, 13/01/1945, 20
W Parry, Chief Stoker, 22/04/1918, Age n/k
Walter Richard Parry, Able Seaman, 01/03/1942, 20
William Norman Glyn Parry, Trooper, 09/08/1916, 36

The generosity of Guild members

Back in June 2009, I wrote about discovering references to the burial, in Winchester Cathedral in 1634, of Roger Parry, rector of Hinton Ampner. After arriving at the conference today, I was given a photocopy of the register showing the burial entry, which had been obtained for me by a guild member. This was soon followed by a transcribed marriage certificate, produced as part of the St Albans marriage challenge, confirming that an entry indexed as both Parry and Tarry was actually a Tarry. Then another guild member stopped me in the corridor and handed me a piece from the Surrey Advertiser in January, featuring an Elizabeth Parry, whose memoir, “Thirty Men and a Girl: A Singer's Memoirs of War, Mountains, Travel, and Always Music” had recently been published.

It never ceases to amaze me how generous Guild members are, in giving their time to help each other. Each year I seem to come home from the conference not just with lessons learnt from the talks, but with additional information on the Parrys specifically.

Getting active again

Things have been picking up again recently. Several new Parry researchers have contacted me and a couple of others, who hadn’t been in touch for a while, have also written to send me information. Whilst life is still busy in other areas, it has reminded me just how much I enjoy working on the One-Name Study.

It's the Guild’s AGM and Conference this weekend. The first talk is by John Hanson and entitled, “Researching and Recording a Large One-Name Study”. Yes, I know that’s what I am already doing – but it sounds like a good opportunity to review where things are at and to get a kick-start back into activity.

Things don’t always go to plan….

I wrote in my journal, at the start of 2010, that I was feeling quite positive about the year ahead – I was obviously anticipating achieving quite a lot. However, things don’t always go to plan and, instead, I have spent much of it dealing with some “relative health issues”. Things are looking more positive now though so, hopefully, 2011 will be more successful.

To finish the year on a seasonal note, one of my favourite photographs taken during the recent snow (in the garden of a Parry family, just in case you wonder at the connection!)



Happy New Year everyone.

Barcheston

It was the Shipston Wool Fair today – a good opportunity for a day out, which also included a trip to nearby Barcheston, where several Parrys who are mentioned in the probate abstracts lived. There, in the main aisle of Barcheston church, was a memorial stone to Walter of Fell Mill, which would match to abstract number 609. It read:

In hopes of A Joyful Resurrection in Jesus Christ
Here Lyeth the Body of Walter perrey
Of Felmil A Dyer who departed this life
The first day of October ANNO DOM
1705 Ætatis Suæ 66

Though wee have lost our faithfull friend
In Christ wee hope he made his end
His Body in the Grave doth rest
To rise wee hope forever blest
All you that do this day pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so shalt you be
Therefore prepare to follow me

The surname spelt Perrey is not necessarily a problem, stonemasons did make mistakes and surname spellings often varied in those days anyway.

But there was no coat of arms on the stone either. Which is interesting, given that Walter’s family being entitled to the arms of the Parrys of the Golden Vale is one of the reasons put forward by Boden for considering them as possible ancestors for Sir CHH Parry.

Clearly more research needed to find any evidence for that.

But a booklet about the Barcheston tapestries did at least tell me that a David Parry was paid for catching two otters in the River Stour. Pity none of the abstracts mention a David though!

Parry’s fit for a Prince!

Ignoring several half written blog entries, I could hardly let today pass by without mentioning an item being reported in newspapers and online – Prince Charles is to present a documentary for BBC Four, exploring the life and legacy of the composer, Hubert Parry.

I can imagine that provoking a surge of interest in the Parry family.

In some ways, that’s obviously a good thing. But I’m hoping the documentary confines itself to the man, his music, and those he influenced – more publicity for his "ancient pedigree", featuring various, seemingly non-existent, ancestors would not be helpful!

It’s probably too much to hope for though – even if the documentary is accurate, the reporting and follow-up articles may not be – I notice the Mirror’s site already reporting that Hubert Parry died in 1848 (No, that was his birth date).

Surely it’s not that difficult to check a few facts!

Mistranscriptions

I finally finished matching the Parrys in HEF 1871 back to 1861 recently – or, at least, I thought I had. Then I remembered that I’d only searched for Parry entries from FindMyPast, before comparing the details to those from Ancestry. I hadn’t done any of the variant spellings, such as Parrey. On the whole, that shouldn’t have been a problem – since I’d done those spellings when searching on Ancestry, & would pick up the entries when I compared the two. But since I’m trying to ensure my file is as complete as possible, I went back to FMP to collect the most obvious of the spelling variations.

It was a good job that I did since, whilst some had been on Ancestry, one couple turned out to be on Ancestry as Porrey, and another as Farrey, so I had actually missed those two. One of the Marriage Challenge results I received recently also led me to find a Parry mistranscribed in a census as Farry so clearly the P/F confusion is something I’ll have to look out for.

Once an entry has been found, it is often obvious why the names have been mistranscribed and it’s relatively easy to be sure what the correct name should be. But I have found two instances recently where people seem to have used Caroline and Catherine interchangeably, appearing in the Civil Registration indexes as one but in a census as the other. It’s almost impossible to tell from just the two entries whether there’s been a recording error or the person actually used both names.

Name variations have been an issue with several marriage challenges recently. I received two results from another challenge, where one turned out to be a Pavey, not Parry. Then I set out to prepare a submission for the Beaminster MC. I only had one entry, from 1903, so it should have been easy. But first I discovered that the entry was on FreeBMD as both Parcy & Parry. On checking the original indexes it turned out that FreeBMD was right, since the original indexes have it as both as well. That much is understandable – I’ve seen many words where "r" and "c" have been difficult to distinguish and the GRO would have indexed it as both if they were unsure.

But I then checked censuses and, from the 1911, managed to identify who is marrying who out of the 7 names shown on FreeBMD (Mary on twice and the other bride on with different spellings). Using the birthplace from 1911, I found Mary with her parents in 1891 and as a servant in 1901. But in 1881 the family are recorded as Pavey – and that’s the surname Richard, the father, appears to use when married in 1866 (and probably his birth in 1842 as well). Having since found the parents in 1901 and 1911, it seems likely that what started as a decision between Parcy or Parry has ended up as really being Pavey!

It will be interesting to see what the marriage register itself actually says.

I guess I shouldn’t complain – I can usually find the Parrys, even when they're hidden under Porrey, Purry, Pansy (and even "Lang"!). But I’ve just dealt with a query regarding a Parry who married a Margaret Oudenrode. Now that’s a surname with potential, when it comes to mistranscriptions!

Patience is a virtue that pays off!

I picked up a second-hand book recently, “A calendar of letters relating to North Wales, 1533-circa 1700,” published in 1967 from various collections in the NLW. North Wales has a high concentration of Parrys, including some families that can be traced back to the 1600s, so it’s likely the book will help with general background to the times, as well as the specifics regarding the Parrys listed in the index.

Several of the entries relate to Jeffrey Parry of Rhydolion, who happens to be the earliest ancestor in the pedigree of the Jones-Parry family shown on my web pages at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/im.griffiths/parryfamilyhistory/parrytrees/jonesparry.htm. He was described on the Llanbedrog church site as “a zealous puritan from Shropshire who was an officer in the Commonwealth army”, something I’ve not yet found proof of. However, the book of letters quotes a NLW manuscript describing him as “a great Heaven-driver of Llyn & a zealous maintayner of Coventicles”. so that’s a new lead to follow up regarding his religious activities.

Some years ago, whilst browsing bookshops in Hay-on-Wye, I spotted a book entitled “Royal Visits & Progresses to Wales” by Edward Parry. The price meant I didn’t buy it – but now I have just discovered that the book is available for download from Googlebooks. (A much cheaper option!)

Was it worth the wait? Apart from acquiring an item by a Parry, does it tell me anything useful? Yes, perhaps it does. Whilst it was published in 1851, so repeats the errors of some other antiquarian works of that time, it does include transcriptions from manuscripts. One of these refers to “Cornet Jeffrey Parry”, who lived near Pwllheli, and who was to be given money to distribute in a way that furthered the work of the Gospel. Wikipedia indicates that a Cornet is a new and junior officer. Could this be the confirmation that Jeffrey was indeed an officer in the Commonwealth Army?

According to the pedigree, Jeffrey Parry died in 1658 and the letter was written in 1657, so he either died fairly young or this refers to someone else. But, despite the general popularity of the surname, he is the only Jeffrey Parry I know of in that area so, yet again, this could be a possible lead into the origins of the Jones Parry family.

Let’s hope I don’t have to wait too long to find out more.

Finding a goldmine!

As I mentioned earlier this year, I have set up a ParryONS account on Twitter to see if that is a more effective method than this blog, for keeping people informed about the study. Initially I’ve just been posting about activities and not tried following other people but, since the Guild has now set up its own account, I thought I’d try following that.

Quite soon I found myself being followed – and struck gold when I checked out the follower’s website at http://welshfamilyhistory.ning.com/ , which referenced the British Library theses database. I already knew about this system through another interest, but had never registered since the thesis I wanted then wasn’t available. However, thanks to Darris, I've now learnt about a doctorate written in 1994 regarding sources for family history, with particular reference to Wales – and it uses the Parrys of Llidiardau as a case study.

This thesis is available to download for free and looks to be a real gold mine – not just with regard to the Parrys but also the whole process of researching in Wales. Additionally, it will be interesting to see what has changed over the last 16 years.

(And, having registered with the site, I now find I can obtain the other thesis I wanted for free as well – it will just take 30 days for it to be digitised. What a brilliant resource).

I came across the following logo on an ebay item recently, a postcard printed in 1910 by J.Richard Parry Jr, of Denver, Colorado.



So far, I haven’t been able to find any other information on the publisher but perhaps he is connected to the J. Richard Parry who illustrated a book in 1910 called “The Mystery of Bonanza Trail”.

On another subject, it was mentioned earlier this year on the ISOGG mailing list about work to combine documentary resources with DNA approaches to tracing immigrant ancestors, especially with regard to indentured servants who travelled to Virginia and Maryland. Since one of the Parry abstracts is for a John Parry, who died in Virginia in 1637/8, this could be specifically relevant to the Parry ONS. Having checked one of the recommended sites, which has a database of immigrant servants, I also found five more Parrys (all later than John). So this is clearly a topic I shall be watching for progress on.

I haven’t commented since the DNA seminar but both that, and then WDYTYA Live, which was on the following weekend, were useful (and enjoyable) days out. I even got to meet some of the names I see so often on the mailing lists.

It’s nice to be able to put some faces to names now.

PARRY DNA

Tomorrow is the Guild’s bi-annual DNA Developments seminar. After the previous one, in May 2007, I wrote that a lot more "paper research" was needed before DNA testing could be used effectively in Parry research. I think that is still true but at least there is now a Parry DNA project with one person tested, as well as a group on Ancestry containing another set of results.

So, some progress, but still a long way to go!

New Year, New Start!

Well, not quite, since we’re already into February and this is my first post. I don’t generally write New Year resolutions but last year’s blogging wasn’t exactly successful, with only three posts all year. So this year I am aiming to do a better job of keeping people informed about the study.

There’s little point trying to catch up with everything that happened over the past few months but one of the "highlights" included finding out from a Tudors site (at http://tudors.crispen.org/chronology/index.html) that a "William Parry of the Persian expedition" introduced coffee into England in 1601.

Really?

It turns out that William Parry produced the first printed reference to "coffee" in its english modern form, when he wrote about the travels of the adventurer Anthony Sherley. Parry had been part of Sherley’s expedition to Persia, in which Sherley was attempting to persuade the Shah to form an alliance against the Turks and also promote English trade interests.

So not quite introduced coffee itself, but played a part in making it known, at least. I wonder which William Parry that was?

A reference on the Forum to the History of Parliament reminded me that I have some early Parrys to look up. But it also set me searching for information about a Sir George Parry. I’ve come across references to this name on several occasions – one referred to him as a commissioner for Dorset who met Prince Rupert prior to the battle of Naseby, there’s also a poem about Sir George by Robert Herrick. Unfortunately, the relevant volume of parliamentary history is not due to be published until 2016. But one of the family tree references I found suggests George died in Ireland in 1660 – I’d never noticed that before. Could he be a link between the Parry family from Herefordshire (known to have moved down into the Wiltshire and Dorset areas during the 1600s) and one of the Parry families from North Wales claiming the same coat of arms?

Definitely a possibility to follow up.

Many more records have become easily available recently, as Ancestry now have all of the BMD civil registration indexes transcribed. However, not all the information is available from the main index pages so there’s a lot of work to be done extracting the rest of the details. With so much now available online, this year will have to see a shift to finding more effective ways of dealing with some aspects of the study.

New websites and technology may come in useful for this. GenealogyWise, a genealogical social networking site, began last year – I did set up a Parry group but so far haven’t found this very helpful. Something that looks like it will be much more relevant is Google Wave, a new collaborative tool. By setting up waves for specific families, it should be possible for researchers to work together, adding information as it’s found or confirmed. That will be much more effective than my current system where people are emailing me and I then try to add the information to a web page (as with the Colston Parrys (http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~parryresearch/colston.htm). That is too reliant on me having the time to draw up the web page. By using the waves, information can be collected and arranged by other people as well, and then perhaps a web page created at a future date if appropriate. Seeing the instant results on the waves is also perhaps more likely to encourage people to share what they know.

One final thing to add is that I am also trying out using Twitter to let people know what’s happening with the study. Since this blog isn’t getting updated frequently, because many things take time to accomplish with there being so many Parrys, this will allow me to let people know about any ongoing activities.

You can find me at http://twitter.com/ParryONS if anyone’s interested.

The Blog Returns

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!

1911 census completed (sort of!)

The final areas of the England and Wales 1911 census were released earlier this month and there is now a total of 28,375 Parrys on the site. I have been collecting the entries for each area as they have become available but my file only has 28,055 in it, since the areas released earlier have now been amended. This is an issue with all of the census sites – initial transcriptions are rarely perfect so there is an ongoing process of error correction, making it difficult to keep an extracted file up to date. Some of the totals for the Welsh counties in 1911 have changed by hundreds so it will probably be quicker to re-extract them this time, rather than trying to identify the changes. I am hoping that such a large number of changes is due to errors with the uploading process, perhaps some areas missed out etc, and that future amendments will relate to fewer entries. Re-extracting the data will become increasingly difficult once I start adding further information to individuals or match up entries across years. Transcription corrections also have a knock-on effect for any derived information, such as statistical analysis or distribution mapping. Fortunately, given the number of Parrys there are, gaining or losing just a few of them should not make too much difference to the conclusions drawn from any analysis, so it may not need redoing. But it will be frustrating to know that is isn’t totally accurate.

If keeping extracted files up to date is one of the challenges of carrying out an ONS, then identifying the surname when it is mispelt is certainly another, especially with early records, when spelling wasn’t standardised. I have sometimes wondered whether I should be looking at spellings such as "Paris", for very early appearances of the Parrys in London, bearing in mind how the place would be pronounced in french. So I was amused to see the following, in the recent release of the Cecil papers on British History Online:
[1611–12, January 5]."A bill of charges from Brussells to London."
For rydyng from Brussell to Parys by coache eyght dayes and a halfe.25s
For dyet eyght dayes and a halfe.22s
For my Lord Imbassettors gardner to goe withe me two and from in Parrys to by my things—given him in Crowns.6s
From Parrys to Roane, coache hire.7s6d
For expences in Parrys for dyet and loging.li80
For porters hire in Parrys to carye trees abord the boat.30
For portters hyre in Roane and carrag by watter.43
Given to the boye in the house to laye my trees in the grond.10
Spent in Roan for aleven dayes and a halfe for dyetli86
For horse hire from Roan to Deepe46
Also given in earnest to the boatemaster from Parrys to Roane.30

I guess anyone looking for the city of Paris should be considering spelling variations as well!

There’s been some useful information sent to me by other researchers over the past few months, such as extractions from a number of Breconshire parish registers, and details of individual 1911 census entries. One of these was for a man known to be a performing pianist, yet he appeared in the census as the manager of a shoe shop in an area of what is now Birmingham. In the course of identifying where the parish was, I came across the Historical Streets Project, which could be useful for finding particular addresses in the early censuses.

There’s also been some links to follow up. One was a news report about the excavation of a WW1 mass grave at Fromelles, France, and the CWGC’s attempts to identify the bodies. The casualty lists of possible soldiers includes one Parry, from the Australian forces:
320 Private Parry Frederick 29th Battalion

Frederick is mentioned on the main CWGC site.
Name: PARRY, FREDERICK
Initials: F
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Private
Regiment/Service: Australian Infantry, A.I.F.
Unit Text: 29th Bn.
Date of Death: 19/07/1916
Service No: 320
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: 1.
Memorial: V.C. CORNER AUSTRALIAN CEMETERY MEMORIAL, FROMELLES

Any relatives are being encouraged to come forward to assist with the task of identification.

Other sites include one for Australian Honours, which has 80 Parrys, and the UK Surnames Genealogy Contact site which has 29 entries for people researching Parrys. A few of them I recognise but the others I should probably contact at some stage. There’s always a trade-off with doing that – time spent (which could be considerable, if I happen to have information on their family) against the information to be gained from the contact. That’s something I have been considering with regard to another method some Guild members use for contacting people – the social networking sites, such as Facebook. Facebook recently allowed the registration of usernames, which prompted discussion on the Forum. "Parry" as a username had already been taken but I decided to register ParryONS - the only benefit seems to be that it makes it easier for people to find me by using that in the URL, rather than a string of numbers, but I thought it was worth doing something. I don’t currently have a One-Name Study group on the site, since there is already a Parry Family Group and a couple of "fun" groups for the surname, but I sometimes wonder if it would be worth creating a closed group for the study, as a possible way of contacting some of the "younger generation" that frequent Facebook. But it’s that trade-off issue again.

I was surprised recently to realise that it was 2007 when I last worked on a particular census page for the internet. Everything takes a long time with a study of a high frequency surname. I did let my Ancestry sub lapse some months ago, in order to spend more time working systematically on the vital records, but the lack of complete census transcriptions elsewhere (and a half price sale) tempted me back. I have been concentrating on collecting some BMDs from FindMyPast’s parish records but, now that Ancestry’s records are accessible again, I shall also return to comparing their parish records to the BVRI2. I had always thought that Ancestry’s "England and Wales Christening records" (and the similar database of marriages) was the same as the BVRI2 but closer inspection earlier in the year indicated that there were differences between them. I therefore started to extract the BVRI2 entries as well, for comparison. There is the option to save files from the BVRI2 cdroms as either rtf or gedcom so, not being sure which would be best, I extracted a small number of entries using both. On conversion of the two files into spreadsheets using LDS Companion, I was surprised to find that, not only did I occasionally get differences in the results (eg the rtf method didn’t cope with accented words, so Thoós and Joós became Tho and Jo), but also some strange errors crept in on the gedcom version (loss of a couple of ages, a couple of grooms names appearing as if they were the bride’s father’s name). Also, neither of the converted files included comments such as "Husband previously married".

So it now appears that I may need to extract all entries using both methods and compare the results of that process first, as well as add back in any "previously married" comments, in order to make sure I have an accurate BVRI2 extraction, before I can then do a comparison of the BVRI2 to the information on Ancestry. It will probably still be quicker to do it that way, rather than checking all entries individually, since there are 3749 entries, but it shows how a "simple" task can end up being much more complicated than originally expected.

Fortunately the correspondence level has dropped recently (although I still have some long outstanding items for which I need to either put together, or check through, information). But there have only been four new contacts since the end of April, three via email and one by post. The postal one did involve putting together information on a couple of people, but it turned out to be a useful exercise. One of them was Roger Parry, a member of the Golden valley family from Herefordshire, but who was rector of Hinton Ampner, in Wiltshire. Searching for more information online, I was able to find a reference to his burial at Winchester Cathedral 18 May 1634, ae. 88. (on http://www.wargs.com/family/stratton.html). Another site indicates there is a note in the Hinton Ampner registers which states that, in 1576, "Roger Parry Parson of Hinton took Possession of his Parsonage the sixth Day of May, and did reade his Articles in the presence of Mr. Richard Beckensall, Robert Streeter & others." The site also mentions a note from the 1634 register of Hinton-Ampner. The original is in Latin, but the site author has translated it as "Roger Parry the Rector of this church who resided here 58 years died at Winchester where he was buried; he lies in the Temple of the Holy Trinity in the Bordal [?] Chapel, May 24th, in the eighty-eighth year of his life."

Obviously the original parish records need checking to confirm the entries but, when I eventually get around to writing some web pages about Parry occupations, it will be quite interesting to produce one about those in the ministry, considering the number of cathedrals with a Parry connection.

Continuing on the subject of occupations, a message on the Forum yesterday led to a site with details of EU farm subsidies – so I now have a list of around 400 payments made to Parry farmers. Comparing that to directory information will go on the "to do" list.

I also noticed yesterday that what is described on the BMD pages of Ancestry as "Marriages 1984 - 2005 (transcribed)" actually goes to a page entitled "England & Wales, Marriage Index: 1916-2005" – so they must be about to release the fullly transcribed records, as they did with the births. That will be a help (although I imagine I will still need to work through each quarter to add the spouses surnames, as I am doing with the mothers maiden names for the births).

And finally, I should have guessed I might be tempting fate to say how little correspondence there had been recently, since I promptly received an email relating to a new contact and also a second email from a new contact I’d answered two weeks ago.

Quarterly Newsletter!

A Guild member mentioned earlier this year that he had changed from producing a quarterly newsletter to writing a blog – given the length of time since my last post, perhaps I should be doing the opposite!

There has been activity on the study throughout the year so far. January saw the official release of the 1911 census. I’d already had a preview of this with a beta trial just before Christmas (not the most convenient of times, but it was an opportunity for a few surprise presents.) During the trial, I had collected all of the Parrys in the available counties. However, some of these needed re-doing after the official release, since the totals had changed. This will continue to happen, as corrections are made to the transcriptions – already some of the counties released in January are showing differences to the previous numbers of Parrys, so those need investigating. The census is also being released in stages – with all of England now completed but with Wales, the Channel Islands, and the overseas military, still to come. The current total for Parrys is 13,772 but I expect that will double by the time the whole census is released.

Another database released earlier this year was Ancestry’s transcription of the GRO Birth Indexes from 1915-1983, something previously available from them only as images. This makes it easier to collect the information and helps me move closer to the recommended ONS goal of collecting all BMD details. I am now systematically working through the images to check the transcriptions and add the mothers’ maiden names. One benefit of the searchable database is that it is now possible to easily identify other surnamed entries where the mother’s maiden name was Parry, although following such lines is certainly not a priority for me.

There have been several marriage challenges during the year, one of which unfortunately I was too busy to submit anything for, since there were about 80 entries to be checked. I am now involved in helping with the Birmingham challenge and it is interesting to see how the challenge principle is changing, as some people "adopt a church" rather than searching across a whole registration district, and others choose to either limit submissions or not carry out certain look-ups. As usual though, the results received have set me searching the censuses for more information, which has resulted in some interesting trails. Even with a common surname like Parry, some people stand out as individuals and "Pluvius Cambria Parry" is certainly one of them. With a father from Flintshire and a mother from Hertfordshire, I wonder whose idea it was to name him "Rainy Wales Parry."

Sometimes Guild members offer other look-ups and a recent "newspaper challenge" by Richard Heaton produced several references to a Mr Parry’s vocal performances, as well as a report of the theft of a cash box from a Thomas Parry in Ross. The box contained gold and silver worth £6, but also "a beer-house Licence, and two Receipts for insurance", so I hope there were no accidents in the pub while he got that sorted out. The relevant entry can be found on Richard’s web page.

On other occasions, information arrives unexpectedly, as a photograph of a Parry war grave recently did, thanks to Anni. Although only the initial is shown on the stone, his number allowed me to identify him as a Thomas Parry, who was born in Anglesea, the son of a Henry and Jane Parry. I was also able to find the family in the 1891 and 1901 censuses.

Correspondence so far this year has included 17 new Parry contacts, as well as ongoing discussions with several others. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit both the National Library of Wales and the National Archives for the first time (not that I actually found what I was looking for in either place, but I still collected a few Parrys.)

But there is one thing that has dominated my thinking since the 1911 census came out – the reason why my great grandfather should have found himself in Hereford County Prison. I’ve often wondered whether I have any "black sheep" in the family – but I hadn’t expected to find one quite so close to home.

Hopefully, it should make an interesting story - when I finally track down all the paperwork!

One-Name Study Blogs

There was some talk on the Forum recently about ways of publishing research on one’s ONS and blogs have featured as an attractive alternative to producing newsletters, or other printed material. There are now 33 blogs listed as being written by Guild members. It will be interesting to read through them to pick up tips – I’m always on the look-out for new ideas, especially on how to write interesting entries.

One of the difficulties with this blog is getting the balance right between meeting the purpose of the blog (which is to keep people informed about what is happening with the study) and making it something that people will actually want to read. I try to log down in Word what I am doing as I do it but, with having a largish study, many tasks take time to complete. This means the blog can turn into a list of half completed activities, forever repeating the same things as ongoing - but the alternative is large gaps between entries, especially when other (non-genealogical) activities also get in the way and delay the finishing of things.

Several other Guild members mentioned being too busy to keep their blogs going. But with December now here, and the end of the year looming, I don’t intend to see "updating the blog" on my resolutions list so it’s back to the listing of ongoing activities.

Keeping up with correspondence has been a major issue, with two records in the last few months. On the 18th August, I received emails from three new contacts - that’s the most on any one day. Then, starting from the 23rd October, there were ten new contacts in a fortnight (looking back, it was actually nine in 9 days to start with – I’m certainly glad that pace doesn’t continue throughout the year!)

It is always exciting to hear from other researchers. As with the marriage challenges, receiving new information is an opportunity to look into a particular family and often I can trace them through at least a few censuses. So that is a form of progress on the study, even if it isn’t particularly systematic.

One researcher sent me a certificate for a marriage in Nottingham in 1922. Because of the names used, and the family’s lack of movement from the village of Llanrwst, DEN, during the census years, it was possible to follow the family line back to the 1841 census, through three generations prior to the person marrying. Obviously the details do need further confirmation but it’s a good framework to work from (and an illustration of the usefulness of middle names).

Of the three new contacts in one day, one related to Monmouthshire, and two to Herefordshire, so all three connected to my area of particular interest. One descended from a family I already knew a little of – James Pritchard was left the property of Arkstone in Kingstone, HEF, by Mrs Mary Morgan (an heiress of the Parry family), on the condition that he took the name Parry. There is a reference in the London Gazette to the name change (Gazette Issue 12920 published on the 11 September 1787. Page 2 of 8 ) and several Parrys appear with Pritchard as a middle name around that time. There had not been much cause to investigate them before, although I had collected a copy of one of their Wills, that of Elizabeth Pritchard Parry who died in 1841. Now I had a reason to transcribe it, which confirmed the initial conclusions being drawn from the IGI, census, and the researcher’s own family stories, about what happened to the family in the early 1800s. The next stage is to produce a web page of the tree (but there’s at least three other family trees that I’ve promised to write first!)

Whilst searching for information about that family, I came across a reference to a book about Kingstone, by Delphine Coleman. As an informative account of the history of the parish, it also contains details about the Parry family, including an image of the Will of a John Parry who died in 1689. Further investigation is still needed to follow up the information in the book but it is a good example of how useful local histories can be. It reminded me of another book I came across a few years ago, at one of the Family History Fairs. "Past People in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire", by June Badeni, has an account of the Parry family from Easton Grey, yet another family to be followed up when time permits. I already have photographs of many of their memorials, having visited the parish church some years ago, and there is a pedigree relating to them in the sheets I obtained from Hereford library, although its accuracy does need confirming.

Another fairly new correspondent has copies of an indenture and two property deeds relating to their family, which should help in tracing them back further. And following up what happened to the other descendant lines had one of those "you’re never going to believe this…" moments. The researcher’s discussions with more recent owners of the property indicated that there had been descendants of the family in Canada and a search through an old address book turned up a couple of possible names. I found an obituary online in which those names appeared along with some others. Could this be the family? Then onto the researcher’s doormat fell a copy of a letter and newspaper cutting that another relative had just found amongst some family papers. Yes, it confirmed that the obituary was indeed the right family – and the researcher is now in contact with their cousins in Canada, a possibility not even suspected just three months ago.

Seeing people connect up with each other is exciting. Amongst the batch of ten new correspondents were two descendants of the "Colston Parry" family (view their pedigree here). With another one of those making contact during October, that means there are now at least eight researchers of that family, and the pedigree needs amending to include all of the new information. Hopefully, being in touch with each other will encourage them to further research to become the experts on their own family, a depth of knowledge that I cannot develop for the many individual Parry families.

Of course, things aren’t always that easy – one correspondent has so little information that they are totally stuck in the 1900s and will probably remain so until the 1911 census is released early next year.

Whilst trying to keep up with the new contacts, there is also continued correspondence with others. One of these concerns much earlier records – those relating to Griffith Appenrith of Calais, who died in 1553 and whose coat of arms some claim to be a more elaborate version of the "fess between three lozenges" Parry arms. He is referred to in the Middlesex pedigrees as "Apenreth or ap Henry" so a link to the Parrys is feasible. An important article with regard to Griffith is "The Welsh at Calais" by P.T.A. Morgan. Several of the references for this article relate to records held at Longleat and, when I first read it years ago, I probably dismissed the possibility of ever viewing these, since a research student had told me about the "exhorbitant fees" often required for access to private records. However, a recent discovery has made me think again – whilst searching for information on a book about Herefordshire speech that had been mentioned on a mailing list, I came across a book cataloguing papers from Longleat, which mentioned families such as the Talbots and the Devereux. Tempted initially by the book, since these are "Parry related" families, I then thought to check A2A and found Longleat listed. It appears that at least some of the records have now been copied so maybe viewing them will not be so impossible after all. Interestingly, as well as the Calais records, there are three sets of papers with references to Parrys - one of which is an Anthony Parry in the 1500s. Could this be the Anthony from Wiltshire who appears in the probate indexes? It would be funny if, as well as finding information that establishes Griffith’s origins, the papers also contain details that help to identify exactly how the Wiltshire Parrys connect to those of Herefordshire – something long claimed by researchers but not proven. That really would be an achievement.

For a family genealogist, such stretches of the imagination would be a "no-go", since it is important to work backwards step by step to firmly establish connections. But, for a one-namer, following up all such references to the name is important. In this case, they could shed light not just on the particular individuals but also on the origins of surnames, since there are Griffith families who claim to descend from Griffith Apenreth.

Which reminds me, I still haven’t finished the web page concerning the surname’s origins, a subject that another researcher enquired about just recently.

Talking of the web pages, following on from the difficulties with the web site in August, I registered two domain names, parryfamilyhistory.org.uk and parryone-namestudy.org.uk. Since the posting problems resolved themselves, the domains are currently pointed to the existing site but they should make it easier if I do need to move it in the future.

I did actually upload the full details of the probate abstracts, although the page is not linked in to the rest of the site, since I want to rewrite the whole probate section. They can be found here. I had made a start on converting the information into a spreadsheet for submission to the Guild Probate index but that still needs finishing. The probate index is another Guild initiative which will be very beneficial as more people submit information, since it will enable members to find their surnames where they appear within the content of Wills relating to people of other surnames.

The marriage challenges continue. Since I last posted I have received results from the following:
Lincoln MC - 2 found out of the 3 submitted.
Blythswood – 1 submitted and found. This is a challenge in stages so I have also just sent 3 entries for the stage 2.
Marylebone – there have been several batches of these and it has fascinated me to see how many marriages relate to people who have moved from Wales.
Eton – 5 found out of 5 submitted. This one also led to a helpful discussion about the use of "mail merge" in the production of certificates from excel files, so I now have some linked files to play around with.
Shoreditch stage 1 – another 100% result, with 27 submitted and all found. I’ve just submitted 13 for the stage 2 as well.
Tiverton – 1 submitted and found. Now this is an interesting one from 1902 – the family of the groom appear as PARRY in the 1901 census, but are PERRY in every census prior to that, a family originating in Devon, but with the groom’s father moving to Wales by 1871. Since the marriage took place in Devon, where the bride was also from, yet the groom remained as PARRY, could this indicate a permanent name change for the family?
Cirencester – 3 submitted. Two full certificates found and the 3rd, a Register Office marriage, had the spouse identified from a local index. The two full certificates are from 1841 and 1870 and, as I looked for related census entries, I realised that the Mary Elizabeth Parry marrying in 1870 was actually the daughter of the John Parry and Mary Coole, formerly Radcliffe, who married in 1841. So that’s a neat tie up between the results.

Although I have only had a small number of marriages to submit for those challenges, there are others ongoing that I won’t be submitting to because of the number of entries involved – for the two stages of West Derby, I have a total of 1153 marriages, and Toxteth has 180. However, for a challenge at Birmingham, there are several challengers working together who are tackling it a church at a time. Even though I have over 230 entries, they have said to submit them, so I have. I might actually be able to help with some batches of that one though, since Birmingham isn’t that far away, so I don’t feel too guilty. I was across there this last week, helping to identify some of the churches in Aston, by finding a few of my Parrys. But, in the long run, it may be more practical if I carried out a more local challenge myself.

It’s not just receiving Challenge results that can lead to furthering the study. In order to obtain details of entries for the Scottish challenge at Blythswood, it was necessary to purchase units from Scotland’s People. While I had those, I extracted the rest of the Parry details from the indexes there. Perhaps not surprisingly, there seemed to be a higher proportion of variant spellings of Parry in Scotland. However, searching for variants also produces more irrelevant results, since the variants of Parrie and Parrey pick up a place, Parrie in Edinburghshire, and an occupation of a "Parrey Cox Maker".

I already had the Scottish census details from Ancestry, which was a great help. If it wasn’t for Ancestry having transcribed so much regarding parents and spouses, it would have been very difficult to sort out some of the families from the SP indexes alone, where several occur together on a page. As one might expect with transcriptions, there are differences between the information on the two sites, with people appearing on one site but not the other. It is fairly easy to resolve the situation of those found on SP but not on Ancestry, by searching using place references and just a first name, or even no name. But it is not so easy the other way round. Funnily enough, one of the latest Marylebone certificates involved someone who I then traced to the Scottish censuses, which made it worth going back and purchasing a couple of the images. This revealed that a person listed on Ancestry definitely does appear in the census, so I don’t know what Scotland’s People have them indexed under. One good point about Scotland’s People though is that, if credits have run out, buying more re-instates them, so that is good to know.

I happened to be looking at the Warwickshire County RO’s site recently, which has Parrys in their databases for Victuallers (4 as victuallers, 6 as bondsmen), Tithe apportionments (21), and Prisoners (15).

I still haven’t followed up many of the databases that have been mentioned on the forum, but there have been a few:
Manchester’s unfilmed 1851 census had 179 Parry entries.
A preliminary look at an Australian newspapers beta site gave me thousands of results so that needs closer investigation.
An Irish Mariners site turned up two Parrys.
And a Guild member let me know there are two Parrys listed amongst the yacht owners in "Lloyds Register of Yachts 1969."

I also noticed that the Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1812-1834 were on Ancestry. I’m not sure how long they’ve been there. There’s 1704 Parry surname results and, using keyword, gives 2837 results because of owners with Parry as a middle name.
Another database it is worth using keyword for is the BVRI on A, which appears under "England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906" and "England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1940". This is not just because using keyword picks up Parry as a first name, but because it also picks it up in other contexts, such as maiden names of widows. (An example to explain - Hercules Richard Burleigh married Florence Peace in 1876. However, Florence’s father is shown as Samuel Billington Parry. It appears, from FreeBMD and CheshireBMD, that Florence Parry may have married Henry Peace in 1874.) These are entries that would be difficult to find on the cdrom version. The only problem is that it is necessary to visit each individual page to collect parental information, whereas that can be easily saved to a spreadsheet from the cd version, with the help of the LDS companion program.

Extracting BMD information is one of the main priorities of an ONS. I was recently sent a list of BMD details by a researcher and adding notes from those to my files indicated that I didn’t yet have all the relevant entries transcribed from the GRO. FreeBMD is becoming more up to date so that helped for some of the entries from the early 20th century. I also decided to have a look at the entries for 2005, which I hadn’t yet done. Using keyword, there are 707 marriage entries (about 350 actual marriages, since all entries are extracted at least twice when using keyword), 443 deaths, and 982 births. Not all the births are surnamed Parry, of course, since using keyword picks up those whose mother’s maiden name was Parry. However, with 558 actual Parry surnamed births, the population of Parrys does appear to be increasing – although I hardly think it’s doing so at a sufficient rate for Parrys to "take over the world", as a group on Facebook jokes.

Mind you, if they did, they could at least make it a legal requirement to record their own genealogy!

Another lost inscription and website issues

There’s been mixed results with regard to the Salisbury Cathedral records. Unfortunately, there is no record of Henry Parry’s burial. But although the burial register appears to go back that far, it is a later copy, so the fact that it shows no entry for him doesn’t mean there wasn’t one originally. After all, why copy a register unless it is in a state of disrepair? Perhaps some other contemporary evidence will turn up from elsewhere, otherwise it looks as if that query will never be resolved.

However, I did learn of an inscription that I didn’t know about before – it’s also “lost”, since the stone can no longer be identified, but at least I have the text for it. This was for Francis Parry, of the Close, Salisbury, who died in 1662, “a man universally esteemed, who in the maturity of life yielded to nature…aged 77.”

An abstract of his Will is in the probate abstracts book and he’ll be appearing in a sub-branch of the Golden Valley pedigree, once I put that on the web site.

I was going to say, “It’s been over two weeks now, with no progress on the web site problem” – but today’s check on whether I could upload anything succeeded! I was so surprised, I almost forgot what I wanted to upload. The DNA information is now on there, as well as a separate page for details of site updates. I haven’t added the rest of the probate abstracts yet – the whole probate area of the site could really do with some rewriting, so it’s a matter of deciding how much of that to do first. In some ways, the fact that I can now upload to the site again seems bad timing – I’d almost decided to take out a domain name and develop a new site because of the problems. Now I have to decide – shall I just “tweak” it or shall I go for a major change?

One of my contacts recently sent an article about Blanche Parry from the Birmingham Post – it’s a shame that, although the reporter had obviously seen Ruth’s book about Blanche, he’d still got her father’s name wrong (Miles was Blanche’s grandfather, not her father. Her father was Harry.) I wonder how many people were interested enough in the details to have now been misled.

I noticed the National Archives have the RN Officer's Service Records available. There’s 30 Parrys amongst them, including a few familiar names. It’s often interesting to look at how occupations run in families – I wonder how many of the Admirals and Commanders will turn out to be related to each other!

Thinking of “new”information, there have been several sites mentioned on the Forum recently, but I haven’t had time to follow those up yet. Perhaps there will be some good results to share in my next post.

Lost monuments and other activities

There have been several things I’ve set out to write about over the last few weeks but time has been flying by again.

We had a holiday and, although I hadn’t planned to do any research, I try not to miss any opportunities. So it was that I found myself in Owermoigne church, looking for a memorial to Leonard Parry, who was rector there when he died in 1614. In his Will, he asks that he be buried in the chancel, specifying the words he wanted to be carved upon a plain stone. However, there was a notice in the church porch with some of the church’s history and the only stone mentioned as having been in the chancel was for the rector who followed Leonard. The loss of some artifacts as well as a number of memorials to the lords of the manor and “former rectors and their relations,” was noted though, so it appears that events over time, especially the rebuilding of the church in 1882, have taken their toll.

At least I did find his name on the list of vicars.

Leonard was rector from 1567 – 1614 and it must have been an interesting time. According to the noticeboard, although the rectory is thought to have existed since the thirteenth century, most of the present building dates from the time of Elizabeth (who reigned 1558 – 1603). The villagers were well known for their smuggling activities in the past – with the squire and parson also being involved. Beams in the rectory dining room are reputedly from a wreck of the Spanish Armada (1588) and the rectory cellar contains a bricked-up window through which the parson used to receive his share. Oh Leonard, if only you could come back and tell tales!

Later we visited Salisbury Cathedral. Here, I hoped to find a memorial to Henry Parry, who was Chancellor & Canon resident when he died about 1570 and in his Will requested to be buried under the pulpit. But a search of the recorded tombs shows no record of him. Perhaps there will be other records, such as the registers, which will confirm his burial at least. That’s something still to be investigated.

But back in June, I wrote about the lost gravestones of a mayor of Coventry and his wife, Mary Luckman, formerly Parry. I also knew that a memorial plaque in Church Knowle to another Leonard Parry, who was rector in that parish until 1623, had been lost when that church was renovated. Considering these two "new" losses, it shows the importance of recording things as they are today, as well as researching the past - perhaps I should be doing more on the current Parrys, after all.

I’m still catching up with emails from when I was away. One of them was from a researcher whose ancestor, Abigail Griffiths, was a servant of John Parry of Ewias Harold. In 1724, he left her all his houses & lands in Longtown, Clodock, with remainder to her brother David. Mindful of a talk on “hidden kin” at the Guild AGM, I am keeping an eye out for anything which might indicate she was related to him – especially since there were several David Griffiths in Longtown by 1800, owning land near to my Parrys. In fact, the son of one of them married a sister of my 3xgt grandfather so who knows, perhaps the Griffiths and Parry families intermarried in the same way the Vaughans and Parrys in that area seem to have done, keeping property "in the family".

But as usual, I couldn’t resist doing a search for any new information which might have appeared recently, and I spent some time on the site of the Ewyas Lacy Study Group. They are in the process of adding manorial surveys to the site, which will be a great help in identifying the lands held by Parry families. The area is a “hot spot” for Parrys, so I could quite happily spend hours on this site, and the similar site of the Longtown Historical Society Archive.

I saw a second hand book recently that looked interesting – “Thirty Thousand Yesterdays,” by Ann Parry. Ann was David Lloyd George's last Welsh Secretary, and the book was described as being “full of political and social events of the era before WW2”. But it is a much more “personal” book than I expected, starting with her early years in Anglesey, and listing the entries from the family bible. Those have enabled me to identify the family in three censuses – 1881 at RG11/ 5593/30/5, 1891 at RG12/4679/96/10 and 1901 at RG13/5296/95/6. I’m looking forward to reading the book through properly.

At the moment, still being fairly disorganised with the study, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of what information is referenced to where. I happened to look at the help pages for the Parry mailing list & message board just before my holiday and was dismayed to realised they were directing people to the Perry DNA project - since they had been written before the Parry DNA project commenced and, at that time, Parry was included as a variant under the Perry project. Changing those was a priority once I returned home.

I would like to say that I have also now updated my own site to include the details of both the project at Family Tree DNA and also the DNA group at Ancestry. However, having got all the pages written, I now find that my ISP has problems with the upload server, which is preventing any changes. “It should be fixed in 4-6 days,” they say. So how come people on the cable forums have been complaining of the same issue for the past two months? I might not have been updating the Parry pages frequently over that time, so hadn’t discovered the issue earlier, but I may have to consider an alternative web site if it can’t be resolved fairly promptly.

Other news – I realised that I had missed the deadline for one of the marriage challenges. Fortunately I only have two entries for that district but it was a bit frustrating. I have now submitted details to three others with deadlines looming, with just one more to do. The Parry probate abstracts would now be on my site if I could upload anything. To go with them, I decided to put up the pedigree of G S Parry, who originally produced them. His pedigree appears on one of the LDS films – I didn’t find it myself, I just happened to be sitting next to an acquaintance in the local FHC some years ago as she was flicking through the film to find the item she had ordered it for, when she suddenly exclaimed “I’ve found a Parry pedigree”! I got a copy and filed it, only later discovering the connection to the abstracts. But I am glad I decided to produce his tree because it meant I got out my file of assorted notes and pedigrees that I have been sent over the years. The very next day, I received an email from a new contact who wrote to say that a 4 year old Doris Parry shown on my 1901 census listings was his grandmother. As I followed the family back through the other censuses, I realised something was familiar, so I picked up another set of sheets from the pedigrees file, relating to research carried out between about 1930-1950 by a Roy Edgardo Parry, regarding Parrys in Gloucestershire. Again, this had been sent to me some years ago by another researcher and I had filed it until the time I got around to working on pedigrees. Roy Edgardo Parry only turns out to be the brother of this researcher’s grandmother. Instant tree back to 1700! In trying to check who it was who sent me those sheets originally, I found an email from 2004 when a non-Parry came across my site and decided to let me know about the developing site for Longhope village, a place with a graveyard full of Parrys – guess where the family is from!

With another of the recent new contacts turning out to be a descendant of the Jones-Parry family that I have a pedigree on my site for, it seems like a lot of separate pieces of information might suddenly start fitting together.

Ongoing Projects

Why are some activities easier to do than others? At the start of the year, I wrote about trying to get some extractions or transcriptions done most days before dealing with any incoming mail. That tactic certainly worked with the probate abstract book, which was transcribed by March. The second stage of work on the details from the book, inserting tabs so that the information could be pasted into a table, was almost compulsive – the sort of task that is so easy to do in preference to anything else, that it’s probably a good job that, that is also now finished. The results have been pasted into excel and just need some rearranging and categorising to make them useable.

The process set me thinking about the different requirements of tasks on the study and how to achieve the most progress. There are many activities to be carried out for a one-name study. The primary task may appear to be the amassing of a large collection of data on the name. But that data then needs analysing, and conclusions developing from it, which should be published in order to advance research on the name. There will always be some overlap of these tasks, especially since one rarely finishes data collecting, as new sources become available. But for a small study, the bulk of the data collection can be carried out before the other stages and, in some cases, the study can effectively be “completed” – having traced everyone by the name back to an original source. There may be new developments to explore, such as the use of DNA for genealogy but, if you only have a few hundred names in any census, the basic work doesn’t take long.

For a large study it’s different. If you waited until all the basic data was collected, it would probably be your descendants carrying out the other stages! So it seems important to work on several stages at the same time.

Thinking about the nature of the activities, there are some which I describe as “mindless” - even if they take a long time to complete, it doesn’t matter since they can be picked up easily and paused at any time, and don’t take much effort to carry out. Other tasks require a bit of planning – perhaps they are still easy to carry out, but must be tackled in one go (eg where the data is only available for a limited time, or where any break in the extraction process would result in a different set of reference numbers and make it difficult to match up the data), or else they just require more thought in order to get them right (as when designing a web page to best explain a particular point). For most of these tasks, the final goal is known – it’s just how to get there that’s the issue. But then there are those tasks which require a great deal of thought and application, often without knowing quite what the final result will look like (as when I tried to find a way of mapping a modern Parry distribution with a program designed for 19c information).

So, for the different types of activities, it’s not just the time available that influences whether they get done or not – it’s also attitude. Do I feel like putting in that level of work, at that time? Am I up for a challenge, or do I just want something simple that will give quick results? I once read that it’s more effective to start a new project before finishing the previous one – the reasoning being that starting and finishing are the hardest parts and, if you finish a task without something else on the go, it gets harder to start something new. (Of course, it is important to ensure the original task does actually get finished!)

But, again, it's the principle of overlapping tasks, rather than tackling them consecutively.

So why this ramble about tasks? Basically, it’s the reasoning behind the structure of the ongoing projects list which follows. I’ve not really thought about the nature of the activities of the ONS in this way before – it’s just been a list of things to do, one after another. But structuring the activities, with priorities taking account of the nature of the tasks, could be a more effective way of making progress.

So, the ongoing projects:
The probate abstracts book is the main task but it has moved into a “thought required” activity, since the structure of the eventual database needs some consideration. And, although there are some simple corrections to be made to the original transcription before posting that onto the web site, page layout and linkage of related abstracts needs thought.
There are actually two new transcription tasks - census entries and BMDs. Since both of these will take a long time overall, having two provides a bit of variety. They are also both subdivided into smaller activities:
BMDs – the starting point is typing up the certificates received from the marriage challenges. As that moves into combining those with results already received in a variety of electronic forms, and submitting them to the Guild marriage index, the basic transcription task will become the civil registration indexes not yet transcribed.
Census – all of the index information is already extracted so this is the continued transcription of the additional details, starting with “my” three counties. Again, as this task moves into a “thought required” activity once a county is completed and the process of matching individuals across census years begins, the transcription will move on to adjoining counties.
The other current activities that require some thought are updating the web site with information on the DNA research, and with the “Fess families” details derived from the display in April.
And, while I’m doing that, the “serious thought” subject – how to connect up information on the web site so that people can easily find out what is available for any individual.

And now the projects are "in print", look out for their progress.

Three weeks ago, I said that, by the end of the week, I intended to have caught up with all the outstanding tasks. Clearly I didn’t achieve the goal, since I have only just posted the current projects list, but I also “failed” with regard to correspondence – probably the major difficulty of every large ONS and the reason that some people choose not to register their studies. Producing an initial response to people isn’t (usually) too difficult but, having had 25 new contacts since the start of the year, it is the later exchanging of information that can take up the time. And I still have several queries that had to be put aside about six months ago.

But setting the goal helped so my next one has to be catching up with that outstanding correspondence, whilst still keeping up with any day-to-day occurrences. And, while on the subject of those, here’s the news from the last couple of weeks:

I spotted a couple of Sir Edward Abbott Parry’s books on ebay. In looking for more information about those, I found an interesting article by Susan Watkin, detailing his work.
I received details of three more marriages from the Marylebone marriage challenge during June. There are 5 challenges to sort out items for, but none of them are places Parrys are common in so it shouldn’t take long.
I had a nice surprise when a Guild member took the trouble to send me a death notice from a newspaper – and then followed that with 13 17c marriages she’d found on a visit to the Westminster archives.
The Queensland Convict Transportation Registers were mentioned on the Forum – 58 Parrys and 1 Parrey transported. Details from the assizes will be a good subject to research at some time but that will have to go on a “future projects” list.

Finally, a couple of comments from correspondence:
Octavious is a fairly uncommon name – but I’ve had two queries recently involving it. The searches I’d carried out for the first query helped me identify information on the second promptly, despite the spelling varying between “ious” and “ius”. It’s helpful when things coincide like that.
I’ve also received emails from both new and renewed contacts regarding the Golden Valley family, which have resulted in me browsing the Patent Rolls for early information, as well as rechecking some of the coat of arms details. There are some contradictions in the reference works with regard to which families certain Parry quarterings have been ascribed to, so sorting that out will be part of the “fess families” research.

Probate Abstracts update

One of the (free!) books I picked up at the WDYTYA event was a catalogue from “Personalia”, who are dealers in all sorts of historical artifacts. It is fascinating to browse through something like this, since it gives an insight into the past, as well as containing many names (no Parrys though). One of the sections I found particularly interesting was about Momentos – predominently mourning brooches and rings. I have come across many references to mourning rings whilst transcribing the probate abstracts book but had never realised what forms they could take. You can see examples on their web site - Mourning Jewellery and Momentos

With regard to the probate abstracts, the basic transcription of the book was finished in March and I am in the process of converting the information into a suitable form to paste it into a spreadsheet or database. Having it in an electronic form will make it easier to search, but a spreadsheet format will also mean information can be rearranged easily which should make it more convenient for spotting connections between the various abstracts. At the moment, the conversion is what I call a “mindless task” – adding in tabs between information such as names and the key terms of “executor,” ”witness,” etc., so that the information will paste easily into a table. It doesn’t take a lot of thought but, every so often, something catches my attention. One such moment was when I spotted “Thomas Luckman, of Coventry, printer” in the abstract for a Mary Parry, spinster of Warwick, whose Will was written in 1783 and proved 1791. It wasn’t just the place name, but also the surname which caught my attention – and an article that appeared in the local newspaper a few years ago came to mind. It concerned the loss of some gravestones, amongst which was one belonging to a former Lord Mayor of Coventry, Thomas Luckman, and his wife Mary, who were buried in St Mary’s in 1784 and 1813 respectively. The gravestones had been moved during excavations at Coventry’s first Cathedral and had later disappeared. You can read the newspaper report here.

According to the newspaper, Thomas Luckman’s wife, Mary, had formerly been a Parry and, when I first saw it, I just noted it as “a Parry, to be followed up ‘as and when’,” since I had no further information on her. But now I have the abstract information, which links her in to a family, since it describes Mary Luckman as the niece of the testator (although it doesn’t actually mention that she was a Parry).

And it’s possibly not just any family – but one of those families who may eventually be shown to belong amongst the “fess families”. One of the other beneficiaries is a cousin, Martha Parry of Barcheston Mill, and there has been a suggestion by other researchers that the Barcheston Mill family connect to those of Aston Somerville, who did use that coat of arms. So there is a picture building up of interconnecting families – I just need to prove that there were definite relationships between them, rather than just associations. But it does seem like it’s time to stop bemoaning the fact that I have no family locally to research – they may not be my own family, but, as Parrys, they’re close enough.

As a final note along those lines, as I rechecked the Segar Parry information today, I discovered that some of the records for that family are held at Warwick record office – yet more relevant information just about on my doorstep!

It’s a good job that I have finally caught up with recording the last few months activities and can now start to look forward to the ongoing projects.