Monday, September 29, 2025

September Update: Canadian Theses, Irish Wills, FindMyPast Fridays, and the Lloyd George Domesday Land Records (etc!)

This post is another one of those "summaries" covering a few of the recent databases that have come to my attention, since I'm still not back into systematically working on the one-name study.

Marilyn M Astle posted on the Guild Facebook Group about the online availability of Canadian Theses.1 It appears that this collaborative project between Canadian Universities and the Library and Archives of Canada celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. I was pleasantly surprised to find there were fifty four results relating to people with the surname PARRY.

The topics covered by their work are wide-ranging, as one might expect, but since the database is available to anyone who wants to look at it, and most of the authors are probably still living, I don't intend to research them, or to write much more about the information. However, it did amuse me to see one relating to the "Interactions of chemical and biological control agents for the integrated control of dandelion in turf." 

Controlling dandelions? Never! (I think that must be my RAF 'BRAT'2 upbringing showing through!)

During August, a question had been asked on the Guild's mailing list about Irish Wills and Probates.  This resulted in several web sites being suggested and I finally had a chance to look at some of them this month.

Will Calendars covering the period from 1858-1965 are available on the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) site.3 I initially made the mistake of just carrying out a surname search, which gave me thirty two results, followed by a first name search, which picked up another five entries involving the name.

But, once I started looking at the details for each entry, I realized it was better to search with the term in the "Full Abstract" box instead. That produced fifty five results, since it now included executors with the name, rather than just the deceased.

There was also one entry relating to a person described as "of Parry Sound Ontario Canada," which I can obviously discount as not relevant to the one-name study. However, although this particular individual did have an address in Belfast, as well, it highlights the fact that several of the entries mentioned places outside of Northern Ireland. I still need to look to see how those people connect to information from elsewhere, but I did recognize a couple of the names, so should be able to match up a few details.

As well as the PRONI site, I looked at the "Calendars of Wills and Administrations 1858 - 1920" that are available on the National Archives of Ireland site.4 On this site, you can (need to!) search either under the name of the deceased, or under the name of the executor/beneficiary. So I ended up carrying out four separate searches this time, since, once again, I thought I'd collect details of anyone using "Parry" as a first name, as well as a surname.

This is a table to summarize the numbers of entries obtained through the various search methods:

 

Deceased

Executor/Beneficiary

Surname

7 (but 2 = duplicated, so only 5 individuals)

11 (only 2 of which were also in the ‘Deceased’ entries)

Forename

2

1

Again, there are entries with connections outside of Ireland, for example, where the death and/or an initial grant of probate took place in England, but was "resealed" at the Principal Registry, in Dublin.

As well as the link to the Calendars section on the National Archives of Ireland, one of the responses to the original question had given the link to the Genealogy section of the site.5 From that, I discovered there were other databases available, eg censuses, tithes, marriage licences, valuation office records, shipping agreements and crew lists, as well as other probate records, in some cases going back to the late 1590s.

I did start to extract some details from these, for example, there were 42 entries for people with the surname PARRY in the "Prerogative and diocesan copies of some wills and indexes to others, 1596 – 1858." However, when I searched using Parry as a first name, I discovered there seem to be some inconsistencies in the data, in that, out of the three PARRY Bishops of Ossory (Benjamin PARRY 1678, John PARRY 1677, and Thomas PARRY, 1679,) only two appear under the surname search, while all three appear under the first name search (with the surname as Ossory). I also discovered a potential 'missing entry' in the marriages database, because a "Lucy PARRY" just happened to appear on the same page image as one of the other PARRYs, but did not appear among the search results.

It's obvious I need to spend more time investigating these various databases, and the best methods for searching them, so I have decided that Ireland would be better tackled as a 'mini project,' when I can just focus on all the records available for that area. I therefore didn't follow up another link which had been suggested, the "Family Search – PRO Ireland records (indexes)" - especially since, being Family Search, it will probably also lead me to other information relating to Ireland.

So that's now on the (ever-growing) ToDo list.

When I was researching for my previous post, on the 80th Anniversary of VJ Day, one of the names I was looking for appeared in an Ancestry database called, "UK, Postal Service Appointment Books, 1737-1969." I thought this might be quite an interesting source of information for adding detail to individuals' lives, so stopped to extract all of the PARRYs in the Index. In this case, I initially searched for exact surname, producing 995 results, but I then tried searching on exact keyword (with nothing in the first or last names). This produced 1006 results, the additional eleven all being entries with "Parry" as a first name.

I don't normally used the keyword search on Ancestry like that since, with some databases - for example, where 'Parry' might occur as part of an address - it could result in many irrelevant results. But this, and the earlier probate examples, demonstrate that, sometimes, it is worth trying different methods of searching.

The Postal Service information has now gone into an Excel spreadsheet, which is my preferred starting point for any set of data. This, of course, can cause me problems when dates are included in the results, since Excel deals with pre- and post- 1900 dates differently, and sorting on the dates can be a 'nightmare'. With a smallish spreadsheet, it's not too much trouble, even with my low level of skill in using formulas, to resolve the issue by adding a 'database date' (of the format "yyyymmdd"). However, with over a thousand entries in this sheet, it seems like that could be more difficult, and time consuming, than usual, so I might need to investigate some of the formulas that I haven't yet mastered!

Or, as was suggested at the recent Warwickshire Guild members meeting, perhaps I should see if this is the sort of task 'AI' can accomplish for me. ('AI' being yet another tool that I know little about, but other genealogists seem to be making good use of it.)

Either way, I think I have some 'studying' to do before I will be able to draw many conclusions from the post office data, although I have identified that the earliest entry is for a Mr Thomas PARRY, who was appointed as a junior clerk at the "Bye and Cross Road Letter Office" on the 3rd May 1769, and the latest was a Christine PARRY, appointed to the "External Telecommunications Executive" in January 1968.

I usually rely on receiving weekly emails from the genealogy sites, to inform me about updates to their databases but, having had to search through past emails (and 'the bin') in order to find some recent items that I was sure had been mentioned, I have now bookmarked the relevant pages of each site.6

One of the recent databases mentioned by FindMyPast was their "Military Service Memorial Collection." This includes "588,288 military records, spanning almost 400 years, from the English Civil War to modern conflicts like the Iraq War." Among the memorials is the one in Hereford Cathedral, which lists the Herefordshire men who died in the South African War 1899-1902. My great grandfather's brother, Thomas PARRY, appears on there, so this reminded me that, with my website still not available online, neither is my father's account of researching this Thomas. I've just checked whether I can add a pdf of the web page to this post - but it seems one can't do that with Blogger. The file would need to be somewhere else, such as on Google Drive, and just a link to it added here. Since I have sometimes had difficulty downloading other people's files, when they have used that method, and I don't want to inflict it on others, I guess this is another incentive to try and get my website back up and running! ☺ 

There have been a few other databases updated on both FindMyPast and Ancestry, but I'm just going to mention one more, which was on TheGenealogist. This company is gradually adding the "Lloyd George Domesday Land Records." The most recent county added was Sussex, but the notification reminded me that they have already included Bedfordshire. And this prompted me to dig out some photographs I had taken of a gravestone, which is in the cemetery at Potton, Bedfordshire, relating to a Thomas PARRY, his wife, Louisa Elizabeth, and their daughter, Sarah Elizabeth.


I have now carried out some research on the family, which I was going to include in this post but, since I found more than I anticipated, I think they can have a post all to themselves.

(That solves the topic for October, doesn't it! ☺)

 

Notes and Sources

1. Canadian Theses: https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Help/theses

2. BRATs and the relevance of the dandelion: The acronym "BRAT" originally stood for "British Regiment Attached Traveler" but later came to be used as a description for military children. The dandelion has been adopted as the flower of the military child. As the RAF Families Federation puts it:

Dandelions are hardy plants which put down strong roots almost anywhere the wind carries them. It’s a survivor and blooms in a broad range of climates.

Military children may bloom wherever the wind takes them. They can have strong roots, planted swiftly and surely. They’re often ready to fly in the breeze to new adventures, new lands and new friends.                            

[https://www.raf-ff.org.uk/education/month-of-the-military-child/]

The thesis title brought back memories of groups of us children playing together on the RAF camps, (including in the monsoon drains, occasionally at the same time as those were being sprayed with some "chemical cloud" to kill off any mosquitos!)

3. Link to Will Calendars on the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI): https://apps.proni.gov.uk/WillsCalendar_IE/WillsSearch.aspx

4. Link to Will Calendars on the National Archives of Ireland: https://willcalendars.nationalarchives.ie/search/cwa/home.jsp

5. Link to the Genealogy section of the National Archives of Ireland: https://genealogy.nationalarchives.ie/


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