April always seems a busy month of the year, for one reason or another, and, this year, the "busyness" has spread into May, such that I am late even attempting to put together an 'update' post about April's activities. So, instead of trying to work through the month in order, I'm just going to begin with a couple of recent events and see where it takes me!
I often mention how helpful other Guild members are and it was obviously 'my' week recently, as I was notified about two sporting PARRYs by Paul Howes; John PARRY, a golfer, who was playing in the PGA Tour, and then Diane PARRY, a tennis player, who had just beaten Emma Raducanu in a tournament in Strasbourg.
As with, probably, the majority of people in the public eye, details about both of them appear online, so I am not going to repeat that information.
More about John PARRY can be found on Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Parry_(golfer), as well as on golfing sites, such as the PGA Tour site at https://www.pgatour.com/player/28723/john-parry/overview.
Since he was born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, I imagine I am likely to pick up entries relating to him, and his family, in my collection of information from the UK datasets.
I am less likely to come across records relating to Diane PARRY at the moment, since she was born in France. Again, some information about her can be found on Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Parry, as well as on tennis related sites, such as https://www.wtatennis.com/players/327077/diane-parry
Another PARRY find was also thanks to Paul - at the Guild Conference, a question arose about what to do with items found, for example, in charity shops, which relate to "our" surnames, and Paul let us all know about the Bible Rescue site, at https://biblerescue.org/.
There is one PARRY bible on the site and, thanks to the details recorded in the bible, I have been able to find the family in several censuses in Pennsylvania, as well as in other records. The parents, William PARRY and Margaret GREEN, seem to have both come from Wales (although Margaret does then say England, in a later census). William indicates he's from Tredegar, in Monmouthshire, so I'm in danger of going down a 'rabbit hole' now, since that is one of my main counties of research, because it's where my own ancestors often appear.
But I shall restrain myself, and just note that there are over thirty pedigrees for the family on Ancestry, before moving on to write about some of the other activities during the past month or so.
A query back in April, probably on the Guild mailing list, led to a site containing information about Wesleyan Methodists, at https://www.mywesleyanmethodists.org.uk/. There are eight PARRYs listed under the surname list, but actually searching on the site for the name also produced a couple of ministers with PARRY as a middle name.
Although one of the 'middle name' entries does have some additonal information, all of the other nine entries just have the dates when they entered the ministry, and when they died. So clearly a bit of research on them might be helpful, in order to add it to the site for future researchers.
Another link from April, this time one which was posted on the DNA-Newbie list - the Wilford Woodruff Papers, which can be found at https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/
This is a project that has digitised the papers of an early missionary of the Church of Latter Day Saints, and is connecting the people mentioned in the papers to profiles on Family Search.
So far, I have done little more than check how many PARRY references there are on the site (currently 149, if one searches for the exact spelling, but over 2000 otherwise). But I think the information in the papers could prove very useful, not just regarding PARRYs, but also for my own personal ancestry.
Initial exploring of the site led me to some YouTube videos, which follow Wilford Woodruff's steps in England, and I found that one of these related to the Herefordshire Beacon, part of the Malvern Hills, on the border between Herefordshire and Worcestershire. That's an important area for my own family, so it will be interesting to read about Wilford's activities in that area.
But I also noticed that, among the people mentioned in the papers is a "Sylvanus Cyrus Hulet" - who I recognise as an ancestor of several of my DNA matches.
Could it be that these papers will help me to get closer to working out whether what I call my "splurge" DNA groups (larger than usual clusters of people, who all match each other by between 10-20 cM) really are the result of connections between my ancestors and early members of the LDS church?
That is something I have 'hypothesised' about in the past, so it would be lovely to put it to the test, and either confirm, or disprove, my theory (to the extent that such 'proof' is possible.)
This was released on the 18th of April, and is available, with images, for free, on the National Archives of Ireland site, at https://nationalarchives.ie/. The index is also now available on both Ancestry and FindMyPast.
My initial search on the archives site resulted in 59 PARRY entries, but it was clear that some corrections were going to be needed, eg two different index entries, which related to the same person in the images (now corrected), or a family of six where the parents and one child are indexed as PARRY, but the other three children are indexed as CARRY (not yet corrected).
So the National Archives site now shows 58 entries, and, at the moment (23/5/26), FMP shows 59 entries, and Ancestry shows 61 (the additional two entries appear to be due to some inital incorrect linking on the National Archives of Ireland, where two PARRY heads of households had been linked to the previous family's image and Ancestry have now given one of the members of that household an alternative name of PARRY!)
I'm sure it will all sort itself out eventually! (and at least there aren't very many PARRYs in Ireland.)
One name I was particularly interested to see in the census, though, was a "Matthew Crosse PARRY" (along with several of his children with the middle name of "Crosse".)
It's funny how one-namers get to "know" their people - although there is a family connected to PARRYs who have Crosse either as a middle name, or as a double-barrelled surname, as soon as I saw the entries, I thought, "that should be 'Croose.'"
And so it turned out to be. The question is, how come Matthew Croose PARRY, from Herefordshire, was living in Ireland in 1926?
[I've just discovered the answer to that, while writing this - it turns out that he'd taken a job with the Beamish Brewery, in Cork, in 1911.]
The "Croose Parrys" are a family I researched many years ago, sharing information with two correspondents in particular, Jay CAFFEY, and Tricia HAYES, both sadly now deceased. The family were associated with Birley Court, in Herefordshire, the earliest in the pedigree being a Thomas PARRY who married Esther CROOSE in 1771.
A cousin marriage in later generations, along with birthplace, and first name, variations through the censuses (eg Edward/Edmund, etc), as well as multiple people with the same name, made it difficult to sort out some of the relationships between members of the families.
To look at my past research on the family, to see what can now be added, is yet another possible 'rabbit hole' that I've resisted and, for now, I'll just post a photograph of the memorial tablet to Matthew in Birley church:
The fact that several items connected to Herefordshire recently, reminded me that I still need to complete my census collection for the county. I thought this might be a good opportunity to make use of the macro that I mentioned in my post about this year's Guild Conference, which takes information downloaded from the Family Search site, and converts it into gedcom format.
Since I still like working with spreadsheets, especially for linking together the census information for a particular person across the years, I was rather hoping that the initial downloads would provide a useful spreadsheet to do that with, prior to conversion to gedcom. However, I then discovered that the downloads, despite opting for the "all information" version, do not include all of the available details.
It looks as if one of the ID numbers will allow the spreadsheet to be sorted in a way that brings families together, which is a good start. But I'm going to wait until I have compared some of the results to those obtained from companies such as FindMyPast and Ancestry, before going through the process of creating gedcoms, just in case there is a more efficient method for transferring the full details.
Talking of Family Search though, there was a face-to-face meeting of the Warwickshire Guild members at the beginning of May, and one of the members mentioned how she had been using the "Full-Text" search facility, in order to find Will beneficiaries with her surname. With a name such as PARRY, it's obviously necessary to use the filtering options (otherwise, there's over a million results, from a keyword search). But it is very helpful to be made aware of these different search methods.
At the start of April, TheGenealogist added some new historic legal records. I haven't carried out a proper search of them but I was interested to see an entry in the "London - Court & Criminal", relating to the "messuages and lands of John Parry, deceased, in Wormbridge and Howton". Wormbridge and Howton are both places in Herefordshire - and John PARRY of Wormbridge was one of three John PARRYs that appear in his Will, dated 1575. (The Testator, John, of Wormbridge, is on his death bed, John, of Dulas, writes the Will for him, and John, of Morehampton, is a witness.)
I always think this Will is quite an interesting one, since the Wormbridge daughters are named in birth order, each one having the option to inherit the property - but only on the condition they marry one of the sons of the John PARRY from Dulas.
So the legal records might shed light on what actually happened in the end!
Another entry I spotted in the London Court records related to "William Parry, alias Thomas" concerning a moiety of the manor of Easton Grey, in Wiltshire. Again, this is a family I carried out research on years ago - so it will be good to see what else can be added now that so many more records are available.
TheGenealogist has also added Devon to the counties in their Lloyd George Domesday Survey. There are 214 entries for PARRY - which seemed rather a lot, for such a county, considering there's not many more that 100 PARRYs in the 1911 census for Devon, (and that includes children!)
But it turned out that a Hugh Lloyd PARRY was the Town Clerk for Exeter City Council, so around 160 of the entries have his name on, but are owned by the council.
There are plenty of books written by PARRYs, and a few that tell the story of particular PARRYs. One that I came across for the first time recently was, "The Last Lord Of The Manor Of Thelwall - Admiral John Parry Jones-Parry" by Mike Taylor. Since John Parry Jones-Parry appears on the pedigree I put on Rootsweb, at https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~parryresearch/family/jonesparry.htm (he's at line 117) and the book was less than £2, I could hardly refuse!
A different situation regarding a collection of four medals that recently sold on Ebay, the usual three 1914-18 medals, plus a "Special Constabulary" long service medal. Beyond my budget!
There was one PARRY among the surviving crew, described slightly differently on websites relating to the disaster:
"Parry, D. / Assistant Steward - Rescued" on https://www.empress2014.ca/seclangen/listepseq.html
As "172 Parry, David. 2nd Class Waiter" on https://empressofireland.wordpress.com/list-of-survivors/
And as "*Parry, D. Bedroom Steward" on https://images.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/2020-05/crew-list.pdf
The fact David survived probably makes it more difficult to identify him so, if anyone has further information to help clarify which David PARRY this was, that would be appreciated.
It has been an interesting couple of months, with such a variety of records. And I hope readers find some of the links useful for their own research.
