Mapping, Ancestors' Journeys, and general October update.

 Another Guild seminar took place this month, with the topic of "Mapping of your One-Name Study". 

Unfortunately for me, since mapping is a subject I find interesting, the event clashed with a special family birthday, so I was unable to attend.  However, as is usually the case these days, the talks were recorded and are available to members on the Guild's website. 

Even in those cases where I have heard a version of the talk before, I am sure there will either be new details, or a reminder of something I have forgotten, so I am looking forward to watching those videos. One down, four to go.

There was also a face-to-face meeting of the Warwickshire members of the Guild this month. The topic for the morning session was "Ancestral Journeys" so a few of us had prepared short presentations relating to that.  I was pleased to hear one member comment about the interpretation of the topic - that it can mean either an actual journey taken by an ancestor (or member of our study), or the journey we have had in researching them. The decision between those two options is something I mentioned in my review at the end of last year (here) when I was thinking about how to write up some research.

Is there a 'best' option?  

I don't know - I think it will depend on what the research is about, as well as the practical issues relating to the research and recording processes, how easy it might be to re-arrange the information, etc.  But it is good to hear others debating the same issue.

I was a bit 'lazy' with my presentation for the meeting since, when the topic was first mentioned, I immediately thought of some images I had prepared a few years ago. One of these shows part of my Dad's old RAF kitbag, on which he had listed many of the places he had been stationed at.  I had then plotted a couple of maps from the details - one showing his travels within Britain and Europe, the other included the places in the middle and far east.  

It is possible I initially prepared the images for the Guild seminar, "The 20th Century is Now History", back in February 2016, because I remember taking a display to that, relating to members of my immediate PARRY family, and their lives. But I also used the images in a post on my personal family history blog, which you can see here so I won't repeat them now. 

This time, as well as my Dad's journeys, I included a bit about my great grandad, John PARRY - thanks to a newspaper cutting found on FindMyPast, I have been able to identify an outgoing passenger list showing when he travelled to America, in 1892. But another newspaper article also revealed that he had travelled across to the US three times within the space of a few months, and I still need to identify each of those journeys, among the various emigration and immigration records. 

It isn't always easy to do that.  For some journeys, there are several different types of records relating to the same event, which can be matched up together, eg an outgoing passenger list from the UK, and then an incoming record on the Ellis Island site.

But for others, such as the following, where four cattle attendants were listed but then crossed out, one is left wondering what happened!

[Image from FindMyPast, Board Of Trade: Commercial And Statistical Department And Successors: Outwards Passenger Lists, Ship's Name; Corean, setting sale from Glasgow on 26th August 1892, bound for New York.] 

I have tried looking for some of the other men, to see if that helped, and did find "F" or "Fred" Duncan listed on a couple of other passenger lists that month, again as a cattle man and, again, in one case, crossed out. 

But no sign of my John PARRY.

As well as Dad and John, I also included the journey of my grandad, Donald PARRY, to Canada, in 1924, in the presentation.  I have details of the outgoing passenger list for him, as well as a Form 30a, recording his arrival in Canada. But I have never found an incoming list showing him (although he obviously did come back to the UK, because I am here!)

But I do have some photographs from his time out there, which I used to have on my website (one day I shall get that PARRY web site re-written and resurrected!):

As you can possibly tell, several images in the bottom row relate to Niagara Falls, and I was thrilled to be able to visit there in 2019, and to take a photograph from a very similar viewpoint to one of Donald's:

In other news...

Last month, I mentioned the Will of John PARRY of Wormbridge, in Herefordshire, from 1575, in which there are three John PARRYs referred to - the testator, the writer on his behalf, and also a witness.  This month, while researching my great grandfather, John PARRY, (in the court case that enabled me to identify his passenger list entry), I came across a report of an inquest in the Hereford Journal, 27 September 1848, into the death of William PARRY, of Birley, in Herefordshire. William died as a result of, "falling through a hole in an upper room of the granary of Mr PARRY, farmer, of Birley, in whose employment he was at the time of the melancholy accident." He was found by the bailiff - also named PARRY.

There's a lot of PARRYs in Herefordshire!

I have continued collecting PARRY information from the new, and updated, databases on Ancestry and FindMyPast. 

Some of these have minimal, or even no PARRY, entries (for example, in the "Dorset Early Census Returns 1724-1821" or the "Leicestershire Monumental Inscriptions", both on FMP.) Others contain thousands (the total in the "UK and Ireland, Find a Grave® Index, 1300s-Current" on Ancestry is currently at 17,767.)

I don't normally check the new or updated newspapers on FindMyPast, since those are always likely to produce a lot of PARRY entries, but sometimes an individual newspaper might seem worth exploring. So I was interested to see they now include "The Musician of the Salvation Army" - unfortunately, of course, I forgot about those PARRY composers! (Charles Hubert Hastings PARRY and Joseph PARRY being the main two, but there's a few Johns, as well.)

However, it did occur to me that such a newspaper might be quite useful if you were studying a particular place, and wanted to research the members of that organisation there, or events they held that your ancestors might have attended. 

Ancestry have updated their "Civil Service Appointments, Promotions, and Transfers, 1871-1942".  The details are linked to the relevant entries in the London Gazette, but it will certainly be easier to collect the initial data from Ancestry.

Also updated were crew agreements for Monmouthshire and crew lists for West Glamorgan, these latter including the name of the ships, so that will make it easier to match up entries relating to the same person.

There's now some Petty session registers for Monmouthshire, covering 1861-1932, containing 1,489 PARRYs. (228 of them called John - that will be fun trying to sort them out!) The Monmouthshire Police Registers, for 1857-1925, have also been updated but I was interested to see that the five PARRY entries are actually split between two entries in the "Newport Constabulary, Registers of Previous Convictions, 1869-1923" and three in the "Gwent Constabulary, Registers of Officers and Constables, 1858-1897". 

So not everyone listed was a criminal! 

But the entry for one who was, Henry Thomas PARRY,  a railway fireman, also contained a photograph of him.

How I wish my John PARRY's brushes with the law had resulted in him being photographed!