Weekly round-up 13 Feb 2015

Companies seem to like releasing information on a Friday.  Each week FindMyPast send out their “FindMyPast Fridays” email, listing all their latest additions and, this morning, Gerald Cooke, the Guild's Gloucestershire regional representative, also posted on the Forum that Ancestry had announced various Gloucestershire records are now available on their site. There's bound to be Parrys in those and perhaps I should start scheduling Friday as a day for exploring new records. 

However, are such records really “new”?

Last week's releases from FMP included Dorset parish records and the British Merchant Navy, First World War Medal Cards, 1914-1925.  As this fitted in with my intention to do some work on WW1 potential casualties, I took a look. In doing so, I realised that the source for the Dorset records was actually Family Search and, for the Merchant seamen, it was the National Archives.  Checking on the TNA site indicated that, not only are these records available from there, but that the index information can also be downloaded as a spreadsheet (up to 1000 entries).  For a one-namer, this is obviously a much more efficient way of collecting the data, than from FMP at twenty entries per page.

This just shows how important it is to plan and log details of research – so I don’t get caught out and waste time with a “new” dataset, which I might already have from another source, and also to consider these multiple sources so as to identify the best way of dealing with a particular “data collection” task.

I have spent some time this week collecting the index details of all the WW1 related datasets on the National Archives. I'm not yet ready to post about the casualties but, when I do come to do so, it seems important to consider the wider context of how many other Parrys fought and survived, or were otherwise involved in some way in serving their country.  So that research is ongoing.

A couple of other recent points of interest:

-          one of my other hobbies is metal detecting and I noticed from "Digging Deep", the latest news from the National Council for Metal Detecting, that the Chairman of the Crewe & Nantwich MDS is a John Parry. 

-          Yet another descendant of the Colston Parry family has posted on the Parry message board at Ancestry (I wish all the Parry families had so many descendants interested in them!)

-          A Guild Newswatch item was received for a Meryl Parry who passed away in January.

By a strange coincidence, when I just looked back at the details of that Newswatch item, I realised that the hospice mentioned just happens to be the same one that my final “round-up” item relates to. Yesterday, two Guild members let me know about an old family bible, which had belonged to a Parry family and has now turned up in a charity shop.  The shop staff were trying to find descendants. (Well, actually, one of the articles says "ancestors" – don’t journalists know the difference?!!!)

The story can be found through the following two articles:

BBC news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-31445869

and the Wrexham Leader: http://leaderlive.co.uk/news/144071/178-year-old-bible-was-in-charity-shop-bag.aspx

I have looked for census information and can find the Parry family at the house in Llanfihangel, Montgomeryshire, through every census.  The bible was presented to the original owner, a John Parry, in the late 1830s by John Owens, a minister from Llanuwchllyn and, based on the 1851 census, it appears that, that’s where John Parry had been born. 

The shop does now have contact with descendants of the family so, hopefully, that’s one old bible which will be reunited with people who will treasure it.

Back in Business (sort of!)

We all go through periods when our hobbies have to take a back seat because of other activities. The last few years have been like that for me.  It isn’t that I haven't been doing any research on the Parry ONS. I have.  But it's been more like treading water, than making real progress.  Hopefully, things will improve this year (although I may still “drop out” for a week or so, at times.)

It will be a slow restart - as I write about in my "Not just the Parrys" blog at http://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.co.uk/, I am currently taking part in Thomas MacEntee's Genealogy Do-Over.  This came at just the right time for me, as I was already planning to start looking at my own personal family history in more detail this year.  I also wanted to make some changes to the Parry ONS, and the way research has sometimes been carried out in the past.  It is going to take time to learn about some of the new tools and to embed improved research practices. But I hope, in time, the result will be a much better organised and presented one-name study.

So what is there to look forward to currently?

The main goal for this year is a new website.  This will be written in WordPress (when I have learned how!), which should enable me to update the site more frequently (as I won't have to write the entire HTML for each page.)  It should also enable better collaboration, through the use of comments.

Talking of collaboration, one thing I have done recently is set up a Parry Name Study on the Wikitree site (http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Parry_Name_Study )  My own Parry ancestry had already been put on the site by someone else, who had probably been in touch with one of my contacts from years ago.  But I decided the best way to respond was to join in and further develop it.  This might seem like duplication with the main Parry Study web site, but I think it is worth sharing on the Wikitree site as well, because that has the potential for involving more Parry researchers, who are already working on their own families.  As I frequently say, Parry is what one might call a “popular” surname (I will always think of Geoff Riggs when I say that, as he encouraged me not to refer to the name as “common”).  I am therefore very reliant on information being shared by other researchers, so anything which helps such information sharing is good.  Wikitree also has features for those who have taken DNA tests, which I think will become important as more people take the tests, especially with two of the DNA companies now actively promoting sales of their kits in the UK.

There has been a bit of “information sharing” over the last month or so, as I have been contacted by seven Parry researchers recently, several of whom sent me information.  One was a request to carry out research for the enquirer – unfortunately, I don't have time for that, even if they were prepared to pay me, so I steered that one towards the list of professional researchers on the SOG site. Three of the other contacts related to Herefordshire Parrys, always favourites of mine.  One was someone I was in touch with years ago, so it was good to renew the contact there.  Of the other two, one of them related to a family I already knew a researcher for, so they are now in touch with each other. Another two of the seven just happen to be descended from the Colston Parry family – a tree I have online at http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~parryresearch/colston.htm .  I had already promised the first of these that I would update the tree with his information as soon as I can, so I am pleased the second wrote before I have done so, as I can now make all the changes at once.

So now there are three trees on my priority list:

-          My own

-          the Parrys from Birley in Herefordshire, and

-          the Colston Parry family from Gloucestershire.

Gordon Adshead posted on the Forum recently about the records of the Middlesex military service appeal tribunal 1916-1918, which have gone online at the National Archives.  There are three Parrys in this and it was a reminder to me that I had intended to produce some posts relating to Parrys in WW1.  I didn't manage that last year for the centenary of the start of the war - but that is no excuse to abandon the rest of my goal regarding this.

So I think that all gives me plenty to be working on for this year as it is.

But, as always, if you have a PARRY in your family history, then do please get in touch.