Too many Williams

As often the case, the lack of posts does not mean there has been nothing going on with the study – rather the opposite, having received emails from six new contacts since I last posted, as well as continuing correspondence with several other researchers.

Sometimes it seems that most of my time is taken up by communicating with people, rather than collecting information but, since many of the enquiries do involve looking up details in censuses and following families through the years, perhaps it’s really just a different aspect of "collecting". The important point is making sure I end up transferring all the details collected into the master files for the study – back to organisation again (which, based on the mounting piles of paper, is something I still need to work at!)

But the general collecting does continue. I noticed one of the Guild members had a tagline for the Geograph British Isles project so thought I’d try a search for Parry related places, with some success:
- Parrys Field Barn, near to Fisherton de la Mere, Wiltshire (SU0039)
- Parry's Castle, Carmarthenshire (SN4114)
- The New Parry aqueduct on the Montgomery Canal (SJ3529)
- Parry's Lane, near to Westbury Park, Bristol (ST5775)
-The Llyn Harri Parry section of Afon Seiont, near to Bethel, Gwynedd (SH5264)

I know, from searching on map sites, that there are a lot more Parry related places in the UK so it has acted as a reminder that I still need to write a web page to collect the information together. (One of the new contacts has also told me of a road in Gosford, New South Wales, which was named after a Henry Parry – it makes a change to find a place in Australia not named after Sir William Edward Parry. Some information on Henry’s family can be found in the Australian Dictionary of Biography)

It is also possible to search within the descriptions of the photographs on the Geograph site. Doing so finds several references to individual Parrys - Llywelyn England Sydney Parry, who built Craflwyn Hall, near to Beddgelert, Lady Love Jones Parry for whom a property called Glyn y Weddw was built, R. Williams Parry, a poet, Tim Parry, one of two children killed by a bomb in Warrington in 1993, Sergeant R. O. Parry, one of the crew killed when a Lancaster bomber crashed in 1945, and finally Arthur Croose Parry who, along with Walter James Probert, is remembered on the war memorial in Birley, Herefordshire. That’s another reminder for me - the Croose Parrys are one of my "priority" families, that I intend to write a web page for. There’s currently some pictures relating to a heraldic query for them on my site at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/im.griffiths/parryfamilyhistory/queries2.htm, but there’s a lot more to be written.

I had some credits to use up on Findmypast.com so collected the Parrys in the London Burials database (167 entries). There was a message from the Origins network to say that they had also added the London City Burials to their site – I must have visited them too soon after receiving the message, since it was showing no results for Parrys. However, I have just rechecked and it now includes 192 Parry entries. I still need to investigate how this differs from the burials on Findmypast.

There was a message on one of the mailing lists concerning Ancestry giving free access to their US military records until June 6. Since I currently have a subscription, I can view them at any time but such messages always prompt me to have a look and start extracting! (only 132 databases with Parrys in – ranging from just one entry in many of them, up to the 1,153 in the WW1 Draft Registration cards. Tho’ strangely enough, searching from the main search page only finds 88 military databases with Parrys in – it looks like some of the databases normally included in categories such as "Family and Local Histories" might also have been made available amongst the military records offer.)

A probate entry I suggested might be relevant to the researcher of the coal business family has proved to be so – Thomas Parry of Saint Mary Islington , Middlesex, whose Will was proved in the PCC 10 November 1857 mentions his sons Thomas Sparke Parry and William Valentine Parry, as well as three other sons. So that’s a success in identifying that link.

A marriage challenge for Newport Pagnell has been announced – from a quick search on FreeBMD, there are four Parry entries in the district so I shall have to get those references checked and see if it is possible to find them on the IGI, before submitting the details to the challenger.

And finally, why the title? It’s a comment on two of the queries received from the new contacts, which have both involved trying to identify people named William Parry. So how does one identify someone with a fairly common name, born in the late 1820s, who may or may not be with family in the 1861 census (and I don't know who the family were, except the father was another William Parry), who may or who may not be married (he was recorded as a widower on a marriage certificate in 1864 but there’s time for the first marriage to also have taken place after the 1861 census), who died before the 1871 census, and who is likely to have an occupation along the lines of labourer, farm labourer or Ag. Lab.? Especially when people seem to appear and disappear across the censuses, because they vary their birthplaces and ages, as well as move around, which makes it difficult to know whether a particular entry in one census really does match to a particular entry in another census (and that's not even considering the mistranscriptions which disguise people).

I guess that’s why I collect them all – but currently, there are just too many Williams!

A quick summary

I’ve finally caught up with most of the backlog, which built up whilst I wrote the Colston Parry page. There’s been a few emails exchanged as a result of the page, but no-one has specifically started discussing the evidence needed yet.

Another thread started on the message board, concerning a family who ran a coal business. Once again, middle names have been helpful since two of the siblings were called Thomas Sparke Parry and William Valentine Parry, which are fairly unusual names. The researcher has created a tree on Ancestry for them (although for some reason it isn’t found by searching and currently needs the direct link - http://trees.ancestry.co.uk/pt/person.aspx?tid=1958178&pid=-1876262920 )

There are times when something brings home to me the enormity of carrying out a One-Name Study on a name like Parry – like looking at how many trees exist on Ancestry for the name. And one of the things pointed out at the Family History Show at Olympia was just how easy it is to connect someone else’s tree to your own now, if you think it fits. That might sound like a good idea but I imagine it could lead to a further proliferation of unproven pedigrees. Which is one reason for me not to worry about the number of trees available – since it’s better to stick with the established sources.

I’ve added the mailing list resources page to the Rootsweb List Pages WebRing which should help to improve its visibility (announcing the pages on the mailing list itself would probably also be useful!).

Results from some of the marriage challenges have arrived – 17 in total from Bristol, and 6 so far between Marylebone and Poplar. I need to make time to add all the details to my certificate list and to see if the information matches up to anything else I have.

Finally, last Saturday I attended the Guild DNA seminar. I still haven’t found any males amongst my own Parry family to take a test, but there are a few Parrys showing in the searchable databases. However, there’s probably a lot more "paper research" needed before it can be used effectively in Parry research.

Finally posted the Colston pedigree

After several weeks of working on it, I have finally posted the page containing information about the Colston Parry family, at http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~parryresearch/colston.htm . Lets hope it prompts some collaboration between the five researchers who connect to the line.

As a side effect of doing that, I have also written some resource pages for the Parry mailing list and message board. No doubt they’ll develop further as time goes by, but I hope they prove to be beneficial to researchers.

Now to catch up with all the other things I’ve been ignoring for these past few weeks!

More sites and a Marriage Challenge sidetrack

A few interesting sites have been mentioned on mailing lists recently:
Buckinghamshire Wills, which has no Parrys (the nearest is "Parryt", but there are many Parrots or similar so it’s probably a variant spelling of that). But it reminded me that I ought to make a list of all the county related sites, such as this one, to ensure that I cover them all when I work on the probate items.
Queensland Historical BDM Indices for the period 1829-1914. I had some difficulties with this site initially (reverting to just 20 results and not going beyond page 1) but I was able overcome these by using "next" rather than the page numbers.
Online Genealogical Resources of the Westchester County, New York, Archives – found 9 entries in the marriages records and 11 under naturalization so that’s useful (although as just index entries, I don’t know how easy it would be to identify the same people in any other records, without obtaining copies of the entries to find out more information first).
Mention was made, on the Monmouthshire list, of a web site for Govilon, which led me to another site concerning the village history. We visited this parish in 2002, mainly for my own family history, since my 2xgt grandparents are buried here, along with one of their children. I discovered the existence of the local history group’s work then, but it is good to see that they now have a "web presence" and that there is also some Parry information noted under the censuses. More incentive for me to get these various families identified – this is one of those "too many people with the same name" areas!

FFHS Ezine arrived yesterday, which reminded me about the catalogue for the Lambeth Palace Archives now being available online. This had been mentioned on the Forum earlier in the month but I didn’t have time to follow it up then – and I didn’t get far today either. It’s possible to carry out several different searches so it really needs exploring properly rather than a quick search. Just using the Keyword search in the printed books catalogue find 186 references to Parry and, although there are only five Parrys in the Names Database, one of them, Edward Parry the Suffragan Bishop of Dover, does have 346 entries to his name.

The ezine also mentioned the Manchester petition concerning the abolition of slavery – I’m glad to see the only Parrys were in support of the bill, a Richard Parry, a Jacob Parry, and a James Parry. No other information on them though.

I forgot to mention in my last posting that a marriage challenge had been announced for the Reading district. I was sorting out the entries for that today (6 entries), checking on the IGI (2 found) and censuses (2 possibles found) and ended up thinking about how the availability of records these days makes it easy to research some things. One of the marriage entries was for a Richard Parry, March qtr of 1896. There’s only one other name on FreeBMD, an Ada Emily Rivers. No guarantee that they married each other, since transcription of the index is incomplete, but it seemed plausible so I looked for a "Richard and Ada" in the 1901 census (unsuccessful). There’s a lot of Richard Parrys, but the only one in Berkshire was an actor and appeared to be married to a Sybil. So then I looked for an Ada Parry – none in Reading and the only wife of a Richard elsewhere was an Ada Ellen in Wales. There were several possibilities to investigate in England without husbands – the most likely seemed an Ada E born in Oxford, living in Kent. She was the Head ("wife" crossed out) but was recorded as married. With her was a one year old daughter and a 40 year old "sister" Edith Parry. Now that’s obviously an anomaly – could it be that this Ada was a Parry who married a Parry, a Parry who wasn’t really married but said she was because she had a child, or was Edith in reality a sister-in-law? Could this be the right Ada?

Searching for Ada Rivers, with a keyword of Oxford, found one entry in 1881 – daughter of a Wm Geo. and Sarah Rivers, born about 1872 - and living in Reading. Using "Oxfordshire" found them in the 1891, still in Reading. No sign of a sister Edith, and the parents would have been too young to have a daughter of the right age anyway, but certainly the Ada looks a possible for the marriage.
So, back to the hunt for Richard Parry. Assuming he’s a year or so older than Alice, I searched for a Richard with birthdate of 1870+/-5 to allow for "census variations" (those few years that people sometimes lose at census times). Fifty entries in Wales, another one in Scotland, but it’s more sensible to start with the thirty nearer to home, in England. Some were easily discounted, because they’re Heads with wives listed. But there’s a promising looking entry in London – a married man, a civil engineer staying in a hotel in London. But he’s born in Yorkshire, so was he just down temporarily from there?

Using as a keyword the birthplace for Richard from 1901 – "Idle" – I found one 1871 census entry, 5 year old Richard, to an Albert W and Alice A Parry. Richard is actually born in Bradford, and the family are living in Eccleshill. This is the advantage of using "Idle" as a keyword not as a birthplace – Idle is actually only mentioned in the entry as the Sub-registration district, so I’d have missed him on a birthplace search.

And there’s a daughter Edith, aged 10, in the family.

Putting Bradford as the keyword to re-search found Richard in the 1891 (but not 1881). He is a surveyors clerk, in Streatham, London and has his sisters, Edith and Rosa, with him so that entry ties in with both the earlier census entry and the 1901 sister Edith.

And then trying a keyword of Yorkshire found the family in 1881 – in St Giles, Reading, Berkshire. Clearly the family had been in the South for some years.

So everything looks good, but is it? Without the marriage certificate to confirm details such as the fathers' names, it could all just be supposition based on coincidence. I just hope the challenger can find the marriage entry!

And finally, I now have a Freepages account on Rootsweb to use as support for the mailing list and board, so will be able to put there any particular trees that I can’t put on my own web pages, but which really need to be displayed somewhere for people to collaborate on. So I need to get on and write the initial pages and the Colston tree page to put up there.

One thing leads to another..and another….

Recently a “renewed contact” sent me her tree to look over so I have been working on that, whilst also putting together some information on the Colston Parrys. Both families have people who emigrated to the States - which led to me deciding I really ought to do something about systematically collecting the information for there, even if only in index format. So I then extracted the 1920 and 1930 census details, as well as made a list of the items available on Ancestry for the US. I know I collected a few bits and pieces from the site when they allowed three days free searching a while ago, so it’s important I get myself organised to do that properly. But it’s definitely a job that needs doing this year.

I was a bit surprised that there had not been a reply to one of my message board postings but, when I checked the board, I discovered there were actually several messages posted which had not come through to the Parry list – so then I had to email the Rootsweb helpdesk to let them know the gateway appears to have broken. Unfortunately it looks like an intermittent fault, since some messages do get through and others don’t. An ongoing problem there.

Continuing to investigate the Colston Parrys, I had a look at the Bristol Wills Index, which had been mentioned on the Forum back in December – there I found an entry for an Edward Colston Parry who died in 1857. I’d seen that death in the BMD indexes but couldn’t account for it amongst the people I had so far found in the censuses. But now, since it clearly was an adult, not on infant death, I checked out the BVRI and found a possible christening of an Edward Colston Parry to another Edward Colston Parry, in 1803. I suspect, although it will need confirming, that the father is a sibling to the earliest entry I had previously found (a William Colston Parry who had children between 1787-1798).

The possible census entries leading from that christening matched up to some of the “stray” Colston Parrys I had found, so that accounts for several of them – and then I made contact with a researcher connected to the line through a correction they’d submitted to one of the census entries.

There’s been new contacts from several sources after the last few days – not only that one from the census correction, and two who have emailed me directly (make that three, since another email was received today & still needs answering) but also another one via this blog. I’d been thrilled to get my first comment on the blog, which had been from a Guild member who kindly looked for the death of the Lieutenant Parry – but to get the second, from a Parry researcher, is just as exciting.

I do hope they all respond to my replies – the number of new contacts who then don’t acknowledge my response is increasing. I shall obviously have to start either asking for a receipt to such emails, or sending a follow up message to confirm that they did receive my reply. That’s a shame because it all adds to my work, but perhaps it is something I can plan for, or set up to happen automatically – in which case at least it will lead to improvements in my computing skill!

Another coincidence occurred whilst looking for the Colston Parrys in the censuses. I had noticed some (unrelated) Parrys in Bristol, who were born in Buenos Ayres – and then the very next day Howard posted a link on the forum for a site with information from there. That led to me finding the details for the marriage of the parents (which gave me the father’s name) and baptisms for some of the family and, since I was now intrigued enough to look for them elsewhere, also to finding the family in another census.

Notice of an offer for some free credits on the Scotlands People site was posted on a mailing list, so I took advantage of that. Initially I extracted the census index information from Ancestry, thinking that would enable me to identify any entries which were particular priorities, so that I could then obtain copies of them. It did, in that there are several people from “my” three counties. However, it also became apparent that there are differences between the indexes on the two sites, so I then used the credits extracting the index entries from Scotlands People as well and will now need to purchase more in order to obtain the full details for those census entries, as well as to look at the other indexes. There’s definitely a need to prioritise, because of the cost, but at least I now have some idea of the totals involved, which I wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for the free credits.

And, finally, the standard “New Names” message arrived from Genes Reunited to let me know that 719 Parrys have been added to the site since 4 April 07.

Phew, somehow I am glad to know that the message doesn’t need to lead to any action on my part (only because I’ve already collected the entries in the regular trawl that I now carry out twice a week!)

Correcting mistakes

A recent attempt by an inventor to cross the Serpentine in an inflatable balloon prompted a letter to the Daily Telegraph by a Jenny Jones, of Hampshire. It appears that her 3xgt uncle, a Sidney Parry who was a soldier in the Life Guards, once attempted to swim the Serpentine dressed in his full uniform. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it to the other side. He is pictured on the British Empire site.

Of course, nothing is ever straightforward – the site indicates the event was in 1833 but the date given by Jenny is 1834. And, since that was prior to civil registration, there’s no easy way to confirm which is correct. To do so will probably entail finding his burial, (although perhaps a memorial or newspaper report may provide the answer).

I seem to have come across quite a few errors of one sort or another recently. I decided to taking a break from writing emails and do some census transcription instead. Almost immediately I found two entries mistranscribed as Crouch when they should be Parrys. Then a housekeeper as Higgins, the Head of Household’s name, instead of Parry. And then a married daughter of a Parry, whose surname was dittoed to her husband’s surname of Jones, and yet she was transcribed as Parry. So I gained some and lost others!

I also discovered that, where I had previously submitted a correction to Ancestry (again, a case of a married daughter who had been given her maiden name of Goode, instead of her married name, Parry) Ancestry have highlighted her mother and sister and added a note that they also have the alternate name of Parry. Now that’s just silly!

I imagine they use software which “thinks” that if one member of a family has had their name corrected, then all those related to them should as well, rather than having a person actually checking the submission. But the moral of the story for researchers is to beware of the little yellow triangles which highlight an alternate name, because they could be very dubious “alternatives” (and there does not seem to be a way of checking how the triangle came about – whereas actual corrections indicate the submitter – so, unless you can make sense of the other corrections in the household, you could easily get caught out on the names).

Talking of errors, hopefully I have prevented one, by suggesting to a researcher that his family probably did not come from North Wales, given that all the evidence places them in Bristol. It’s a family I call the “Colston Parrys”, since they often use the name Colston as a forename, which makes them fairly easy to spot. Only “fairly” easy - there are a few censuses that I am unable to find them in and there are also a few entries I can’t account for, so it will be interesting to see how they eventually all fit together. Pity most of the marriages are outside of the range for the current Bristol Marriage Challenge.

But I have managed to check and submit entries for the four other challenges soon to begin, so that will be a help towards identifying all the GRO marriage entries. Again though, errors can be an issue – at least two of the entries I have received details for, from earlier challenges, have then turned out to relate to Perry families when matched up against census information (despite everything in the GRO system recording the name as Parry).

I have occasionally commented to Guild members with “old” English names about how their names appear to have a lot more spelling variations than Parry does (which also then leads to more possibilities of mistranscription for them). And I’ve assumed that the difference is due to the longer time that their names have had to mutate, since Welsh surnames settled later than English ones did. But sometimes I get that nagging feeling that, perhaps, when I finally start matching up all the Parrys, I shall find just as many of them “missing”, because they are listed under some unexpected spelling variations.

And perhaps, in the end, the distinction between Parry and Perry will not be as clear as expected based on the theories concerning their origins.

Rambling!

I thought it had been a quiet spell recently, but now that I have looked at some of my activities…..
- a link to an index of Methodist ministers and probationers who have died in the work was posted on the Forum – that contained 9 Parry entries and one Parys. All but one of them should appear in some of the censuses so identifying them in those is on the 'to do' list.
- a link was posted on the Powys list for the gravestones section on the Llanspyddid Community Website. There are three Parrys listed, so I spent some time looking for relevant census entries – found some intriguing links but establishing all of the connections is not easy so that will require some further work.
- another message reminded me of the Longtown Historical Society’s site. When I first searched for Parrys here, I found four pages of references, now there are 16. Clearly a site that needs returning to – especially since it is the parish where my own family were living in the mid 1800s. Aren’t I fortunate that my Parry ancestors lived in an area which now has some keen local historians in it!
- a couple of addresses were posted relating to the Gloucester Record Office and an online index to the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeology Society. There are over 100 Parry references in each, but I know I have looked at these sites before so need to check back first before extracting any more details.
- amongst various ongoing communications with Parry researchers, I also received emails from two who had not been in touch for several years. They’re both researching Parrys in Monmouthshire, largely in 'my' area, so that’s a promising sign for making more progress on the Parrys there during this year.
- had a look for some information on 'Parryville' after a link was sent to me by another researcher. I wonder if I’ll ever find out exactly how many places in the world are named after Sir William Edward Parry, the arctic explorer?
- Results from the first stage of the marriage challenge in Whitechapel district received (Thanks, Howard) – 11 out of 12 marriages found. To put that into perspective – if I was researching those particular families to the extent that I needed to know what was on the certificates, this challenge has saved me a minimum of £77 (or a lot of time searching through otherwise unidentified registers).
- four other marriage challenges have been announced so there’s a few other entries for me to sort out (fortunately none of the recent challenges are hot spots for Parrys)
- I went on an interesting 'sidetrack', when I was checking my one and only entry for the Epsom MC, a Robert Gee Parry. Since it is a fairly distinctive name, I decided to search through the censuses to put together the family. That was reasonably successful but, in the course of it, I began to wonder whether a lot of the 1851 for Manchester is missing. Why does something which starts off relatively easy, then become so much more complicated?
- Booked to go to the 'Who do you think you are?' show at Olympia in May which should be good. Any other Parry researchers planning to attend?
- yesterday there were problems with the search on Ancestry, which seemed a major issue for a while, since neither the .co.uk nor .com seemed to allow any searching. But it was possible to browse the new databases so I did that instead and found they now have Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1956. I thought that might be a useful source and, once the search facility returned, I found I was right - 566 Parry surnamed border crossings, and 32 with Parry as a first name. But there’s 1,235 with Parry as a keyword, so there must be many entries where a Parry is a contact, or next of kin, etc.
- Received an email from NAOMI, the 'National Archive of Memorial Inscriptions.' Although it does have 11 Parrys on the site, I don’t think I shall be purchasing the details, not at £4 per inscription!

So not a quiet few weeks after all – perhaps better described as a ramble, than an amble.

And perhaps I should try posting more often!

Errors and Discoveries

Recently, I was checking the references for marriages to send to the upcoming challenges, confirming the FreeBMD transcriptions using the images on Ancestry, and also searching for the items on the IGI. Whilst doing this, I was surprised to notice a quarter which seemed to have no Parry references (March 1846). The image on Ancestry is a typed one and the surnames ran from Parrott to Parsison.

Since there were references on FreeBMD for that quarter, I had a look at their image, which turned out to be handwritten. Initially I had thought that perhaps a whole page had been missed out when the typed indexes were produced but it soon became obvious that it was just the Parry entries which were "missing" from the typed version and that they ran over several pages in the handwritten version.

The solution? The typed version shows no heading for the Parrys – so there are only five entries which should be Parrott, from an Ann to a Susannah, then the first names start again with Ann but, because the “Parry” is missing, it looks like they are all Parrotts as well

I wonder how often such a thing might happen with a less common name, where it is unlikely to be spotted? At least with Parry, I know there will always be some of them in every quarter so would be suspicious enough to investigate if I found none.

A couple more sites mentioned recently on mailing lists – the Museum of Freemasonry (which also has information on other similar societies) has a searchable catalogue which produced 16 results. Many of them related to the fact that there was a company by the name of Parry who produced some of the medals and regalia. But there were also a few books written by Parrys, which reminded me that I have still not decided on the best way of recording such things.

The London Gazette site was also mentioned. I have come across that one before but again, it should be on my “to do” list because it needs proper organisation and a systematic approach to tackle it, since a search over the whole current date range produces 14803 Gazette Editions that contain the name!

Finally, the discovery – yet another “fess and three lozenge” reference. Found in a Surtees Society publication of the Visitations of the North (Yorkshire and Northumberland) for the family of Baguley, “gold a fess between three lozenges azure” (p120, which is p136 if you use the page box in adobe). Somehow I think this one could be an error, since their normal coat of arms is just three lozenges, and the note does state that the shield is not recorded elsewhere. But it just shows how easy it might be for a single reference to mislead people.

Browsers!

Not directly concerning research but related to the web site and therefore relevant. I received an email last week letting me know that two of the links on the site didn’t appear to work. “Strange,” I thought, “they work for me.” But it was apparent, from the copied text in the email, that something wasn’t right. It turns out that IE automatically corrects little errors in coding – and clearly confusion on my part when I was teaching myself how to write web pages, such that I put \ instead of / on certain links, has probably resulted in some people never being able to view particular pages properly!

Which is a bit of a disappointment, given the number of years since the first pages went online.

I have now (I hope) corrected all of the links. I also realised that a couple of the pedigrees were likely to be displaying incorrectly in certain browsers (images which should align horizontally being displayed vertically instead). Fortunately, I found a solution to that elsewhere on the web so that has been corrected as well.

Ancestry are beginning to add British Army WW1 pension records to their databases. There’s only the A and B surnames at present, but a keyword search turns up three results with Parry either in the contact address or as one of the first names (although I suspect one of those might be mistranscribed as George Parry Blackwell, when it should be George Percy Blackwell).

There have been two new contacts since the end of February, so correspondence with them and some of the other more recent contacts has taken up a reasonable amount of my time. Another marriage challenge has also been announced, so sorting out the entries for those four challenges must be my priority over the next couple of days, although I have also been working on the web page for the Parrys of Penderi – one of the families using the “fess and three lozenge” arms. That’s something I would like to place online fairly soon, since I have received help from two researchers local to that area and it would be nice to show that I have actually done something with all the information they have sent me!

Contacts, more contacts, and Marriages challenges

Isn’t it strange how, sometimes, the things that should be easy to find, turn out to be very elusive. Since the last posting, I’ve received messages from four new contacts, plus a renewal of contact with someone I was last in touch with in 2004. Two of the messages were easy to deal with – one was someone just starting out on research and wondering what to do. He’d already made a good beginning by contacting living relatives, and so it was easy to pass on details of my own page with sources for new genealogists, and a few of the other useful sites, such as the BBC, which has a "getting started" section. The second was a current Parry who’d come across my site and thought they’d write. Again, an easy one to respond to.

Two of the other contacts, strangely enough, were both looking for Parrys called Robert – unfortunately, not the same Robert! What with possibilities of name changes and second marriages for both of them, I knew they would not be very easy to identify. But we have made some progress.

But in the final case, the researcher very kindly sent me a tree going back to the 1800s. And can I find them in all the censuses? No!

Both of us have come up with the same possibilities for some of the entries but second marriages, possible mistranscriptions, and children being born just after census dates have "conspired" to turn what looked like being an easy task, into quite a search. Such is life. Good job I like a challenge.

Talking of challenges, I’ve finally submitted my (19) marriages for the Bristol challenge and suddenly there are three more challenges being announced on the forum. The kindness of Guild members in undertaking these challenges is really appreciated (even if I do have to get a move on to check the details for my entries before submitted them. That’s minor work compared to what they are taking on.)

Other news – I have updated some of the pages on my web site, to tidy up my Sources and Resources page, and to include the link to Ruth’s site. Ruth and I have also been "chatting" about coats of arms. The details of a Surname information site were posted on the forum, but subsequent comments by the experts (i.e. the one-namers who know their own surnames better than a general researcher would) indicate that much of the information is suspect (so I won’t even repeat the link!). Genes Reunited continues to grow – between the 9th – 23rd Feb there have been 1101 new entries for Parry (according to the "Genes New Names Alert"). I wonder how many of the submitters are actually researching or whether it is just people submitting their recent families?

And, finally, I discovered that the University of Wales, Aberystwyth has been granted the funding to put Bartrum’s Welsh Genealogies on-line. (BBC article) Brilliant news for those of us interested in the old pedigrees but who don’t live on the doorstep of the NLW. Mind you, with all the Welsh naming that is in there, I wonder how long it will be before "researchers" are publishing all sorts of pedigrees showing how their family connects to those in Bartrum’s work?

Perhaps it's a good job the project will take three years - that might give me sufficient time to identify some of the Parry families who genuinely trace back to them.

Matching marriage entries, and other news

I have almost finished sorting out the Liverpool district Parry marriages, to help Susan with her challenge. The process is not really complicated, just time consuming, as I have mentioned before. Basically it involves:
- already having a listing of civil registration items (perhaps extracted from something like Freebmd, or transcribed personally from the GRO indexes)
- collecting the items on the Lancsbmd site (relatively easy because it is possible to download a csv file of the results).
- checking each item from Lancsbmd to find its GRO reference (using Freebmd as far as possible but looking up on the original images where necessary). [For a low frequency name, it might be possible to skip this step and to match to a listing of the civil registration items just on the basis of the names alone but this is not possible for the Parrys – they’re just too common.]
- matching the Lancsbmd listing with its added references to the listing of civil registration items.

In some ways, it would be easiest to run the match process using a program like Access but there are some difficulties with doing this. Firstly, if running the match on the basis of just the GRO references, then there are additional entries created in any situation where two Parrys have the same references (which can happen because of Parry-Parry marriages but there is also at least one case of two Parrys marrying non-Parrys yet having the same references. Was it a brother and sister marrying on the same day or was it just coincidence that they followed each other in the register?) Although it is possible to automatically delete any duplicates, this won’t solve the problem of "false matches".

But, if the original matching process takes names into account as well as references, then it won’t match items where there are slight differences in spellings, such as the Susannah who appears on Lancsbmd as Sussanah, or the James who probably should be a Jane. And it certainly won’t match the "Christina" who probably should be a "David John"!

Although the Freebmd name transcription can be checked back to the original indexes, there’s no way of checking the Lancsbmd entries. And what if the transcription is correct but the spelling is just different in each source? Such situations lead to the question of whether I really need to be adding a standardised name column to every file as well (which I will obviously need eventually, when I finally want to put all of the names into a master index. But do I want to sidetrack onto consideration of "standard forms" at the moment?)

And, of course, any automatic matching process using the GRO references, presupposes that the references on the civil registration listing have all been corrected (which they haven’t!)

In the end I just find it easier to match using Excel, keeping all the columns of each file but then also having one column with all the GRO references in to sort on, which brings the matching items next to each other enabling them to be combined manually. It might take longer but I keep control and at least I know there are no false duplications. Then it is just a matter of putting the information into a form that is usable by Susan since I have sent both a full column file (in case she wants to double check anything) but also a reduced file based just on the references and including spouses and church, which should be easier for her to work with for the challenge.

Hopefully, having now listed all the process, it will remind me of what to do if much time lapses before I tackle any more UKbmd sites.

Other news - more years have been added to the passenger lists on findmypast – it now covers from 1890 – 1909 and includes 2038 Parrys.

Another researcher mentioned a strange entry on FamilySearch, where what is possibly her Williams family have all been entered as if a Caleb Parry is their father (easy to find – use "All resources, look for a Martha JASPER, with Caleb in the father’s name. First entry, on the IGI, for Martha Williams Jasper, born 14 FEB 1821 Llanbedr, Brecon, Wales, is the relevant one. Click on her and then the "Family" link alongside Caleb.). Having done some further searching, I found an entry in the 1871 census for Abergavenny showing a Caleb Parry visiting the Jaspers. Caleb was originally recorded as a Minister, to which someone has added "Latter Day Saints". Now I wonder when that was added!

Caleb is recorded as being born in America but, based on various census and IGI entries, I suspect he might actually have been born in Flintshire, and that he then moved out to Utah, marrying a Catherine from Wales either before or after he arrived there (or on the boat, as some IGI entries have it). He then returned to the UK around 1870/71, and died in Birmingham in 1871. There’s also an interesting collection of other marriages, along with some children born to one of the other wives, children who do appear with Caleb and Catherine in the US census. I wouldn’t have been able to tell from just the census entries but it seems possible that this is my first case of the "multiple marriages" one is reputed to find amongst the LDS.

Funnily enough, one of the names which appears in the family is Bernard, and I have just dealt with a query from another researcher who has family using that name, in the same area of Flintshire. I wonder if there might be a connection there? It’s a pity there are so many of these North Wales families – it will be a fascinating job to sort them all out eventually but, at the moment, I just don’t have the time or resources.

Next priority is to update my website, and add that link to Ruth's site.

The last few days

Two sites have been posted on the Forum regarding indentured servants to the US. One has 7 results from just a Parry search (3xPARRY, 1xPERREY, 3xPERRY). However, a soundex search produced 32 results, including 2x PERREY and 9xPERRY. The reason for the difference is that the other results found on the Parry search all have Parry as a spelling variant within the entry. It’s always useful to explore what results different search methods produce on a particular website, especially when dealing with early records. It helps in determining the best strategy for searching, in order to get the right balance between picking up everything which is relevant, without being inundated with irrelevant entries. The second site did not appear to have a specific search facility, so needed to be searched using Google’s site search. That indicated there were 36 pages with references to Parry, but the site is familiar - have I searched it before?

I have been thinking about organisation and how little things can make a difference. Sometimes it happens that I come across a site whilst searching for something else, or a useful site is mentioned on the Forum but I either don’t have time to look at it, or else I just carry out an initial extraction and don’t finish tidying up the information. I often leave the Forum messages highlighted to remind me to go back “at some stage” – but then I don’t always check back through those emails when a “new” site is mentioned. How much simpler it would be if I just had one spreadsheet into which I entered all the web sites when they were first mentioned, including details such as whether there are any Parrys, if so, at what stage my extraction is in, and for sites where information is still being added, the date I last extracted the details. Doing that would mean I only have one place to check to see if I have already done work on the site. It would also enable me to clear out a lot of my old emails. Just a simple piece of organisation.

The trick is to make sure I stick to the system!

Two burial sites mentioned on the Forum, following on from one concerning Missouri death records (which is still sitting highlighted in my “GOONS” messages folder) – St Lukes, in Upper Norwood, Surrey with 1 Parry, and Jewishgen, which has 1925 results using a “sounds like” search but only 3 for exact spelling Parry. Since one needs to register to view the details, I have left it for the moment. But that’s now four entries in my new spreadsheet.

Some good news – Ruth’s book on Blanche Parry is with the publishers, although it sounds like it could be near the end of the year before it is published. I will set up a link to her site, which should help her to get noticed on the search engines. It will be interesting to read what she has discovered, especially with regard to the family as they appear in the bardic poems – one of the few more contemporary records relating to them.

A marriage challenge for Bristol 1837-1851 has been announced. I thought I might have quite a few entries but there appears to only be 19. I’ll need to go through and see if I can find any of them on the IGI, or other such sources, first before I can submit them. But that project is such a help to Guild members. I have also received copies of some certificates from another researcher so that adds to the collection. I must set out my timetable for tackling the marriage indexes – but I still have the Liverpool entries from 1881-1911 to sort out first to help Susan with her challenge.

Todays emails included the Rootsweb review. I often only skim through that, but of course it also includes a list of new databases. I should really try checking them when they are announced – or at least add them to my new spreadsheet. I hope it proves as effective as I am finding my “activity log” for emails. There is something quite satisfying to see 3 emails received (just this morning – one renewed contact from 2002, one about the marriage certificate, and one about an unsuccessful deeds search) and all of them marked off as acknowledged already. It helps to keep a sense of order to the study.

Now all I need to do is clear the longer outstanding ones which I have marked in red!

So much for being organised!

The blog is certainly failing miserably at its task of letting people know what’s going on with the study. But, never mind, I have decided that the success of a New Year’s resolution should be measured by whether the planned action is consistently in practice by the end of the year. So I still have plenty of time to get organised and into a better routine of writing it.

There has been a lot happening though. Firstly I’ve made up my mind with regard to the civil registration indexes – largely as a result of emailing Susan, the Liverpool marriage challenger. Although I’m not submitting any of the Parry marriages for the district, she said that the listing iteself would be of help to her and that perhaps I would find the Lancsbmd site of use myself. I certainly did – it turned out that there are 964 entries on there which related to the period covered by the current challenge. Although some of them were duplications (because separate entries appear to be made for both maiden name and the 1st married name when someone has been married before) I have been able to match almost 600 entries so far from the Lancsbmd to the GRO listing. Which means those GRO entries now have the spouse and church details added to them, making it much easier to identify a particular marriage amongst the many Parrys with the same name.

At the same time, I was also trying to match those Liverpool items which are on the IGI to the GRO, since that also helps to identify the relevant churches and spouses. The two matching processes have been time-consuming, since every Lancsbmd entry initially needed looking up in the GRO just to be able to match the items properly, and the second marriage issue did cause me a few problems (Parry entries in Lancsbmd aren’t necessarily Parrys in the GRO). There were also anomalies with the IGI because some items are on there with the surname as, for example "Jones or Parry" or "Parry or Jones". And there is a difference between these because one is found when using Parry as a search term and one isn’t. This means that the entries found on the IGI are not actually the ones which will be found on the GRO as having married under the surname Parry. Confusing until you realise what’s going on.

But the final result of all this work has been the realisation that it could be possible to identify quite a number of the GRO marriage references – not just who is marrying who, but also which church it took place in – through the UKbmd sites, and that is definitely worth doing, so work on the GRO marriage index has become a priority for this year. (And I’m wishing there were a lot more districts covered by UKbmd sites!).

Whether the GRO birth and death indexes will follow remains to be seen, since I do still want to get the census entries for my main counties transcribed fully and online, as well as some particular family trees derived from them.

In line with the decision to work on the marriages, I have made a start on contacting the 35 other Guild members who might already have the full details for some of the marriages, since they have submitted entries to the GMI indicating a Parry married into their registered name. This of course adds to my correspondence, which has also included five new contacts since I last wrote, as well as renewed contact with a researcher I last wrote to in 2002, and over twenty other Parry related emails received – most of which I have answered but there are still a few long outstanding ones.

There’s a few specific items to mention from the correspondence – one of the new contacts was having difficulty with her Parrys in Herefordshire, because there appeared to be some duplicate entries, but with slightly differing details. This illustrated how a One-Name Study can help in sorting out such situations, since I had sufficient information to be able to demonstrate that there were actually two different couples called Henry and Emma Parry within the same area, both of about the same age, rather than there being some error in the way the census was enumerated. I’ve received a very interesting enquiry with regard to Parrys who were prisoners of Napoleon – I’ll write more on this in a later blog entry since I’m only just beginning to look into it. The issue of surnames possibly being used as first names was touched on by another query – in this case the researcher was trying to find out about a James Burdett Parry in London who, unfortunately, died before any of the censuses and civil registration began so I am struggling to find much about him. The interesting point though, is that in Herefordshire there is a John Burdett Parry, whose wife came from London – could there be a connection or is the use of Burdett just a coincidence?

As I was answering this query, Daniel posted to the Forum a method for searching middle names on Freebmd – which obviously I checked out for Parry. Only just over 4900 on there at the moment. The question arises as to whether such entries are considered part of an ONS. Some researchers say no, because they regard an ONS as just instances of the *surname*. Others say yes, because it is still use of the name – and, since the situation often arises through use of a maiden name as a middle name, one would expect such entries to be of help in identifying marriages. But, with a common surname, there can be as many (if not more) "first name" instances as some other One Name Studies have in their entire study!

Other interesting points from the past month (most courtesy of Guild members as usual) – a site about Family History in India which has 39 pages with Parrys on (still need to sort out those), the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office have put their Wills index online and some of the items have the images freely associated with them. (32 Parry entries – still to follow up properly). The passenger lists on Findmypast (used to be 1837 online) have 774 Parry entries so far (just for 1890 to 1899). A database of cases heard in the Court of Chivalry between 1634 – 1640 produced 131 references. Many of them appear to relate to cases where a Parry was the solicitor but again, this site still needs investigating properly. A project involving the digitising of documents from the US National Archives (NARA) – it’s currently a pay to view site, but it appears the documents will be available for free after five years (which gives me plenty of time to index the 1185 documents mentioning Parrys that are already there, before I even consider viewing the actual records) (Note - the total has now gone up to 1241 since I first searched.)

Finally, during the last month I’ve also received upgrades to two very useful programs – Genmap and LDS companion (both available from Archer Software). Now I’ve just got to find the time to use them!

Holiday’s end

Well, the decorations came down yesterday and are boxed up, ready to go back in the loft, so I guess that means the holiday season really is over. Time to get back to "work".

Not that I actually stopped working, of course! Even with visitors around, it was still possible to carry out a few of those "mindless cut and paste" jobs. As I mentioned earlier, I have been thinking that I should perhaps re-adjust my priorities and do something with the civil registration entries. So, over the holidays, I had a look at Parrys on the FreeBMD site - only 45,515 births, 27,054 marriages and 32,523 deaths.

And there’s already almost 2000 new entries added to those, since they updated the site on 5th Jan.

That just goes to show what a major task transcribing the details of the civil registration indexes would be – yet alone then attempting to identify who each entry relates to. It’s a good job some of the Parrys used distinctive names. There were quite a few I recognised from queries or my own research. But in a few years time, the DoVE project will probably be on-line, which might render the current indexes obsolete.

One advantage of collecting some of the entries would be that I could submit requests to the Guild Marriage Challenges, where members are looking up church records for particular registration districts. This enables members to discover the full details of the event, making it much more likely they can identify the people concerned. However, I doubt it would be appreciated if I submitted a request to the current challenge for Liverpool – with 1141 Parry marriages in that district within the relevant timespan, it could be a good way of destroying the enthusiasm that’s been shown for the project.

So, still some thought needed as to what I do with regard to the civil registration indexes.

During the holidays, I have also been working on extracting the rest of the details for the Parry entries in the NLW probate indexes on A2A. This should enable me to identify their relevant parishes, which will be useful at the moment for sorting out those Parrys from Carmarthenshire, in particular, and for deciding whether any other probate items could be relevant to them. I haven’t yet transcribed the four items I received just before Christmas, but I have had further parish information sent to me by the local researchers. Amongst that, I noticed an entry for a Griffith TWYNING. I don’t think that’s a very common surname and I wonder whether it could relate to the Twining’s Tea company – there are a couple of references to Twinings in the book The Parrys of the Golden Vale, about the family of CHH Parry. This could be a lead with regard to how that family really connects to others who use the "fess and three lozenges" coats of arms. Something to bear in mind, at least.

There have been a couple of useful web sites mentioned on the Forum – a Directory for Cuba from 1960 netted one Parry, there was another Parry in a cemetery index from Sleaford and today I found three Parrys in the New Bedford (Massachusetts) Whaling Archives.

But I mustn’t get too sidetracked on such "new" things – I still have seven people to email with regard to Parry messages received over Christmas, two of whom are new contacts, so that is a good start to the year. Let’s hope it continues (now all I need to do is pursuade all these contacts that they really want to contribute to the study – I wonder how long it would take to collect all the BMD indexes if every Parry researcher helped?)

A quick summary

Just a quick summary of the last few days, so that I don’t get too far behind over Christmas.

There have been several sites posted on the Guild forum concerning patents, following an initial message mentioning Google’s new beta Patent Search. These all still need following up, since there are 916 Parry references on the Google site alone.

I received a query from Adam, another Guild member, concerning marriages between people of his registered name (Hargest) and people of mine. Since one of the marriages was in 1914, I didn’t have any information on that couple but, by taking a guess as to the likely birth date for a first child, I did manage to find a birth registration in the right area for a child with the mother’s maiden name as Hargest, so that was a start. His other query related to a marriage in the 1700s in Llandyfalle, Breconshire – again, apart from having the entry from the marriage bond index, I couldn’t identify the Harry Parry further. But he was from the parish of Gwenddwr, Breconshire, where there is quite a sizeable Parry family being researched by others so I shall look into that further in the New Year, as well as try to do more on the births from the 1900s.

The subject of "cross marriages" between Guild Members has been on my mind after an email from Mary, who organises the Guild Marriage Index. There are currently 79 entries in the Index for Parry marriages, all of which have been submitted by other members. I could possibly find out the full details for each of those entries by contacting the other members – so that’s another thing to add to my "to do" list. (Fortunately several members have submitted more than one Parry marriage so at least that’s only 35 emails to write, not 79).

After posting a message about the NLW probate indexes onto the Powys list, I received a request for information abut a marriage between a Mary Parry to a William Thomas, around 1852/3. I have found one possibility in the GRO indexes for 1854 but also realised that the enquirer had already bought at least one certificate which appeared relevant to them – just one of the problems associated with such high frequency names.

But these recent queries have made me think about adjusting my priorities – although I really do want to get the details for the census entries for my three main counties transcribed and online asap, I am beginning to think that finishing the listing of the GRO will be of more use – it would save me having to spend time looking for possible entries when I receive such queries. It would also mean I would have the items listed so that, as I go through the censuses, I should be able to identify the relevant BMDs for the people I am transcribing.

Following on from my last entry, I received another Genes Reunited "New Names Alert" and decided to look at the entries for the last 14 days – supposedly there were 635 entries, but this total became 636 when I went to the page and, once I tried extracting the details, the final total shown was only 607. Definitely strange!

I have received the photocopies of the four probate entries that I had ordered from the NLW. Two of them are actually just administrations, but they have inventories and bonds with them so that still gives me the next of kin details. It is interesting to see how the earliest (1680) has a value of almost £490 pounds (probably a lot of money in those days) whereas two of the others were £19 (1694) and £92 (1746). I don’t know yet whether these do all relate to the same family but, if they do (as I suspect, since it is not a common surname in that particular area), one wonders at the changing fortunes. It will probably be after Christmas before I can transcribe them all properly, and I know there are some others to obtain for these Parrys in Llanvalteg but, hopefully, they should enable me to put together at least some form of a pedigree for the family. Then it will be a matter of trying to find other records, eg parish register entries, to confirm the details.

But I haven’t seen anything yet to indicate the use of a coat of arms, which was where this line of investigation started.

And, finally, another Guild member has written to me to see if I have any hints on where to start with carrying out a large study. (I shall resist the temptation to say “don’t” – I enjoy what I am doing too much myself – but sometimes I do think we’re a strange bunch!)

New Year’s resolution!

I mentioned recently to a friend that I’ve already made my New Year’s resolution – and that it is "To be more organised." The fact that, yet again, it is over two weeks since I posted anything probably demonstrates why – there’s certainly been things happening on the study, they just haven’t made it into the blog.

It’s amazing how much time gets wasted through not being organised – papers not filed when printed, resulting in it taking longer to find them when they’re needed, emails not written when first thought of, so it effectively takes twice as long to write them because they need "re-thinking". And I have lost count of the number of half-finished web pages in the "working" folder. How much more convenient it would be if those were finished – then I could just give people a link to them instead of having to virtually rewrite the same information in an email to answer a query, as I did yesterday. Another researcher had asked whether Ap Harry (which led to the surname Parry) was also the same surname as Harry. Now that page on the origins and derivation of the surname would have been so useful – if only it was online!

The question arose because I’d posted on a couple of mailing lists about a new discovery – the pre-1858 probate indexes for Wales have finally been made available online, but through the A2A site, rather than the NLW. That will be a great help to researchers – there are well over 2000 entries just for Parry and, since the records go back to the 1500s, it’s important for me to include the "ap Harrys" as well as other variations on those two names. I have collected all of the references that show up just from the initial search, but I still need to go through each catalogue individually in order to pick up the parish information. With 68 separate catalogues and all those individual entries, I think I could be busy for some time. But what a great resource for anyone researching family in Wales. And it could also be useful for the wider study of surnames – looking at the frequencies of particular names in particular areas and at how the Welsh surnames developed over time.

That I discovered the indexes were on A2A was thanks to one of the two researchers who have been helping me with regard to the Parrys in Carmarthenshire – he’d sent me a second listing of Wills for the parish of Llanfallteg and I’d recognised the format as that of A2A so checked out the site. Such contact with people who are local to the area of research is a great help and often a good reason for joining and supporting the local family history societies. Of course, I had already written to the NLW with regard to the four Wills for the Parrys of Llanfallteg that had previously been mentioned to me, and it now looks as if there will be a few more that are relevant, but such is life. I shall probably wait until I have been through all of the early Will entries, adding parishes and any other details, before I decide which others are important enough to obtain copies of. I now know, from the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, that one of the family was born in Llangan, an adjoining parish to Llanfallteg, so I shall obviously have to widen the net from just that parish.

I have been working hard over the last week to try to get all my emails up to date, after some non-genealogy activities had taken up my time. I think I have done reasonably well – even managing to answer some emails on the day I received them, since more come in while I’m clearing the backlog. But there are still a few long outstanding ones (that I need to find the paperwork for!).

An interesting point arose with regard to one of the new correspondants – the use of Parry as a first name. I am now in touch with three people whose first name is Parry – but two are male, and one is female. It’s interesting how "non-gender specific" the use of a surname as a first name can be.

There have been some interesting discussions on the Guild Forum recently. One, about the differences between Access and Excel and how people use them for recording their genealogical research, has set me thinking about organisation (again!). Another was about the Genes Reunited site, and about how to follow up the "Genes New Names Alert" messages. When I was a member (I joined for a year to solve a family mystery) I rarely received these notifications but now, having let my membership lapse, they are arriving every two weeks.

From the 3rd Nov – 15th Nov, there were 812 new Parrys added and from the 17th Nov – 1st Dec there were 787. In total, there are currently 34982 Parrys listed on the site – that’s more than there were in the UK in any one census. You’d think, with that number of entries, there must be a lot of researchers who should connect to each other – I wonder if people actually look for, and follow up, possible matches?

Perhaps I should just be glad they aren’t all writing to me - not even my New Year's resolution would help in dealing with that number of queries!

Forgotten Blog?

Anyone who reads this blog frequently (is there such a person?) could be forgiven for thinking that I had forgotten it.

Back on the 6th November, I started to plan an entry which was going to be entitled “A Justified sidetrack”. It was to follow on from my previous one, where I had mentioned getting sidetracked such that I wasn’t working on the things I should have been doing. I really did intend to get on with writing the web page about the coats of arms – but then Ancestry made their databases available for free for three days. Since I only have a UK subscription, I could hardly resist such an opportunity to explore the entries relating to the other countries, could I?

So that was the “justified” sidetrack.

But I had just finished investigating those entries when Ancestry added a further batch of immigration records – and then made them available for free until the end of November.

Of course, I have only extracted the index information for most of these records – with the number of Parry entries on the site, it would be impossible to follow them all up in the time available (even with another “three days free” offer, which they have just sent me.). But at least the details I have collected should enable me to look at the sorts of records which are available and to get them into some form of basic organisation. Then, when I do get the time and resources to follow up further, I should have some idea of what I am looking at.

I did check a couple of the John Parrys, who appeared in the passenger lists around 1890, in case one of them might have been my great grandfather. He is reputed to have gone abroad at about that time, but there is insufficient information on the lists to identify most of them. I wonder whether there are any other records which might be of use? [If anyone does come across a John Parry, born in 1865 in Glynfach, Breconshire, (but just as likely to state his birthplace as Monmouthshire or Herefordshire since the family moved around when he was young) possibly working as a cattleman somewhere in Canada or America around 1890, but who has then “disappeared” by 1901, I’d love to hear from them. He was back in the UK by 1901.]

I had a nice surprise last week, when one of the Guild members sent me the details for four Parry related marriages – the results of the Guild Marriage Challenge that he had been carrying out. Two of them I’d asked for and they will help another researcher. The other two were previously unknown to me and, since one of them relates to someone with Parry as his middle name - which he never used in full on any census – I now have the added puzzle of working out where the usage came from.

I still have the backlog of sites which had been mentioned on the Guild forum to check out for Parry entries, so no news of any great discoveries amongst them. There have been three new contacts so far this month and I still have some census details to look at for two of the researchers who made contact during October. I’ve also been taking a look at the National Archives, where I discovered that some of their special collections are available online for free – so, at long last, I have a copy of the records relating to the “grievances and horrible extortions and destructions done to Jordan, abbot of Dore and his abbey“ as a result of the attacks by Griffith and John ap Henry [SC 8/213/10624 if anyone else want to look at it].

And, finally (only six days after starting to plan the above), I have discovered that Llanfallteg, the parish in Carmarthenshire where the Pendery farm mentioned in the previous entry is, has a Village History Society. I have been exchanging emails with two researchers from there who have been very helpful in supplying me with maps and information on the area. I have downloaded a Will from the PRO for a Richard Parry who died in London in 1641, and who I suspect could be the Richard from Llanfallteg, mentioned on the Genuki page at http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/CMN/Llanfallteg/Lloyd.html. That should be interesting to transcribe. And I’ve also put in a request to the NLW with a view to obtaining copies of four other Parry Wills from Llanfallteg so it’s a case of “watch this space” – I shall track down these “fess and three lozenge” families eventually!

Coincidences and sidetracks

This week, I have been working on a web page relating to the “fess and three lozenges” heraldry puzzle – where several, apparently unconnected, families all use the same (or very similar) coats of arms. One of the families has been described as being descended from the “Parrys of Pendery”, a farm reported to be in the parish of Llanfallteg, near the border of Carmarthenshire with Pembrokeshire. I had looked for Pendery in various sources but had found no other reference to it.

Last night I noticed an email which had been dumped in the bulk mail (ie spam) folder by msn, which just had the subject “lloyd”. Lloyd’s not a family name I recognise, so I almost deleted it but something made me stop and check the properties. At which point, I recognised the sender as someone I’d previously helped with regard to her Parry family. She was wondering if I could get her started on her Lloyd line. Now, I don’t normally get too involved with research into other surnames – there just aren’t enough hours in the day – but this time I did, because of where they were living.

Only the exact farm I had wanted to identify with regard to the Parry family!

It looks as if the Parrys had long since left, by the time her family were at the farm but, what a coincidence. At least I now know where the farm was.

On one of the days earlier this week, I started out with the intention of writing the heraldry page, but got sidetracked immediately when I checked my mail beforehand. There was a message from ebay with regard to an item I was watching – a book about a railway tunnel, which had been written by a Keith Parry. In trying to find out more about it, I ended up extracting the details of all of the books which had been written by Parrys and which were held at a particular library. It was a fairly manageable number, only thirty two such authors there. But I wonder how many there would be if I tried the British Library catalogue? It’s things like this which make me stop and think about the goals of a one-name study, and how feasible it is to collect *everything* on the name.

The two new contacts I mentioned on the 23th have both responded with further information, which is great. Sometimes people don’t even acknowledge my response to their first enquiry, which can be a bit disheartening. One of the families is from North Wales so, as usual, there is probably not a great deal that I can add to his research but sometimes just sharing the information enables people to spot gaps and further opportunities for research. The other family originates from the area around West Dean in Gloucestershire but they are living in Monmouthshire for some of the later censuses, so that makes them one which I will be including on my web site.

If only I didn’t keep sidetracking and actually got on with writing the pages!

Quieter weeks

The past couple of weeks have been fairly quiet from the correspondence point of view, which has been useful since I have had other things to do. But that doesn’t mean work on the Parry collection took a break.

I recently helped on the Guild stall at a local history fair and discovered that the Herefordshire Family History Society, (who were conveniently on the adjoining table), have now produced their marriage index on cdrom. Given the concentration of Parrys in Herefordshire, as well as my own family links there, this was one cd I just had to buy! Some of the entries will be on the IGI, of course, but there are others that aren’t. (Even for those that are, having such a second transcription will be useful for confirming the details of the entries, since it will be some time before I could check all of the parish registers myself). Another advantage of such indexes on cdrom, as opposed to searching an index such as the IGI online, is that the whole index can be viewed. This makes it easier to spot entries with variant spellings such as Pary, Parey, Parrie, Parrye, (and “ap Harry” with the “ap” as part of the first name). There are 891 marriages with just the “Parry” spelling so plenty to keep me busy there (and three of them are Parry-Parry marriages, which will add to the fun of identifying their family links!).

A weekend away in Kent gave me the opportunity to visit Banstead parish churchyard, which I had read contained a Parry tomb. Email correspondence with a member of the local History group, who kindly went and checked the churchyard for me, confirmed beforehand that the monument did exist and was accessible. Although there are no personal names on the actual tomb, it does have coats of arms on it, photographs of which I will put up on my web site soon. And I know who is likely to be buried in it from the details in the book, which are confirmed by the entries in the National Burial Index.

Coats of arms can be very useful for identifying links between families – as long as one can be sure that they are genuine and have not been assumed. Whilst in Kent, we visited Canterbury Cathedral and I had a bit a a surprise when I found a Parry tomb there – that of Edward Parry, Suffragan Bishop of Dover, who was also an Archdeacon of Canterbury. The tomb shows the same coat of arms as that on the tomb at Banstead – which also matches to the arms found in several other places around the country. But most of these families have no known connection between them - so I think it is definitely time for a ”puzzle page” on the web site.

The Guild Forum has again been the source of several possible sites for collecting information but, since I haven’t yet had time to follow any of them up, comments will have to wait for another blog entry.

And the lull in correspondence has obviously passed, since I received emails from two new contacts yesterday.

Assortments

It seems to have been a week of “bits and bobs”, with nothing actually getting completed sufficiently to justify writing about it. However, in keeping with the blog’s “reason to be”, here’s a few notes:

I finally got time to look up a web site of obituaries, relating to Saginaw, Michigan, which had been mentioned on the Forum. Although searching for Parry as a surname produced just four results, using the “full record” option resulted in twelve. Three of these additional entries were for people born in Parry Sound, another three related to a Campbell family, where the husband’s first name was Parry but, of the other two, one was the married daughter of a Parry couple and the other was an entry where the spouse’s maiden name was Parry. Certainly a good example of how a wider text search can be more fruitful than just a surname search.

Another site mentioned was for the Jamaican phone book – netted fourteen Parry entries (although, being current, these go in the “file for later” category).

As well as updating the Parry profile on the Guild site, so that the census figures are more up-to-date and there is now a link to this blog, I have been working on my web page for the Parrys in Herefordshire in 1901. I have finished the extraction of the full details and am adding a map of the distribution within the county – but there are always some issues to sort out when trying to plot maps, so that still needs further work.

It’s funny how one thing can lead to another - the correspondence with regard to the Aston Somerville Parrys reminded me of a reference I came across a few years ago, for a Parry family in Lillington, Dorset, who appear to bear the same arms. There is a Will for a George Parry of Lillington mentioned in the Parry Abstracts book and he appears on some pedigree sheets I have from Hereford library. But, whilst searching for further information on the Parrys from Lillington, I happened to come across a list of marriages at Winfrith Newburgh (no. I’d never heard of it, either!) which included the marriage of an Alexander Parry of Owermoigne to Joane Mildeton on 20 Jun 1603. I suspect this is Alexander, son of Leonard Parry, the Rector of Owermoigne – who just happens to appear on the same pedigree as George, only without any details for his marriage, so that’s a useful find.

Another item found through the Lillington/Parry search was an “index to Dorsetshire” which, on further investigation, turned out to be an ongoing series of publications concerning monumental brasses. A google site search produced several references to Parrys there, so that’s clearly something to explore further.

Whilst I was thinking about the discrepancies in some of the Parry pedigrees, I had another look at the online Calendars of Patent Rolls, since I know several people on the pedigrees appear in them. This site seems to have improved its layout so it's easier to follow up the references (mainly to Ap Harrys/Ap Henrys in those days, not Parrys) But I need to understand more about these sorts of records, and the history of the time, before I can make sense of some of the entries.

There’s been a sudden flurry of activity on the mailing list – mainly due to one researcher who has “found” the message board. At least it has enabled me to see that the gateway between the board and the list is finally working properly, as are the mailing list digests.

I received copies of two certificates from another researcher, which will be a help when I come to deal with the civil registration entries. There have also been two further new contacts this week – one already back to 1780, and the other in America, so perhaps not a great deal I can help them with, but I shall try.

And finally, a notification from the Powys mailing list that the Genuki pages now contain a list of photographers in Wales – not surprisingly, a few of them are Parrys!

Historical Records

Two new contacts over the last few days, as well as continued correspondence with three others. One of the new contacts has family in Monmouthshire which is already traced back to an Edward Parry born around 1806, so I am not sure how much help I will be able to be at the moment, although I have been able to find some relevant census details.

But it is always good to account for a few more Parrys from one of my three main counties.

The other new contact is even further back in their research, having traced the family back to the mid 1600s. This is a family I recognise – the Aston Somerville Parrys – who, from the coat of arms on the monument in the church there, could possibly connect to the Henry Parry who was Bishop of Worcester in the early 1600s, and also to the Parrys of the Golden Valley, Herefordshire.

Which reminds me that I still have some photographs relating to Henry, and to the Aston Somerville memorials, which I haven’t yet sorted out to put on the web site.

I’d love to be able to find the links between all of the families who used this coat of arms – but will I ever know enough to do so?

It’s not just the simple “data processing” task, of gathering more information in order to connect up all of the, currently unconnected, individuals or partial pedigrees (and to correct the discrepancies in some of the accounts already published). It’s also about having the skill to understand what some of the information gathered actually means - I needed a lesson on the background and language of marriage settlements recently, having misunderstood which of the parties actually had the “use” of the property.

Sometimes the thought of amateurs such as myself tackling historical records is quite frightening!

Perhaps that’s just one of the difficulties of carrying out a One-Name Study – we collect everything, from any place and any time. So, whereas a “normal” genealogist would be tackling things gradually, working back a step at a time, we might suddenly find ourselves delving into medieval records (or even earlier) without having had the opportunity to build up the background knowledge necessary for their correct interpretation.

A cue for a reminder to myself – to constantly ask, “Am I understanding this correctly?” and to be prepared for alternative explanations, rather than assuming things really are as they first appear.

Matching references

Thanks to a comment by another Guild member, John Dods, I spent some time yesterday extracting references to Parrys from the National Archives of South Africa. There were 828 occurrences of the name so I have a lot of work to do in identifying exactly what is there but, whilst looking through them, I just happened to notice some references to “Leon Parry and Hayhoe Ltd”. It stuck out to me because Leon is not a name I have come across for a Parry.

Later, I happened to be looking at the new British Phone Books database on Ancestry – and what should I find but entries for “Parry Leon & Hayhoe, Travel Agnts (South Africa) Ltd, 219 Regent st W.1”

I then checked that address in a 1934 Trade Directory, but they weren’t there. However, they were listed under the Commercial section - “PARRY, LEON & HAYHOE (SOUTH AFRICA) LIMITED (Representing Parry, Leon & Hayhoe Ltd. The South African steamship, shipping, forwarding & insurance agents, bonded warehousemen &c.; marine surveyors & adjustors; agents for brokers at Lloyds), 19 & 20 Northumberland avenue WC2- Telegrams, “Parlehay, London”; Phone, Whitehall 3387 & 3388.

I wasn’t sure where to find them within the Trade section but a look under Shipping revealed that “Agents-Shipping” was the most likely grouping and, yes, there they were, as well as under the Northumberland Avenue address in the street directory.

Repeating the process with a 1938 directory, I found from the Commercial listing that the company was now at 2 Conduit St. And again, they appeared under that address in the Street Index and also under the Agents-Shipping group in the trade directory.

Of course, “Leon” wasn’t the first name of a Parry, it was the surname of someone else in the company, as indicated by a message now found on one of the mailing lists.

But, if I had realised that at the time, I might not have remembered the name later so would not have spotting the matching references!

An afternoon's search

Well, I was right – another two weeks before I posted an entry. But I can’t blame the mailing list transfer. Everything went smoothly with that and the Parry list has now migrated to the new mailing list software being used by Rootsweb.

No, it has just turned out to be a busy couple of weeks. Again, correspondance has taken up a fair amount of my time – fourteen Parry related emails received, leading to eleven replies being sent. A couple of the responses involved following families through all of the censuses, which can be quite time consuming but is also fascinating – seeing how fortunes change and a child in the workhouse can become someone famous, or how some families "die out", because branches all end with daughters, so there are no sons to carry on the family name.

Amongst the information sent to me recently was another obituary. As I’ve mentioned before, these can be very useful sources of information, as they often list the relatives attending the funeral. But one thing I noticed about this one was the separation of men and women – the men attending the funeral and the women being at the house. Was this a particular social practice of the time (or the area), I wonder?

There’s more to family history than just the story of a family – it prompts enquiry into many areas of social history that I, for one, might never have considered.

Other interesting reading I received were two articles relating to a Parry family from Machynlleth, where a researcher has traced the family, largely through property deeds and probate entries, back into the 1600s. At this time, the patronymic system was still in operation and the family is a good illustration of how the "Harry/Parry" name can re-occur through several generations, whilst not actually being their "surname".

It is an interesting thought that, for many Parry families, by the time the line has been traced back about six generations from someone alive in 1901, they might no longer have the surname. Unfortunately many of the surviving parish registers in Wales don’t start until the 1700s but, where they do begin earlier, or where the surname settled slightly later, there would seem to be great potential for researchers to be able to establish exactly when their family became Parrys.

If only there weren’t so many of them that it is often impossible to get back beyond 1800!

The Guild forum has again been a useful source of information. Amongst the sites posted have been some relating to modern references, such as UK company directors, or US "people look up" sites, such as the My Family people finder which found 26,466 Parrys! Clearly such sites produce a large number of results for the surname, sometimes with too many occurrences of even just one first name, to allow the data to be fully searched. Not that I’m in a position to do a great deal with such current data even if I could collect it all, since I still have the 20th century BMDs for UK to extract.

A recent addition to the Ancestry databases shows more promise, although again will tend to produce a large number of results. Their "British Phone Books 1880-1984 Release 1" contains 5120 Parry entries – somehow I think it will be a long time before I can do much with those but certainly the ones for the early 20th century will be useful.

Another "Guild" reference was a site for the town of Burton Latimer, in Northamptonshire. I wasn’t expecting much, since it’s not really a "Parry" area but I did find one family in the 1901 transcriptions. The household was headed by an unmarried Catherine M Parry, with "Head" crossed out and "sister" entered instead. With her were six children described as daughters and sons, but I guessed they were probably not her’s. In the course of trying to identify them in the earlier censuses, I found a couple of errors on Ancestry - someone transcribed as aged 2 when they should be 23, and as Parry when they were actually a married daughter and should have been Webb. Then there was another person transcribed as a son called Catherine Parry but who was actually a servant called Catherine Griffith.

I was going to say, after all that, that I never did find the original family that I was looking for – but I did (eventually). The 1891 searches were proving unsuccessful so I tried earlier and found a possible entry for the Catherine Parry in 1881, in Llanasa, Flintshire, with parents, Alexander and Margaret, and siblings Joseph aged 18, and Emma aged 12. At 15, the Catherine was recorded as a pupil teacher, so she seemed a good candidate for someone who is later a described as Governess.

Next I found the oldest children, in the 1891 census, with Frances as Francis, Margaret as Margaretc and the birthplace of Canonbury as Cannonbury. Obvious really. Good job Mary F was just Mary F!

This time the children were with their mother Louisa Flora Parry, visiting their grandmother, Emma M Draper. A quick look on Ancestry’s listing from FreeBMD, and there’s Louisa Flora Draper getting married in Kensington, June qtr of 1886 to a John Parry. Quick look forward to 1901, Louisa Flora (transcribed as "Floy") Parry is with her husband at the Vicarage in Bromley. John, her husband, is a Church of England clergyman. Staying with them is his brother Joshua Powell Parry, an undergraduate from Jesus College Cambridge. No children there – they’re obviously all with their aunt, Catherine, in Burton Latimer.

Back to 1891, where’s John? No sign of him at the moment so let’s look for Joshua. He also seems to have absented himself, so I’ll try the 1881. There’s Joshua P Parry, aged 9, staying with his brother William 22, another brother Edward G, also 22, and a sister Josephine aged 20. They’re in Liverpool and it looks as if John is also nearby - a 24 year old lodger, Clerk in Holy orders, Curate of St Chrysostom, with a B.A from Cambridge.

Looking further back, in 1871, there’s Alexander Parry again, with his wife, Margaret, this time with children John 14, William and Edward G., both 12 and described as twins, Josephine 10, Joseph 8, Catherine M 5, and Emma 2. Joshua would not yet have been born.

So I was right with my identification of Catherine in 1881.

Nice when things match up like that. And of course, that isn’t the end of the story. With a name such as Alexander, which is not a common Parry first name, and his birth place in both 1871 and 1881 consistently being Ysceifiog, it isn’t that difficult to find the family in the 1861 census, with the four oldest children, and then to find him in both the 1851 and 1841 censuses. In those, he was living with his mother, another Margaret, and his brothers, William, Thomas, Edward, and Joseph. The boys all seem to be in the building trade so Alexander must have changed direction, becoming (according to the census entries) a farmer and then later, a brewer, and earned sufficient to give his children the opportunity to gain an education and, for three of them, the chance to go to Cambridge University.

Those three sons, John, Joseph and Joshua, all appear in the Cambridge University Alumni. Interestingly, the entry for Joshua describes his father as the Rev. A. But I’ll leave that for a descendant to investigate!

So, from a site reference where I wasn’t expecting much, I have had a pleasant afternoon putting together a four generation family tree, matching up several disparate census entries in the process and been able to identify some of the Cambridge Alumni!

Not bad for an afternoon's search.

Update to the web pages – Probate index

I seem to have been composing this entry for a week. One day I shall learn how to write the blog so that it actually achieves what I intended – to keep people informed of all the ”daily” happenings, which rarely get attention on the web site. But I’m sure there must be one of those “laws” in operation for genealogical research – you know the sort, about how the time taken to carry out a particular task is inversely related to the time you expect it to take, combined with some obscure relationship to the complexity of the task!

Anyway, a brief summary of the events since I last posted:
Received nine Parry related emails (including two from new contacts), and an updated tree by post. Sent twelve Parry related emails, plus posted some census information in response to the tree.

Several useful sites have been mentioned on the Guild forum. Some haven’t actually contained any Parry entries (but I’m sure they were useful for someone). However, I did find a Henry Parry listed as a Navy coastguard on the Isle of Wight in 1841 through Ann's page. He was 50 and was not born in the county whereas his wife, Jane aged 45, was. No sign of them in 1851 at the moment though.

Exploring the rather gruesome subject of judicial executions, I discovered that two Parry ladies had been the victims of murders. No Parrys listed amongst those executed for murder (on that site - found one later) but the subsequent postings of related web sites did show up the case of Albert Parry, a private in the West Yorks Regiment, who was amongst those soldiers executed by their own side during WW1. (One of indexes at http://www.lightage.demon.co.uk/index.htm)

Some of the sites have many individual pages, which can make them time-consuming to search. So sometimes one has to decide whether the likelihood of results justifies the time taken to search. One useful feature of Google is their “site search” facility, which does speed things up. It also helps in finding people or information which might not otherwise be found, e.g. a Dr Edward Parry who attended one of the victims on the Judicial Executions site, or the fact that another victim’s maiden name would have been Parry, since her father was named in the article.

Unfortunately the "site search" doesn’t seem to work on some sites, such as lycos/tripod. It also doesn’t help when a site exceeds its data limit (too many of the Guild accessing one of the execution sites, no doubt!)

Another site mentioned was the 1901 Canadian census, which currently contains 242 Parry entries. But I shall leave extracting those until I’m ready to tackle Canada more systematically.

Carole, a new subscriber on the Parry list, wrote a good message to the list to introduce herself. I thought I’d look up her family on the censuses but, in common with the way things seem to be going at the moment, the task extended. First, I came across a family who were mistranscribred as Parry when they should have been Evans (that lost me 6 Parrys). Then, after finding a possible partial family for Carole in the 1851 census, when I looked for them in the 1841, the only likely family all appear to have been mistranscribed as Perry (so that gains me 10 Parrys). I guess I gained overall, but notifying Ancestry of all the errors will take time.

(And whether it is the “right” family still remains to be seen, since some of the children differ from the list Carole gave.)

The problem when things all take longer than expected is that they end up only getting half done before something else crops up. [Mental note to self – still need to tell Ancestry about the Perrys. And still need to remove/add all the mistranscribed entries in my own census files].

And other things that crop up don’t always get dealt with. Anne posted a message on the Forum asking for views concerning the issue I'd commented on in my very first posting here – mentioning living people in blogs. Almost two weeks later and my views are still sitting in my drafts folder!

Found a “classic” on Family search – “2d. Gt. Gd. Father Perry”, born about 1727 in Stafford, England, who died about 1780. I wonder if that was really his name!

And, finally, I managed to upload some of my transcriptions of the National Probate Index entries onto my web site. They aren’t fully transcribed but the list has been “hanging around” for so long (one of those “half done” jobs) that I thought I ought to put them where they might help other researchers.

Not that anyone on the Parry list commented when I told them. With five of the 3877 entries relating to my own direct line (most of whom didn’t have much to leave anyone) I would have hoped that others might also find a few. Perhaps there just isn’t sufficient detail there yet for people to recognise their own family.

Or perhaps the list is keeping quiet prior to its migration onto the new Rootsweb mail system tomorrow. Will it be another two weeks before I post anything?