A possible route into family stories, and the religious leanings of one of my ancestors - more news from January

A possible route into family stories - a "life index"
 I've written several times about family history being more than just 'names and dates', that it's about the lives of our ancestors, and their other relatives, who they were, what they did, and the circumstances that impacted them. Even their hopes and fears, where possible. 

I've also mentioned that we should be recording our own stories because, one day, most of us will, more than likely, have become an 'ancestor'.

But I hadn't resolved the issue of how to make any of that easily accessible to future generations (or even to 'future me'!) or how to provide a 'way in' that might catch their attention and spark their interest.

For some years, I've tried to keep a "Master Timeline" record, in an excel spreadsheet, of what we, as a family, did on particular days.  It began as just a way of keeping track of some of the mundane things, like dentist and optician's appointments, but also included holidays, days out, and other key dates as the children grew up. 

It was designed to answer those inevitable questions of "When did we....?"

Maintaining the spreadsheet has been a bit erratic at times, particularly in the years when I've also kept a journal, and especially once the children left home. And I'd never seriously even considered how easy (or otherwise) the information would be for anyone else to access, since it was mainly just for me, and I knew what was in it.  

But, of course, one can ask a question the other way around - "What did we do on...?"

 For example, looking up all the 31st January entries, I can see that, in 1986, my parents' dog, Sadie, had to be put to sleep, that in 1998, one of my sons ran in the local primary schools' cross country championship, and, in 1999, he had a rehearsal for a school show. (and yes, on this date in 2012, there was a dentist appointment! ☺)

I've realised this as a result of a post by Taneya Koonce¹, another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies, whose blog I follow.  She posted a video about her "life index" journals, and it struck me what a brilliant idea this is, to have an index for every day of the year.  

It was one of those 'lightbulb moments', when an idea that I 'knew about' in some form, eg from the old 'birthday books' that some of us might have kept, or the 'on this day' notices on 'history' websites, suddenly became something I could actually use in a way that will help me to achieve what I want to.  

Taneya is in the US so, although I love the tree design on the front of her journals, those specific ones would take a while to arrive in the UK. There are similar ones available here but I have decided instead to go for a plain covered, larger journal (A4) which contains 400 pages (200 sheets).  That means I can include two pages for dates which I know I'll probably have lots of stories for (eg Christmas, or close family birthdays).  There'll also be some 'spare' pages that I can use to list stories where the specific date is unknown (eg my mother, as a child, using the bedsheets to climb out of her bedroom window, in order to try to avoid having a bath!)

As you can possible tell, from the things I've listed above for the 31st January, just noting a key event on a day can act as a prompt for a family story - in those cases, what Sadie, the dog, was like and the things she got up to, as well as the childrens' sporting and 'theatrical' activities. 

As Taneya says, "writing things down doesn’t just preserve them. It activates them."

Another January discovery, the religious leanings of an ancestor
I had a lovely surprise early in the month, when I was contacted by a descendant of one of the step-daughters of my 2xgreat grandfather.  We had exchanged information some years ago but, recently, she had discovered that the burial register for Rowlestone, Herefordshire, is available on the Ewyas Lacy Study Group site.²

 

Now, I knew that my Thomas PARRY's second wife, Ann, had been buried on 19 September 1908, "without the burial service according to the rites of the Church of England", because that was information supplied to my dad, by a local vicar, back in the 1990s. 

But, what the vicar had not passed on, was that the register also gives the name of who performed the service, "William JAMES, Abergavenny", or that it was a noted as a Christadelphian funeral. 

Having discovered this, my contact had then spent time working through the Christadelphian Magazine archives, from which she was able to discover that:

    - My Thomas PARRY and his wife, Ann were both formerly Methodists

    - That they were baptised by immersion and received into fellowship with the Christadelphians in May 1900

    - That their home in Walterstone was used for meetings

    - That their names occurred several times among those from Walterstone who met with the brethren in Abergavenny

    - and that, when Thomas PARRY died, in February 1918, the Christadelphians noted that "we were not allowed to take any part in laying our brother to rest." 

Did other members of the family not approve? 

Or was it the minister of the church where Thomas was buried who objected? 

Or could it have been simply because he was being buried in the same grave as other family members, and a non-conformist burial would have required a separate grave? 

We'll possibly never know for sure. But Thomas PARRY was buried on the 26 Feb 1918, in Christchurch, Govilon, which comes under Llanwenarth Ultra, Monmouthshire, in the same grave as his first wife, Sarah, and their infant son, Lewis.

I'm very grateful to the researcher who, many years ago, uncovered the gravestone and supplied my dad with this photograph:

 

[Especially since, when I visited the graveyard some years later, in 2002, the particular area where this stone was, was totally overgrown. I found several of the graveyards around there were being allowed to 'return to nature', so the stone would have been almost impossible to find. ] 

Notes and Sources

1. Taneya's post on substack: https://taneyakoonce.substack.com/p/helping-dates-tell-stories-with-an

It's also on a Facebook reel: https://www.facebook.com/reel/950876704124479

2, Parish Registers on the Ewyas Lacy Study Group website:
https://www.ewyaslacy.org.uk/-/Digital-Archive-Index-to-Ewyas-Lacy-Parish-Registers/1700s-1800s-1900s/rs_DA_0051

DNA match numbers

 Like many people, I imagine, I've spent some of January doing a bit of 'sorting and planning' to help me achieve what I'd like to during the year.  

So now I just need to actually do the things I've planned!

One of the first tasks was to update the graph of how many close matches I have at Ancestry.  At the time of my last post, the review of 2025, the number had increased to 376 close matches.  I now have 378 close matches - and I also noticed yesterday that I had exactly 20,000 matches, in total, there. 

(But that total had already increased to 20,003 by this morning.)

Since I was interested in the rate of increase, I also looked at the change in the totals over the years:

The Ancestry test was launched in the US in 2012 and then in the UK, in January 2015.¹ One can see that, after an initial slow start, for me, the three years between 2017-2019 saw the most new close matches, with an average of 50 across those three years.  Numbers have since reduced, averaging 30-35 per year, but are quite variable.

 From the graph, many of the years seem to show a higher rate of increase in the early months of the year - probably due to the sales in December, and 'Christmas gifting', which results in more kits being processed during those early months.

It will be interesting to see if the early part of this year shows the same sort of curve. Although kit prices at Ancestry were reduced, those of one of the other companies, MyHeritage, were even cheaper.  

And, with the news that MyHeritage was moving on to "Whole Genome Sequencing" (WGS)², perhaps more people will have opted to purchase kits from there instead?

Either way, I'm sure, with this change, there will be a surge in the numbers at MyHeritage - if only because of all those who have already taken DNA tests elsewhere now deciding to try the new test, as well. 

I admit it - I did too. ☺

My kit is currently in the "WGS in progress" stage, and I am looking forward to receiving the results.  It will be interesting to see how they compare to those received from the other companies I have tested with, and especially with those kits I transferred to MyHeritage.

Unfortunately, I've not been tracking numbers there in the same way, with those transferred kits - but perhaps it will be worth starting to do so, once these new results are in.

Notes and Sources

1. Launch dates of the autosomal DNA test at Ancestry: https://isogg.org/wiki/AncestryDNA

2. MyHeritage upgrading to Whole Genome Sequencing: 
https://blog.myheritage.com/2025/10/myheritage-upgrades-its-dna-tests-to-whole-genome-sequencing/