First Update of 2008 for www.family.charsley.org.uk
10 October 2008 - 7:45:17pm

My last GEDCOM update was in December 2007, so this one has been a long time in the making. Since family history research is slow and laborious, it is always easy to say “I will just finish this before I do the update”, and there is always a new “this”. Anyway, I have now downloaded the GEDCOM, and it will be up on the site as soon as Nick has the time. Many people have contributed new information to me, especially relating to births marriages and deaths outside the UK.

As a measure of the change since December, the statistics below show figures now, with December figures in brackets: Individuals 6938 (6907), unlinked trees, including single people 1950 (1995), trees excluding unlinked people 1204 (1217). The largest 5 trees link the following numbers of individuals: Charsley (originally from Buckinghamshire) 800 (756), Charsley (originally from Middlesex) 468 (447), Cheasley (originally from Surrey) 358 (357), Cheesley (originally from Wiltshire) 122 (97), and Cheasley (originally from Middlesex) 101 (84).

Alan Watts did lots of work in the past on Buckinghamshire parish registers, but no one has tried the same for Wiltshire (Cheesley), Surrey (Cheasley) or London and Middlesex (Charsley). If anyone has a hundred hours or so to spare, please let me know!

I am setting my own next objective as identifying key birth or marriage certificates to purchase that might link trees or just individuals to trees. My family know that I don’t throw money around when I can avoid it, but it becomes harder and harder to believe that someone alive today might remember the name of their grandfather’s grandfather!

Please remember to check that all the facts that you know are on the website. If you have not logged on for some time please do so. If you have never activated your account on the site, please do so now, as we will be removing accounts that have never been accessed within a couple of months!

Keep happy!
Phil

All Change Again
4 January 2008 - 1:33:14pm

Due to improvements in phpGedView, the site has now moved back to using it and it alone.

I hope everyone should be able to access the data they could previously access, if not then email me and I'll see if I can fix the problems.

Not everything is currently working, so if you get any odd messages please email me and I'll get them removed.

Enjoy the experience.

Nick (c)

Happy Christmas 2007
25 December 2007 - 5:54:10pm

Hot on the heels of my October update, another one in time for Christmas (at least I hope so, as I am dependant on my son Nick to upload to the website, and I don’t know when he will have time). Anyway, I will send this message out by e-mail, but before you say there is no change on the website, just check when the Gedcom was uploaded!

The major input for this update has been the on-line sources from “Family History On-line”. Some of these I already had from Alan Watts, and I have simply changed them to note the original source. We have moved forward a bit on the families front, but the number of families has fallen from 2248 families last time to only 1995 this time, despite a lot of new people having been added. I have worked hard to identify and remove duplicate people, and this has also allowed me to do some linking. The biggest Charsley tree has risen from 709 members to 756! I am particularly proud of the research that has allowed my own Charsley tree to rise from 383 members to 447 members, and I write about that below. I am still stuck with the biggest Cheasley/Cheesley tree having 357 members, and will take it as a challenge to do something to improve this next year!

Last Christmas I was struggling to prove that Edward Charsley, who married Margaret Irvine in Edinburgh in 1869 was the same person as Edward Charsley, son of John James Charsley and Eliza Marchetti. The first Edward emigrated to South Africa, and started a dynasty, some of whom are on my email list. The second one was the grandson of my third great grandfather. I had tried to prove the two Edwards were one by checking the marriage certificate, but it was not conclusive. I could not find either Edward on the 1871 census, and was close to deciding that DNA testing was the only way forward. However, I decided a few weeks ago to have one last shot at paper records. I believed that Edward and Margaret Irvine had 2 children in 1870 and 1872. Agnes Eliza M was the first, and the second was another Edward, recorded in IGI as a child of the marriage. Since the Marriage Certificate listed Margaret’s mother as Agnes, it seemed possible that Agnes Eliza was named for her two grandmothers. Imagine my delight when the certificate arrived, to reveal that Agnes Eliza’s third initial stood for Marchetti! I know this is not absolute proof, but it is as good as it gets! IGI only lists 17 entries for the surname Marchetti, and only about 6 of them are different people. Thus I am pleased to say “Hi Cousin” to about 20 people in Southern Africa. Fourth Cousin once removed is still a blood link, however diluted!

Phil Charsley
19 Dec 2007

Christmas Update 2007
25 December 2007 - 5:50:50pm

Lates Gedcom has Gone up, the main work was a rationalisation of place names, so hopefully we now have a consitent aproach.

GEDCOM Statistics

Charsley Genealogy
This GEDCOM was created using RootsMagic 2.0 on 19 December 2007
6805 Individuals, 2272 Families, 6832 Sources, 2 Other Records

Most Common Surnames
Chadsley, Charsley, Chaseley, Chasley, Cheasley, Cheesley, Chersley, Chesley

nick (c)

Update at last
14 October 2007 - 7:23:47pm

Almost a year has passed since my last update, but at least there is lots of change. The biggest change in my life is that we have moved house. In the last 15 months we have built a new house in our back garden, moved into it, and sold the old house! A small change of location, but a big change of life-style. Still more change to come, as I plan to retire properly on my 65th birthday at the end of February next year.


The new Gedcom has quite a few more people, but also quite some rationalisation, thanks to input from a number of new sources. I have had input from June Tilley, a Cheesley descendant; Gill Fox, a Cheasley descendant, and Elizabeth Anne Charsley from USA. My Ancestry.co.uk subscription ran out a few months ago, so I recently decided to check that I had everything from “Family Search”, and found that I was up to 5 years behind with their new entries! I am now working on new on-line sources from “Family History On-line”, and finding quite a few sources and people I had not entered. However, relatively few of these allow me to connect any families, so we still stand with 2248 families, but only 3 of these have more than 100 members (2 Charsley trees of 709 and 383 members, and one Cheasley/Cheesley tree with 357 members). It would be really good to be able to report next year that we had a tree with more than 1000 people in it! Perhaps my retirement will help, but any link that any of you can provide could reduce the number of unlinked trees below the current 1936!