The last few weeks I have spent most evenings transcribing information from the IGI and the GRO indexes into my trusty notebook.
I have now completed all the IGI records and all the births up to 2005. Just this week I made a start on the GRO marriages.
I have prepared a spreadsheet to eventually capture all the details. However I am not yet convinced this is the way I want to go. So the IT options are still open.
I used to think that the GRO index was infallible and that any mistakes on Ancestry for example would be down to incorrect transcription. I now realise how naive I was.
I discovered duplicate entries and one person registered three times!
So my biggest lesson so far – check the information, then check it again and again if necessary. Always try to find the original document, record or index.
Because I have been concentrating so much on the One Name Study I haven’t done much of anything else.
I still have to join the Guild of One Name Studies and register the Espley name. I decided to wait a while until I gathered more information – especially about the origins of the name and the variants I want to include in the study. At the moment I am thinking that the variant spellings will be – Esply, Esplee, Aspley and Asply.
I know that there is an Espley Group on Facebook and my wife (Jayne) has joined them. Perhaps that might also be a source of information.
