Monday 27 May 2013

Revisiting my family history

Many years ago I started my family history.  This hobby soon developed into a one name study of the Pursglove family and over the years I have examined and recorded a mass of records relating to this family name.
I have a website at www.pursglove.org.uk which is essentially a listing, by town, of many of these records.  They are in brief form and a search can take hours to do properly.
For example, Bakewell in Derbyshire, UK, has records listed chronologically and grouped in known family sets.  The links between families in unclear.

To improve on this arrangement, I have started to create a database of all of the record entries.  Over the last week I have entered almost half of the Derbyshire Pursgloves, only the rest of the world to go......
The records are being entered in a Microsoft Access database with a marriage code as the starting point for each family group.  This becomes the filial code for any children, so that they can be linked back to parents.  I have already linked a few more family groups in this process.

I have estimated that at my current rate of productivity, the entry of records and the writing of software to search the records may take a full year to achieve.  I am also considering a means of members being able to update the database, but that is another bridge to cross in the future.

I am also looking at the inclusion policy.  With my website, I refused to add entries that were less than 100 years old.  This was done to avoid issues with data protection.  However, since the UK government were willing to release the 1911 census data a year early, I may review this decision.

It will be interesting to see how this project develops.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi my name is paul pursglove. I bet you know more about my family and it back grou d then i do haha good look with it all and i will keep looking to see what you come up with

Pterosaur said...

Good to hear from a Pursglove, as far as I can tell there are only 2 Paul Pursgloves in the World at present. Have you been on Pursglove Unity on Facebook?
I do not have information on your family, but I bet if I knew who your great grandfather was, I could pin your family relationships down.