James Howell b.1841 Lydney. (General)

by Bob Philpott , North Wiltshire, Tuesday, August 03, 2010, 17:03 (5231 days ago) @ Thomas Ian Wagstaff

Ian,

I was beaten to it in suggesting Middle Forge. The Forge area was a series of cottages used by workers from Lydney Tin Works and is on the Whitecroft road out of Lydney. It crops up a lot in my family tree. In fact I do have one of my Cook's marry a Howell and the name William and James Howell features in their family as well. I used to argue as a 'young un' that the Foresters weren't all related to each other but I am starting to think otherwise.

Can I suggest one radical way of finding out more. This excellent website has a very excellent search engine of parish records. I approached this one day with my Cook family and downloaded every Cook record in and around Lydney to Alvington. I copied these onto Microsoft One Note as a piece of research software (I suspect there are others around) and gradually matched up all the B, M and D records. I then put the non related ones into a separate folder awaiting any change. I thought I might get a 30% return but ended up 'owning' about 80% of the ones I found. As a result my tree suddenly got a lot of extra branches.

Bob Philpott (Allsopp, Cook(e), Parry)