There’s a new free online resource available if you’re researching the name Stanley and associated Romany/Traveller families in the West Country.
Gary Stanley has this month launched ‘Romani – An English Heritage Project’. His website includes a collection of baptisms, marriages and burials collected from parish registers plus transcriptions of newspaper reports.
Currently, the main emphasis is on members of the Stanley family in the counties of Somerset, Devon and Hampshire but there are also references to the names Joles, Broadway, Burton, Hix and Cooper. And Gary says that he plans to add new items to the site frequently.
One unusual aspect is that there’s a map at the top of each page that pinpoints where events have taken place. Click on a pin and you get brief details of the event plus a link to the full parish entry or newspaper account, so helping you to plot possible travelling routes and the distribution of the surnames in western counties.