Friday, February 22, 2013

What can be found quickly online - Ernest Murley of the London Orphan Asylum, Watford

Help Desk
One of the delights of modern family research online is that, in many cases, a great deal of information can be found so quickly, from a variety of sources, at a cost which is trivial compared with the time when I started researching, and had to physically travel miles to spend hours searching through two or three unindexed documents. The big problem for many people now is knowing where to look, and how to get the most out of the indexes.
The London Orphan Asylum, Watford
Carole's query about her father Ernest William Murley, who was brought up in the London Orphan Asylum at Watford 100 years ago, demonstrates what can be done in a few hours. I was able to identify her grandfather Thomas William Murley (1870-1908), her great grandfather Thomas William Murley (1840-1899); her 2X great grandfather Thomas William Murley (1805-1884), and with the help of a family tree on Ancestry her 3X great grandfather Thomas Murley (1776-1855) - and a possible route to living cousins. A google search revealed an entry relating to the family business in the London Gazette, while a search in the British Newspaper Archive produced a marriage announcement in the Reading Post. See MURLEY, London Orphan Asylum, Watford, Early 20th century for details of where I found the goodies!

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