The Parfrey Families
The Parfrey family pages are divided into three main sections reflecting the appearance of the earliest family-head in each area. There were nests of Parfreys in Norfolk, London-Kent, and Somerset-Gloucestershire in England. From there, the descendants have branched out into America, Australia, Ireland, Wales, and Canada. We have attempted to connect the groups into one large family, but, so far, success has eluded us. Keep in mind that Parfreys and the variations of the surname exist in other locations, but have not yet been collected into a One Name Study.
The Parfreys of Norfolk, England - our line - moved about within the county, and a few were trained as engineers who moved into London to seek their fortunes. A street in London W6 is named Parfrey Street, presumably after one of those engineers. Another few, millers and publicans, also left Norfolk for the city. From there, some took the great step into America, settling first in Wisconsin, and eventually in Nebraska. Amongst those who left Norfolk for America was a woman named Eliza Parfrey, who had married a man named Robert Jary. From this pair come our ancestors. Surprisingly, in spite of the great amount of research, the Parfreys that form our beginnings are but four generations, after which, the surname in our line is lost due to marriages of females. Nevertheless, we have followed the relations and generations further, and present them fully in the adjoining pages. In London, virtually unconnected to the Norfolk family, were a lot of Parfreys who strayed into and out of Kent county. We are still untangling this lot, but we have found that the areas of Lewisham and Greenwich, which waffled between London and Kent over the years, held a few families, which, by and large, were born there, lived there, and died there. Those Parfreys of Somerset and Gloucestershire were there quite early, some records dating from the 1600s. Many stayed there, or barely strayed over into neighboring counties. However, a few, mostly coal miners, followed the coal-road to Wales, then into Pennsylvania in America. One family headed by a Coach Maker from Gloucestershire moved to Wales, then to Manhattan, New York, where his family worked and married. Their descendants include the actor Woodrow Parfrey. Another large family of Parfreys from Bristol, Gloucestershire went to Australia, and greatly multiplied. There is a Parfrey Road in Rochedale, Queensland, although the source of this name is as yet unknown. There are, of course, a few Parfreys, born in one area, who wound up in one of the other areas quite by chance. While this might appear to connect the distant families, we cannot yet find any true record that they all stemmed from one source. It seems that we would have to go back a few more generations to find any family heads in common. Today there are Parfreys all over England and United States, and no doubt the same holds true of Australia. We have also read of several who went to Ireland, but have not been able to investigate that yet. So much depends upon finding whole families in Census reports. In England, the 1911 Census has been released and indexed, after the mandatory Century of elapsed time. Noteworthy about that census is that women in the Suffrage movement boycotted and refused to be counted, which may affect finding the correct families. In the United States, 2012 saw the release of the 1940 Census, as determined by the government policy on privacy, that censuses be locked for a period of 72 years. Prior to these most recent releases, useful census records are available for each decade from 1841 in the U.K., and from 1850 in the U.S. The exception is that the U.S. censuses have a gap for the decade of 1890, due to a cost-cutting government edict to keep only one copy of the census, which copy was subsequently lost almost entirely in a fire. Parfreys of Norfolk, England | Wisconsin, Nebraska / Records & Censuses Parfreys of London and Kent, England | Wales, Pennsylvania / Records & Censuses Parfreys of Somerset and Gloucestershire | Wales, New York / Records & Censuses |
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