SEWELL Co-ordinator's Report - November 1996

By Geoff Sewell

At last I feel that the SEWELL group is progressing as the members directly researching the SEWELL surname is growing.

Recently we have been joined by Mr Sewell from Carlshed, CA USA, and H.J. Sewell from Menlo Park, CA USA. Another of our new members, Pamela Jones has an ancestor, Lizze Sewell, who is one of the Manton, Rutland group.

The Internet email method of communication is proving more useful than I at first thought it would. For instance Benjamin C. Sewell III from the USA - his ancestor Jesse Sewell left Durham, England in the early 1790s to emigrate to Vermont - made contact with Tim Soles and myself by way of email and as a result is applying to join the Sole Society. Interestingly, he also mentions Marcus Sewell who was listed as being from England and who died at the Battle of the Alamo in Texas. Do any of our members know anything about Marcus?

The One-Day gathering and AGM at Houghton Conquest was very successful. In particular, it was marvellous to meet Michael Sewell and his wife from Horsea, Humberside. The group meeting this year consisted of Michael, Eric, Christine Yates and me. Following general discussion, I reported that after a year of head scratching, I had a suggestion for progress with the SEWELL charting system. I proposed a straightforward approach whereby I produce a list of marriages for each county generated from my database. Each marriage is then allocated a code made up of the county code, for example BDF (Bedford), and then an arbitrary number so the complete code for a marriage may be BDF23. Having selected the initial codes, I would then send a list of marriages complete with allocated codes to the SEWELL member responsible for that county. I hope to make a serious start on this project in the new year as work commitments allow.

SEWELLs, we are on the point of lift-off! There's a lot of work to do and I intend to publish a comprehensive list of SEWELL members and their particular area of ancestry research in the next Joumal.

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