Researchers use lots of different sources to build a picture of a family. Sometimes there is just a single date that proves an individual’s existence and for others there is a wealth of information available.
Here are some of the sources used and referred to on this site.
Records & Repositories
GRO – General Register Office – birth, marriage and death certificates from 1838 to present https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/
Scotland’s People – lots of Scottish records https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/
NA – National Archives – A huge resource of documents about so many different things. Some content has been digitised and is available to download. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Kresen Kernow – CRO – Cornish Record Office – lots of Cornish related material. https://kresenkernow.org
Before 1838 (England) and 1855 (Scotland) there was no civil registration of births, marriages and deaths but there were parish registers which recorded baptisms, marriages and burials. Parish registers were introduced on 5th Sep 1538 by Thomas Cromwell, the advisor to King Henry VIII after he took a trip around Europe and realised that other countries did this. Sadly not many of the very early registers survive and those that do may have damage and missing sheets. Those that survive can still be consulted.
Family Search – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides FamilySearch free of charge to everyone. The library at Salt Lake City is an amazing resource for genealogists and family historians. Many of the old parish registers, wills etc. (and millions of other documents) have been microfilmed and are available online to search. https://www.familysearch.org/en/
Cornwall OPC – Online Parish Clerks – a brilliant resource for anyone researching their family in Cornwall. Lots of parish information and a huge database of individuals which is free to search. (Most baptisms, marriages and burials that occurred in Cornwall and mentioned on this site were found or corroborated on the OPC database.) https://www.opc-cornwall.org/index.php
Books
‘The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers’ – Cecil Humphrey – invaluable for finding out what registers are still available.
‘The First Book of the Parish Registers of Madron’ by George Bown Millet – essential reading for all the early Lanyon baptisms, marriages and burials in Madron. https://archive.org/details/firstbookparish00madrgoog/page/n4/mode/2up?view=theater
‘The Parochial History of Cornwall’ by Gilbert, Hals, Tonkin and Boase 1838 Vol 3 https://archive.org/details/parochialhistory03gilb/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater
‘The Visitations of Cornwall : comprising the Heralds’ visitations of 1530, 1573, & 1620′ by Vivian, J. L. (John Lambrick), 1830-1896 – lots of Cornish family trees, not always 100% accurate. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/441740-the-visitations-of-cornwall-comprising-the-heralds-visitations-of-1530-1573-1620
‘These were our People’ by Ruth Lanyon 1991
‘The Survey of Cornwall’ by Richard Carew https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9878
A Geographical Dictionary or Gazeteer of the County of Cornwall – R Symons
‘Tudor Cornwall’ – AL Rowse
Tudor England – S.T Bindoff
A Compendium of the History and Geography of Cornwall – Rev. J. J. Daniell 1908
A History of Plymouth – Llewellynn Jewitt
The History of Helston – H. Spencer Troy
Ecclesiastical History of Plymouth – J Brooking-Row
Bibliotheca Cornubiensis – WP Courtney
‘Magna Britannica Vol III’ – Daniel & Samuel Lysons 1814
‘Collectania Cornubiensia’ – George Clement Boase 1890
The Compleat History of Cornwall – Hals
‘Old Cornwall’ Vol VI no 7 Autumn 1964 & Vol VIII no 11 Autumn 1978
‘The Place Names of West Penwith’ by P.A.S Pool
‘The Field Names of West Penwith’ by P.A.S Pool
Brondson & Box Families – Lucius Marsh
Captain Cook’s South Sea Island Vocabularies – P Lanyon-Orgill
‘The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance’ by P.A.S Pool 1974
Guide to Penzance – Ward Lock & Co
History of Cornwall – Fortescue Hitchens
Medieval Cornwall – E Elliot Binns
Patronymica Britannica – MA Lower
Surnames in Cornwall – Richard Blewett
History of Liskeard – Allen
Rambling Sketches in Cornwall – T Raffles Davison
Register of Armorial Bearings – Fox Davies
‘Eighteenth Century Life in West Cornwall’ by Penwith Local History Group 2014
‘The Story of Fowey’ by John Keast 1950
Rural Economy & Society in the Duchy of Cornwall 1300-1500 – John Hatcher
Homes of Family Names in Great Britain – Henry Brougham Guppy
Heraldic Church Notes from Cornwall – AJ. Jewers
A Handbook of Cornish Surnames’ by G. Pawley White 1972
Industrial Archaeology of Cornwall – Todd & Laws
‘A Topographical and Historical Description of Cornwall’ by John Norden 1728
‘The Book of St Ervan’ by Moira Tangye 2006
Commemorative biographical record of New Haven county, Connecticut – JH Beers
Cornish Inns – HL Douch
Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution – JR Liverpool
Websites
Sites to create a family tree with subscriptions available for those who want to search their vast range of documents. And DNA testing to help track down relatives.
Other sites
https://maps.nls.uk – when Google maps just won’t do!
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/CON/ – lots of Cornish (and other county) resources.
https://www.freeukgenealogy.org.uk – lots of free information
https://www.british-history.ac.uk – all sorts of goodies here if you’ve already got back quite far in your research
https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/online_parish_clerk – list of all the online parish clerks for each county
https://www.cwgc.org – Commonwealth War Graves Commission
https://sites.google.com/site/cochoit/medieval-genealogy-resources – various medieval resources – Patent Rolls, Fine Rolls, Feet of Fines etc.
http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/updates/update.shtml– lots of Medieval resources for family historians
https://www.thegazette.co.uk – searchable from 1665 to present day
https://archive.org – loads of stuff here – particularly useful for digitised copies of old books
https://www.digitalpanopticon.org – useful for criminal family history
https://www.oldbaileyonline.org – great for finding the bad boys on your tree!
http://aalt.law.uh.edu – Anglo American Legal Tradition – great site for old manuscripts
https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org (page very slow to open)
https://www.cornwallforever.co.uk – Culture and history of Cornwall
Cornish Genealogy Sites
https://www.opc-cornwall.org/index.php – amazing site for anyone searching in Cornwall – almost my second home!
http://www.west-penwith.org.uk/madron.htm – resources for those searching in West Penwith, Cornwall.
https://azazella.proboards.com – Penwith Genealogy Group – some great posts!
http://webs.lanset.com/azazella/cornish_database.html – lots of Cornish genealogy links
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wbritonad/genealogy/ – transcriptions of births, marriages and deaths in West Briton & Cornwall Advertiser newspaper.
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html – Cornish Online Census Project – Census – the first national census took place in UK in 1841 and then every ten years since apart from during the second world war. The 1931 census was destroyed in a fire. 1921 is the latest census to be made available to researchers. Lots of local family history groups have projects to make the census available. Cornwall Online Census Project is a free resource for those with Cornish ancestors
https://peterpool.co.uk – Cornish historian, site features a number of his articles
https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/h/i/c/Robin-Hichens-Cambridge/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0053.html contains a fair bit of Lanyon research
People
You can’t really produce a family history without input from real people. An official record may list someone’s name and date of birth but you’ll only find out they were called ‘old walnut face’ by talking to their relatives!
Sometimes you are lucky enough to discover another researcher in the family. The Lanyons have been blessed with more than one!
Samuel Lanyon – 1833-1908. Samuel was the son of John Lanyon & Peggy Vincent (St Allen branch) and he collected some of the records and references to the Lanyon family. The notebook he created has been painstakingly copied a number of times.
Jane Veale Mitchell – JVM – 1866-1929 she was the daughter of Samuel Mitchell and Jane Veale Lanyon (St Allen branch of the family) . She was an historical researcher and noted any Lanyon she found whilst going through old records. She also used the nom de plume ‘Veritas’. She produced four large, somewhat disorganised, sheets of information about the family. She was a frail woman and was killed when a passing train sucked her off the platform at Perranzabuloe station in Cornwall.
William Smith Lamparter – WSL – 1926-1992 he was the son of William Lamparter and Irma Lanyon Smith (St Hilary branch of the family). He was an amateur genealogist who did a lot of research into the Lanyon family. William originally bequeathed his papers and estate to Duke University, his alma mater. His family objected and eventually David H Lanyon secured the papers. He copied everything and then deposited the original papers at the Courtney Museum in Truro.
Rose Olive Tolman née Banks – 1903-1993 Rose was a Mormon who undertook a lot of early Lanyon research at Salt Lake City LDS Library, she was descended from Paskas Lanyon and Thomas Shetford. She and William Lamparter corresponded for a number of years.
Edward Augustus Bullmore – 1875-1948 Funded and collaborated with JVM and corresponded with WSL about Lanyon family history. His wife was Hilda Maud Lanyon (Helston branch of the family) and he was interested in researching her family. When he died he bequeathed his papers including his correspondence with Jane Veale Mitchell to William Lamparter.
Emily Blanche Lueck née Meserole – 1910-1985 was the daughter of Jacob Meserole and Myrtle Lanyon (St Allen branch of the family). She corresponded with William Lamparter and Rose Tolman about her Lanyon ancestors.
Jack James Lanyon – 1928-2007 – Jack was the son of William Edgar Lanyon (St Just in Penwith branch of the family) and was a dedicated Lanyon genealogist, he drew the family tree on the walls of his study!
Richard ‘Dick’ Lanyon – Author, speaker & retired executive director of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. Dick is descended from the St Allan branch of the family. He has his own website www.dicklanyon.com which has a section about his family history. Dick inherited papers from Emily Lueck.
Simon Lanyon – Guild of One Name Studies – Simon is descended from John Jenkinson Lanyon and the Irish branch of the family. https://one-name.org/sendemail/?sendto=lanyon&study=Lanyon
Special thanks to David H Lanyon for ‘passing the baton’ over to me and sending so many parcels of ‘Lanyon’ papers. (Copies of William Lamparter’s papers, Jane Veale Mitchell’s letters, Rose B Tolman’s letters, Emily Lueck’s letters, notes, photographs, newspaper cuttings etc.) This site is my attempt to make sure the information isn’t lost.
Thanks to Ian Lanyon for sending me Jack Lanyon’s pedigree sheets.
Thanks to John O Lanyon for sharing Lanyon family photos and information and for help with our Flight ancestors.
The Lanyons 