I have chosen, installed and commissioned webtrees, a 'state of the art' system which I believe points to a fascinating direction of travel for family history. A suite of programs built specifically to promote collaboration between people researching shared ancestries yet retaining a secure, high level of confidentiality of data. It maintains an online 'family tree', enables online updates and corrections by 'trusted users' and supports sharing of data by providing for downloads, again for authorised users. To accommodate this development I've combined existing projects into this new site - My-Rellies.com.

The beginning

It was easy, even back in 1990's in New Zealand. Regular trips to the local Family History Centre on Thursday evenings to consult a recently arrived reel of microfilm, ordered weeks earlier, that just might contain a reference to an ancestor who was the current focus of research. Saturday trips to the Library of New Zealand to consult immigrant ships manifests and voyage reports – all this added to the intense satisfaction of conducting a forensic investigation into the infinite number of life changing events of people whose only connection is a common ancestry.

An enigma

When I selected the YARNOLD name and its variants for a one name study it was natural to start a second set of records to accommodate the research. It became apparent over time that there was a conflict regarding where to store data when the two lines of research intersected. Where should YARNOLD data that is part of my tree be stored? I tried a compromise where there were references from one set of records to the other, this was confusing, still left an amount of double updating and meant both sets of records had to be available for a complete picture.

A solution

The establishment of the My-Rellies.com web presence to hold my collection of records, plus some 'other stuff' I'm working on. By associating the names from the tree to this new site using various information linking resources like Cyndi's List, Genes Reunited and Ancestry and using a collaborative, open source genealogy tool – webtrees, I will build on the research base and aim to provide resources to fellow researchers.

Researched names include – DOBSON, SWITALLA, RAINSFORD, YARNOLD, LAWN, SHERLOCK and a one name study into YARNOLD and the YARNALL and YARNELL variants