Being an Amphlett myself I always been interested in the names roots, but never found the time to research our family tree.
My father has done lots of work on it but hit something of a brick wall - which will only be scaled with extensive leg work through the parish records. I guess this is the bit that sorts the men from the boys! Anyway, my father has moved abroad now which makes it that much harder to wonder around the West Midlands researching Amphletts.
Being a father myself now (doing my bit to continue the name) has me interested in the family tree and I'm tempted to take up the baton from my father. However, my approach is a little different...
I've owned
www.amphlett.net for quite some time, and realised it could be the ideal place to pull together the details of the records that all the Amphlett family researches are coming across. There must be so much duplicated effort going on that it makes me dizzy.
I've created a free forum on
www.amphlett.net for now, but I'm really interested in creating some sort of database of records that people can use as a research tool.
I'm very aware that sharing trees is different to sharing research. My father always stresses that some people are happy to make assumptions about family links that he isn't. To be content that a link is real his 'threshold' of proof is (he believes) higher than some others. So he's always very careful not to take other peoples trees at face value. A fair point I guess. This is what set me thinking about sharing research rather than trees. If we share the fundamental evidence that we uncover, then we're each in a position to draw our own conclusions.
As a software developer by trade I'll certainly be able to build whatever would be needed. However as I've very little experience in researching family trees I'm not sure what information we will need to store, and how best to present it.
So - please check out
http://www.amphlett.net/genealogy.aspxcross post any enquiries there on the basis that there's a good chance living Amphlett's will come across it and may be able to respond. But most of all give me your comments about what you think the ideal Genealogy Research Database would look like, and I'll have a go at putting one together.
regards,
Dave Amphlett
Note - portions of this post appear on that forum to get the conversation going.