Welcome to www.CloseAncestry.com
 
Thanks to links from our main tree into America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand we've now opened these up with their own set of people. Some of these are a bit skimpy, so if you can find someone here who is an ancestor of yours in foreign parts please let us know and eventually we'll conquer the world!

For those of you who have sent us updates, information, images and corrections, many thanks. Please bear with us because we will get around to it eventually... and please keep them coming.

We're continually dripping smaller updates onto the site. These can be anything from clarifications to photographs, so please visit us regularly.

Close Ancestry Shop

We've agonised long and hard about this for over a year.

The site's turned into a bit of a monster and unfortunately so have the costs of keeping it going. So, to try to cover some of these we've put together a few goodies in our new online shop that we hope will tempt you into adding a few pounds into our coffers, ... and it's as easy as we can make it.

We're not here to make money and anything left over will be used to buy Birth, Death and Marriage Certificates ... or anything else that adds value.

The site started as a free resource, and that's the way it's going to stay. However, all contributions will be very gratefully received.

For anyone who simply wants to send us a donation, we have a "donation" item in the shop for this purpose. Just add it to your shopping basket as if you're buying something real and pay online as you would do for real stuff... or if you have a PayPal account you can send us a donation direct to sales@closeancestry.com - just remember to make it a "personal" transfer, otherwise they nick a percentage.

Many thanks to all who have helped us out so far.

Grinton Parish Registers
We've managed to find a document containing the Grinton Parish registers from 1640 to 1807!

This is a digital copy of a book published by the Yorkshire Parish Register Society in 1905. It contains the Grinton Registers dating from 1640 up to 1807 for Baptisms, Marriages and Burials. There are gaps, as the original text explains, but this seems to be due to missing registers. Click here for more on the Grinton Parish Registers

Poet Close Books
We have a couple of Poet Close's books available as .PDF files in the shop. Even though they are 140 years old they are in brilliant condition inside (unfortunately the covers have suffered). He wasn't short of words, so these are fantastic value. Click here for more on Poet Close's Books ... the quality of image below is a meagre fraction of the full high-res scans on offer.
 
The Church of St Andrew, Grinton
See the east window at the Church of St Andrew, Grinton which is a dedication to members of the Close family. Click the image below to see it in all its glory.
Unattached Trees
We've finally bitten the bullet and published a few unattached trees. These are "unattached" from the point-of-view of not linking into our main tree. However, what they all have in common (ish) is that they start in Grinton. Given that Grinton is not exactly large, and had a smallish finite set of Closes living there at any one time, it's almost inevitable that the tops of these trees are related to each other in some way (brothers, cousins, uncles, etc) - we just haven't found the link yet.

If anybody can provide a link for any of these back into our main tree, or joining two together,  we'd be very interested. Please drop us a line.

The Story So Far

This seems to be pretty much where it all started ... or at least as far we've got up to now!

The current holders of the Prolific Breeders Award are:
 
  ... and one of his sons ...
 
  ... both of whom managed a groin-trembling 13 children apiece! Good effort chaps.
 
As far as the site goes, we currently have over:
900 people, now spanning three continents, every one of which is related either by blood or marriage to everybody else. So if you find you're related to one of these, you are also related to ALL of them!!!
800 people in our unattached trees, apparently covering the best part of Lancashire and Wales in the 1800's. If you find a link back into our main tree, please let us know.
1,500 images of certificates, family photos, census records, indices, places and family crests
180,000 cross-references between people, places and images
... and so far we've found:
our very own poet ... who was so bad he's starred in a "Worst of ..." book ... but we love him!

(at least) 4 bona fide lunatics
a whole bunch of people who really should be calling themselves Close ... rather than Metcalfe
a whole bunch of people who probably should be calling themselves Smethurst ... rather than Close

Site Map


LAST MAJOR UPDATE
31st December 2008
An extension to an unattached tree into Canada. 83 New!
Click here for details
Questions about the site? You can find out more here.