THE SANKEY ONE NAME STUDY

My first investigations into genealogy were in 1984, when I attempted to start tracing my paternal line. As a side interest to this I also noted down any printed references to the name Sankey, in the hope that they might one day come in useful.

After a few years I had completed my family tree back four generations, and reached the 1837 boundary in the St. Catherine's House index registers. At this point I had to branch out into other sources such as parish registers, and also had to switch areas, as my 3x great grandfather, Matthew Sankey, appeared to be the first Sankey in the South Derbyshire area, his birth having taken place in Cradeley, Staffordshire.

It soon became obvious that finding Matthew's baptism was not going to be easy, and also that I was accumulating a lot of references to Sankeys that had no immediate connection to my paternal line. At this point it seemed logical to switch the momentum of the research towards a One Name Study, in the hope that eventually I would unearth enough clues to piece my own line together.

In 1990 a mailshot to the Sankeys of South Derbyshire resulted in a wealth of information, and a large number of trees were able to be constructed, all of which led back to Matthew Sankey. In order to maintain contact with the many respondents to the initial letter, I started an annual newsletter, which continues today, and has extended to include Sankeys and others from around the world who are interested in the genealogy of the Sankey name.

It has long been my intention to expand the number of Sankeys contacted, in order to try and gain some synergy from others who may be doing research. The effort involved in doing this by normal mail has meant it has been impossible to date, however recently I sent an e-mail shot to a number of Sankeys who are on the Internet, and there has been an extremely good response to this, so hopefully the word will spread a bit more.

In my efforts, or rather as a result of my failure, to locate the baptism of Matthew I have accumulated a large amount of data, and the quantity of it may well be obscuring the answers I am looking for. To that end these volumes attempt to order and present that data, so that it may also be used by others in an attempt to locate their own Sankey ancestors.

The Sankey One Name Study has been divided into several volumes:

Volume 1: G.R.O. Extracts - Births, Marriages & Deaths 1838-1980.

Volume 2: Primary Sources - Parish Registers, Index Extracts, Census Returns, Misc.

Volume 3: I.G.I., U.S. Social Security Index, Ancestral File Index

Volume 4: Journal

Volume 5: Published References, Miscellaneous