The Wells Family Research Association was founded in 1988 with two primary objectives:
The Association now has nearly 600 active members with the membership residing in the US, Canada Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Nearly 700 researchers have been members of the Association since its founding and we have information on and from over 5,300 researchers with interests in Wells family research.
The Association is building a large Wells research database which consists of:
All of this information is used to help answer inqueries from members and others as well as to continue the primary project of building the linked family records in the database. We have hundreds of thousands of entries currently in the system, but we still have a very long way to go.
The Association publishes a (sometimes) quarterly newsletter titled The Wells Chronicles which typically carries 28 pages of compacted information on Wells with regular columns "Wells History", "Wells Heraldry", "Early American Wells", "Queries", "US Wells", "Canadian Wells", "English Wells", "Australian Wells", "New Zealand Wells".
It is the objective of this publication to circulate as much material on Wells from various sources as possible to assist Wells family researchers in their research efforts. Due to the limited involvement in the production of the newsletter and the level of effort to produce it, its publication is not always quarterly.
The association is also currently acquiring CD-ROM sources as funding permits to help build our base of information and to serve as a resource for members who do not have access to this material. Eventually we hope to be able to build a Wells specific CD-ROM for researchers that will contain everything we can find that relates to any Wells. This would eventually be made available to anyone with an interest.
Membership in the Association is
Membership includes 4 issues of The Wells Chronicles.
Membership information may be obtained by writing to one of the following addresses:
Additional information will be sent with your registration confirmation including any researcher connections we may be able to identify for your Wells family of interest.
Whether you chose to join the association or not, we encourage you to send us your family information for inclusion in our database and matching to existing information. Although we would like to have you send this in Family Group Sheet or GEDCOM computer file format, any format you have the information in currently is acceptable including handwritten pages. We suggest you provide as complete information on dates, locations and relationships as possible to help us identify the individuals and best help you in your research efforts. It is often a sibling or child or in-law of an ancestor that provides the critical link in discovering more information.
If you have Wells information you have gathered that is not related to your family, we would like to invite you to send it to us for our constantly growing Wells information collection and library. We would also invite you to send us copies of information you have found on your own Wells family.
The Association does NOT currently have facilities or staff to conduct individual research for members or others for pay or otherwise. We do make a continuous effort to distribute Wells Research information, to match members with new information from other researchers and to put members in contact with others researching their families as we become aware of them.