Wells Family Research Association Info Page

What is
The Wells Family Research Association?


The Wells Family Research Association was founded in 1988 with two primary objectives:

  1. To serve as a repository for Wells information for all Wells family researchers the world over.

  2. To enable Wells researchers with interests in the same lines to more easily find each other and to share information.

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:

Linked family groups constructed from the material submitted by members, correspondents, our own research efforts and virtually any research source that yields such information.

An index to numerous publications including our own The Wells Chronicles, another Wells newsletter Wells Researcher, a 1970's newsletter The Wells Family Research Bulletin and a growing number of published and unpublished Wells genealogies.

An index containing the ancestors extracted from thousands of Wells related family group sheets acquired from members and other sources. This is the source of the material published in April 1996 as the International Wells Research Index.

A database of all the Wells individuals found in the 1850 US census. We hope eventually to be able to expand this to the 1851 census for both Canada and the UK. Our next US project is to gather the Wells from the 1880 census.

A database of family researchers from around the world who are interested in any Wells line. Currently, this database contains over 5,200 names. This is used as a resource to help connect new researchers who contact the association with others who have a similar interest (whether members or not) and for the association to communicate to them when we find some material that links to their line(s) of interest.

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

$12 (US) per year for North America
$16 Australian ($21 Airmail) for Australia and New Zealand
£8 Sterling (£11 Sterling Airmail) for the UK and other European countries

Membership includes 4 issues of The Wells Chronicles.

Membership renewal is keyed to the four issues and not a calendar year. To date we have published 19 issues (over 660 pages including full indexes on an annual basis plus a complete index to the first 18 issues).

Membership information may be obtained by writing to one of the following addresses:

US, North America and locations not covered below
Wells Family Research Association
P. O. Box 5427
Kent, WA 98064-5427
(e-mail [email protected])

UK and other European locations
Wells Family Research Association
c/o Mrs. Denise Dawson
109 Crofton Road
Orpington, Kent BR6 8HX
England

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.


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e-mail: Wells Family Research Association
[email protected]