Welcome

24 August 2018 

I am hoping to complete the photography of St Oswald's Churchyard headstones by the end of this year. It will be very slow progress putting the photographs, inscriptions and family information on this Wiki and FamilySearch. I will be pushed to do five stones a week and there are well over a thousand of them. 

There are about 60 'old-style' grave pages at the moment. I will update them 'as and when'.

You can look for people of interest by putting names in the 'Search this workspace box' top right. There is also an Index in the St Oswald's folder. Access this by clicking on the main header. Clicking on the Grave link will take you to the page.

19 July 2017

About a month ago I revived the Looking at Filey blog - and naturally called it Looking at Filey REDUX.

 I asked the kind folk at PBWorks about three years ago if they would continue to host this Wiki because the old LaF had been archived by the British Library and although most links didn't work on the Wayback Machine it was possible to figure out how to get to websites referenced. Maybe some people managed to find this Wiki and information that was, I hope, useful to them.

In a LaFredux post yesterday I linked to a Wiki Page here and noticed a bunch of people IDs needed updating. Four or five years ago I set up the Filey Community Tree, hosting it myself for a year before passing it over to FamilySearch Community Trees. It wasn't well managed there but the whole project was shut down not long afterward and FamilySearch seemed to concentrate their efforts on the World Tree Wiki. Given that all Wikis are flawed because wayward human beings pile the information into them. FamilySearch Tree (FST) with its countless millions of people is clearly not the most reliable of sources for family historians. But I happen to think it is terrific and worth putting in some effort to make it progressively more valuable.

A few months ago I asked Kath Wilkie, a Filey local historian, if she would consider putting her database of about 45,000 people into FST. After consultation with FamilySearch it was agreed that Kath's database should go into the Genealogies at FamilySearch.org (aka Pedigree Resource File) and anyone with Filey forebears can search for them there in Kath's database. About a quarter of the people in Kath's database can be found in the World Tree Wiki. I would guess that there are not many Filey people in the World Tree that are not in Kath's database. So if you go first to FST and don't find who you are looking for - search in Genealogies. 

To demonstrate the differences between FST and Genealogies (if you have no idea what to expect from either resource) here's the example of one of the first fishermen to move from Norfolk to the Yorkshire coast - William JENKINSON. You will find his pedigree on Kath's Filey Genealogy & Connections here. You will need to open a free account with FamilySearch to access the Wiki-Tree. Once there look for William by his FST ID: MGCZ-286. Compare and contrast pedigrees!

Below are the old WELCOMES  so that you can see how I've arrived here from there. This Wiki is a mess, for sure, but I'll try to improve it in the coming months. It will take time to make all old links serviceable and replace fct IDs with FST IDs. Your patience will be appreciated.

Previously...

This wiki is a companion to Looking at Filey, a contributory local history website on a blogging platform. A lot of local history information, such as enriched census data, doesn't fit well into a calendar framework. I'm hoping to put data for selected households on this wiki - and any other information that proves difficult to access on the blog. 

Looking at Filey, the blog, will be made public in October 2010 and this companion wiki will be made available on the first occasion that the two websites need to be linked up.

It will take several months for the wiki to mature. I will leave many of the default PB Works Pages and helpful links as they are (usually highlighted in orange) until all the Filey-specific elements are in place. 

This is a contributory workspace. Looking at Filey Wiki can only grow into something really useful if many other people put their ideas, data, documents, links, and enthusiasm into it. Without such contributions the wiki will most likely wither and die. So, if you have an interest in, or a family connection to, this small town on the Yorkshire coast please consider actively supporting it. Sign up at PB Works (easy and free) and you'll be able to add comments. Alternatively, tell me about your interest in Filey in an email and I will add you as a writer to the workspace.

Ian Elsom, 28 September 2010

ian.elsom@btinternet.com

Update

In the sixteen months or so since the above Welcome message was written one person stepped forward to add information to the Wiki. Meanwhile, over at the Looking at Filey Blog, a few written contributions were received, but not enough. At the end of its first year, I had hoped that 90% of posts would be contributed by guest bloggers. Overall, outside contributions barely reached 5% of the total written content.

Clearly, both the Filey Blog and the FileyWiki failed as contributory websites. The duo was joined last summer by the Filey Tree.  This genealogy of the town also had a contributory heart but although a number of people offered valuable and gratefully received information about their forebears nobody has been brave enough to sign up to input data directly to the server or donate Gedcoms of their family trees.

Although the three sites are basket cases a lot of information about Filey and its people has been gathered and it would be wrong to throw it all away by closing the Looking at Filey operation down altogether.

I am reducing the amount of time I put into Filey considerably but, over the next six months or so, will attempt to re-organize the store of information so that it can remain available online for the foreseeable future. There isn't a blueprint for this re-organization but here is a rough guide: -

Looking at Filey Blog Regular posts have now ceased and a selection of the most informative articles will be archived to this Wiki. The Blog will then disappear.

Filey Tree will remain available in its current location until May 2012. Arrangements are in hand for it to be hosted elsewhere in a more basic form. In its next home it will be shorn of all photographs and Google Maps but the Individual and Family Group records will be unchanged. I hope to act as Tree Administrator until 2014, my main task being to handle donated data.

Filey Wiki will undergo a major overhaul in the coming months. It will become the repository for selected Blog posts and the photographs and documents that can no longer be held on the Filey Tree. All individuals on the Tree whose lives are documented by more than the basic BMD and Census information will have their own Wiki Page.

Ian, 14 February 2012

Another Update

I soldiered on through 2012 and much of 2013 before giving up all hope of anyone coming along to help me carry the (enjoyable) burden that is Looking at Filey. Then, not getting any younger and having other things I wanted to do before I croaked, I asked the British Library if the LaF Blog was worthy of being stored on the UK Web Archive - and that is the only place you will find it after 7 October 2013.

The Filey Community Tree was handed over to Family Search Community Trees where it has languished. My September 2012 update has not yet been implemented 12 months later (the 18th September 2012 modification was a duplicated upload of the previous month's update).

I have added quite a bit of information to this Wiki in the 18 months or so but most of the categories/folders are a long way from what might pass for completion. As a resource this Wiki is not up to much and as a Wiki it has proved to be an abject failure - but it will remain available for as long as the kind hosts want to give it house room.

Ian, 20 September 2013

Photographs on this Wiki and Copyright

Photographs donated to the Looking at Filey Project and shared here on the Wiki are attributed to their donors and the photographers if known.

Copyright to “family photographs” remains with the donor/owner, all rights reserved. They should not be copied without permission. If you wish to use a donated photograph please email me and I will approach the owner on your behalf.

The copyright to some “old photographs” in family collections may still be held by commercial businesses. Those images created by known professional studio photographers are shared here in good faith. They will be taken down at the request of a copyright owner who feels their rights have been infringed. Permission has been sought from publishers of Filey area newspapers to show their photographs and it has been kindly given by the current owners of the Hull Daily Mail.

All unattributed photographs on the Wiki are by Ian Elsom and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You may copy and share these photographs but please read the license first.

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