Project 26 April 1, 2026 update
Project 26 Update
Posted April 1, 2026 by Orin Wells
Genealogy Without Documentation is Mythology
I do not know where this quotation originated. I have repeatedly tried to find out. I started using it years ago and it has
always been on the first page of our website (wells.org). The source seems to be anonymous.
However, it conveys a very important message. If you believe Elmer Wells born 1851 in Lexington, KY to be one of your ancestors
the question that needs to be answered ALWAYS is "How can you prove this?" A couple of examples:
Just because you found it in a genealogy does not make it fact. If at all possible you need to find original source documents
or at least verifiable copies to prove connections whether it be a parish record, bible record, public record etc.
A written genealogy whether published or not is NOT a primary source. If the author included primary source references,
you owe it to yourself to verify that cited source.
Did you miss the March update?
I placed the update from March 1st on the Wells.org website here:
https://www.wells.org/project26/project26.html
Click on "Project Introduction"
Looking for a graphics artist
I need someone who has the skills of a graphics artist with experience using Photo Shop or a similar program. We have a number of
Wells/Welles coats of arms that were drawn in black and white by hand by Patti Quallich for our newsletters back in the 1980s
and 1990s. I want to redraw these in full color to include in the archives. I have background information on the families
connected to this heraldry much of which I obtained directly from the College of Arms years ago. Yes, many of these are
available on commercial sites but many are not all that accurate. There will be no time pressure on this task.
The National Genealogical Society 2026 Family History Conference
This annual conference will be held May 27-30 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. If any of you are planning to attend the conference,
please let me know.
More DNA tests?
I think that most of you involved in the DNA testing know this, but I am going to repeat it. If you are a female or have a
maternal connection to your Wells family the ideal DNA test is going to be Y-DNA. I recommend the 37 marker test at Family
Tree DNA. You should be looking for a male relative you can persuade to give up a DNA sample "for the cause". It is the
best way to connect your family to one of the "known" Wells families. Now, if you are a guy carrying the Wells surname then
by all means you should have taken a Y-DNA test. We have several who took the AncestryDNA or FamilyFinder DNA test which is
the autosomal test. The Y-DNA is passed from father to son virtually unchanged which is why it works in matching a known Wells
family.
We can expect Family Tree DNA to offer discounted tests for DNA Day coming up on April 26th. Also they frequently offer discounts
on Father's day which will be on June 21st. I will let you all know when these discounts are announced. Let's get more of our men
tested!
Postscript The April discounts have now passed having closed on April 30th. I will keep an eye out for the next one.
W001 Thomas Wells b: abt 1605 & Abigail Warner
About 1903 Gertrude W. Wells-Cushing published Genealogy Of The Wells Family and Families Related in which she wrote
'St. Botolphs Register, page 53, Colchester, Essex Co., England, has the following marriage record: Thomas Wells of _____, single, and Abygall Warner of _____, single,
the 23rd July, 1630.
'
The problem here is there is no such entry in St. Botolphs Register nor in the corresponding Bishop's Transcript. I know because
I checked them myself. I can only surmise that Mrs. Wells-Cushing hired someone in England who then claimed to have found this.
The message here is you can not trust citations unless they actually include a copy of what they are citing or you can check it
out yourself to validate the citation.
That is why we will be seeking every original primary source we can find to validate everything and, when possible, including an
image of what we are citing and/or a link to where the record can be found by future researchers. Sometimes it will be
necessary to take some relationships at face value because the necessary original source records simply do not exist.
Was it Colchester, Essex, England?
A lot of genealogies claim that many different Wells ancestors came from Colchester. The primary reason appears to connect back
to Albert Welles' book again plus another history written in the 1800s. But I believe the genesis of this came from the Will
of this same Thomas Wells (above). In his will he refers to a cousin Mary Baker (alias Lowe) of Colchester
. Many have
taken this to mean that Thomas was from Colchester. Mary Baker was NOT a blood relative of Thomas but rather of his wife Abigail
Warner. Again the message here is you can not make assumptions. Related to that is if you find two Wells families living in the
same area you can not assume they are related unless you find collaborating evidence to validate the hypothesis.
Credits
When a genealogist or family historian finds a new piece of information and shares it whether through private correspondence or
on-line they kind of expect that anyone who picks it up and passes it on whether again in private correspondence or by placing
it on-line in a family tree or otherwise the person who originally discovered the information rightfully should expect that their
name will be credited as the source along with how to find the primary document. Sadly too often that does not happen.
Frankly, for the work I have done and will do, I do not really care if I am cited or not. It is the shared information that I
am most interested in making available to current and future researchers. However, we need to accommodate those who do care.
So as we move forward anyone who shares a document that they want to have a credit attached to please make me aware of this
and I will do my best to appropriately include that citation on the document as it is forwarded for inclusion in the Wells
Families Special Collection.
In addition as we will do our best to place all the Wells we include in the project in their ancestral families I intend to
include a special document for each family that is a list of all the researchers who have contributed information to the material
on that family whether currently living or not. It will consist of the names of the contributors ordered by last name then first
name. No contact information or locations will be included. The reason for that is most of us will be long gone when future
researchers come across this.
Collaboration
There is no way I will be able to accomplish everything necessary to make our project as successful as it can be. So I need YOU
folks to collaborate with me and with others. In particular we will encourage all descendants of each family to work together
with a lead researcher to help gather the material for that family.
First Volunteers Needed.
I do not expect everyone who is on this email list to volunteer to help. Some of you are not even sure if your ancestors actually
had any Wells among them. Others are just not able for various reasons to volunteer your time for the effort. But I will
absolutely welcome anyone who does have the time and willingness to assist. This project is likely to last years rather than
just a few months.
To accomplish this I am calling for those of you who are able and willing to step up for your family and volunteer to be the
lead researcher. If you are willing and have the time, please send me an email letting me know and identify the family you
are taking responsibility for. Please include your mailing address and phone number for my records. Mind you I have a
lot of information for just about every family we will be working and this will be shared with the lead who I will expect
to share it with any of your cousins who need to know. We will look to the other researchers on each family to share what
they have with the lead researcher. There is no problem if two or more researchers want to become co-leads for their family.
Some of you have been at this for decades so I know you have a lot of information to start with.
General Volunteers
I may regret doing this as an open invitation because there are SO many of you. So let's try to organize it. If you are willing
to volunteer to search for stuff as we need it and request it from an archive that you subscribe to (Ancestry.com, MyHeritage etc.)
please send me your name, address, phone number and the different archives that you are a subscriber to. I will do my best to
spread the requests so no one is asked to do more than their share. To keep me from being overloaded please respond to this
request by day of the month (April). Let's do it by first name. A=April 1st, B=April 2nd, C=April 3rd etc. through Z=April 26th.
If you miss the designated date, just jump in and send the info on a later date. Anyone who has already volunteered and sent me
this information, you need not repeat it.
Bible Records
One of the first things I am going to request you all do is to find bible records wherever you are able to find them. Many of you
may already have bible records in your materials picked up during your research. These are incredibly valuable in family
history research and are sometimes found in the oddest places. For example for the Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans
who submitted pension applications it was not uncommon to find copies of their family bible record among the materials submitted
as well as references to other family members. I am not yet sure how to do this without you all tripping over each other and
duplicating effort in searching for bible records. I have some in my files, but there are tons more out there. For now let's
limit it to your own families.
If you locate a bible record in some archive, please try to get the image from the site, a transcript if available and include a
link to where someone else will be able to find that record. Don't worry about attaching the source link, I will take care of
that so it is universally the same on each document. If you are going to scan a document please do so at 300 dpi and create a
TIF file. Also do your best to include a copy of the Title Page which includes the publication date. This is important if you
are trying to verify that the bible was somewhat contemporary to the personal records included such as birth, death and marriage
information.
Let;'s see what we end up with just doing this.
Current Research Resources
Back when the Wells Family Research Association began in 1988 there really was no Internet. If you wanted records you had to
go to record archives personally or hire someone to do it for you. The LDS church started their massive project to record on
microfilm all records they could access in 1938 creating over a period of 83 years 2.4 million rolls of microfilm. If you wanted
to view one of these rolls you had to go to Salt Lake City or to one of the local LDS libraries and order the microfilm sent
for you to view. In 2021 they completed the digitization of all 2.4 million rolls and most of them are now available on-line
through the FamilySearch.org website. Although often I find it awkward to find information.through their website. And they
don't have all of the parish records and Bishop's transcripts. Other archives have still more and not all of the English County
Records Offices have digitized or shared their holdings. When we go looking for those records especially for US families who
are still trying to find out where their English Root Ancestors came from, we will want to go into several archives.
FamilySearch.org currently has 22.7 billion searchable names and images with tens of millions being added every month.
Subscriptions are free.
Ancestry.com was started in 1983 as Ancestry Publishing focusing on books and publications. Paul Allen and Dan Taggert
acquired Ancestry Publishing in 1996 and then renamed it ancestry.com the next year launching the on-line digital database for
family history. Currently they have around 68 billion records and add 3 to 5 million pages daily. There is some sharing of
data between Ancestry and FamilySearch but 70% of what ancestry makes available (by subscription) is unique to Ancestry.
We need to use both. Ancestry also owns FindAGrave.com (265 million grave entries) and Newspapers.com (1 billion
pages and adding millions monthly dating back to the 1700s)- two resources we also will need to access. Be careful of the family
information posted to findagrave. It is posted by well meaning individuals but often contains errors.
Fold3 This is another ancestry owned resource that is accessible ONLY with a subscription to Ancestry's
All Access Subscription
. This resource contains over 600 million digitized, searchable records, primarily focusing
on military documents, photos, and personal stories from the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
MyHeritage.com is owned by Francisco Partners and still operated by the Israeli founder Gilad Japhet. This, subscription
based, resource currently claims to have over 38 billion records adding over a million new records daily. So this is another
resource we can not overlook.
GenWiki - a good source for German Records has millions of records expanding daily.
WikiTree - has over 44 million family trees and over 1.3 million members. I know from what I have seen that not all of the
family records are necessarily accurate. For example Hugh Welles appears in several of the families posted. There WAS a Hugh
Welles in Whethersfield, CT that various researchers have attempted to incorrectly attach to at least two different families
and some have attempted to claim that the husband of "the widow Frances Wells Coleman" to have been married to an earlier Hugh Welles. We just have to be careful when working with records from this and similar sources. As far as we know the earlier Hugh Welles may never have existed and the younger Hugh Welles had no male offspring so we have had no opportunity so far to determine what his DNA may have looked like.
USGenweb Archives - another good resource
GenealogyBank.com - Owned by NewsBank, Inc. Contains over 2 billion "mostly exclusive" genealogy records including
16,000 newspaper articles, census records 316 million obituaries, military records, historical books and more.
Subscription based. Updated with millions of new records monthly.
BillionGraves.com - Owned by Otter Creek Holdings - has GPS-tagged grave sites for over 18 million headstones with photos
both in the US and Internationally. Seems to work with MyHeritage in some way.
Archives.com - another resource owned by Ancestry.com offers access to over 11 billion records including U.S. federal
censuses (1790-1950), birth, marriage, and death records, military service records, immigration/passenger lists, and
obituaries. Some records are shared on Ancestry.com but many of their records can not be found there. This is a subscription
service at $39.95 a year.
Archive.org - this is a non-profit site that digitizes and archives books and publications. Looking for some old
obscure genealogy book? This is where you might find it for free.
Archives.gov - The official website for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Apparently there are a
lot of records here including military records. They are working on digitizing their holdings, but much more slowly than other
sites. They have a goal of reaching 500 million pages of the 13.5 billion in their holdings by September of this year
Waybackmachine.org - operated by Archive.org and linked off their main page. This is an archive of web sites from
over the years dating from 1996. Lost a website with important information? This is where you might find it and be able to
get at that data.
ngsgenealogy.org - National Genealogical Society - The material held here includes all their past publications containing
articles rich in genealogical information, 60,000 member family trees, 2,000 bible records and more that is in the process of
being digitized. Unfortunately most of the records of real value to genealogical research are only available to members of the
Society. Who has a membership?
sog.org.uk - Society of Genealogists - Over 11 million records across 1,700 data sets are available on-line.
Of particular note are Boyd's Marriage Index and London burial and inhabitant records. I know they also have various
parish records. About 40 years ago I visited the SoG and copied all of the Wells information they had in their Wells
collection. This resource is of particular value for those in the UK and other countries whose ancestors came from the UK -
that would be most of us.
FindMyPast.com - This resource has "billions" of records (one source says 1.3 billion) that are largely digitized
high-quality images and transcribed records. All available on-line. Many of their records are from the SoG and The British
Library. The site specializes in digitizing unique historical documents, including censuses, directories and over 50 million
newspaper articles. Again, of most interest for UK historical research. Requires a subscription to access or "pay-as-you-go".
Geni.com - Owned by MyHeritage contains over 200 million linked family profiles.
There are probably others that I am not thinking of right now. I hope to be leaning on you folks who have memberships to
various genealogical record sites as we go along.
I would like to hear from those of you who are subscribers to any of the above. We may want you to do special searches for the
project.
Nothing is Perfect
We live in a great time for research with all of the on-line historical information that only a few years ago were only
available if you took a trip to that special library or county courthouse. As valuable as all the different resources are
you need to be vigilant and careful about what you use. Especially when it comes to family genealogies and trees you can
find on many of these sites. For example, I recently had an occasion to take a look at one particular family at
FamilySearch.org. I discovered 30 different trees for this family with little duplication. Their trees allegedly led
to 4 DIFFERENT immigrant ancestors. They can't all be right. The problem is that these trees, whether at Ancestry.
FamilySearch, MyHeritage, WikiGen, GenTree or where ever else were submitted by users of the sites. Often created by
users who were not as careful as you all are at properly researching and documenting what they "found". Unfortunately I
have learned from the past that once someone assembles "their tree" they are often not interested in updating the information
even if you can prove to them it is wrong. So it lives on in the Internet forever and is propagated to other sites by
new users researching "their" family history.
Our Wells Families
I was asked recently where someone could find the "baseline" families and the other families that the WFRA had identified over
the years. As I work on getting the wells.org website updated I came across the pages on the "families". I had
completely forgotten that this was on the website. It probably was created back about 2014 when we moved about 120 of the first
DNA test results over to Family Tree DNA. It includes every family that we were looking at based mostly on the folks who had
been tested which means it does not include many of you who have come along later. I was astonished that this set of pages
contains 528 family IDs assigned to the families whether it was considered a primary "baseline" family or a lower branch including
some that could not be linked at the time by DNA results plus a LOT of families that just didn't seem to match anything. You
can take a look at this if you wish by going here:
http://wells.org/dnaproje/families1.html
The pages are not alphabetical so it is tedious to find a specific family/ancestor if you do not know the family code used.
On the right at each entry there is a link intended to take you to the DNA results EXCEPT I never got that piece fully connected
in at the time except for a few of the baseline families. I will disconnect those that do not work and put up a node where this
is incomplete to keep the infamous "Server Error 404 Page Not Found" error from coming up if you click on this link. I don't
have all of these disconnected yet so I advise you not to click on the links. As I find time I will finish this up.
I will also put up a parallel set of pages that are organized alphabetically with alpha links so you can click on "G" if you are
looking for George Wells. The entries have the Wnnn family code on the left side, the Husband/wife in column 2, the husband's
birth date and location (if known) and location where they lived/died (again if known) in column 3 and the DNA results link
(if we found a willing person to take the DNA test) once I get those links working.
You can see all the DNA results through 2011 starting here:
https://www.wells.org/dnaproje/results1.html
The marker ids at the top are in numerical order which is not how Family Tree DNA does it so I will have to reorder the columns.
This is also the 43 marker results from the earlier BYU, Relative Genetics, Ancestry and Sorenson Molecular Genealogy projects.
None of the FTDNA results have been integrated yet.
On the left were links that would let the user send a brokered email (address masked) through a form to the person who
contributed the DNA sample or the person who sponsored the DNA contributor. The code for that was in a now unsupported bit
of software, so I will need to revise this, again as I get time. It is highly likely that many if not most of the emails
no longer function and I will have to verify them. For now don't click on the IDs.
The Family and Branch links seem to sort of work. Clicking that will take one to the page with the subject family -
most of the time. I will need to go through and fix many of these as well.
I am pretty sure that the original intent was to set a link on the family code (W001) that would take the user to the page
where the genealogy for that family could be viewed. None of this is in place currently. I will add this as we go through
the project and get more of the families fleshed out.
I will advise you all when I have had time to update these pages as noted.
Project 26 Status Update
Phase I
We now have over nearly 600 researchers on this list. I am still working on confirming email addresses for those I can locate
who are part of the DNA project. I anticipate eventually we will have 700+ as I wind down on trying to catch up with everyone I
know about and we all start inviting other researchers to join us as we move along.
Phase II
Trying to contact past DNA participants continues. I believe we had nearly 600 who had been tested before we moved
the project to Family Tree DNA in 2014. Only 120 were moved into FTDNA. Again he next update at Family Tree DNA will
restore the ability to see the STR Results for folks who transferred 46 markers over to FTDNA. I will let you know and
tell you how to see this when it is live. I have not been given a date for this.
Phase III
I still have not yet had time to import the FTDNA tests into my matching software. Hopefully that will happen this next
month. I said THAT last month....
Phase IV
Contacting other researchers from my database. This continues to be a painfully slow process as so many are no longer
reachable at email or phone numbers I have. I will add to this a group of people who contacted me over the past 10 years as
I can verify their contact information..
Phase V
I am still slowly working my way through the Wells.org website.
Retutn to the Project 26 Index
Return to WFRA Home Page
e-mail: Wells Family Research Association
Last revised 5/1/2026