Advertisement

WELCOME TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE “WORLD WIDE W*GG*”

Editor - Vivian Egan

The aim of this Newsletter is to bring together the W*GG* family history researchers of the world by way of combining and sharing our research results with each other.

Firstly I would like to introduce myself.

My name is Vivian Egan (Mrs. in case you were wondering - my grandparents chose the spelling for my mother whom I am named after). I currently live in the small coastal, sugarcane farming community of Ingham in north Queensland, Australia.

My husband Peter’s job involves us being transferred around the state every couple of years. We have 3 children, Gerard 10, Stephanie 7 and Brendan 3.

I began tracing my family history in 1983 before I met and married Peter. My research is concentrated in Australia, the UK (England, Scotland and one lonely Irish ancestress) and Germany (my mother’s paternal grandfather was from Wuerrtemberg). With a surname like EGAN, of course, most of Peter’s ancestors are Irish, with a tiny smidgeon of English and Scottish thrown in.

Harriet Ann WEGG, only daughter of John Willis WEGG and his wife Hannah nee EVANS, was my 2 x great grandmother. Harriet was born in the village of Mundesley, Norfolk, England in 1856.

Just over twelve months ago I decided to start a database for the WEGG name. At first I was just concentrating on Norfolk families, but decided to expand it worldwide and to include the other spelling variations - mainly because in one family alone - I found at least 5 different variations of the name. Widening my area of research has even been beneficial to my own WEGG research.

So at the moment I am collecting all references to the WAGG, WEGG, WIGG, WIGGS, WHIGG, WIGGES and anymore you can think of.

At present the database holds over 7,000 records covering the UK and Australia. I have also been sent quite a lot of US and Canadian details but have not added them to the database yet.

So far I have contacted over 50 others researching these names and have had replies from about 40 of them. To those who have sent details of their research - THANK YOU-IT IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

It is only with your continued support and generosity in sharing your information that I am hoping to make the database a viable research resource for all W*GG* researchers.

In this early stage of the database, it has been great to have been able to help others out with their research. Of course, I have not been able to help everyone, but it is a start in the right direction.

In the next edition I would like to include a list of researchers. If you are willing to have your name and address details included please let me know.

Information in the database will be available FREE to everyone researching these names, but I would appreciate some help with postage in sending out this newsletter.

What I am proposing to do, is to E-mail a copy of the Newsletter to everyone with access to E-mail, which covers Australia, New Zealand, England and Canada (so far). I would then like to call upon volunteers (of those with e-mail access)from each country who would be willing to post out copies of the Newsletter to those who are not E-mail accessible. Of course, the more people who volunteer the more the work is shared around.

With regards to postage costs this would be a one-off. I would then expect that anyone interested in continuing to receive a copy of the Newsletter to come to some arrangement to cover postage of any further mailings.

If you would like to help out with this, please let me know and I will send out a list of recipients for the Newsletter for distribution.

At the moment I cannot guarantee how often I will be able to compile the Newsletter. It will depend upon my family commitments and time available. There is a chance we may have to pick up and move again in March (and we have only been here since May).

Any ideas for topics for future editions would be much appreciated. I thought that a brief Biog. from everyone on the Mailing List would not go astray. A list of resources already checked would also save a lot of work.

Any thoughts and comments on any part of the newsletter including the title ? I must give credit to Paul Wagg of Brisbane (formerly Wales) and Ian Wegg of Hampshire for the title !!! (Hope you don’t mind me pinching it ?)

HAPPY NEW YEAR

TO

EVERYONE

Advertisement