Preece

Preece One-Name Study

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Study details

Study: Preece

Variants: Prease, Prees, Preese

Category: 3 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way on a global basis.

Website: www.preecefamilyhistory.co.uk

DNA website: www.familytreedna.com/public/Preece

Contact: Mr Ian Preece

About the study

Having started looking into my family back in the 1980's, I discovered the Guild of One Name Studies, and realised that I could maintain a Study for my name with the large numbers of Preece entries I was finding in Worcestershire and Herefordshire at that time. I subsequently became a member in 1988.

Little did I know just how many entries I would locate - having used a card index I went onto computer in 1990 with 2000 records, and now have well over 120,000 individual entries.

I have a large number of contacts who share my name or who have the name in their own families, and it is now quite rare for me not to be able to enhance someones knowledge when they contact me.

Most of my contacts have been in the UK, but I have quite a number from North America and Australia/New Zealand.

Variant names

The following variations of the name PREECE are presently included within the database:-

PREECE PREACE PRIESS PRIECE PRECE PREES PREESE PREEZE PRIES PREEC PREICE PREACE PRESE PRES PREASE PREAS PREEZ PRIESE

In addition, sometimes the name has been entered as Priest or Preist in some parish registers and census records. For various reasons the name has also been found as Pruce, Pruse and Purce in census indexes. There is the odd example of it being found as Price, but these instances are surprisingly rare.

Name origin

The name Preece is thought to derive from the Welsh 'Ap Rees', meaning son of Rees - this is also the origin of many other Welsh based names, for example the similar Price. There is some evidence which suggests that Preece may be a separate name in it's own right.

Data

My database now extends to well over 140,000 entries, and the main parts of this are as follows :-

GRO Birth, Marriage and Death records from 1837 to 2006.
Census entries - complete from 1841 to 1911 as far as humanly possible! I keep finding entries missed previously, wrongly indexed in a variety of projects and so on.

Herefordshire is the county with the largest numbers of Preece entries, and all census entries for the county are held.

Large numbers of parish register entries have been extracted, particularly from Herefordshire and Worcestershire parishes, in addition to those entries in the IGI and Vital Records indexes.

All entries from the US census up to 1930 are held, together with a large range of entries from all sorts of sources - wills, union records, military, medals, electoral rolls, trade directories etc.

DNA

As of 1 March 2015 I have started a DNA project in conjunction with FamilyTreeDNA.

The website for the project can be found at https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Preece

Links

I maintain a separate website which holds much more information than shown in this summary here. It contains lots of records available to view as well as further details on the name, distribution maps, links to immigration data and plenty more. It can be found at http://www.preecefamilyhistory.co.uk .

I have also finally entered the 21st century and set up a Facebook group for the ONS - this can be found at Facebook/Preece ONS .

Contact Details

Mr Ian Preece

General Search Results

Occurrences of the surname Preece in the Guild Indexes

(Click on the number to view the search results in each index. Indexes marked by * are only accessible by logged in Guild members.)

Global Marriages (public) 11613
Global Marriages (members)* 15532
Inscriptions Index 3
Modern Newspaper Index 7
Marriage Index 1837-1945* 4993
Probate Index* 9
BMD Index* 353
Members' Data Stores in which the name Preece appears 41
References to the name Preece in the Guild Journal 1

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