Welcome to Stanley Origins!

This is the web site that helps you find out more about your Stanley ancestors.

I have records of Stanleys from various parts of England, Wales, Scotland (not many), Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, USA & Canada and a small sample from other places, but the geographic bias is still tending towards the areas my own family lived in namely Birmingham and the Cotswolds area of England. You can see more about the distribution later on. I consider Standley, Stanly, Standly, Stanlee, Stanleigh etc. all as valid variants of the name (there are other more obscure ones).

This is where I need your help.

This project has two objectives. Firstly to document the history of the extended Stanley family in detail in an offline database and to make this available to searches, and then secondly to publish as much of this as possible online in a concise way, giving links to other Stanley researcher who are more expert in their specific areas. A true 'one name' study of this name would be impossible for one person to handle so this is where you come in. Do drop me a line and tell me all about your relationship to the Stanley family. If you can send me a gedcom file then even better. For more information on my offline database and how you can help me extend this please see here.

Enjoy the web site and thanks in advance for your participation.

Stanley family history and origins

Thanks for stopping by. Over many years I have managed to help out many Stanley family researchers and to put many distant Stanley cousins in touch with one another.

So, if you are interested in your Stanley family history please take one of the links to the geographic region where your Stanley family interest lies, take a look at some of the external links listed there - then come back and tell me more.

I look forward to hearing from you.

I am happy to assist bona fide Stanley family researchers with lookups. There are now in excess of 22,000 names on the  database
 

Introduction

It started off as my own personal Stanley family history. It then developed into a study of all the Stanley families who lived in the same part of the world as my own family, namely Birmingham in Warwickshire, Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, and before that the area around Broadway in Worcestershire and Snowshill & Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire.

In the last few years this has started to evolve into a more general one-name study. This is quite a task however as Stanley is not an uncommon name.

The best I can probably hope for at this stage is a general covering of most of the more commonly settled countries & areas of the world by the Stanley clan.

What’s New?

Recently we introduced some more information on collateral branches of our own family including some new photographs.

A new source has come to light concerning the Stanleys of Knowsley, more details on the Earls of Derby page.

Please keep your feedback coming back.
 

Announcement

I’m sorry to announce the death of Peter E. Stanley, author of “The House of Stanley” who died last year. Please join with me to send our condolences to his family. See here for more information on “The House of Stanley”.