[CR] name search needed for an American that apprenticed in England

(Example: Component Manufacturers:Cinelli)

Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 20:14:58 -0400
Subject: [CR] name search needed for an American that apprenticed in England
From: "Doug Fattic" <fatticbicycles@qtm.net>
To: "classicrendezvous@bikelist.org" <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>


While looking through an old address book recently which I created to find British framebuilders, I rediscovered the name of the American that apprenticed at Johnny Berry's shop in Manchester during the summer of 1973. His name is Allen (or perhaps Alan) Wood. At that time he was probably somewhere around 19 years old which would make him 52 to 54 years old today. I would love to be able to talk to him because he could help me unlock the mysteries of how Johnny made frames.

Is anyone on this list familiar with name search techniques available on the internet? I googled "name search" and a variety of possibilities pop up - most that charge and I would like to be able to filter the options down to what might work best. I did find in my initial search that there are 350 people in the states named Allen Wood so this won't be easy. Years ago when I wrote this name down, the internet with it search engines wasn't available and I eventually forgot it was there since there was no way to find out where he was without more information.

Johnny's son Don got a PhD and works in Indianapolis and his wife Ida is still alive at 99 years of age. However, neither of them paid much attention to how Johnny made frames and can't/couldn't answer my questions about his methods. I would love to know this since I ended up with much of Johnny's framebuilding stuff and I do know enough of what he did to realize he was one of England's masters. He was dedicated to quality rather than quantity.

If anyone has some experience with name searching and can help me, I would appreciate any on or off list help.

Thank you, Doug Fattic - with a lot of framebuilding stuff from Manchester now in Niles, Michigan USA