Family History
· The Group has meetings on the 3rd Monday morning of each month, 10am-12 noon, at a member’s house.
· We constantly reveal interesting facts as our group now has members with local, national and international roots.
Leader: Janet Freeman – email janethfreeman.12@gmail.com
Or Cathy Platt – email plattcathy58@gmail.com
Members of the Family History Group report progress achieved within their own family research at each monthly meeting. Triumphs are celebrated and sticking points are discussed. Any photographs or other illustrative material, such as documents, diaries, personal belongings, newspaper articles or even adverts of the time are always particularly interesting.
Our coverage is wide ranging and varied, often including the related area of social history through learning about health and housing, employment and occupations, and possible reasons for migration.
Recurring themes touch on how best to store and retrieve the information found, the use of computers, achieving the best results for the least cost, and how to tackle the task of presenting your family history to others. A new but increasingly used method of research is the use of DNA which is proving a challenging avenue of investigation.
Within our members, we have access to the subscription databases of Ancestry, FindMyPast and The Genealogist, each with their own specialist areas. FindMyPast, for example, includes the 1921 census and the British Newspaper Archive, whereas The Genealogist has a good coverage of maps which can be overlayed. The group also has a subscription to the ‘Family Tree Magazine’ whose articles often provide guidance to the way forward, and notification of new sources of information as they become available. Subscribers are encouraged to send in articles, queries from their own research, or just snippets of interest. There has been quite a bit of success in having many of the latter printed.
- The Family History Group is full at present, but queries or problems from anyone are welcome.
