This Sunday, 19th May, is the Kent Family History Fair in Maidstone, Kent. Run by Family History Fairs, it's at Lockmeadow Market Hall, Hart Street in Maidstone, Kent. It's £2 admission and is open from 10am to 4pm. Apparently there's over 100 stalls going to be present offering a wide variety of genealogy products and services, so should be a good day out for the family historian. Are you going?
An amazing discovery of 77 lantern slides taken by well known photographer Alex R Hogg, dating from World War One has recently been made in Belfast. The slides were found in the organ loft of Alexandra Presbyterian Church last month. A project has now been put together to identify all the men pictured in the slides. Apparently there are 137 men to be identified.
The Castleton Lanterns project is now looking for assistance from the public to try to identify the names of each of the soldiers listed. There's more information from their official website. If you have an ancestor from Belfast who fought in the Great War it is well worth taking a look to see if you can help!
For those family historians with Irish ancestry, or for those people interested in Irish history, the book we've looked at this week could prove of great interest. Entitled 'Tracing your Galway Ancestors' by Peadar O'Dowd, it looks at all aspects of life in the second largest county in Ireland.
The book starts off with a look at the history of the county, dating back to the 13th century Norman adventurers. It then gives some handy tips on how to go about researching your Galway ancestry.
The author looks at the types of records available to the family historian which can help you find out more about your relatives- looking at Irish census records, census substitute records, church records, land records, grave inscriptions and more.
The book is a comprehensive research tool for those looking into this widely diverse population, giving you the ideas on what records are available and how best to use them. The book is published by Flyleaf Press and is available from S&N Genealogy Supplies priced £11.55 at http://www.genealogysupplies.com/product_display.php?prodid=6224
The Historical Association are in the midst of promoting the 'Research your Local Community' campaign throughout the month of May, designed to get everyone interested in the history of their local area or birthplace.
From interesting facts about royal visits to the origin of street names, there is so much to find out about our local history. It's a great feeling being able to conjure up pictures from the past and relate them to things you do now around about your community.
The Historical Association have created a searchable database with events and talks happening throughout the month. Take a look at what is happening in your local area- there's more information on their website.
A number of genealogy bloggers have picked up on the new comedy series from Christopher Guest, entitled 'Family Tree' which started yesterday on HBO in the US and is rumoured to air on BBC 2 in the UK in the near future.
Chris O'Dowd in Family Tree (HBO)
It stars Chris O'Dowd (pictured) who sets out to uncover his family lineage after being left a box of objects from a great aunt. Four of the eight parts are set in the UK, the other four are set in the US, giving the programme an international feel.
There appears to be no definite date when it will screen on the BBC and we will await with interest. With Chris O'Dowd starring, it looks like proving a humourous take on family history research which may attract the attention of a younger audience and hopefully interest them enough to look into their family history!
News from the Vatican Library is the major project to digitise 82,000 valuable manuscripts from their collection is finally underway.
The project, finally up and running a year after its announcement, uses an armada of equipment to capture the vast range of pages amassed by the Vatican over five or six centuries into one of the world’s most valuable collection of books and manuscripts.
Vatican manuscripts to go online
They include the Vatican’s 8,900 incunabula (books printed before 1501): the Sifra, a Hebrew manuscript written a millennia ago, a 4th century manuscript of the Greek Bible and the De Europa of Pope Pius II, printed around 1491.
More information on the project is available here
Family History Social will be taking a weekly look at some of the popular books available for family historians which I hope are of interest to you.
This week we've taken a look at the 'Penguin Dictionary of British Surnames' by John Titford. The book describes itself as 'the definitive guide to surnames and their meanings' and is certainly very comprehensive. The author looks at the history of British surnames, regional variations and offers in one section, a humourous take on surnames from various parts of the British Isles.
The Penguin Dictionary of British Surnames
The book is very meticulous, analysing the history and thought-processes behind the use of surnames. There's also a section devoted to how genealogists can approach the whole surname issue and its significance in our research. The book also gives a comprehensive list of further sources of research (both offline and online) to discover more about surnames.
Finally, the majority of the book (as per the title) gives an A to Z of surnames and their origin and meaning. The book contains over 10,000 surnames and includes how names have developed and varied over the years. It's available from S&N Genealogy Supplies priced £14.99. There's more details on their website.
The National Archives at Kew has, according to their website, made a further 20,000 digitised Home Guard records for County Durham available online, which adds to the 40,000 records already available from the site as part of a pilot project.The records are a great way of finding details of a relative who may have been part of the defence organisation of the British Army consisting of 4.5 million volunteers in World War Two. There's more details at the TNA website here.
TheGenealogist has now completed transcribing birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales giving a third of a billion fully searchable records. These are also linked into their unique 'SmartSearch' facility taking you through a person’s life events.
This release marks the completion of a hugely successful project for TheGenealogist, now providing family historians with fully transcribed BMD records dating back to the start of civil registration in 1837.
What makes this unique is the linked in ‘SmartSearch’ feature, which makes life even easier for the family historian.
Mark Bayley, Head of Online Content, explains: "The transcriptions allow us to harness the full power of 'SmartSearch' and allow our users to swiftly jump from one record to the next. It's now possible to move through your ancestral line with unparalleled speed. No other site makes searching for your ancestors so straightforward."
There's more details on the completion of this project at www.TheGenealogist.co.uk
