Celebrating Family History

As part of the City Voices strand of Gloucester History Festival 2020, Gloucestershire's family historians gave a series of short talks ranging from 2 to 9 minutes.

Headline speaker, Dr Nick Barratt, historian, genealogist and broadcaster also gave a talk drawing on his experience with the popular TV programme, ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ to look at the future of family history. He concludes by providing tips on getting started with your own family history

A Focus on Family History (32 minutes)

Local family historian talk on a range of subjects including -

(Click title to see the film)

Introduction to family history with Clive Andrews

Stonemasons at Gloucester Cathedral with Elaine Schollar

Researching the Smiths and England’s oldest farmers with Barbara Osborne

Button Gwinnett and the American Declaration of Independence with Liz Jack

Early family history publications with Gareth Swain

JRR Tolkien with Sue Woodward

Tragic accidents with Elaine Schollar

Gloucester Cemetery, Tredworth Road with Andy Sysum

Police ancestors with Barbara Osborne 

Police collar numbers with Sue Webb

Richard Gwinnett the dramatist Liz Jack

Unusual sources for family history with Rose Hewlett

Family tree to die for with Barbara Osborne

Gloucestershire’s memorial inscriptions (grave stones) with Andy Sysum

Titanic with Sue Woodward

Gloucestershire’s war memorials with Andy Sysum

We hope you enjoy the range of stories as much as we did! If it inspired you to take up research into your own family, please join us in the covid-safe Heritage Hub and work with one of our local experts.  Pre-booking essential - please see  gfhs.org.uk for details

News from Gloucestershire Family History Society

We are sad to report that in July, we lost our long-standing committee member and former Chairman, Dr Hugh Kearsey. Hugh was also president of Oxfordshire FHS, and had a keen interest in the Cotswold Canals Trust, to which any donations in his memory may be made: https://www.cotswoldcanals.org.uk/. Hugh will be sorely missed.

Dr Hugh Kearsey

Re-opening of the Family History Centre

September was a busy month for the Society. After much work, we were finally able to open the doors once again to the Family History Centre. Initially for one day a week, following this successful trial period, we are now open on Tuesday and Wednesday (morning and afternoon) and Thursday (morning only). Pre-booking is essential, and the form with further details can be found at:

http://gfhs.org.uk/partial-reopening-of-the-family.../ 

Also in September, we were delighted to contribute a series of short films promoting family history to the Gloucester History Festival (click here to view the talks). Another highlight of the Festival was Rose Hewlett’s presentation “Defending Gloucestershire's Coast”. This drew on her recent book “The Gloucestershire Court of Sewers, 1583-1642”, which contains a wealth of family and local history information.

   

Click the image to see Rose's presentation

And finally, we were privileged to have been gifted the lifetime work of Bryan Sysum, who passed away in 2019. Bryan created about 30 ring binders of local history information. We’ve scanned some of these so you can view them on our website, www.gfhs.org.uk   We hope they can be appreciated, if not for current accuracy, but for Bryan’s skill and dedication to his interest in history.