Welcome to the Family History Centre
The enthusiastic and experienced volunteers who run the Family History Centre love to meet people and talk about everything Family History. This is one of the things we missed so much during the lockdowns when the Hub was closed and although we all know that you can meet up on Zoom it is just so much better when you can sit down together to share your research successes or problems.
Therefore we’re delighted that the Hub is going to open on a Saturday again and we’re looking forward to contributing to all the different events. We’ve thought hard about what we can do to add a family history angle to such a wide range of subjects and we’ve come up with two different options -
- 10am and 12 noon we’ll open the Family History Centre so researchers, whether Gloucestershire Family History Society members or not, can visit us before the main Hub event itself starts. We’re very aware that many people just can’t come in during our normal opening hours so this their chance to take advantage of the many resources available in the Centre.
- 1pm - 4pm we’ll offer a ‘Help Desk’ so folk can bring us their ‘brick walls’ and we’ll see if we can chip away at them. This can be an exciting experience for the visitor and volunteer alike - more often than not we all learn something new which is always a good experience. Almost a ‘repair cafe’ for genealogists!
Even if you don’t think family history is for you, please reconsider and look at the possibilities! As many of you will know the life experiences of people, whether individuals or whole families, underpin many different research projects. This means that you don’t actually have to investigate your own family although most of our members will tell you that this can lead you to some unexpected places. You can look at the people who lived in your house or on the land where your (modern) house was built. You can take it a step further and look at the people who lived in a particular place, whether a village or just a few streets in a town, or worked in a particular industry. The sources in the Centre can help you to understand more about how local, national and even international events shaped their lives and the lives of their descendants.
We’re looking forward to welcoming you to the Family History Centre on 25 June and are anticipating a fascinating series of Saturday events each month from 2 July.