Kent's Family History Societies

After writng a post about research in the Fenlands, I wondered both whether there were other regional family history societies (FHS) and whether there were societies for areas smaller than a county. It seems many of the smaller societies exist. Let's look at the county of Kent, for example.

Kent is east of London and contains such well known communities as Greenwich, Canterbury, and Dover with its white cliffs. The Thames River and the sea form the northern and eastern boundaries of the county. Present day East Sussex and London form the bounds in the southwest and northwest.

According to the website www.genuki.org.uk the North West Kent FHS and the Kent FHS cover almost all the parishes in the county. You can find out about the North West group at their web site www.nwkfhs.org.uk. The Kent FHS was founded in 1974, making it the oldest in the county. Find it at www.kfhs.org.uk. (The other source about the English FHS is www.ffhs.org.uk.)

Three other smaller groups exist in Kent:

-Besides the NW Kent Society, there is another abutting London, the Woolrich and District FHS. It covers 8 parishes listed on its homepage at www.woolrichfhs.org.uk.

-Folkstone and District FHS covers a 44 parish area in the east of the county by the sea. Reach them at www.folkfhs.org.uk.

-The Tunbridge Wells FHS is a hybrid. While it covers only a thirteen parish area, they are in two counties, seven in Kent and six in Sussex. Find the society at www.tunwells-fhs.co.uk.

Wisdom Wednesday: National Burial Index

Yet another source of death/burial information is the National Burial Index (NBI) for England and Wales. This project of the Federation of Family History Societies is a finding aid to over 18.4 million burial records taken from Anglican parish, non-conformist, Quaker, Roman Catholic and cemetery burial registers that are held by local repositories, family history societies and groups. For an overview of the content, the process used to create the NBI and the area of coverage, consult www.ffgs.org.uk/projects/nbi/nbi-overview.php.

The project started in 1994 and published its first 5 million+ results in 2001. “The majority of the records cover the period from 1813 - 1850 but the index does extend significantly in both directions from these dates.”

The latest edition, the 3^rd, is available on CD from FFHS or is online as part of the Parish Records Collection 1538-2005 at www.FindMyPast.co.uk.  Find My Past is a subscription site that also has a pay per view plan. Considering the high postage costs you might incur ordering the CDs, Find My Past may make sense. You can purchase the CDs from the National Archives online bookshop. They were recently offered at the sale price of £25.

Another relevant website is www.findmypast.co.uk/content/ffgs/nbi. Besides a description of NBI, there is much information about burial practices among the religions of the UK. The section begins with the intriguing statement, “There are traditionally three types of Christians in England.” It then goes on to talk about the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and Non-Conformists. It ends with a paragraph or two about Non-denominational and Atheist Burials.

I know I have faithful readers who may think that over the summer I have said most of what there is to say about non-conformity in the UK. Do NOT believe it! Please go to this website and enjoy!

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: News from the FFHS

About a year ago (14 November 2011), I described the website of the Federation of Family History Societies at www.ffhs.org.uk.  That day I subscribed to the FFHS news feed which sends information from their 160 member societies about closings, new hours, and new addresses. What a great way to be in the know especially if you are going on a research trip to the UK. (Note that Scotland has its own Scottish Federation of Family History Societies at www.safhs.org.uk.)

I didn’t know how helpful this would be for travelers until I read a few of their email blasts. I quote below from just this week’s list of closures:

Pembrokeshire Record Office Move

The public search room is no longer available to visitors. 

The Pembrokeshire Record Office is on track to move in to its new home on the former site of Prendergast Junior School in Haverfordwest at the end of this year.

Work preparing for the move has been going on for several months in the background at the Record Office - based in Haverfordwest Castle - while maintaining a public service for historical research. ..

To facilitate the move it will be necessary to close the public search room to visitors temporarily from the early autumn.

It will be ready to open again to the public at the new site early in 2013….

During closure the office will respond to written and telephone enquiries in line with the County Council's policy on dealing with external communications. Any questions concerning the service and, in particular, the temporary closure of the public search room may be directed to:

The Pembrokeshire Record Office,

The Castle,
Haverfordwest,
SA61 2EF.

Tel. 01437 763707; fax 01437 768539; E-mail record.office@pembrokeshire.gov.uk

Gwynedd Archives Service, Caernarfon Record Office, Caernarfon

will be closed from the 8th to the 15th October. Reopens Tuesday 16^th.

www.gwynedd.gov.uk/gwy_doc.asp?cat=3693&doc=12971&Language=1&p=1&c=1

 

Anglesey Archives, Llangefni will be closed for annual stocktake from Monday November 5 - Friday November 9, inclusive. The service will reopen as normal on Monday November 12, 2012.

http://www.gwynedd.gov.uk/gwy_doc.asp?cat=3693&doc=12971&Language=1&p=1&c=1

Perhaps the most important news did not fall in the above category but dealt with changes to the National Archives website:

From this week, Discovery, our new catalogue, will become the primary way to search our collections.

We have now added more browse functionality to Discovery, which means that users can browse our collection by hierarchy or by reference, as requested by many of our users. For a more detailed explanation of using Discovery to browse our collection, read our frequently asked questions.

We want to gather feedback on the new browse feature over the next couple of weeks before we decide when we can switch off the old Catalogue. We want to make sure it's as useful as it can be, so please try it out and let us know what you think - you can browse from any page of Discovery, including search results and descriptions. Please send your feedback to discovery@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk.

We will be switching off DocumentsOnline this weekend [29-30 September 2012], along with three other features on our website that have now been replaced by Discovery: Your Archives, Equity Pleadings Database and Person Search. We've integrated the digital document delivery service provided by DocumentsOnline into Discovery, making it easier for users to search our records and download digital copies (where available), all in one place. Discovery also features an image viewer, which means that users can see a low-resolution version of a document before paying to download it.

To get this news directly, go to www.ffha.org.uk and click the button on the right, second from the top. The first button allows you to subscribe to the FFHS Ezine which comes every two months. Older editions of the magazine can be read on the site.

©2012, Susan Lewis Well