Tracing your Heritage
Tracing your Heritage
We were delighted to welcome Heulwen Davies to talk to us about tracing your heritage. Heulwen obviously has a real passion for not only tracing her own family but helping others to get started with looking at their ancestry. Every Tuesday morning Heulwen is available in the library where one can take advantage of her expertise.
It was stressed that one had to start with oneself by writing your own biography. One should work backwards and include anything you can remember that might be of importance especially ones nearest relatives.
These days one can use the internet to search the widely available free of charges sources to help with tracking down your family. These include census records from England, Wales and Scotland 1841-1911, Births, Marriages and Deaths records, Parish records and newspaper records.
After getting as much information from ones immediate family remembering to look for letters, bibles, diaries and photos that might all hold valuable clues about family members one can look at the extended family. It is important to bear in mind ethical considerations when interviewing people and if you want to use information consent should always be sought to use the information.
Heulwen was able to give us some interesting examples of facts she had found out about her own family many of whom were farmers and tended to spend all their lives living in the same locality. By visiting locations where ones family was located and capturing images of graves etc Heulwen has written about her family and these scripts will be able to be read by her family.
Tracing ones ancestry is obviously something that once you have started becomes addictive and you need to learn more. With the advent of relatively inexpensive DNA testing one can with accuracy trace one’s own roots and hopefully glean important information.
Anyone interested in this subject should come along to the library where Heulwen will do her best to get you started tracing your roots.
Our final event of the year was our Christmas Meal which was at the Beech Tree. Once again this venue didn’t disappoint and I am sure that everyone who went had an enjoyable evening.
New members are always welcome so if there is anything of interest in next years programme please come along – you will be assured of a warm welcome.