We went to a real life event!

Last month (Saturday 6^th July), The Society went to its first real-life event in a very long time! The event in question was the Hampshire Genealogical Society’s Golden Jubilee event in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. We were delighted to be sharing a room with Joe Saunders representing the British Association for Local History, The Guild of One-Name Studies, AGRA and the Captain Swing Project. Several one-placers gave talks or workshops – Dave Annal, Janet Few, Joe Saunders and Jackie Depelle.

 

 

It was great to meet so many of our members in person – thank you to all those who popped by the stand to say hello! We also chatted to several attendees who were already doing one-place studies, but hadn’t realised it. They are now aware of our Society and its wonderfully supportive community. We’d like to think that we raised awareness of the importance of place-based research in adding context to our ancestors’ lives to everyone who visited our stand.

We also took the opportunity to publicise our members’ studies – we displayed profile pages from our website for all the Hampshire studies, and had a list on which we could look up registered studies on request.

We were busy on the stand so missed most of the talks, but I was very grateful for the opportunity to attend Dave Annal’s talk ‘Fact from Fiction’ about adding context to our family histories (and one-place studies!) by using quotes from literature. Dave told us that although it was fiction and authors wrote from their own viewpoint and political viewpoint, there is still much we can learn. For one-place studies, that means descriptions of daily life in villages and towns, and how people journeyed between them. Occupations are also described, such as dame schools in Great Expectations (Charles Dickens); Thomas Hardy wrote of agricultural labourers reaping and women following along behind the plough; there is a description of Smithfield market in Oliver Twist. If you’re a Society of Genealogists member, you can find a version of Dave’s talk in the Gold Video Library.

Have you ever used historical contemporary fiction to add context to your writing? Are there any books or authors you would recommend? Let us know in the comments!

We’re definitely interested in attending more real life events like this. We are a small geographically-dispersed team, but if you know of an upcoming event and you’d be willing to help staff the stand at an event near you, please get in touch.