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Oxfordshire FHS is pleased to announce that it will have a helpdesk at the Wantage family history roadshow, which is to be held on Sunday 26 October 2014. This is part of a Europeana collection event, at which we will be offering family history help via our Search Services in the venue's cafe area. The Search Services is our suite of databases of baptisms, marriages, burials and monumental inscriptions, and includes data relating to both the parishes of historic Oxfordshire and the former North Berkshire.

The event will be held at "The Beacon", Portway, Wantage OX12 9BX, with the doors opening at 10.00am. Admission is free. The organiser's website gives more details of the event itself :-

http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en

Meanwhile, the Oxford Mail's preview of the event can be found here :-

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11543142.Wantage_residents_will_have_their_war_relations__diaries_preserved_online/

Anyone wanting details of this society's services, products and activities, or simply requiring help with a thorny research problem, will be made very welcome.

Best wishes.

Paul Gaskell
Publicity Officer
Oxfordshire Family History Society
Website : www.ofhs.org.uk

Colleagues

The next meeting of the Oxfordshire Family History Society will take place on Monday 27 October 2014. It will be held at the usual venue at Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1AB. Doors open at 7.15pm for coffee, the bookstall and computer help.

The subject of the talk at 8.00pm will be :-

All the News that's Fit to Read

This will be presented by Richard Heaton.

All members, potential members and their guests are welcome.

Paul Gaskell
Publicity Officer
Oxfordshire Family History Society
www.ofhs.org.uk

Colleagues

The next meeting of the Oxfordshire Family History Society will take place on Monday 222 September 2014. It will be held at the usual venue at Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1AB. Doors open at 7.15pm for coffee, the bookstall and computer help.

The subject of the talk at 8.00pm will be :-

Brick walls and lost ancestors: problem solving for family historians

This will be presented by Dave Annal.

Dave tells me that even the luckiest of family historians will come up against brick walls from time to time. We’ve all experienced the feeling that our ancestors appeared from thin air. His talk will aim to show that everyone left a paper trail and that it’s almost always possible to find it. Dave will introduce a number of strategies to help you get around the brick walls and dead ends in your research, paying particular attention to getting the most out of online databases and advanced techniques such as ‘family reconstruction’.

Our speaker Dave Annal has been involved in the family history world for more than thirty years in a number of different roles: he has worked as a professional researcher since 1984 and was employed by The National Archives at the Family Records Centre and at Kew, where he was TNA’s Principal Family History Specialist. He is the author of ten family history books, and is an experienced lecturer. Dave is currently working on a new book on death duty registers, while running his research business, Lifelines Research.

All members, potential members and their guests are welcome.

For directions as to how to get to the Exeter Hall, please see :-

http://www.ofhs.org.uk/ExeterHall.html

For a list of future OFHS meetings, please see :-

http://www.ofhs.org.uk/meetings.html

Any queries, please contact me.

Paul Gaskell
Publicity Officer
Oxfordshire Family History Society
www.ofhs.org.uk

This society's bookstall at http://www.ofhs.org.uk/books.html carries about thirty titles that are published by Oxfordshire Black Sheep Publications. A member of the society, Bill Seary, has recently compiled a cumulative index to those thirty or so volumes.

If you would like to know which of those volumes contains references to the surnames that you are researching, please let me know the surnames of interest by replying to this message and I'll check for you.

Best wishes.

Paul Gaskell
Publicity Officer
Oxfordshire Family History Society
Website : www.ofhs.org.uk

Oxfordshire FHS is pleased to remind researchers with Oxfordshire and North Berkshire ancestry that our next helpdesk at Abingdon Library will be held on Saturday 23 August 2014. All are welcome !

The society's helpdesk will be "manned" from 10.00am until 2.00pm, but with the library itself open from 9.00am until 4.30pm. Abingdon Library is situated at The Charter, Abingdon OX14 3LY. The helpdesk will be situated upstairs, in the library's local and family history area. That contains lots and lots of resources for the researcher to peruse.

Those wanting further details of the helpdesk should visit www.ofhs.org.uk, and then click on a link - just over half way down the page - that is entitled :-

Helpdesk in Abingdon Library (upstairs in the local and family history area).

Anyone wanting details of the society's services, products and activities, or simply requiring help with a thorny research problem, will be made very welcome.

Best wishes.

Paul Gaskell
Publicity Officer
Oxfordshire Family History Society
Website : www.ofhs.org.uk