One Name Guild Gloucester Regional Meeting
Last Saturday was the last day of March and also the Gloucester shire one Name Guild meeting at the National Star College near Cheltenham. Gerald Cook had organised a very interesting agenda. He also made sure that the weather was not as hot as in the previous week so we did not feel too bad about being indoors. Thanks, as well, to Alan Moorhouse for facilitating use of the college in the school holidays.
Teresa Pask gave a polished and comprehensive presentation on The Master Genealogist (TMG) and Second Site. She kept exactly to time over the two morning sessions. What stuck me was how comprehensive and configurable TMG is but also that it would take a fair bit of time to master fully. This was also useful as extra information for my talk on Tuesday in Devizes on “Documenting Sources using Family History Software” with a demonstration using Rootsmagic.
Richard Scantlebury gave an excellent presentation on naval research with several examples on Scantlebury coastguards. I raised a question about a non-Peapell possible ancestor William Richards from Newport. In successive censuses he had been a mason, then a Greenwich pensioner and then a mason again. The group agreement was that being a mason is compatible with being in the navy, and that his children being born in a village in Devon did not mean that he was working there. There may be information on him, his pension payments and his service in the ADM series of the National Archive.
Looking at future meeting there was a lot of agreement that understating more about “Social Media” (Facebook, twitter, Google Circles and Hangouts etc) and sharing our experiences would be very beneficial for those of us who have not yet even dipped our toes in the water.
Kevin Hurley April 2012