My Ancestor was a Liar: Ignorance, Half-truths or Wilful Deceit? A One-hour Lecture on 23 January

• Lori
• 17.01.2020
• 0 Comments

Sifting through the evidence to find the truth (or what passes for the truth in the world of genealogy) is a skill which all serious family historians need to develop. The information left by our ancestors is all-too-frequently misleading, inaccurate or just plain wrong! As we become more experienced we find that they had any number of reasons to be economical with the truth...

Tracing your Huguenot Ancestors - A Half-day Course on 18 January 2020

• Lori
• 14.01.2020
• 0 Comments

It was 500 years ago in Wittenberg, in 1517, that Martin Luther challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings. The consequences of his dissent set off shock waves throughout Europe. France initially was highly receptive to the theology of Jean Calvin, a far more fundamentalist reformer than Luther.

Confrontations between the Huguenots, as these French Protestants were called, and their monarchs, loyal to the Catholic Church led to wars and persecution. Over the next 200 years, an estimated 50,000 Huguenots came to Britain and they have left descendants at all levels of society.

In this course, Kathy Chater looks at the Huguenots in Britain including:

- How to establish descent from these refugees;

- How to take research further back into France...

An Irish Family in the Great Famine - A One-hour Lecture on 16 January

• Lori
• 08.01.2020
• 0 Comments

About 80% of today’s English people have Irish ancestry. In this talk, Stephen Lally looks at Irish lives in the rural west of Ireland during the famine years between about 1800 and 1850. 

Stephen looks at:

- How people lived;

- Their houses, possessions, food, work, education and entertainment.

Stephen also touches on politics, social attitudes and the reasons for mass poverty and emigration...