The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.3 | December 2022

Local Group Programmes

Contact: Jane Hurst – 82, The Butts, Alton, Hants GU34 1RD Tel: 01420 86701 Email: janehurst1@gmail.com

Alton Meetings are normally held monthly on the second Monday at 7:30 p.m. in All Saints Church Hall, Queens Road, Alton.

(July) Problems and Successes We started by sharing experiences of the various commercial web sites and methods of creating and storing family trees. Several of us still like to hand draw them! Amongst the Group were people researching German, Polish, Irish and Welsh ancestors as well as ones from counties all over England. This proved a very useful evening and we all learnt something from our discussions. (September) Members’ Meeting The Alton Group has decided that, for the near future, they will just have Members’ Meetings. In September this took the form of the usual ‘Problems and Successes’ evening. We started with a discussion about different places to keep an online family tree. Aspects which are important are security, how a web site uses trees and how easy they are to construct. It was noted that trees can be put on Ancestry without paying a subscription! One of our members had been helping a friend with her family and had an interesting photograph which appeared to show an Army and a Navy officer shaking hands - which needed further investigation. The same person has a collection of postcards of Bexhill-on Sea and one of them showed a mid-war house with a lady at the gate. After much searching, the lady and the house have been identified, using the message on the back of the card. Next was a success in receiving the Army records of a grandfather after a long wait due to Covid. These contained information about the service from June 1942 (when he left his job as a baker’s roundsman) until discharge in December 1945. Having joined the 8th Army, he fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy and ended up in Austria. During some of the time he was a batman to an American officer in their 1st Army. It is hoped to be able to soon acquire replacement medals. One member had been lucky enough to have a set of family photographs and postcards given which were helping with the history of a local shop which illustrated that it is difficult to research people and buildings separately. The meeting ended with topics being chosen for future meetings. (October) Members’ Evening As with many groups the numbers, coming to the Alton one, have dropped since Covid. So we have decided to just have Members’ Meetings. In the October one we shared family stories and research into those who had been in the Services. A common theme was that so many of those who had served in the two World Wars was that they had not talked about their experiences and so that it was up to us to try and find their service records and put the tales together. What was also sad to hear was that many sets of medals had gone missing or, possibly, never been claimed.

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