The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 49 No.4 | March 2023

Local Group Programmes

Contact: Phil Brown Email: romsey@hgs-online.org.uk Tel: 01794 515316

Reports by Ros Boon or Colin Dawe: (November) Family History on the Internet – Ian Waller. Romsey Meetings normally take place on the first Monday of the month (except Bank Holidays) at Crosfield Hall, Romsey, at 7.30 p.m. Newcomers are welcome. All meetings for the foreseeable future will by Zoom.

Ian’s talk, delivered via Zoom, was accomplished and informative, and he even managed to magically provide a few internet addresses for some free sites that many of us had never heard of. Generally, his message was upbeat and confirmed we all know that there is much to be gleaned from the internet, especially if one employs a few tricks. Ian advocated getting to grips with different search engines (because they will produce differing results for the same search criteria), altering our search terms to widen the scope for the most accurate hits, listening to podcasts and generally making use of gateway portals such as www.genuki.org.uk that carry links to other sites; all invaluable when researching at a distance. But he also struck a note of caution about relying purely on internet sites, underlining that they are not a substitute for original research. He warned that ‘a lack of source should raise suspicion’ and that one should not be too formulaic in one’s approach. (December) Members’ evening A select few of us donned festive jumpers and met up at Crosfield Hall for a Christmas get together to mark our final meeting of the year. Our organiser Kay had prepared a little talk about the Dark History of Christmas which included some choice titbits about mistletoe, Druids, Saturnalia and Pope Julius among other things and she then presented us with a 30 question quiz, comprising 10 questions each on general knowledge, genealogy and Christmas – I won’t go into the scores, but suffice to say, no-one shone! We then had an open discussion about our various ongoing family searches and I mentioned that a maternal cousin has recently popped up on Ancestry with a large DNA match to both me and a known maternal cousin, where there should be no such person. Needless to say, this has caused a lot of sleuthing late into the night. (January) Help, My Ancestor Has Vanished! – Simon Fowler. Our group met by Zoom this month and we had a well-attended meeting which included guests from Canada and France. Our speaker Simon started off by highlighting his thoughts on the three main reasons why we might be failing to find that mysteriously vanished ancestor – is it our own flawed research, or is it maybe records are missing from a database - or hey – what if they actually really are missing?! The chief reason that Simon cited, though, was poor research skills and he exhorted us not to make any assumptions and not to fall foul of confirmation bias. Is what we are searching for really feasible, he asked? Have we checked the spellings? Has the census record we are endeavouring to find been destroyed? We were told that about 10% of the 1851 census is

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