The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.1 | June 2023

Local Group Programmes

Contact: Phil Brown (interim) Email: romsey@hgs-online.org.uk

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.

Reports by Ros Boon or Colin Dawe: (February) Conserving Your Family Archive – Sue Gibbons

Well over 60 participants attended this Zoom meeting, the last to be hosted by our wonderful Group Organiser Kay Lovell, who is heading to pastures new. You will be sorely missed Kay; thank you for all the amazing work you have done and the dedication you have shown our group over the past several years. Sue Gibbons’s talk was fascinating and gave us not only many very useful tips, but also the names of trusted manufacturers from whom we are able to buy recommended archive quality storage boxes, repair tape, polyester folders, consolidants for leather – the list goes on. She also gave us really useful tips, such as not storing newspaper cuttings near photos or paper ephemera as discolouration migrates. Lavender bags are preferable to moth balls and don’t use metal hangers for plates. There was a lively question and answer session at the end before most participants logged off, leaving just the Romsey contingent. Phil Brown then spoke to us, he is taking over for the short term, hosting speakers Kay has already lined up, but he cannot continue in the role long term which leaves us in a quandary...... Ros Boon (March) Members’ evening A dozen members met up at Crosfield Hall for the first “in person” gathering for three months. This was the first meeting without previous organiser Kay who had dedicated so much of her time to make the group and meetings welcoming and successful. We had the pleasure of having Paul, HGS Chairman, who made a plea for more volunteers to help run the group. We introduced ourselves to each other with focus on our family history interests and how long we had been members of HGS. The theme of the evening was “Methods of Researching and how to record and store the research. How do we use the internet to find information? Tricks and traps”. We spent about an hour sitting in a circle discussing this, there were many valuable contributions. It was generally felt that despite a lot of information being available online, many of the more useful records are undigitised and can only be found in records offices, libraries and archives. It was acknowledged that hand-drawn pedigree trees and viewing original images were still best for accuracy. The value of family bibles was recognised as an excellent resource if anyone was lucky enough to have one. It was mentioned that the MoD will be waiving the £30 fee for obtaining post 1920 Military Service Records from 1st April. The task to transfer 9.7 million records to The National Archives and have them digitised by Ancestry is already underway but will take several years to complete.

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