The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.1 | June 2024

From our Archives

My own links to family history go back to the 1950s, when I listened spellbound to my great-grandmother Ada FAKES of Hemsby, Norfolk, as she talked of her early life. Born in 1881, she had met people born in 1815, eventually dying in 1987, aged 106 – a great beginning for a budding genealogist. After leaving school and serving a spell in the Merchant Navy, I came to Portsmouth to study for a Geography degree in 1970, and in 1973 began a Ph.D in historical geography – while still continuing with my own family history. Being at Portsmouth Central Library one day in September 1973, I noticed a small advertisement asking if anyone in the district was interested in forming a genealogical study group. I wrote to Michael Walcot (the advertiser) in Purbrook, and received a reply a few days later saying we should meet – which we did in Portsmouth Record Office, then in the Guildhall, run by the slightly eccentric archivist M. Willis-Fear. We then met again for a pint and decided to hold an inaugural invite only meeting on 26 November. At this meeting, some 20 people turned up, and we agreed that the annual subscription would be 70p, and that our name would be the South East Hampshire Genealogical Society. Previous writers have listed a lot of the people I remember – including the redoubtable and very elderly (or so it seemed to me) lady who was apparently indexing telephone directories! At this initial meeting I ended up as the first editor of the 'Journal', on the strength of being

a co-editor of the Portsmouth student newspaper – and the fact that no-one else wanted to do it. After a rather poorly supported appeal for articles, I began typing up the magazine on duplicator stencils in December 1973, and actually ran off the first page on Monday 10 December whilst Fred Edwards, our new treasurer, allowed me to spend £3.40 on having the covers professionally printed. On 24 January 1974 we had the inaugural public meeting at Hilsea, where Michael Walcot spoke about his own family, illustrating it with pictures of his ancestors going back to 1580, which impressed the packed meeting - which I noted at the time had a 'very friendly interchange of information afterwards'. By February I had completed duplicating the magazine pages, and collated them on a very large table by walking round and round with successive pages – and then stapling them all together to produce 100 finished copies. In the same month Michael, Fred and I travelled to the Society of Genealogists in London to find material for the next Journal – no internet in those days. We finally distributed the first magazine at our second public meeting on 18 February. I went on to produce the journal for nearly two years before I completed my thesis and secured a lecturing job at North Devon College in Barnstaple – where I remained for the next 36 years. Peter Christie (Member # 8) (reprinted by kind permission of his family.)

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