The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.4 | March 2025

Local Group Programmes

reassigned a post based in Iceland! As usual there was a discussion about accessing military records. It was mentioned that flight books and log books are being digitised. Merchant Navy record cards are available at Southampton City Archives. (December) Christmas Social There was a large attendance for what was to be the last face to face meeting until March 2025 - the first two Fair Oak meetings of 2025 will be via Zoom. Angela gave a review of the Fair Oak Group 2025 meetings. There were seven speaker meetings, three members' evenings, one walk and the Christmas social. The group was then split into teams for a quiz based on 2024 events, some rounds based on TVs Only Connect and picture rounds based on education. The winning team was Katie, Rod and John. We then had the usual American Supper which produced a wonderful spread. (January) Using Facebook for Genealogy or Historical Research – Clare Wilson Clare started by asking how many used Facebook and for those that didn’t what were the reasons for not doing so. She considered that it was a valuable resource for research as there are a large number of interest groups who have members who are passionate and knowledgeable about their subject. It is estimated that around the world there are 3 billion facebook users, 2 billion of whom use it daily. The main concern was being hacked and Clare hoped to show that there are measures to avoid this. Surprisingly Facebook is being used less by teenagers. 53% is used by people over the age of 35. The main content on Facebook is to post comments, share photos, post links, chat live or watch short videos. The content can be publicly accessible or limited. From a research point of view, it can be useful to find groups who have interests in names, places and subjects such as military history, old fashioned recipes, railways, craft groups and so on. Clare’s advice was to err on the side of caution. You don’t have to post under your own name and the image doesn’t have to be a photo of yourself. She also highly recommended reading thoroughly the privacy notice to check who will see what. The help centre not only deals with technical issues but with privacy problems as well. If you are not happy with any content you can report it. Forthcoming Meetings:

Members’ Evening

March 11th April 8th May 13th June 10th

Radio Times

John Pitman Andrew Negus

Southampton: Slaughter, Water & Trade

The Hatcher Brothers

Richard Backhouse

Ministering Angel

July 8th

Jane Glennie

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