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

HGS News

Chairman’s Letter Before I begin, I really would like to wish you all a (very) belated Happy New Year! I do hope this year so far has been good for you. For your Society, the New Year started off as a very challenging one in relation to our continued search for a Treasurer. However, not unusually, the situation changed rapidly soon after I submitted my original draft of this Chairman’s Letter to the Journal Editor. Writing during the last week of January, it appears that we do have a new Treasurer in the offing after all. Alongside our search for a Treasurer, we have also been reviewing how we actually record our finances, especially with a view to ensuring our Working Practices can easily be picked up and carried forward by any new postholders, namely the new Treasurer and the Bookkeeper already working with us. However, moving on to something else I need to tell you: I have reached the decision, extremely reluctantly, that I can no longer devote sufficient time to the role of HGS Chairman that it deserves. Consequently, I shall not be seeking nomination for re-election as a Trustee at the next AGM on June 17th 2025. Obviously, if I am no longer a Trustee, then I cannot be an Officer of the Society either. I have explained my reasons in full to the Trustees and other HGS Volunteers and, therefore, the Society will be looking for a new Chairman to be nominated from the membership and, subsequently, to be elected by you when the time comes in June this year.

A new Chairman should be easier to find than a new Treasurer, I would suggest, because no particular skills are required to carry out the role I have performed for the past nearly two years except, maybe, the ability to motivate a group of people or individuals to get things done for the Society and its members’ benefit. A copy of the Job Description for HGS Chairman is printed elsewhere in this issue. If you believe you have those skills, please get in touch and discuss it with the Vice Chair or me, both of whose contact details are on the inside cover of any recent Hampshire Family Historian, our Journal. The new Chairman, plus the new

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