The Higham & Rushden U3A Genealogy Group has been meeting since
August 2009.
We meet on the third Tuesday of each month in the Hall at Rushden
Catholic Church. Attendance is hovering around the 14 person
mark for our meetings in 2011.
We tend to run our meetings via a laptop computer connected to a
projector, with a broadband link to research sites. This means
that everyone can see what is going on!
Attendees range from novice to reasonably experienced, both in terms
of genealogy research skills and also computer usage.
We don’t run with a particular Northants/Beds bias, unlike the local
FHS, our ancestral families seem to come from all over.
Our normal meeting structure is about 45 minutes of me reviewing new
entries on our Group Blog (see below) plus one or two specific
subjects of general interest, followed by the Group all helping
individual members approach and overcome research “brick
walls”. For this we access online to Ancestry, Findmypast,
FreeBMD, deceased online, family search, etc. all displayed
via the projector.
For new members into the Group who put themselves into the “novice”
category, I hold small group introductory sessions with an emphasis
on covering the basics in a hands-on fashion, at an appropriate pace
for learners.
So far we have looked at many aspects of family history, including
researching Birth Marriage and Death certificates in the civil
records, accessing census records, learning about parish records,
emigration, wills and probate and many other topics.
