Events courses and talks - Familyrelatives.com

Events - Courses & Talks

FAMILY HISTORY CLASSES

2010

Evening Class

Building Your Family Tree

This five-week course is not just for beginners, but also for those with some experience behind them. We will look at not just the basic records but introduce you to other records such as wills while also investigating the best research methods. Thursday 29th April 2010 for five weeks at Sutton Valence, Maidstone. 7.30-9.30 pm. Cost: £66 - includes a year's research support service. To book or for further details of all courses: telephone 01797 344376 or visit http://www.heritagefamilyhistory.co.uk/events.htm

One-day Courses

My Victorian Ancestor

Featuring Ruth Goodman of BBC's Victorian Farm

Ruth Goodman will give us an insight into how our families lived in Victorian times, and Celia Heritage will show us how we can get the most from both civil registration and census records, and what to do when we come to a brick wall in our research. Cost: £38. Saturday 24th April 2010. To book or for further details of all courses: telephone 01797 344376 or visit http://www.heritagefamilyhistory.co.uk/events.htm

Tracing Your Family Tree

My 5-week evening class condensed into a one day course. Cost: £32. Saturday 12th June 2010.

All one-day courses take place at Christ Church University, Chatham, Kent.

To book or for further details of all courses: telephone 01797 344376 or visit http://www.heritagefamilyhistory.co.uk/events.htm

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Celia Heritage

Following a childhood love of family history, Celia has become a regular lecturer on the subject, teaching at the Society of Genealogists in London, The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies in Canterbury and also at last year's Who Do You think You Are Family History show at Olympia. She writes for several magazines and is also the genealogist on Radio Kent's regular family history phone in.

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Find out how a Celia Heritage family history course can bring your family history to life and help with your research.

HERITAGE FAMILY HISTORY

BRING YOUR PAST ALIVE WITH A LITTLE LEARNING!

It's very easy to be carried away by the family history bug and find yourself spending hours on the computer adding the various generations to your family tree. The Internet age has revolutionised family history, and what used to take hours to do can now often be completed in a matter of minutes.

But hang on a minute - you may well have found your ancestors, but how well do you actually know them? Do you know what life was like for your grandmother Mary as a young girl growing up in London in the 1890s, or great great grandfather Robert an agricultural labourer in Norfolk in the 1840s, or even great Uncle Tom a young private in the First World War?

Do you just want a list of names and dates to add to your database or do you want to learn about your family history for real? What was life like for these people? What did their jobs involve and what sort of living conditions did they have to contend with? Did they live through times of hardship, such as the Napoleonic wars when prices went sky high, or did they live in more prosperous times when things were a little easier? Learning about your ancestors' history and the time in which they lived adds a whole new dimension to your research and most people find it becomes even more rewarding and addictive!

This is also the difference between "genealogy", which shows names, dates and relationships, and "family history" which is learning all about your family, where they came from and what made them tick! It is Family History which helps you learn not only how they lived, but gives you an idea of why they made certain major decisions in their lives such as deciding to migrate to another part of the country, to change jobs, to steal from their employer, or even to leave their spouse and set up a second family - all things which could, at the end of the day, have had an effect on the sort of family you yourself were born into.

At Heritage Family History my aim is to bring your ancestors alive for you; to make them real living, breathing people and to help you get under their skins by means of stimulating courses with information and examples you can relate to, rather than dry old lectures where all you can think about is what time the next tea break is.

Many people come to realise that there is a lot more enjoyment to be had, and many more records and relatives waiting for them, once they have a little learning under their belts. Yes, it is great fun searching on the Internet, but even more fun is to be had once you know more about the records you are looking at and about all the other documents out there waiting for you! As more and more records are coming online, it is even more important not only to know what is available and which records to use to search for certain types of ancestors, but also to understand what these documents are and how to get the most from them.

Learning does not have to be tedious or difficult, and although there are plenty of advice and classes available online, nothing beats the stimulation of attending a live class with other people who share their love of the subject with you and also with the tutor!

My students come away from my classes buoyed up, and rearing to go and look at new records and to revisit old ones with new eyes! This is because I am passionate about family history and history too. I want you to get as much enjoyment from it as I do. The most rewarding thing for me is to hear back from students telling me how much they have enjoyed one of my classes, and how it has led them to discover new and fascinating pieces of information about their family and how they lived.

Let one of them tell you in her own words below, and I hope to see many more of you soon!

Details of my courses and talks are on my website under both the Events and the Talks pages or try the links below;

http://www.heritagefamilyhistory.co.uk/events.htm http://www.heritagefamilyhistory.co.uk/talkwork.htm

Celia Heritage
Heritage Family History
http://www.heritagefamilyhistory.co.uk/

"Firstly I would like to say how wonderful your lectures were this week. I could have listened to you for hours. You really know how to bring a subject to life and have made my desire to learn even stronger!

The reason I am writing is, thanks to your talk I spent some time looking through the Army Records. I actually knew this time what I was looking at and everything made far more sense. I found an absolute gem! My Grt Grandfathers Brothers records. 27 pages of them!

The other information was fantastic too, giving all details of his wife, children and also nephew, who I am hoping that I may be able to track down.

I am SO chuffed, and I would never have managed it if it hadn't been for your instruction yesterday! Thank you so much!

I am now really looking forward to your one day course in October! Many many thanks"

Caroline Richardson

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