‘The North West Kent Family History Society was formed in 1978 to aid and encourage the study of family history and genealogy in North West Kent and the ancient Kent parishes now South East London.’ (source of information: www.nwkfhs.co.uk.) The society has three branches in Sevenoaks, Bromley and Dartford where they hold meetings on a monthly basis and a society library at Joyden’s Wood which is open every Wednesday from 10:00am – 16:00pm. This year the society is celebrating its 40th anniversary and I went to speak to the Chairman of the society Tony Codling to ask about what the society does and what events are taking place towards the end of the year.
I first asked the Chairman why he liked doing his hobby and why he liked looking into people’s history: “I enjoy my hobby because I like helping people discover their family history.”
“It’s interesting to hear people’s stories they have uncovered and the surprises they discover plus the challenge of how far back you can research into family connections”.
At the moment in the society Tony Codling says they “are arranging Christmas lunches for the branches and sending a quarterly journal to the printers that is posted to all the members in the society on the 1st December.”
“In the future we will be organising training workshops at our library and arrange talks at our three branches on subjects related to family history.”
I asked Tony Codling how he gets the information to research a families’ history: “The first thing we do is look for their relatives in the Census that started in 1841 and were produced every ten years ending in 1911 plus in World War II the government wanted to record the population of the UK and produced the 1939 register which records all of the people in the UK and where they lived.”
“It can be difficult to read older documents but the quality of the handwriting is usually excellent ‘copperplate’ but some documents can be damaged by water and/or fire and can be extremely difficult to read.”
Tony Codling would give the following advice to people in search of their family history: “It’s very engrossing because it places your ancestors in a period of time such as the Battle of Trafalgar and other historical events and which monarch were reining when they were alive.”
“It is considered cost effective to join a Family History Society where you can gain expertise from experienced researchers and at only £10 a year subscription, is considerably cheaper than commercial websites available, plus in addition you get four quarterly journals which contain interesting articles and twice monthly email information service advising of latest developments in Family Research.”
For more information about your family history, you can go to www.nwkfhs.co.uk.
