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The SDFHS Blog

Creating and printing your own personalised family tree

Posted on 18th May 2017

I fell into using a desktop publishing package quite by chance In the village in which I was living a skilled resident had taken the local parish council newsletter, sent three times a year to all residents, and the parish church news, distributed six times a year, to church parishioners, and turned them into very satisfactory publications from the cutting and pasting of paper and photocopying that had been done before He liaised with a helpful local printing company and the results were much... more

Railway Staff in East Dorset

Posted on 9th May 2017

We are very pleased to announce that an important dataset has been added to the Members’ Area of our website, thanks to the generosity of Peter Russell (of the Somerset & Dorset Railway Heritage Trust) Together with Colin Divall, Emeritus Professor of Railway Studies at York University, he has been studying the railways around East Dorset, including the careers and families of those who worked on the railway from the 1840s to the 1970s, particularly in the Wimborne area, where both Peter... more

From Slavery to the Workhouse

Posted on 2nd May 2017

I am sure many of us have discovered that one or more of our early family members went into the workhouse Sitting at our computers in our centrally heated homes we have tried to imagine what it might have been like with, perhaps, images coming to mind of Oliver Twist asking for more, or the heavily pregnant Fanny Robin, in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, painfully making her way to the workhouse to meet her fate We are likely to have gleaned that this was to be avoided at all... more

The Greenwood Tree – March 2017

Posted on 24th February 2017

The March 2017 issue of The Greenwood Tree is now being printed, and will be posted to all members of the Society next week This is the first under the new schedule, where the publication dates will be at the beginning of March, June, September and December So if you’ve been wondering where your copy of The Greenwood Tree has got to, don’t despair – it will be with you soon Once the print copies are in the post, the PDF version will be uploaded to the Members' Area of our website We... more

The Wonders of The Library Catalogue or how I came to fight my way through an imaginary net curtain

Posted on 20th February 2017

I struggled to come up with a title that would grab your attention as I knew 'The Library Catalogue' just wouldn't do it I thought 'The Life Changing Library Catalogue' didn't quite have the right ring to it as in the scheme of things it seems such a small achievement but there are years and years of work by a series of long term volunteers at the Family History Centre behind it I take this opportunity to thank the most recent incumbent, Elsie Smith, who has just retired after many years of... more