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Family History

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

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 – November 2016

Posted on 1st November 2016

The November issue of The Greenwood Tree is now in the post to members The Editor, Bob Barber, presents a few items to whet your appetite The cover includes a number of photographs collected recently by the the Society's Photographs Project They also act as a Who Do You Think This Is feature Go to page 113 and see if you know any more about the people portrayed With thanks to Allan Collier for permission to use his photos, and also Sylvia Creed-Castle, Tony Chew and the Sunshine Coast... more

Collecting and Sharing Family Photos

Posted on 16th March 2016

On Saturday (19 March) we will be holding our first Photographic Project Open Day at our Family History Centre in Sherborne (for details see below) Barbara Elsmore describes her own rewarding search for family photographs which she will be adding to the SDFHS database Imagine my surprise last week when I was leafing through A Dorset Camera 1855-1914 in the library at the SDFHS Family History Centre, and a photograph of my great grandfather, George Collings, leapt off the page at me He was... more

The Charge of the Dorset Yeomanry at Agagia on 26 February 1916 – a personal view

Posted on 26th February 2016

Exactly one hundred years ago today the charge of the Dorset Yeomanry at Agagia, in Egypt's western desert, played a major role in the WWI campaign in North Africa Barbara Elsmore shares her own family's memories of this important military event Back in the 1950s and 60s, while visiting my grandparents’ house in Nether Compton, we would have all our meals in a room dominated by what seemed to me like a huge picture of men on horses brandishing swords charging towards a lot of other men in... more

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