Our public meetings have been cancelled for the next few months.

The ‘History of Bath Research Group’ are publishing digitised version of the Bath Directories.  They have been working for the 4 years on this project and launched bathhistoricaldirectories.org.uk in November at one of their meetings, with a total of 15 of the 60 available directories completed.  They are continuing to add directories as they are available.  The site is free to use and offers a wide range of search tools designed to get the most out of the entries, currently numbering just over a quarter of a million records. It should make the job of researching Bath families from the 1846 to the late 1930s much easier, no longer needing a trip to the Bath Record Office and much quicker generally to find people and organisations. Take a look if you have research interests in Bath!   bathhistoricaldirectories.org.uk

You may already be aware that the “FFHS Every Ancestor Matters Conference” will be held at Bristol Museum’s M Shed on Saturday, 14th April 2018. The normal admission price is £39-50 but Bristol & Avon Family History Society members may attend for the reduced price of £29-50. For more information or to book your place, please click this link specifically for B&AFHS members:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bafhs-every-ancestor-matters-conference-tickets-43502751902?aff=utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_event_email&utm_term=eventurl_text    

An index of Bristol municipal burial registers covering Greenbank cemetery (1871 – 1991) was published by BAFHS in 2014 and is available from our website either as a CD or by download. Volume 2 has now been published covering the following cemeteries:-     Avonview (1883-1991) Brislington (1905-1991) Canford (1903-1991) Henbury (1923-1991) Ridgeway Park (1888-1991) Shirehampton (1898-1991) There are more than 145,000 entries. The new CD will be priced at £9 and will be available from 9th September but you can purchase the download now for £7 from our home page :-  click ‘SHOP’ on our main side menu then ‘INTERNET SALES’ from the dropdown menu  

The original aim of The War Graves Photographic Project was to photograph every war grave, individual memorial, Ministry of Defence grave, and family memorial of serving military personnel from WWI to the present day. However, due to its popularity they have now extended their remit to cover all nationalities and military conflicts and make these available within a searchable database. Th success of the project has been made possible through the efforts of a dedicated group of volunteers, from all walks of life, who feel the need to Remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and who realise the importance for families to see where their loved ones are laid to rest or commemorated. This emulates the CWGC ethos to ‘Remember in Perpetuity’. Recently, the CWGC reviewed thier website and edited out links to other organisations including TWGPP which seems an odd thing to do because it makes it that bit harder for searchers to find these pictures of war graves having successfully found what they want on the CWGC website. This article on the BAFHS website should help a little to rectify that! 

If you are interested in receiving emails about the society and perhaps discussing its interests you can join the email listing for BAFHS.   To join, just send an email to BAFHSinfo-owner@yahoogroups.com   Be sure to include your name and membership number in the email.