About 1,100 people attended the 2009 Open Day and Family History Fair which was another great success. Many visitors took advantage of the specialist Help Desks on offer as well as the other research facilities and computer look-ups and of course the stalls representing over 60 family and local history societies and commercial genealogically related organisations.

 

 

John Hanson, one of the Census Detectives and the speaker for the first of our free taster talks, was unfortunately unable to attend at the last minute and our second speaker, Valda Hudson, was also absent due to illness but Captain Graham Bandy who volunteered to run a specialist Military Help Desk very kindly stepped in at the last moment and gave a talk on researching military ancestors instead. All the talks were well received and Jeanne Bunting’s talk on the 1911 Census and Bill Davis’ talk on Irish Research were fully booked.

We received appreciative comments from many stallholders, visitors and volunteers. A few of these comments are included below:

Just to say thank you to everyone at WSFHS for staging the Open Day on Saturday.  I came up from Bristol and was not disappointed .

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I am glad it was such a good day – there was certainly a good buzz about it!

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Congratulations on a great Fair yesterday - my first - hope to see you in 2010.

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I just wanted to say what a fabulous fair it was on Saturday.  We drove 100 miles from the Midlands and it was well worth it!  It was the best fair we have been to.

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Just to thank you for a very enjoyable day last Saturday at the Open Day. Please convey our thanks to everyone concerned for their hard work which is greatly appreciated.

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We had a great day and we are sure that the public that attended also found it to be a very well organised event, well worth attending. Please pass on our thanks to the rest of the other people involved in organising the event and the rest of the committee.

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I thought the day went well, with a lot of satisfied customers.

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I write to thank you and the West Surrey Family History Society for all the great efforts put into the Open Day on October 31st.  It was a busy and rewarding event, and one at which I met many old friends and new contacts.

 

Don't forget to put next Family History Fair and Open Day date in your diary.

Saturday 6 th November 2010 .

 

Photographs courtesy of Peter Cleaver