OPEN DAY AND FAMILY HISTORY FAIR 2012
Another successful Open Day and Family History Fair was held at Woking Leisure Centre on Saturday 3rd November with attendance of about 750 people, which although a lower number than in recent years is still good compared with many other family history fairs.There was plenty to interest those who attended with stalls manned by many family and local history societies and a wide range of commercial organisations offering goods and services relating to family history research. Comments from visitors were very encouraging including: "Resparked my interest - great day!"; "Great event - will come again."; "Very well presented. Good spread of stands."; "Really interesting. Found a lot."
 The Family History Fair in Hall 2 |
 The WSFHS Bookstall with Rosemary Cleaver, Jean Follett, Joyce Sampson |
 The WSFHS Bookstall with Rosemary Cleaver and June Rudman |
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Left: Anne Ross, Anne Welch and John Beck at the Volunteer Registration desk where tickets for the free talks were also issued The talks were more popular than ever and the larger room hired for the talks this year proved a boon. The talk given by Amy Sell of Findmypast was so popular we had to turn people away despite the larger room! |
 Above: The Tongham Village display in the Research room - an amazing collection of photographs and information. |
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| Jeanne Bunting and Graham Walter, as the Census Detectives, and a number of Society volunteers, some from the Computer Group, provided a valuable service helping visitors with look-ups on Findmypast and Ancestry as well as West Surrey transcriptions and indexes. The specialist Help Desks provided enquirers with help on a variety of subjects from Army research, dating old photographs and Irish research, to adoption and reading old documents. A late addition to our Help Desks was Scottish Research when Ian Macdonald (photo left below) volunteered to share his expertise on this. Photo below right: Brian Swann answering DNA queries. | |
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The Mayor and Mayoress of Woking, Councillor Michael Smith and his wife Councillor Anne Murray visited the Open Day and were accompanied by our President Ray Anstis and Acting Chairman Sue Turner looking around both halls and meeting some of the stallholders and volunteers.  Thanks as always must go to all the willing volunteers who joined us on the day itself and on the Friday evening setting up until gone 11pm and the Open Day Committee (Anne Ross, Anne Welch, Chris Bartholomew, John Beck, Maura Sellars and Shirley Forster) who worked with me through the year to make this event a success. |
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Next year's Open Day will be on Saturday 26th October 2013. Put it in your diary now!
Photographs courtesy of Stephen Welch
Report by Chris Leech