ANESFHS online Beginners' Course on six consecutive Thursdays, 1 February to 7th March 2024

Dates:  Thursdays, 1 February to 7th March 2024 (inclusive).
Time:  7pm to 9pm GMT.  (EST: 2pm to 4pm.  Pacific Time: 11am to 1pm.)
Host:  ANESFHS.
Presenter:  Kenneth Nisbet (Scottish Genealogy Society).
Medium:  Zoom online meeting (invitation link to follow).
Format:  First hour: presentation (attendees muted).  Second hour: Q&A.  Afterwards: handouts e-mailed from presenter.
Zoom etiquette:  Ken Nisbet politely requests: "The students have to agree not to record the class as it belongs to me."

Course fee:  £46.00 sterling, or £42.00 concession for OAPs, or unemployed, or registered disabled.
Payment method:  please see details on inside front cover of any ANESFHS Journal.
*  UK members:  preferred method (please): Internet banking, or PayPal.
*  Overseas members:  please use PayPal: on the Society's website, go to "Services" and select "Ad-Hoc Payments".  (Any problems: please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Once the Society has received your payment, you'll receive an e-mail with a single Zoom invitation link which you'll click on to join each instalment of this course.  Keep the e-mail with the invitation link in a safe and accessible place!  If you don't receive the link within a couple of days of making your payment, please check your Junk/Spam folders, and please let us know if the invitation still hasn't reached you.

Broad description: A BEGINNER'S COURSE IN RESEARCHING YOUR FAMILY’S STORY AND HISTORY

This 6-week course, tutored by Ken Nisbet, will look at the sources available both online and offline that can help you to start researching your family history, and importantly what additional sources can be found to research your ancestors' employment, military service, appearance in local newspapers, education and so on.  Ken will also explain how to put the acquired information together to give a story to your relatives’ lives.

Ken Nisbet has been involved in family-history research for over 40 years and is currently Secretary of the Scottish Genealogy Society and the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.  He has been a member of the Scotland's People Family History Centre User Group since its inception.  He is the resident expert on Scottish Ancestral Records Podcasts and does talks to many of Scotland's Family History Societies.  Through the Scottish Genealogy Society, he has had published a Roll of Honour for Nairnshire 1914-1921, and a History of the 2nd Battalion 78th Foot 1804-1816.  He has extensively researched his own family history, which covers all parts of Scotland.  He has also researched family members who emigrated to Australia (voluntarily or involuntarily), Canada, South Africa, the USA and many other countries.

More detailed description:

Week 1: what is family history? and how do you create one?  Also a detailed examination of Scottish Statutory Registration and the records created, so looking at birth, marriage and death records 1855 to date, and also how the rules regarding what is a legal marriage have changed.

Week 2: the census from 1801 to 1921.  Examples from 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1921 will be shown and examined.  The tutor will also look at what other lists can help us with our family history, such as Valuation Rolls, voters' rolls, Post Office and trade directories.

Week 3: church records: where to find them, the various kind of records that exist, parish registers and kirk session records, an examination of how the Church of Scotland split up and then reunited, and the effect it had on its records. a look at Roman Catholic Church records and what they are.

Week 4: education and employment records, what records can we find on our relatives' schooling and further education, if they went to university, what employment records can be found online and offline; government employment, railway, shipping, nursing; also a look at industrial accidents, trade union records.

Week 5: military records from the 17th to the 20th century, looking at what records are available and what they can tell us about our relatives' service (the advanced course covers the Great War Records in detail).

Week 6: an introduction to the use of DNA in family history and how, having got the information, you put it together to make a family history.

 Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested.