No porkies to be told today. We have certainly not had a day off! Not by a long stretch. In fact, I think we have worked as hard today as we have all week, if not harder.
We received a crucial certificate this morning on one of our cases. On another case which we had hoped to send off to the Government Legal Department, we received an interesting and totally unrelated birth certificate to the one we ordered. Much as I am pleased to know more about Colleen X, I wanted to know about Zebediah Y who, I can only assume, was born in the same quarter of the same year in the same registration district. Apologies received from the General Register Office member of staff who took my call but, frankly, an apology is not much help when we needed the certificate today. Ho hum….
Alongside being the MD of FWL, I also do a lot of voluntary work in the world of genealogy. One of my roles is Chair of The Surname Society and today, I was very proud to chair the 1st Annual Conference and AGM. It was the first (we believe) fully online surname studies conference and a free benefit to all members of the society. We were joined by five inspirational speakers from all corners of the globe who spoke about how to search for surnames in the Caribbean, Ireland, South America, Canada and Australia. There are so many surname searchable databases/indexes, my notebook is full to overflowing of new resources to investigate. I put my study name into several sites during the conference and located new records to add to my surname study (Sillifant and variants). My sincere thanks to Brandon Baird, Jill Ball, Bob Cumberbatch, Maurice Gleeson and Kathryn Lake Hogan for giving up their time today to speak to members of The Surname Society…. and not forgetting Geoff Rasmussen who provided technical expertise to ensure that we had a seamless day of lectures.
Conference/AGM…. the wheels of FWL did not stop turning – the magic wand worked well today with three beneficiaries finally tracked down on a very tough case. Never a dull moment and I am sure (even though it is Sunday), work will continue tomorrow. There have been a fair few interesting ‘developments’ in genealogy this weekend – some positive, some not. More after Sunday’s travels….
