BIFHSGO April Meeting

Saturday's BIFHSGO meeting feature presentation at 10 am is My Ancestors Were All “Ag Labs” – or Were They? by long-time member and genealogical researcher, and international traveller, Christine Jackson.

When Christine Jackson started researching her maternal grandmother’s family in West Sussex nearly 40 years ago, she had to use conventional tools on-site in England and printouts from the International Genealogical Index compiled by the Church of Latter-day Saints. Her efforts revealed a long but unexceptional line of agricultural labourers, reaching back to a brick wall in 1675. Many years later, Christine tackled that brick wall using a variety of online resources. Lacking key parish records, she accumulated what she calls ‘circumstantial evidence’ which also led her to a fascinating discovery. She learned about the skilled blast furnace workers, at least one of whom bore her family name, who migrated from Northern France in Tudor times to develop a new iron industry in the Weald of Sussex and Kent. In this presentation, Christine will recount her search for early genealogical evidence in a variety of lesser-known sources and for a possible link between that 16th-century immigrant French ironworker and her known 17th-century ancestors.will speak about how she uncovered a long line of agricultural labourers and the online resources that helped her break through a brick wall in 1675.

In the Before BIFHSGO Education Talk at 9 am, titled Genealogy 101, Bill Arthurs will offer an "understandable" explanation of DNA for Genealogy, starting with basic knowledge of cell structure, the Y Chromosome and the X Chromosome.

The venue is The Chamber, Ben Franklin Place, 101 Centrepointe Drive, Nepean, Ontario