We spent a fun morning today with Nick Barratt, Laura Berry and director-cameraman Tamer Asfahani of the Family History Show, a monthly online video podcast, or ‘vodcast’, which showcases interesting topics from the world of genealogy.
Nick outside the ERO
The FHS team came to the ERO to film some of the resources which we have to offer, from our online catalogue, Seax, and the images available on Essex Ancestors, to the original documents which can help with your family history, and some of the ‘treasures’ of the ERO – our most beautiful, interesting and rare documents.
Laura finds out all about Seax and Essex Ancestors from Public Service Team Manager Neil Wiffen
The Family History Show looks beyond the narrow confines of ‘family history’ strictly defined, to social history, local history, and house history, to build up a fuller picture of what life was like in the past.
Archivist Chris Lambert shows Laura around a set of poor law records, which can tell fascinating and haunting stories about your ancestors
It’s easy for family history to become an exercise of collecting names and dates, but the truly rewarding element is finding out more about how your ancestors lived. Once you have used birth, marriage and death certificates, parish registers and census returns to find out the names of your ancestors, when they were alive and where they lived, there are so many more questions you can ask to bring history to life.
How did your ancestors make a living? What was life like for children? What happened to you if you lost your job? What did people eat? What sort of accommodation did people live in? How were your ancestors’ lives different from your own?
Answering these questions means delving into other record sets, such as the poor law records the FHS team filmed here today, which may seem daunting at first, but ERO staff are always on hand to help guide you.
Filming some of the ‘treasures’ of the ERO
We love sharing our ‘treasures’ documents, and although we cannot usually produce them to the Searchroom in the same way as most of our documents, you can come and see them for yourself at one of our Discover: Treasures of the Essex Record Office sessions. The next one is on Tuesday 23rd October – see our events page to find out more.
The finished vodcast will be released on the Family History Show site in November, so keep an eye out to find out what Nick and Laura made of the ERO!