Welcome to the East Surrey FHS
For the past forty four years the East Surrey Family History Society has been helping members trace their family history whether they have family connections to the East Surrey area or enjoy attending events connected with family, social or local history.
The Society covers parishes in the Eastern part of the ancient County of Surrey. This includes several modern day London Boroughs - Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Merton, Richmond, Southwark, Sutton and Wandsworth, in addition to the more rural parts of the county.
If you are new to family history then we can help put you on the path to good research. Not all records are available on the internet and some of those are very confusing. If you are more experienced then we can reinforce your knowledge with additional information or techniques.
Joining a family history society means that you can meet like-minded people with the same enthusiasm for this fascinating subject who are ready to pass on tips and hints from their own research.
If you wish to login into the website, click here. The "Username" is your registered email address, and if you have not got a password click on "Forgot Your Password" and you will receive an email enabling you to set/reset your password. You may have to look in your spam folder for this email.
Click Here for our Privacy Policy
Several family history societies are, like East Surrey, running meetings online while the pandemic is preventing physical gatherings. Some are open to non-members and those societies are happy for members of our Society to attend. One case in point is the West Middlesex Family History Society, that borders our area to the north, and the link to information about joining their meetings is http://www.west-middlesex-fhs.org.uk/content/meetings.aspx .
Virtual Meeting
December 11, 2021 12:30
DNA and Family history Special Interest Group
Michele Leonard’s 8-part course of 4 Webinars and 4 Chat sessions leds to looking at some of her suggestions for labelling, tagging and documenting your matches and this is something we all may find interesting, and stimulating, to discuss.
You may be assured that we all have our own methodology but it is always interesting to hear other people’s ideas so please bring your suggestions to the meeting.
Different/controversial is healthy!
Click here for more information and to register for meeting
Southwark
December 13, 2021 
The Southwark group would like to invite you to their Virtual Christmas Party. We held one last year, using Zoom and had a lot of fun with competitions, quizzes, music and other entertainment, including members' party pieces.
If you would like to contribute to the entertainment, please email me with some details. Bring your own sausage rolls, mince pies, mulled wine, silly hats etc.
Register in advance for this Zoom meeting:
Sylvia Dibbs & Rita Russell
The Will may be just a short document leaving everything to a spouse or it may
contain almost a family tree. Did you know your ancestor had so much in the way of
goods, chattels and property?
Surrey History Centre
130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, Surrey GU21 6ND
Opening times
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Monday: closed
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Tuesday: 9.30am to 12.45pm and 1.45pm to 5pm
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Wednesday: 10am to 12.45pm and 1.45pm to 5pm
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Thursday: 9.30am to 12.45pm and 1.45pm to 5pm
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Friday: 9.30am to 12.45pm and 1.45pm to 5pm
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Saturday: Second and fourth Saturdays of the month (9 October; 23 October; 13 November; 27 November; later dates to be advised) 9.30am to 1pm and 1.45pm to 4.15pm
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Sunday: closed
How to build a private and unsearchable research tree.
You may have heard people say they used a 'quick and dirty' Private family tree to find some ancestors to do some reasearch on. When I heard that I wasn't sure what they had done and it sounded an unusual thing for a careful genealogist to do. The issue was also clouded because you can't see anyone else's Ancestry Private Trees, because they are Private!
In the attached document I have provided a step by step guide on how to set up a Private Tree in Ancestry. I chose Ancestry because of its large underlying database (18 million records) but you could use a similar approach for the other Research sites that include a tree building facility that you can keep Private. Please do keep it Private or you may upset people whose help you will need in the future!
Happy Hunting! '
Anne Ramon
