GoONS in Hounslow

The Guild of One-Name Studies (GoONS) held a seminar in Hounslow today.

The Guild is an organisation for those family history researchers who study all occurrences of a single surname. Often the surname examined is that of the individual or, as in my case, I've chosen the surname of a Great-Great-Grandmother (HAYTER) because I had hit a bit of a brick wall tracing her ancestors. The idea was to do a blanket search in the hopes of picking up the appropriate thread... more of that at another time.

The seminar today was about "Organising records on a computer" and was held at Montague Hall (I wonder if there's connection with Let-make-a-deal!**) in the middle of Hounslow. We (Jeanne, John and I) eventually managed to get to the place after dealing with a Tom-Tom navigator that didn't know the Hounslow one-way road system at about 8ish. Plenty of time to head to a café for a timely english breakfast...

Returning to the hall we were faced by a Hall supervisor who was not prepared to let us at 9 (so we could setup) but at 10 (when the seminar was due to start). Fortunately Jeanne (ever prepared) was able to provide some printouts of what had been paid for and arranged, so we were able to get in an get things organised. Howard was also there early as well to setup the GoONS bookstall.

The program consisted of five presentations:

Overview - Jeanne Bunting
Using General Purpose Programmes - Sue Turner
Custodian - Brian Horridge
The Master Genealogist - Teresa Pask
Family Historian - John Hanson

It was a full day and very enjoyable - Brian's talk on the software package Custodian has given that extra push I needed to give it another try. Custodian is an all-purpose database designed to hold the bits and pieces of information collected along the way in family history research. I find the interface a tad over-done and 'busy' but I might try again with it.

I think the attendance was about 50 so quite a good turn out.

Although we managed to pack reasonably quickly at the end we found ourselves stuck in traffic jams trying to get back to Jeanne's house back near Guildford. Apparently there was a rugby game at Twickenham and there were quite a few road closures. What should have been a 40 minute trip ended up taking about an hour and a half...

Early night tonight as we are off the a Family History show down in Wimborne (Dorset) at 7 in the morning...

** Monty Hall was the presenter of the TV show "Let Make A Deal" in the US from 1963 to 1977