THE 1970S
As someone who is now in their 47th year of serious family history research, I have watched the family history movement grow and change, not always for the better, over many years. That growth and development will continue and so it should. We should not be content with doing things the way that they have always been done. Neither, of course, should we look to make changes just for change’s sake.
Let us wind back the clock to the 1970s. This was an era when genealogy was beginning to move beyond being a pursuit of erudite antiquarians. It was in this decade that, through the medium of television, two things worked together to unwrap the gift that was the quest for ancestry. One was the story of newscaster and actor Gordon Honeycombe’s foray into his own family history.
Add to the mix the primetime epic drama that was the televisation of Alex Haley’s Roots and the excitement of an ancestral journey was delivered to our living rooms. We began to believe that we too could do this and the means for us to do so began to build. Institutions such as the Society of Genealogists and the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies were already in existence but had a narrow membership base. Local groups began to form and the county family history network was well-established by the early 1980s. We sought out others who shared our research interests by joining those societies, participating in the Genealogical Research Directory. It was even possible to seek fellow researchers via Teletext. We sent letters
