The Orange Family History Group is celebrating a little of their own history this month: 40 years since their founding by keen local genealogist, Bruce Walkden Thomas.

The origins of the group can be traced to a meeting of the Ladies’ Evening View Club on July 28, 1983, where the guest speaker was Nick Vine Hall, the director of the Society of Australian Genealogists.

“His talk was very well received,” recalled Mr Thomas in a 1988 Spring issue of the group’s newsletter, “and after the talk Nick and I were besieged by many interested ladies requesting further information on tracing family history.

“Later that night, as we sat drinking coffee before a blazing log fire, Nick asked me to found a Family History Group in Orange. This I did.”

Initially a private group of interested people, they soon found themselves overwhelmed with letters asking for research assistance and advice. It wasn’t long before the group went public and today, as then, they continue to help people uncover their past.

“The family history group, one of their aims is to help people out, educate people on how to do their family history,” local studies librarian Julie Syke said.

Now partnered with Orange City Library, family history group volunteers can be found in the library’s local studies room every week, Julie said.

“They volunteer here, most Fridays, to help people, people who've hit brick walls or just need to know how to start, they can come down here and the group are quite welcoming and willing to help,” she said.

There has been a huge increase in interest in family history research in recent years, in part driven by the greater access to records and archives as they are digitised and become available online.

“When I first joined, the records were harder to come by,” local time member of the family history group Carol Sharp said.

Carol joined the group in 2000 and says she is grateful for the good grounding in family history research given to her by dedicated group members, Sue Griffin and Shirley Duckworth.

Carol is now one of the regular Friday volunteers at the library helping others as they uncover their own family’s past.

She said requests can be as broad as, "Have you got my family history?" Or they can be helping people find or confirm one particular detail or date. A recent request involved collecting highlights of a gentleman’s cricketing career from local newspapers.

“And we are getting a lot of people who were adopted, that are now looking for their parents,” Carol said. “That's a big request at the moment, it wasn't when I first joined but it is now.” 

While much more information is now available at the click of a button, there are resources at the library that you won’t yet find online.

“I always use both,” Carol said.

One important resource that the library holds are microfilms of local newspapers that have not been digitised and made available on the National Library’s online archive, Trove.

We also hold the Orange papers from 1899 through to the present day,” Julie said. “On trove, you can only get them up to the Second World War.”

As part of the Orange Family History Group's 40th Anniversary Celebrations, they have invited Australian historian and author Kate Gadsby to give a special free presentation on the use of maps when researching family history. Kate spent much of the past 25 years researching the history of the Nubrygyn district, Euchareena for her book Convicts, Capitalists and Corruption and has a wealth of knowledge in this area.

Kate Gadbsy will be speaking at Orange City Library on Tuesday, July 18, at 2pm. Book your place via Eventbrite.