For many, family history is a thing of the past, but for others, there is one group in Canberra helping people to piece it together.
Family History ACT is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
To celebrate, Family History ACT president Dr Michele Rainger and Gina Tooke have compiled a book, Honour Your Ancestors: Sixty Years of Family History in the ACT, which delves into the group’s past and present.
Honour Your Ancestors, which recounts the group’s achievements while also celebrating the tireless work of its volunteers through profiles, will be launched at the society’s library at the Cook Community Hub on Saturday 19 October.
Dr Rainger said it was “pretty special” to celebrate the milestone because not many community organisations last 60 years.
“Let alone one that’s still going strong and well – so we’re very proud of that achievement,” she said.
“60 years is when a lot of people (groups) retire, but we’re already thinking of the next 60 years.”
Dr Rainger said while there were about 600 members in the group, all volunteers, they would like to see more younger people join.
She said the group has helped thousands upon thousands of people dig into their family history. It has also had thousands of members.
“A lot of people find things that are exciting to them that others might not think are exciting,” she said.
“There was a time a few decades ago when if someone had a convict in the family, they kept it quite because it was an embarrassment.
“But, since the 1980s (1988) when we had the bicentenary of white settlement in Australia, people have become loud and proud about their convicts.”
Dr Rainger also discovered she was two marriages away from being related to notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, through her dad’s side of the family.
“We often think of history as being a long time ago and convicts is a good example of that,” she said.
“We think of the convicts coming to settle Australia with the European colonisation as ages ago, but the last convict in Australia died in 1938 – after my parents died and just before World War II was to start, so it puts things into perspective.”
The group started as the Heraldry and Genealogy Society of Canberra on 20 October 1964, with just 14 members who met at the seminar room at the then recently opened HC Coombs Building at the Australian National University.
It was only the third family history society to be established in Australia.
Honour Your Ancestors: Sixty Years of Family History in the ACT will be launched at the Cook Community Hub on Saturday 19 October at 2pm.
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