Newsletter
No 18
July 2010
For those members who have recently joined, these Newsletters are intended to ‘bridge the gap’
between the half-yearly Journals presently published in Autumn & Spring
Dear Fibis Member,
I am pleased to say that the Society has expanded its operations well in the last six months since
our last Newsletter. As will be confirmed in our Annual Accounts when published in Journal 24, our
funds have increased significantly and we hope to allocate more to upgrading our ageing show
stand and to the acquisition and transcription of further data for our expanding database. This, by
the way, has now passed two-thirds of a million rows of data!
Thanks for this must go to our large band of volunteers across the world. If members would like to
volunteer some spare time or have data which they can offer for our volunteers to transcribe
(register pages, correspondence, photographs of memorial inscriptions etc) then please contact
Penny at [email protected].
Website
Exciting developments have continued to our web-site. Following my appeal in January, a significant
number of members have signed up to follow developments on an RSS Feed. You will remember
that this is a free service which will enable you to keep yourself informed of what is happening in the
world of family history in British India. You may also like to link to our blog*, our presence on Twitter*
and Facebook*, view our productions on YouTube* or add your comments to the FIBIS Forum.
* All accessible from the Home Page on our web-site www.fibis.org
As regards the web-site itself, you will note the emergence and development of:
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FIBIS Library: links to over 1,000 categorized titles to ‘full view’ books digitized by Google.
FIBIS Multimedia: links to Video Presentations, Podcasts, etc. produced directly by FIBIS or
by others with interests in British India.
FIBIS Presentations: these include some of the high quality Lectures given at a number of
our ‘Open Meetings’ recently.
Fibiwiki has been expanded significantly and its homepage has been re-structured with an
index to make navigation through its over 500 major categories easier to manage.
Additions to the FIBIS Database include: Further announcements from the “Times of India”, large
numbers of gravestone inscriptions from all over India and Burma (many kindly offered by BACSA)
and, very significantly, a number of Cantonment Maps of South India dating from about 1850. These
were digitized from originals held in the University of Melbourne and we are particularly grateful to
our Victoria Coordinator, Mary Anne Gourley, for helping to organize this.
FIBIS Fact Files
As promised, we are in the process of finalizing our Fact File (No 5) on “Getting the Best from the
FIBIS Website”. Further titles planned for the future include the Civil Service and Maritime Services.
Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2010
This year’s major Family History Show at the end of February was, once more, a great hit with the
public – the Grand Hall in Olympia reached capacity and further visitors had to queue to get in! The
FIBIS Stand was as busy as ever and our visitors included a man whose grandfather had arrested
Gandhi in the 1930s! Prominent amongst our achievements was the ‘serendipitous’ arrangement by
our Webmaster, Valmay Young, of a first-time meeting at our stand between prominent FIBIS
member, Noel Gunther, and a long-lost cousin of his, Charlotte Harwood. You can read about this
fascinating encounter on the front page of their web-site at: www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk
(click on the link to gain access to the full story).
Other Family History Fairs & Lecture Meetings
So far this year FIBIS has taken part in various other Family History Fairs:
1. Hastings & Rother Family History Group Lecture Meeting at Hastings on 13th January 2010.
2. Guild of One Name Studies (GOONS) Annual Conference at the Oxford Belfry Hotel,
9th-11th April, 2010. Peter Bailey spoke on “Ancestors in British India 1600-1947.”
3. 7th Victorian Family History State Conference “The Border and Beyond” 28th-30th May 2010 at
Yarrawonga/Mulwala in Australia. Sylvia Murphy gave her presentation “Sahibs, Nabobs &
Boxwallahs: the British in India 1600-1947”.
4. The York Family History Fair at York Racecourse on 26th June, 2010.
And events planned for the close future:
5. A talk on “Family History Research in British India” by Peter Bailey to the Hastings & Rother
Family History Society at their meeting at Ore on 8th September 2010.
6. A talk by Peter Bailey on “The Royal Mallows and the Indian Mutiny” to the Sherlock Holmes
Society at the University of Surrey at Guildford on 11th September 2010.
7. A stand at The Orders and Medals Research Society Annual Convention in London on
18th September 2010. This event is open to OMRS Members only.
8. A joint stand with our colleagues of BACSA at the West Surrey Family History Fair at Woking on
6th November 2010.
9. A stand at the Oxfordshire Family History Society Research Open Day at Marlborough
Enterprise Centre, The Marlborough School, Shipton Road, Woodstock, Oxon, OX20 1LP on
2nd October 2010.
And, of course:
10. FIBIS AGM and Lecture Meeting to be held on Saturday, 13th November at the Hughes-Parry
Hall, University of London at 19-26 Cartwright Gardens. The two Lectures this year will be:
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‘The East India Company in London - Its Directors’ by Richard Morel of the British Library
‘Identifying the Founding Soldiers of the East India Company’s Armies’ by Peter Bailey.
Research Guidance Experiment
As an ‘experiment’, for our May ‘Open Meeting’ we arranged an informal low-key ‘panel of experts’
to try to answer members’ questions on researching their families in British India. Imagine our
surprise when we arrived to find people queueing to approach our ‘experts’ before they had removed
their coats and to keep them busy until the start of the afternoon lectures! We plan to offer the same
service for our November meeting – and to be better organized and prepared this time! We hope to
start this ‘surgery’ at 10.00 a.m.
The use of Hughes-Parry Hall was very convenient to us. It was larger, more convenient and airconditioned! However, if numbers of attendees continue to increase (over 90 in May), we may, yet
again, be forced to look elsewhere.
Trustees
On behalf of all Members, I would like to pay tribute to the devotion of all our trustees, all of whom
give freely of their time to the Society. We all find this rewarding and, in particular, we find that
serving in this way helps us significantly to increase our own knowledge and understanding of the
ways to research the lives of our ancestors in British India. Recently we have decided that, to assist
further expansion of our activities, we would like to invite another couple of members to join us as
trustees “without portfolio”. Our Board Meetings are held bi-monthly (on Monday evenings at the
British Library) with an ‘AwayDay’ in the Summer. Would any member who is interested to join us in
a general or specific capacity, please contact me at [email protected]
Wishing you all continued “Good Hunting” in 2010!
Peter Bailey