The Riches of the Earth Mary Bodfish will explain all From being Staffordshire husbandmen, the Gilbert family worked its way up to producing two brothers, nephews of an ancestress, who were Thomas Gilbert (1720-98) and John Gilbert (1724-95), prominent entrepreneurs of the early Industrial Revolution.   As well as with important parliamentary reform, they were involved […]

DNA Painter Jonny Perl will introduce the concept of chromosome mapping and demonstrate various features with his DNA Painter website that can help you make the most of your autosomal DNA results for your family history research.  Examples of how to use the site’s probability-based tools for relationship prediction will be presented alongside an overview […]

On the Trail of The Pilgrim Fathers Speaker: J Keith Cheetham The Pilgrim Fathers stand out in history as the best remembered of all American colonists and over one million North Americans count them as their ancestors. The Pilgrims were the first group to found their own colony and run it on a system of […]

Friends of Key Hill and Warstone Lane Cemeteries Speakers: Jacqui Fielding and Richard Beardall The Friends of Key Hill and Warstone Lane Cemeteries  who formed in 2004, are a group of volunteers working to preserve, research, inform and promote these important historic and interesting cemeteries in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, Hockley. Jacqui will talk about how […]

Friends of Birmingham Archives & Heritage Established in June 2009, FoBAH aims to promote and support the work of Birmingham Archives and Heritage in making their historical collections available to as wide an audience as possible. Their committee has a range of expertise, including: archivists, researchers, academics and archive users. This presentation by the Friends […]

Lost Industries and Businesses of Birmingham A slide show by Keith Clenton, most photographs used in this presentation come from The Birmingham Lives Carl Chinn Archive. Keith will bring to us the reality that despite the ability of Birmingham people to adapt to innovation, for a variety of reasons there was a decline in manufacturing […]

See re-scheduled event 21 July 2021, click here Park Street HS2 Archaeology works: Park Street Former Burial Ground Did you know that one of the biggest archaeological digs in the UK has been taking place right here in Birmingham? As part of the preparations for HS2’s phase one, an archaeological team has been excavating the […]

The Role of Women in Medieval Heraldry Speaker: Dr. Paul A. Fox Early heraldry at a superficial level appears to have been a very masculine affair, but women played a much more important role than has been generally recognised.  Moreover, the frequency with which maternal arms (or elements thereof) were inherited has been under-estimated. Such […]

Spread the Net Wider and Dig Deeper. Speaker: Ann Simcock When we first begin to research our families often the aim is to try and get as far back as possible adding names and dates with a hope to find a link to someone famous. However, our ancestors were living breathing human beings with fascinating […]

65 Brunswick Road – The Musical Midlands author Shirley Thompson, who has published everything from biographies to fiction, poetry and children’s books, invites you to a musical adaptation of her 12th book, 65 Brunswick Road. This extensively researched, personal family saga relates the stories of five families from the 18th Century to the present day. […]

Bring and Share In the past members were very willing to bring along displays of their research and family history. There has been a move away from paper based records to computer aided storage. Members are invited to bring along your lap-tops and share examples of your research and encourage others who may not be […]