Tailored family history talks for major organisations and local groups and family history societies.

Notably I am a regular speaker at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live! History Show at Olympia, for the Society of Genealogists in London and the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies in Canterbury. In 2013 I presented at 'Exodus. The Movement of the People' the international conference organised by the Halsted Trust.

The talks below are a selection of what I offer but can usually be adapted if required, while new ideas are welcome! Please email me to get a price for a talk, providing details the date, time, venue, the subject you require and whether or not you require me to bring my own equipment.

• Mind and Roots
  In this unique talk Celia speaks from her unique position as both professional therapist and professional genealogist to show you how your family tree holds hidden clues to your personality and your relationships. By means of a detailed case study she shows how family traits and mindsets cane be passed down through generations and still affect us today in the 21st century.


• Above & Below: Exploring a Pre-Reformation Church and Churchyard
  Celia will take you on a trip round the parish church and churchyard, helping you to learn, observe and appreciate many different aspects of the sacred place, which was the centre of village life. She will look at the changing interior of the church pre- and post-Reformation and look at the origin of our churchyards and how they evolved into places of burial. Using a selection of her own archaeological photographs, she will take you underground to show you inside the resting places of some of our forebears (vaults and brick-lined graves) and finish with explaining why so many gravestones no longer stand.


• Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records
  Celia takes some familiar and less well-known family records, sets them in new light to show how much we neglect death records and how much we can get from them.


• Newspapers for Family Historians
  A general overview of how to use newspapers for family historians and the type of info you may find.


• How Far Did Your Ancestor Travel?
  How far our ancestors migrated within the UK before the advent of the railways and what type of people they were.


• Abandon all hope ye who enter here!
  Celia talks about the origins of the 19th workhouses and their predecessors and then gives an insight into what life was like in the workhouse and some of the improvements made in form the later 19th century onwards.


• Surnames: An Introduction
  Celia looks at the origin of surnames and how they evolved and mutated and can provide challenges to family history research

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