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The Alcester and District Local History Society is not a family history
society Admittedly, local history is about people and for this reason we keep an
alphabetic index of the surnames of people who have appeared in the many documents which
we have studied or transcribed. We are not primarily in the business of compiling family
trees, so we have not, for example, deliberately transcribed all the baptisms and
marriages of the Alcester parish registers in the county record office. A family history
society would have done this but we have not.
Our name and address appeared years ago in the literature of the Birmingham Genealogical Society and this has led to scores of folk across the country contacting us for information on particular sur-names. Usually we are able to help but what we cannot do is to give specific details of someone's marriage in 1880 or the date of decease in the 1920s. What we often can do is to point the way to where enquirers can find the details they are seeking; many have been helped in this way. What we cannot do is to give cut and dried genealogical answers. We do not exist to help with family history - we exist to research the local history of our area and in so doing to spread an interest in the area among those who live here. We recognise that the immense interest in family history in recent years has led in many cases to a growing concern for local history and if we have played a small part to this end we are very pleased.
© G.E. Saville