The Lancashire Family History & Heraldry Society was born in April 1973 as the Rossendale Society for Genealogy and Heraldry. 

John Mackie who appears to be the only surviving member who attended that first meeting remembers it as being a dark wet Saturday. Ten people answered Frank Fell's advertisements in various Lancashire newspapers and gathered in a dark and dingy room at the Trevalyan Club in Bury. 

The room was furnished with leather settees and armchairs and not really the ideal venue for a meeting but subsidised drinks from the bar next door helped things along. 

Frank Fell was keen to start a family history group and was quite happy to be the administrator but he needed a chairman, John Mackie was keen to get involved with a heraldry group and was able to act as chairman. Neither man was too keen on the other mans subject but they were able to work together and so the meetings got off the ground. 

The cost of renting the room at the Trevalyan Club proved too great and the group moved to the snug at the Bishop Blaize at Rawtenstall and then across the road into the Textile Workers Union Rooms. A new venue at Bury was found at the Moses Community Centre but this also proved to be less than ideal as the meetings were often interrupted by dart and snooker players and on one famous occasion a folk group started to play. 

However, with two meeting groups each month the membership numbers began to grow, with a little help from Frank who was in the habit of going into the library and inserting fly leaflets into any books likely to be opened by prospective members. Rita Hirst first came across Franks recruiting methods when a colleague at Bury library reported this "funny little man" for putting stickers onto the microfilm readers advertising RSGH.

  Rita joined the Society after meeting Eileen Fletcher in Bury library and discovering that they could do each other's research. A few weeks after this meeting a talk at the local family history group attracted their attention and they decided to go together. Eileen who was already a member paid for Rita's first year's membership of the Society and George Pelling joined on the same night. 

Rita remembers that both she and George thought that they had joined a thriving society but soon found that it was really nine or ten folk meeting at the Bishop Blaize. There wasn't much by way of speakers in those days and Frank would turn up with a load of journals and they would sit around talking about their families. On one occasion they sat around telling ghost stories. Then one night Frank turned up and said "right, we are going to have a committee meeting and everyone here will be on the committee" so were our democratic roots lain. 

Frank Fell was also attending regional meetings of other family history groups and very early on saw the advantage of belonging to a greater national organisation. So it was that Rossendale became an early member of the Federation of Family History Societies and when the North West Region started to form their own group, in 1977, Rossendale was right there amongst them. 
 

The first full scale North West Conference was held at Howarden Collage 1978 and the second in March 1979 at Whalley Abbey hosted by Rossendale, this group celebrated their silver jubilee in May this year with the Conference at Woodford hosted by the Cheshire Societies.

With local government reorganisation in April 1974 the chairman moved from Burnley to Preston and there founded the Preston and Heraldry groups in September 1977. 

The next few years saw groups open up in Pendle in May 1979 (this group was formed from the Pendle FHS opened in 1976), Blackburn in March 1982, Rochdale in May 1982, Blackpool in February 1984, and Lancaster in March 1984 and the Society began to feel that the name should reflect the now enlarged area covered by our meeting groups. At the AGM in 1984 a motion was passed and from January 1st 1985 we have been known as the Lancashire FH&HS. 
 

Seventeen members from the first one hundred who joined are still with us thirty years on, Tom Atherton, an Australian member stumbled across a poster in Wigan Library during a visit in 1974 and regards that as his lucky day. During subsequent visits to the UK he attended a Heraldry group meeting and one Society Dinner during the 1980s. He recalls with pleasure his correspondence with Jim Topping, Rita Hurst and Mary Davison with whom he is still in touch. He tells me that he enjoys receiving and reading his copy of the journal each quarter but is disappointed by those members who submit their interests to the journal and then fail to reply to correspondence. Perhaps there is a lesson there for us all.

Evelyn Reed joined the Society in 1975 when subscriptions were £2 per year. She remembers corresponding with a lady who had advertised in the Rochdale paper in 1972 and was attempting to start a Family History group. 

Evidently it didn't get off the ground for Marjorie Smith was also attending meetings at Bury and would attend the Rochdale group meetings when that opened. 

John Prescot is another Australian member who joined in 1976 following a visit to family in Accrington. He and his wife spent a year in the UK during 1977 and remember getting a lot of assistance from Frank Fell and Rita Hurst. They would later spend some time in Salt Lake City where they got the family line back to Brindle in 1712.

Edgar Diamond kept the earliest minutes books and although they are not complete they are written in Edgar's inimitable style and a joy to read. From them we learn that by spring 1975 the Society has a President in the person of Derek Janes who was at that time Librarian at Bury Library, however in September that year he married and in April the following year he and his new wife moved to Coventry. 

Fortunately for the Society Rita Hirst knew just the man to replace him. Jack Walker Barber-Lomax was a vet living or working in Bury and had been working privately on a marriage index at the Parish Church. Mr Barber-Lomax was such a nice man and so easy to talk to, if the Society had anything as sophisticated as an AGM at that time they were very fortunate to have found their second President.

  Jack Barber-Lomax took a keen interest in the Society's affairs and although he lived abroad for some time he attended several of the later AGMs and was a most generous benefactor to the Society. 
 

In that same year 1976 the Society also found a Patron in the person of Sir Ralph Assheton the first Baron of Downham, the Rt Hon Lord Clitheroe who lived at Downham Hall. Sir Ralph remained Patron until his death in September 1984. 

He also took a keen interest in the Society's affairs and could be called upon to attend high profile events like the Conference at Whalley in 1979. He and Lady Sylvia entertained the Society at Downham on two occasions September 1979 and again in 1980. 

Members chosen to receive these invitations will remember the house, which wasn't at that time actually open to the public, as being large enough to be grand but small enough to feel lived in, a feeling enforced by the dog baskets behind the television set and the notes from the grandchildren on the mantelpiece. Sir Ralph entertained us in his library where he proudly showed us the insignia of the Royal Victorian Order that he received on his knighthood and he invited us to look at any of the books on the shelves. Lady Sylvia showed us around the house where she had displayed several originals of newspaper cartoons depicting Sir Ralph and herself during his period in government. However, when she was asked how many rooms there were in the house she faltered. How many rooms she mused, I'm sure I don't know, there are fifteen bedrooms but I have never counted the rest.
 

When I joined the Society in April 1977 the UK membership was forty-six and my second meeting at the Textile Workers Rooms proved to be the AGM where we were told that the Society had made a trading loss during the previous year of £109. Fortunately George Pelling had taken over as treasurer and the Societies fortunes during his term of office would be completely turned around. 

By the next year we had past the one hundred membership mark and were showing a profit of £81. Eric Frankcom would eventually take over from George and Pauline MacLoughlin who had done such a good job with the finances at the Blackpool Conference followed him into the treasury. Jim Topping brings our list of Treasurers up to the date of the last AGM. 

The Society can count itself very fortunate to have found four members so able to take care of the Society's finances; future holders of this office certainly have a hard act to follow. 

The meetings at the Textile Workers Rooms were always very friendly affairs. John Mackie was still travelling from Preston to attend the meeting each month bringing with him Eileen Fletcher and Mildred Rigby, two rather quiet ladies who contributed such a great deal to the quality of the Society. 

Donald Hyde who lives in the USA joined in the very early days and is still a member, he remembers writing to Mildred Rigby, Jack Barber-Lomax and George Pelling who all helped with his research in various ways. 

Another regular at that time was Dorothy Cartman whose pithy comments could always be relied upon to lighten the stuffiest of moments. George Pelling shared Frank Fell's belief in our belonging to the National Federation and represented the Society at Federation Conferences.

Along with other equally strong characters from the other northern societies this made sure that the voice of the north was heard at the national assemblies. George later became Chairman of the National Federation and remained a powerful force within the family history movement until his death in 1995.

A few months after I joined the Society in 1977 Joyce Pickup started coming to meetings, as we were both travelling from the same area we often shared transport, and when the AGM came round in 1978 we both got our first jobs, Auditors. 

Now Joyce had a great deal more gumption than me but I often think that if the Society had seen some of the maths results on my school reports the vote might have gone the other way. Our service to the Society as Auditors was mercifully short but I have one abiding memory of auditing the books of a very senior taxman over his own desk and not everybody can say that now can they. 

In that year 1978 Eric & Dorothy Frankcom joined the Society and when the 1979 AGM came around Joyce Pickup and I moved jobs and came onto the executive committee along with Eric & Dorothy who took on the roles of assistant treasurer and editor respectively. I became secretary and Joyce Pickup took over as membership secretary a role that she filled with great distinction for several years. 
 

Dorothy Frankcom transformed the journal, both content and presentation. It became the type of journal that you could sit down with a cuppa and have a real good read.

Andrew Todd took over the journal in 1984 and under his editorship the magazine took on a rather more educational style. 

In the early days we couldn't afford to have the journal published as we do today and it was typed on stencils and then printed using an old gestetner that we purchased second hand. This work was done around Frankcom's kitchen table and later in the back room at Joyce's shop in Norden. 

Having printed the required number of pages we stacked them in great piles around the table and then spent many happy hours walking around it collating the finished product. 
 

Eric took over as Treasurer when George moved to the Federation in 1980 and he built on George's good work in keeping the Society finances on a good footing. 

Eric is retired these days but he was a builder at that time; and when the Textile Workers rooms needed refurbishing Eric recruited all those members who couldn't run away fast enough and he and his team painted, cleaned and sorted until we ended up with a meeting room, a kitchen and a lockable library, our first permanent premises. In recognition of both their efforts for the Society the room was named The Frankcom Room and Jock Shaw created a superb plaque to fasten onto the door. 

By 1980 the Society was strong enough and confident enough to hold the AGM as part of a one day conference, the venue chosen was Alston Hall at Longridge and on the 3rd May an incredible sixty four members turned up. These events were so popular and the venue so comfortable that we stayed at Alston Hall for five years until the Principal had to tell us to move on, we were overcrowding the place. 

Since 1985 the AGM and one day conference has been held at the University of Central Lancashire where it is still a good day out.

1983 saw our tenth anniversary and we celebrated this by hosting the North West Federation Group Conference at Rivington Barn on October 22nd that year. Some two hundred members from all the NW Societies attended and enjoyed a day of lectures and conversation.

Emboldened by the success at Rivington we had agreed to host the 1987 Federation Conference. This event was organised by a specially formed committee who were assisted during the conference weekend by a great many volunteers from within the Society membership. We chose as our venue the Norbreck Castle Hotel in Blackpool. 

Some three hundred and fifty members from Societies in the UK and a good number from overseas enjoyed a weekend of lectures, visits and meetings culminating on the Saturday evening with a banquet followed by cabaret from the Oldham Tinkers. We certainly showed them how to have a good time in Blackpool. 
 

With the spread of meeting groups and our ever growing membership we wanted to encourage the membership to feel that they belonged to the Society and not only to the meeting group they attended. 

The one day conference for the AGM was intended to be a social day, also the groups were encouraged to arrange out visits to places of interest locally to which the wider membership could be invited. The two visits to Downham came into this category, as did the visit to Stonyhurst College not normally open to the public. 

We also visited Great Mitton and in the church there we were allowed into the vault where the coffins of members of the Sherburn family can still be seen along with a square box containing the head of Margaret of Skipton who was pressed to death at Leeds for witchcraft. 

We went to Browsholme and gathered on the gravel in front of this magnificent house awaiting our guide. The door opened and this lady appeared introducing herself with the words, "my name is Mrs Robert Parker and this is my house". I think it would be Dorothy Cartman who muttered, "How I wish I'd said that". It was definitely Dorothy who tried to start a chorus of Sally when we all stepped out onto the balcony of Rochdale Town Hall during our visit to that magnificent building. There was usually a light supper arranged at a convenient hostelry thereby ending the visit on a social note. 

The Pendle group organised a dinner at the Spread Eagle at Sawley in January 1982 at which the guest speaker Jessica Lofthouse upset the smokers by asking them to leave. It wasn't intended to be a Society Dinner but the group invited other members to join them and it did in fact become the first of a series of very successful events. 

Rochdale invited the Society to join them at the Broadfield Hotel in September the same year when Cyril Smith was the guest speaker. 

Blackburn invited us to dinner at the Last Drop Village when their speaker was to be Dr Rhodes Boyson. That would be 1984 and took place just a few weeks after the bombing of the Grand Hotel at Brighton, between the conference and our dinner Dr Boyson was promoted to the Minister for Northern Ireland and we were much relieved when he confirmed that he would be able to honour this engagement. However, on the night we arrived at Last Drop to find security men concealed behind almost every bush. I don't know how many members sitting down to dinner that night realised that we had two armed security men hidden amongst them.

But we on the top table certainly knew it and spent most of the evening waiting for masked gunmen to burst in. If they had done the entire executive committee were sitting on either side of Dr Boyson and in our opinion our loss would be far greater than the loss of the Tory government might have been a few weeks earlier. 

There has been a succession of these events including the Fylde group hosting our silver anniversary dinner at the Masonic Hall in Cleveleys in 1998, as I write this in the Autumn of 2002 we are heading back to Pendle for this years event which brings us round in a full circle and is somehow appropriate.
 

It hasn't all been fun and games though; the members of this Society have compiled a tremendous library of archive material through their efforts in grave yards doing MIs, and hours and hours spend in libraries and record offices transcribing material and then indexing it at home. 

The Heraldry group projects have located and recorded armorial monuments in buildings both public and private adding to the general store of information available. 

Terry Walsh's team of transcribers made sure that this Society was well represented in the work done on the 1881 census transcription, and we all know now what a benefit to researchers that is. 

Further census indexes compiled by both group teams and individuals have benefited the library, and through their sale on microfiche they are benefiting researchers all over the world. 

Jack Barber-Lomax's Bury marriage index is a major contribution to our Lancashire Marriage Index and Harold Cook through his magnificent bequest gave us an archive that has probably never been used to its full capacity.
 

During these past thirty years this Society has made a tremendous contribution to the pool of material available to the genealogical researcher. However I make no apologies if my recollections appear to be leaning towards the social aspect of belonging to our Society. What we must never forget is that this is a hobby and we are supposed to be enjoying ourselves, if we produce something worthwhile along the way then all well and good.

I was asked to put together some memories of the early days and, with a little help from some of the other 16 members still remaining from the first hundred, that is what I hope I have achieved. 

I am indebted to all those whose brains I have picked for memories and to reinforce my own oft failing recollections, without them this piece would not be so complete. They have all received my personal thanks and are named in the narrative. 

Rodney Hampson.