Narrabri residents discover the art of genealogy

The Narrabri and District Historical Society welcomed genealogist Grant Fisher for the society’s annual genealogy presentation at the Old Gaol Museum recently.

This is the third successive year that Mr Fisher has made the trip from Tamworth to Narrabri to share his expertise with the community.

“This was a bit of a hobby for me that naturally progressed into something more serious after my dad passed away,” said Mr Fisher.

While helping his father search for information on his brother Edward who died seven days after birth, Mr Fisher started looking through council and cemetery records while attempting to locate his burial site.

After spending some time with the Tamworth Family History Group researching through old leatherbound books and funeral directories, he recovered a record of Edward’s death.

“It was only because of a place like this historical museum that I found Edward,” Mr Fisher said at the start of his presentation.

For the previous two years, the genealogy event has been held at the Bowling Club, but this year the historical society decided to bring it home to the Museum grounds to add to the experience.

The group of passionate genealogy enthusiasts who gathered for the event also received a rundown of the Narrabri Museum’s wealth of resources that could aid in their search.

As well as local cemetery records, the Museum carries baptisms, marriages, local deaths, newspaper archives for both Narrabri and Wee Waa, parish maps, and many written histories from families and the area.

Mr Fisher has been able to trace his family lineage back at least 100 generations and started volunteering his time to teach locals how to utilise the available local resources to take on the somewhat overwhelming task.

“The premise for these talks is getting started, and looking at other places instead of just online,” said Mr Fisher.

While he touched on his appreciation for online genealogy tools such as Ancestry, Mr Fisher’s presentation was full of useful tips, like setting an agenda and setting clear boundaries on your search.

“The biggest boundaries you’re going to have to set when starting a genealogy search is time and money because otherwise, you could end up spending quite a lot of both,” said Mr Fisher.