Berkshire is an odd shaped county surrounded by Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire,  Surrey, and Hampshire. Much of the area around the Thames has become known as Silicon Valley, the home of new technology, yet it still remains a county of rolling hills, and farmland. The county also retains its historic Royal connections: Windsor Castle stands above the River Thames. It lies on the flight path of aircraft landing and taking of from Heathrow Airport. The aircraft formerly included Concorde.

Partly from its geographical position Berkshire has always been a county in which transport has played a significant role. When ancient Britons walked along the Ridgeway from the early settlements on the Thames to the religious ceremonies at Avebury they could not have known that the same routes would be used by the Romans and later still by the pack horses of the wool trade. The coaching pioneers continued that same east-west journey and when the canals were constructed it seemed natural to connect the City of London along the Thames to the Kennet and Avon. When Isambard Kingdom Brunel constructed his Great Western Railway his trains thundered along a different road, but the destination remained the same. Finally when the modern motorway engineers cut a way through the open countryside their roads channelled the traffic from London to Bristol. This flow of goods and people can sometimes be a clue when searching for a lost ancestor as individuals moved in the same lateral direction.

It is only by learning about the past that we can gain the perspective to understand how society has evolved and it is only by studying the history of our own families that we can learn how we have become what we are in the modern world. Family history provides us with a glimpse of the past, and for all that Kings and politicians haste achieved, the stability of England was built upon the working man and woman.

The local government reorganisation of 1974 transferred a large part of the 'historic' county, the "Vale of White Horse" to Oxfordshire, but many archivists and family historians ignore these new boundaries. You will find all the parish records for the ancient county at the Berkshire Record Office, although copies are also held at the Oxford Record Office. See links to the BRO and ORO on our web-links page.

The Society was founded in 1973 and we now have a flourishing and active membership of over 2,000 in the United Kingdom and worldwide. The society year, which runs from 1st July to 30th June, embraces a regular series of monthly meetings at venues throughout the County. In 1981 we became a Registered Charity (registered number 283010).

While many of the Society's activities are Berkshire based, we aim to provide a service for all members, whether their families come from Birmingham, Bristol, Belgravia, or Ballaret.

These are held at six centres: Bracknell, Newbury, Reading, Windsor and in the Vale of White Horse at Abingdon, with a Computer Branch meeting at Woodley. Members are encouraged to swap ideas and discuss their problems and experts on a wide range of topics from computers, to wills, or the nineteenth century census to parish registers are invited to speak at meetings. A library and bookstall with the most up to date publications is also available. Suggestions for meeting topics are welcomed and members are encouraged to offer their services as speakers if they wish.

A major aim of the Society is to encourage the transcription and indexing of the many records within Berkshire. This helps to preserve the originals and make them more accessible. This task is shared with many other local societies who, like the BerksFHS, are members of the Berkshire Local History Association. The Society also organises monumental inscription recording sessions in churchyards and graveyards. We need your help to make permanent records of the crumbling and fading inscriptions on the memorials to our ancestors. See further details on-line.

The major link with out-of-county Members is through our quarterly magazine, the Berkshire Family Historian. Our site includes the text of most articles published since September 1999 but NOT the most recent edition! The magazine is also sent, on an exchange basis, to many other family history societies worldwide, ensuring it reaches the widest possible readership. All members are invited to submit articles to theabout their own research or any topic of interest to other family historians. The aim is to broaden our understanding of family history, particularly in Berkshire.

Members can use the membership pages of the magazine to publicise the names of the families they are interested in and to seek help from other members to solve particularly difficult and stubborn problems. These pages are especially important as they allow the freedom to advertise specific interests. It is a common occurrence for the membership pages to reveal family connections that might otherwise remain unknown.

An index to the 1851 Census for Berkshire has been a major publishing venture for the Society. After many years work complete indexes by surname, forename age, and folio number were issued together with a County Index to all the names. The full Index and transcription for the County may be purchased.

The Society holds the magazines and journals received on an exchange basis from many other family history societies worldwide in our Magazine Library in the Research Centre. These are also available for loan at Reading Branch meetings.

The BerksFHS is a member of the Federation of Family History Societies, which covers the world through its various member societies. The Federation holds a twice yearly Council meeting for representatives of English and Welsh family history societies, at a conference hosted by each of the societies in turn. National projects are co-ordinated by the Federation, such as the recent 1881 census indexing project with the Genealogical Society of Utah. This has produced the English and Welsh transcripts on fiche for every county. In 1999 the entire 1881 census transcriptions for England, Wales and Scotland were published on CDROM. Every two years the Federation collects lists of family names being researched in the British Isles for issue on fiche as the British Isles Genealogical Register (Big R).

The Society is also a member of the Berkshire Local History Association, formed as a liaison group for matters concerning local history in the county, which offers occasional meetings of interest to both local and family historians.

See details on how to join the Society.

A blank pedigree chart (or Birth Brief) is given to every member when they join the Society. When one is returned it is indexed by name. This index is used as a finding aid to identify others interested in the names you are researching, and who may be related to you. The Index is held at the Research Centre. The Birth Briefs project is in place to computerise these details and include them in the Berkshire Name Index.

As the King said in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "begin at the beginning then go on till you come to the end then stop". So start with yourself and your immediate relatives. An aunt might fill in some background about your parents and grandparents, a cousin might add some dates, and an uncle might tell you where your family lived. Gathering oral evidence is the best way to start, and then you will be ready to look for documents and family Bibles. See also our articles on 'Starting your Family History' and 'Tracing your Ancestors'.

General registration of vital records in England and Wales began on 1 July 1837. Events are recorded in quarterly indexed volumes. The death indexes provide age at death from 1866 onwards. Certificates can be obtained from the Family Records Centre.

The first census of any real significance was carried out on the night of June 6, 1841. The names of everybody, even vagrants and those living rough in tents, were recorded. Though no doubt many were missed. The information on this census is limited, but the next one taken on the night of March 30, 1851 was a much grander affair, and more important for family historians. 30,000 enumerators collected 4.3 million schedules, which were eventually transcribed, into 38,000 books. The exact dates when the census was taken are as follows:

Limited information and only available where the records have been kept	Complete
1801, March 10th	1841, June 6th
1811, March 27th	1851, March 30th
1821, May 28th	1861, April 7th
1831, May 30th	1871, April 2nd
	1881, April 3rd
	1891, April 5th
	1901, March 31st

Copies of the Berkshire returns between 1841 and 1891 are held in the Research Centre either on film or on CD-ROM (copied to hard disk).