CAPE TOWN FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY

0rigination of the
CAPE TOWN FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY
An interview with Heather MacAlister - the founder.

: Heather, couldgive me some background about beginning of the Cape Town Family History Society ?
: The Society was started out of pure frustration listening to other novice genealogists who needed help and basically a starting point to get on the right road to genealogy. the time there was only a society that catered mainly for people of Dutch, German and French Huguenot Ancestry. most of the people were Afrikaans and meetings were held in the northern suburbs.
:What made you interested to form this society ?
: I like changes and challenges and this was something I was determined would make a difference.
: How much of research had you done before this on your own?
: I had spent many about 12 years doing research on my own family and then I started to do private research for other people.
: Did you have anyone close to you who also had voiced the need for help?
: Not really anyone close but lots of people who were in the same boat as I had been years before.
: You & who else decided on how to form this society & who to contact?
: Basically it was my own idea and I had bounced the idea off my sister Jennifer Lloyd who thought it was a good idea. I just made a plan and it worked.
: So how did you start ?
:By inviting people to my home in Lakeside, we started having small meetings. Below are the minutes of the inaugural meeting:

Bay Family History Society

Meeting held 15 June 2002

9 Mistral Close Lakeside Cape Town

Present: Heather MacAlisterPratt, Carol Stemmet ,Sylvia Grey, Denise Cook, DebiNevin, Graham Lloyd, Jennifer Lloyd, Jill Martin, Fay Lea

was agreed that we contribute R3 for tea from the next meeting.
(7 years later & we still charge R3 for tea !!!)
Heather will find out what the Genealogical Society of SA Western Cape division charge for membership.agreed that we should have an agenda for each meeting.
discussion on Computers in Genealogy and Heather to talk to us about her site.person to present their trees and talk on their families and the research.

following subjects were suggested as projects to do:Cemetery - Heather to find out what has been done.Logs to be transcribedEmigration lists found by Derek Pratt to be photographed and transcribed

following subjects were raised as places to visit:
Minnie from the Cape Town Archives to be approached to give us a tour of the archives.Society of SA Stellenbosch offices.Office tourMuseum FranschoekCemeteryMuseum
next meeting will take place at:
9 Mistral Close, Lakeside: Saturday 19 July 2002.

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: Who decided on the choice of name?
: Originally we advertised as the False Bay Family History Society but not long afterwards it was agreed & the present name of the Cape Town Family History Society was proclaimed.
: How did you become involved with Ancestry24 - when you handed over the reins of the Cape Town Family History Society ?
: In 1994 I was contacted by one of the senior staff members of Naspers publishing who offered to buy my website and asked me then to come and run it for them - at the time I was not too happy as I had been a housewife for almost 20 years and the thought of going to work in the corporate world was extremely daunting. Husband, Donald, thought it a good idea to go back to work - which I did and have never looked back.
: What is your position at Ancestry24.co.za?
: Channel Manager. I could be classified as the web master but we have 3 full time web developers that do all the technical stuff - I orchestrate and make it happen. I do corporate research for newspapers, magazines and TV eg “Who do you think you are?” on 2.the moment we have just created some new tools for genealogists which are called "user generated content tools" this enables anyone to upload photographs, documents, images, pictures or graves etc and our next one will be a grave tagging tool whereby we will upload thousands of cemetery images which have not been indexed or named - we are asking the public to come online and go through the images and tag them and fill in the details online in the database.
: Thank you so much Heather for all your input & we wish you every success wherever you go.