Welcome to the East Surrey FHS

 You may be new to family history, you may have some experience, you may be an old hand; this may be the first family history society you have joined or you may already be a member of several. Whatever the case we will welcome you as a member and do our best to help you in this fascinating pastime.

Background to Family History interest
Future historians will doubtless regard with some astonishment the enormous expansion of interest in genealogy and family history in the last decades of the 20th century. People have always had a natural curiosity about their forebears but only recently have they begun to trace their ancestors with such single-minded dedication. Their pursuit is not normally of the gentry or nobility, but of the common man and his origins. In the UK, the USA, and certainly throughout the Western world, the degree of interest has been extraordinary; indeed family history is reputed to be the UK's fastest growing pastime, and the formation of hundreds of family history societies to cater for the many thousands of enthusiastic amateur historians in the UK alone has been clear evidence of that.

In addition the society regularly has talks by professional historians relating to local history, so when relatives from the past are found, the conditions under which they lived can be determined, full family history.