For many people learning about their family history can become a hobby and even a passion and in Orange there's a group of such people who meet to share stories and find resources.
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Julie Sykes from the Orange Family History Group answered some questions on tips for looking up information for family trees to what she likes about it and what she's learnt.
What is the family history group?
Now in its 41st year, the Orange Family History Group runs in partnership with Orange City Library and about 10 people get together every third Tuesday of the month to talk about family history.
Although some of the participants are from Orange those they research can come from all over Australia and overseas.
The group also helps other people from across Australia and abroad who are seeking information on ancestors and family members from around the Orange region as well as other parts of the country and overseas.
The Orange Family History Group meets in the local studies room at Orange City Library every Friday between 10.30am and 3pm.
What made you get involved with the group?
"I've been doing my family history and my husbands family history for over 20 years and I started that in Mackay [Queensland]," Mrs Sykes said.
"I've always had an interest in family history and came down here and utilised the resources here at the library but I'm actually a retired local studies librarian from the library so it was part of my role was to look after the family history group.
"I'm very interested in my own family history and also finding out what resources are here in this room."
What resources do you have at the library?
"In the library here itself we have what we call our local history section," Mrs Sykes said.
There's also a genealogy section which has anything to do with the history of Orange, family histories people have written, cemetery records for the cemeteries that are around.
"We have family history magazines that we get from different groups, we have maps of the area and in the genealogy part there are things like the old census from 1828," Mrs Sykes said.
"There are how to do your family history and then we also have family history resources from places like Parramatta, Wellington, all around NSW, then we have microfish and microfilm from the Australian Research Kit.
She said the NSW state library put on film a lot of the most used old records and sent a copy to a few main libraries across NSW and that's what the kit is.
There's also copies of old newspapers, births deaths and marriages volume numbers, shipping records, coroner's inquests and old publican's licenses.
"We've got a lot of the Central Western Daily and the old Leader," Mrs Sykes said.
What's a tip you would give someone who is starting their family tree?
"What they should do is they should start from themselves and then start asking their parents and their grandparents what they know and start writing it down," Mrs Sykes said.
"We have forms they could fill out and from that you can see what things you don't know and what you need to know and we can start helping them develop that."
She said Births Deaths and Marriages is a good start.
What have you found in your own family history research?
"We only moved to Orange 15 years ago but my husband had a relative, Moses Sykes who was a convict and he bought land on the Bathurst Road near Dairy Creek Road so we are actually a local family," Mrs Sykes said.
"He's a direct descendent, he can follow the family back through his male line to Moses."
Before that they didn't realise they had a connection to Orange.