International Collaboration - Ventura County, California

Norman Bambridge leads our International Alliances. In this article originally written in the Covid era, our Chairman Ken Porter talks about the work with Ventura County Genealogical Society in California.

FROM COVID TO CALIFORNIA (DNA and Genealogical Research)

By Ken Porter

As with previous pandemics, many things happen, but with the Covid Pandemic which hit our shores in 2019, the idea of non or restricted contact brought genealogical research to the fore, with many people now finding time to look at their family histories and Basildon Heritage here in Essex were no different in the sense that people from around the world found the time to review previously dormant research which transcended times back to the Puritan and Quaker movement from these shores in the early seventeenth century.

The fact that Billericay in Essex was one of the prime organisational centres for this period from around 1600 to 1640 and many of the vessels that sailed, did so via Harwich and Rotherhithe on the Thames,  stopping in the estuary at Leigh on Sea before their onward journey to Southampton, Bristol and Plymouth etc. before making the journey to the new world.

We were originally contacted by a member of the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society asking for information of her ancestors who came from our area of the Thames Estuary between Pitsea (where we are based in Wat Tyler Country Park) and Shoeburyness where the North Sea takes over.

Without going into great detail here, we thought that a social history of the area which included some twenty-four parishes and parish church records in that area alone and adjacent to the estuary, would indeed give her the impetus needed for her research, which it did and to a point of her presenting a lecture to her own society and of course that then generated other requests, totally different from the first which generally related to the agricultural side of the area, and for example, the second had much more of a research line of the known aristocracy and land owners of the county, and as such a more traceable past back on some lines to William the Conqueror.

In return, from that knowledge passed on, we learned from them many features of their research methods which included there “Brick Wall” issues particularly of trying to match DNA results, with our initial ideas of firstly tracing the Social History with its demographic movement. This approach was widely accepted and acknowledged, to the point of transmitting our contact results with their adjacent county of Ventura and its own Genealogical Society and of course that expansion has resulted in our receiving requests from other individuals from across America. It was worth us noting that the two societies have a different approach how they work and respond to others and how our input, has helped in widening that involvement, for example we are listed with them as the advisor/coach for English and particularly Essex matters..

Our own methods of working, as volunteers and subject to time restraints, include the production of topic “booklets” related to either a individual or a borough or county location, and copies forwarded to our Californian friends has led onto the very regular Zoom meetings and us being asked to give lectures on some of the subject matter which acknowledging the eight hours Pacific Time difference, is a challenge but albeit we try to be present at their weekly sessions and of course we seem to have become the ‘missing link’ between their ‘Brick-Wall’ their DNA research and our provision of the social history which helps expand that knowledge.