Please contact Jerry by e-mail on jerrywr@gmail.com

Listeners in Scotland will be able to listen to it at Mid-day this coming Sunday, February 20th and others on a podcast thereafter.

WARNING – Email Scam 27 January 2011

It has come to our attention that an email scam is in progress whereby someone masquerading as a representative of IHGS is asking for personal details. They are claiming that a large inheritance could be yours if you supply personal details that could be used for identity fraud. THIS DOES NOT COME FROM US. DO NOT SEND YOUR DETAILS. An example of the fraudulent email is below.

My name is David Lord and I am a representative of The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies (IHGS). Our department deals with issues of genealogy and especially genealogical (family) trees. We discovered several evidences to consider You as a heir of great family (clan) and our client supposes that You might be her relative. In order to identify You as a heir and assure our suggestions and connect You with Your possible relative, we need to check some information. Would You be so kind to tell us Your parents names and Your birthday date as it’s obligatory for our research and it is also at Your interest. We are looking forward for Your quick response and commitment! Respectfully Yours, David Lord.

via News – IHGS.

FIBIS will be receiving a mention in the show. The BBC Radio Scotland website gives the following summary of the episode:

Listener David Price got in touch regarding his great-grandfather George.

He says, “There was just this great hole in information about [him]. He just seemed to have disappeared off the radar in 1841. Until recently the trail went cold at this point. George’s next entry in official records was his marriage in Calcutta. But how, when and why had he turned up there?”.

David wondered if he might have been around during the turbulent times of the Indian mutiny and contacted the “Families in British India Society” who provided David with a list of soldiers awarded the Indian Mutiny Medal. Four George Prices were included including one in the 42nd Foot, better known as The Black Watch. David visited the Regimental Archivist at Balhousie Castle in Perth who provided him with lots of information from their records. But still David had no proof that this was “his” George.

By coincidence at this same time David had re-established contact with his only first cousin on the Price side. She mentioned that her father had given her a pendant with an Indian connection many years previously. On checking the pendant she discovered that one side displayed Queen Victoria’s head, the other read “India 1857-1858″ and the engraving around the edge of the coin read: “G. Price – 42nd Foot – Royal Highlanders”.

Listen this week to hear more about George Price’s story and his recruitment into the Black Watch.

To read more about the episode visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xx98g

2.  Having won for the third time one of the prestigious Federation of Family History Societies “Best Website Awards” – First Place in the 2010 Small Societies Division, we are very proud of our Webmaster – Valmay Young – who is now in process of introducing many new exciting features to the website including a mobile optimized theme and a members social network – to be launched at the WDYTYA Exhibition in February.

3. FIBIS will probably be the first small family history society to have an online Social Network area for our Members – the FIBIS Social network will be an area where members can:

• connect with other members

• create their own photo albums

• join or create an interest group

• use member discussion forums

• send private messages

• can use the chat facility to converse with other members

• access the FIBIS Multmedia files for both Audio and Video

4.  FIBIS is setting up a new online book shop to be launched with the new website – this will probably have one of the largest selections of books on Colonial India available to be purchased in any one place, and our members are given a discount.

5.  One of the first small Family History Societies to offer Research Grants to its members – who are willing to undertake research on behalf of FIBIS into some aspect of British Indian history which will be of help or of general interest to others wishing to investigate their own family history. Fibis would aim to publish the results if they are of sufficient quality.

6.  To reflect our maturing status FIBIS has decided to update its image with a new crimson and gold style, more in tune with current marketing practice. It will feature notably at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live exhibition at Olympia on 25-27 February on our new exhibition stand and is designed to make a greater impact for British India on the family history community.

1. Large amounts of data, transcribed from their microfilms, are being transferred from their beta test site to their new FamilySearch site at www.familysearch.org

2. This is evidently taking time and tranches are being ‘migrated’ into this site on a continuing basis in the middle of the night Utah time. This may cause the site to be inaccessible during daytime hours in other parts of the world.

3. This continual updating means that it may be useful for researchers to visit the site on a regular basis.

4. This is a worldwide project and, evidently, no particular emphasis will be given to the records of British India.

5. In the longer term, the transcribed records as currently presented, sometimes containing less data than appears on the original, will be augnented by a digital image of the original record. No timescale is available for this.

6. The expression ‘FamilySearch’ will be used for all this activity and the Family History Centres will, in future, become known as ‘FamilySearch’ Centres.

I hope that you find this helpful.

Good Hunting!

Peter Bailey
FIBIS Chairman

• Featured image – The photo was taken in Rawalpindi at the regimental school of the 48th Regiment of Foot

• Featured article – Singapore

• Featured Project – LocationsProject

To access the India and Ceylon records from this site, scroll down the page to “Browse by location” and select “Asia and Middle East”.

The India Vital Records Index available on the FamilySearch is only a partial index with more records hopefully to be added at a later date. The table below shows the number of records by locality online as of April 2010.