Oxford 2001

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Introduction

The Discovery Weekend, held on the 28, 29 & 30th September 2001, brought together researchers from all over the UK and one from New Zealand.  About 60 researchers in all attended the conference.

Pictures

A couple of pictures of the conference itself.  My grateful thanks to John and Sue Ferdinando for these images. Click on the pictures to make them larger in a separate window.  

   

Ferdinand(o) Discovery Weekend Conference 1

Ferdinand(o) Discovery Weekend Conference 2

A View of the Conference

A View of the Conference

   

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Report

The Family Tree was presented by Dr. Peter Ferdinando which contains close to 2200 names.   As a biased reporter, I felt that it was a great success and added much to the work that had already been undertaken.  It was so good to meet those who we may only have known as correspondents or have known by seeing their names on the trees we had.  Certainly, it pushed the family tree I had produced (with assistance) from about 1100 to just under the 2000 connected members!  Many artefacts and photographs were brought along too so that this site has a lot more pictures in the gallery and elsewhere to add that extra dimension to the people on the tree.

It was a great success from my point of view as the detail and extra information that came out of that weekend allowed me to go on to add so much more to this site, almost doubling its size in this latest upgrade.  

The Weekend started with a welcome get together in the Bar on Friday evening to meet, many of us for the first time!  Oxford had been chosen as the most central point for us all to meet however, one of our researchers had come all the way from New Zealand!  Too soon, it was time to retire for the evening.  Next day saw almost sixty of us assemble in the Conference room where we treated to an explanation about the family tree which had been printed off and filled both long walls of the conference room.  Dr. Peter Ferdinando had spent many of his lunch times and indeed holidays researching and transcribing the parish and other records for Ferdinand and Ferdinando names.  The tree when printed was about 78 A3 pages in size and linked through to (almost) everyone attending.  Dr. Peter also gave us a talk on the origins of the surname and some of this information is contained on the page The Portuguese Connection.  Other talks included the history and future of this web site by yours truly and a thoroughly enjoyable talk by Chris Knight from New Zealand on how he had managed to trace his history on his trips back to the UK.  We rounded off with a look at what work had been done and what work still needed to be done to add further detail to the records we have.

That evening about 50 of us sat down together for a meal and a general chat.  On Sunday we said our farewells and left with the possibility of doing something similar in 2003.  Watch this space.

Dr. Peter, Mavis and I would like to thank everyone who attended the weekend, it was a great success and has moved this researchers work on tremendously.

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Copies of Tree or Video

So you've got the T-Shirt, Pen and Pad but have you got your copy of the tree?  Or what about the Video we made of the event? If you would like a copy of either, please contact the webmaster for details.  There will be a nominal charge to cover costs for the tree and the video.  Details on application to the Webmaster.

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