Members
Boat Families
News update
Next meeting...
Wednesday 28th May 2025 AGM & Raffle
"Celebrating 45 Years of ODFHS"
Family History and the Landmarks of West Lancashire
Find out more about some of West Lancashire's most iconic and lesser known landmarks
No need to book, just come along,
Doors open 7pm, talk starts 7.30pm
All welcome, non-members £2.00 entrance
Next Ormskirk Library Family History Helpdesk
Monday 2nd June 2025
10.30 a.m.- 11.30 a.m.
Out and About with ODFHS this Spring and Summer
9th - 17th May Ormskirk Library, a display celebrating 45 years of ODFHS
Saturday 10th-Sunday 11th May, Ormskirk Medieval Festival Coronation Park
ODFHS 45th Anniversary Competition
2025 is the 45th anniversary of ODFHS and, in celebration, we’ve decided to mark this with a competition, open to both members and non-members. The subject of the competition is “Who is your most interesting West Lancashire ancestor?” or “What is your most interesting family discovery related to West Lancashire?”. Choose one of these and tell us about it in 300-750 words. Add photos and illustrations as you want.
Entries by email or post - any reasonable format accepted. The winner will get a year’s free membership. Entries must be received by 31st May 2025 and the results will be announced 1st August 2025.
The best entries will be published in the ODFHS Magazine “The Ormskirk and District Family Historian” (subject to space). Full competition rules can be found by following this link (click here).
Sharing People's History of West Lancashire project
Family History and the Lost Buildings of West Lancashire
Family History and the Landmarks of West Lancashire
Our books are still available as a digital downloads, please follow this link
Family History and the Landmarks of West Lancashire
A Slice of Gingerbread
A Slice of Gingerbread - the Ormskirk Gingerbread Sellers is available to purchase:
See "Events" and "Meetings" pages for details of upcoming events.
Update: April 2018
Work on transcribing Land Tax records for Ormskirk, covering the period 1799 - 1804 is now complete and is available on CD, price £5.00. These are the first records in a series of Land Tax Records held at Lancashire Archives in Preston. Lots names of Ormskirk residents at that time are listed. Please go to our CD Sales page for further details.
We have now completed our work on transcribing the Burscough Town Book, covering the period 1770 to 1850 and this is now available on a CD. It contains names of churchwardens, constables, overseers of the poor and more. It is in a searchable format and should be of interest to anyone with ancestors in the Burscough area. The information it contains is not available anywhere else, as far as we are aware. The CD also contains a list of names of people living in Burscough who were given free Beef in December each year, during the period 1801 to 1825. Our thanks go to Lancashire Archives for allowing us to photograph these records. Ref. DP/437/1 and PR1270. The CD is priced at £7.00 and details for ordering can be found on our CD sales page.
The boatfamilies website continues to grow and now contains over 36,000 names in 4 main family trees. It is hoped that eventually we will be able to merge them all into 1 large tree. We are indebted to our members and visitors to the site for sending us their family information, which enables us to keep adding more names. All information is checked by Keith Jenkins, who is the Administrator of the site, before it is added. We have now been able to link into boatmen not only in Lancashire, but in Yorkshire, Cheshire and beyond. The names on the site are searchable and so it is easy to see if your ancestor is mentioned. New names are being added all the time, so keep checking back on the site.
