Alec Tritton has been a family historian for over 35 years, specialising in burial grounds, graveyards, grave robbery, and obscure nonconformist sects. He is currently a Vice President of the Guild of One-Name Studies and Chairman of the Halsted Trust. Formerly he was Chairman of the Federation of Family History Societies, Chairman of the Guild of One-Name studies and Vice-Chairman of the Society of Genealogists (London).
Alec has presented regularly at Who Do You Think You Are? Live, at the Society of Genealogists centenary conference, and internationally in the U.S. As well as lecturing and writing articles for genealogical magazines, his passion is leading walking tours around London burial grounds. Most recently he was a tutor for the 2018 ISBGFH British Institute, a week course in Salt Lake City and a guest lecturer at Brigham Young University. Previously he has lectured on cruise ships for Swan Hellenic and in 2015 at the ISBHG and at RootsTech London in 2019. Future engagements include the ISBGFH conference in 2021 in Salt Lake City.
In his roll as Chairman of the Halstead Trust he was conference chair to the last three International Family History Conferences held in the UK. These being “Open the Door: Here are the People” in 2009, Exodus: Movement of the People in 2013 and the highly successful “Secret Lives: Hidden Voices of Our Ancestors” in 2018. He is also conference chair for the forthcoming conference “Elizabethan Ancestors: Genealogy from Elizabeth Tudor to Elizabeth Windsor” in 2021.
He teaches both the Nonconformity and the Employment Records Courses for Pharos Tutors and has taught the Apprenticeship Course in the absence of the normal tutor. He also teaches subjects on both the Family Skills courses at the Society of Genealogists.
In his spare time he keeps rare-breed horses and ponies (Irish Draught & Dales), two cats, keeps chickens and enjoys listening to smooth jazz and drinking red wine (especially Malbec).
Topics
- Anglican Parish Registers
- Death and Resurrection: “The Body Snatchers”
- Outside the church – nonconformist records
- The London Burial Grounds: London Burial Grounds and Gruesome Burial Practices
- The Parish Chest
- Probate records before and after 1858
- Apprenticeships before 1850 in the city, borough and parish
- Sea, sand and sail. Employment of the sea
- Before the workhouse: The old poor laws
- County records – JPs petty and quarter sessions
- An introduction to manorial documents
- Burial Records for the Family Historian
- Getting started with WordPress for genealogy
- Digital Storytelling through multimedia
- Going Paperless – the ultimate challenge
- Social Networking for family historians