History of the Society
paged updated 14 January 2012

The Featherstone Society was formed in late 1996 by five English researchers of the surname.

Beryl Featherstone
Jillian Gibson-Stephenson
Susan Nesfield
Iris Woodall
 W. Paul Featherstone e mail at

We published an introductory newsletter, and sent it to all the other researchers we knew of, some 20 other researchers.  Paul had registered most of the surname variants with The Guild of One Named Studies, registration number 2627.

We have published once a quarter over the past 16 years a "Featherstone Family News" which has contained articles by the founder members and members contributions of their research or stories about their family trees and individuals.  We also have published source information.

In 1998 we launched this web site, and soon had a surge in membership mainly from the USA, but also from other former colonies of  Great Britain.

We appointed volunteers to act as country representatives in late 1998 to make the process easier for those not in the U.K. They are currently:

Lynn Burdick for the USA
Bill E Featherstone for Canada
Joan Currie for Australia & New Zealand

Because of the amount of SPAM we are receiving we have removed all but one of the members addresses for contact.

We have had 370 members to date, some have passed on to better things, others have renewed and we have a current membership list of some 160 members worldwide.

We  planned a grand reunion for the year 2002 in the U.K.

If you want to join with us click here. (Opens new navigation bar on right)