182 The Twentieth General Meeting. 



Americans were coming over to England to trace their genealogy, 

 so perhaps in two hundred years time some of the Swindon people 

 might begin to trace their genealogy. 



In acknowledging the toast of the Honorary Secretaries and the 

 Committee of the Society, the Rev. A.. C. Smith observed that the 

 President that day had said in the course of his opening address, 

 that he wished there was a person in every parish who could give 

 them an account of the antiquities, and local history of the parish. 

 He was not perhaps aware that in the diocese to which he (Mr. 

 Smith) belonged, they had had some scheme of that kind going on 

 for fourteen or fifteen years. Both the late and the present Bishops 

 of Salisbury had taken great interest in the matter ; and had au- 

 thorized him to address to every clergyman in the diocese two large 

 folio papers, with a series of questions for the resident clergyman to 

 answer, respecting the civil and ecclesiastical history of his parish. 

 These documents were then in his (Mr. Smith's) custody, but would 

 eventually be preserved in the Museum at Devizes, and upwards of 

 seventy valuable parochial histories had thus been accumulated. 

 But he had no power to introduce this system into that part of Wilts 

 which was in the diocese of Gloucester. Some of his clerical friends 

 in that district would be rather astonished if he were to send them 

 two sheets of foolscap covered with questions to be answered. But 

 now he had the authority of their President, Mr. Goddard, he might, 

 perhaps, ask the clergy of the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol to 

 aid him in that matter. 



Mr. Cunnington said that the Society was in reality celebrating 

 its coming of age, as the idea was started just twenty-one years ago. 

 The new Museum at Devizes was completed at last, and the work 

 of arranging the objects would be immediately commenced. He 

 believed that when that work was finished their Museum would yield 

 in interest in some particular things to no Museum in the country. 

 He hoped that they might all meet next year at the opening of the 

 Museum. 



The Rev. F. Goddard said that when the idea of this Society was 

 first started some twenty years ago, he was breakfasting with Mr. 

 Neeld, of Grittleton, who, when he saw the announcement, said that 



