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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: 2mi3museum on Wednesday 20 November 19 08:48 GMT (UK)
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Have you ever checked the Chronology and analyzed the effects of historical events on your family?
Some stories in family has been told like a fairy tale, but noone knows the reasons behind.
Here in this article, i tried to analyze the history and my family. Compared the told stories with chronology... The natural disasters, politcal decisions, wars that effected their lives...From 1880s to 1950s...
https://www.2mi3museum.com/ourfamilyinhistory (https://www.2mi3museum.com/ourfamilyinhistory)
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I use an Excel spreadsheet for each of my family groups. The master sheet has all the world, national and local events pre-entered. It is usually easy to see, at a glance, why people were doing what they were doing.
Two examples -
By having a time-line, I worked out that it was not the 60+ year old widowed grandmother who was having the illegitimate children, but rather the 16+ year old feeble-minded daughter.
For the longest time, I could not work out why about 100 people left Hull, never to return, all in the space of about 1 month. When I added in the Hull dock bombings all became clear - No homes and no jobs.
Brexit has already caused job losses locally. I expect genealogist in the future will point to this time as a pivotal time in our history.
Regards
Chas
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A famine in Mayo, Ireland in 1879 (the "Forgotten Famine") was pivotal for my paternal line. Earlier famines and economic distress in Ireland for one of my maternal lines. A long-term effect of the famines was to decrease marriage prospects for those who remained.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain, particularly "King Cotton" in Lancashire. Canals.
Founding of one of the world's oldest building societies in Longridge, Lancashire to build houses and workshops for handloom weavers & related trades such as nailers (bringing my nailer 5xGGF from south of the county), and expansion of the stone industry in the village attracting my stonemason 5xGGF from the north.
Railways, specifically rail link between Longridge and the town of Preston to transport stone. The growth of Preston, drawing in people from surrounding areas.
Going back a few hundred years earlier, the Reformation. Some of my English ancestors and the Irish ones stuck to the old religion. English ones declined to take Protestation oaths. Their choice of spouse was mainly limited to their co-religionists. By 1800 the head of the Anglican branch of one family was worth 3 times the Catholic one.
A new stagecoach route in late 18thC, coincided with growth of popularity in sea-bathing, changed a quiet inn, located in a small coastal town, to a busy & profitable coaching-inn for my ancestors who had been landlords for generations . Gradual relaxation of laws against Catholics, allowing those innkeepers and their relatives to become equal citizens, particularly regarding tax, property, inheritance and education. Decision of the lord of the manor to redesign the town-centre and demolish the inn, whereby my innkeeper family departed for the smoke of Preston and the metropolis of Manchester to run other inns and businesses. The younger son, (my 3xGGF) married in Manchester.
Radicalism in politics and trades unions in Preston during first half of 19thC. Strikes and trials. Chartism; demonstrations; shooting of demonstrators (outside the house of sister of a 3xGGF; another 3xGGF may have been taking part in the demonstration). Great Preston Strike & Lockout 1853-4 and ensuing trials. Peoples' Parliament in Manchester at the same time. My Preston-based, Scottish-born ancestor was involved in many of those events.
Lancashire Cotton Famine, a consequence of American Civil War.
I already knew about historical events. I'm pleased that some of my ancestors were participants, especially in the struggle for democratic reform and fair wages.
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It's really perfect to hear that there are people like me who interests in history and compare the effects on their family :) I'm not alone:)
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I regularly check the exact dates of historical events to check what, if any impact they may have had on the people I am researching.
So far in my tree I have: poor law reform campaigners, Covenanters (standard bearer at Battle of Drumclog), people displaced by both the potato famine and Highland Clearances, people whose movements around the country matched the new railways being opened.
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There are a few threads on this aspect of family history here:
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=163836.0
More works have been written since though!
Gadget
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I too have been interested in the history of the time of my folk.
Kiltpin....re Hull.
Born in Hull before Ww2 we left when I was one?
The reason my mother ,at the start of the bombing , upped sticks and moved South was to be near her family while her husband was to be away at sea. The night after she left the house in Hull it had a direct hit but furniture etc had been loaded and was on its way. Lucky?
Common sense/ sixth sense on her part was the reason for the move.
Why did agricultural workers from Suffolk end up in industrial cities as mill workers,living in crowded tenaments?
Because of the advent of machinery on farms which had once employed several men and horses and now needed fewer workers and starving families took up the offer of free train fares to employment rather than face the workhouse.
How did my farming Irish folk survive the famines and stay put ? Because they had a good landlord possibly?
History is entwined with genealogy.
Family history is not about collecting lists of names but who the people were, how they lived or even what they wore to a wedding in 1792?,
How did some , agricultural workers or gardeners have ten surviving children while others of wealth had two and lost both?
How does a certain special ability come down so many generations?
The movement of people across the country or across countries is mainly about survival or betterment whether it is necessitated by war,, famine , plague or fear.
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Gadget reply #6. Thanks for drawing attention to those resources.
I've been reading about a chaplain to Preston House of Correction in 19thC. who contended that parents were allowing their children to die so they could collect money from burial clubs because a dead infant was more cost-effective than a live one. This was refuted by a contemporary writer who pointed out that cholera and other epidemics, poverty, bad housing, inadequate water-supply and sanitation were the real causes of childhood deaths. My Preston ancestors would have had frequent recourse to burial clubs for their children in 1830s and 1840s.
Nigel Morgan, Preston historian, wrote a book "Deadly Dwellings"
Preston History website https://prestonhistory.com
A search in Preston newspapers for the names of streets where my ancestors lived was enlightening but not in a good way.
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What a very unchristian , judgemental remark for a chaplain to make.
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What a very unchristian , judgemental remark for a chaplain to make.
He seemed to have had a bee in his bonnet about burial clubs. I wonder if it was his experience of being prison chaplain which caused him to think the worst of working people.
Many of my ancestors lived in Preston from c.1820. 1 pair of my 3xgt-grandparents lost 2 of their 5 children in 1840s. Another pair lost 2 of 3 in the same decade. Siblings of the parents, including a doctor's wife, also had several children buried in Preston graveyards. Reports in local newspapers tracked epidemics around areas and named streets. The ginnel or wynd where a 3xGGF spent census night 1851 had an open sewer.
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Listening to adaptation of "Middlemarch" on Radio 4. Setting the scene "The year was 1829, the country was suffering economic decline and Parliament was in crisis". Coincidently it was around then that a business of eldest brother of a 3xGGF failed. He and partners were sued and had to sell assets. A few years later the 2nd eldest brother went bankrupt. By 1841 both men were employed as accounts clerks.
Another 3xGGF campaigned in 1840s for restoration of wage rates which had been cut during the economic decline in earlier decades.
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What a very unchristian , judgemental remark for a chaplain to make.
I think that in previous times, there was a focus on the principle that if you gave 'poor people' too much kindness and consideration, then it would encourage them in their perceived indigence. The reason that Workhouses were as awful as they were.
I am always reminded of the very honourable Thomas Coram, who was very upset by the number of abandoned babies to be seen in London (it's a horrifying thought) and wanted to set up a Foundlings Hospital.
He tried to get support, but many Christian people (amongst others) were reluctant, thinking that it would increase the number of abandoned children. It took years for him to be able to set it up.
Horrifying thought - but I suppose it is only the distinction between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, which can be heard even now...
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I have for one or two direct ancestors and it has enabled me to piece together some interesting finds although I did it at first to learn more about the time they lived in and what was happening nationally and internationally
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I have always found old newspapers interesting. They tell you something about what people thought about events at the time, rather than some historian's, sometimes biased, view.
I was prompted by contact from a third cousin to find out why his branch of the family emigrated to Nova Scotia.
Reading the local paper informed me that there was a slump following the end of the Boer War, a fact not mentioned in history books. Mills were on short time, and coal pits were on a 4-day week rather than the usual 5½. Then in June 1902 a serious pay cut was enforced. Family finances must have been dire. At the beginning of September an article appeared about a group of colliers from 15 miles away who were going to Cape Breton "where coal mines are being developed". My great great aunt's husband sailed at the end of the month, with his family following him in the spring of 1903.
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Scottish folk also went to Canada for fur trapping as their fares were paid and money good ...but fearsomely cold.
It seems that after wars there is hardship for the people.
It was the same after both WW1 and WW2 . Wars take a lot of money and all sides have to then recover economically by frugality.
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What a very unchristian , judgemental remark for a chaplain to make.
It was also a rare, but real, phenomenon albeit subject to a daily-mail-esque moral panic.
https://www.thesocialhistorian.com/fraud-murder-burial-club/ (https://www.thesocialhistorian.com/fraud-murder-burial-club/)
But to the topic at hand I always try and link the local and social history to my genealogy. For instance some of mine moved from Buckinghamshire to Lancashire in the window 1832 -1839 and when I looked at the local history it turned out that poor law commissioners sponsored poor ag labs to relocate by canal 1835-1837 - probably not a coincidence.
That said it pays to check your assumptions as another family relocated from the countryside to the towns and I assumed they were following the work but I later found a distant relation with the same surname (they were the only family in the area with the name) was involved in a fairly nasty attempted murder and then within 15 months everyone with the name had either moved to Bradford or towards Manchester.
But for me it's always a victory to link the family tree to specific historical events. For example the Loveclough printworks burnt down and both a granddad's maternal aunt and a paternal aunt relocated their respective families 35 miles to the same village.
I've also found more than a few emigrants whose departure turned out to coincide with goldrushes.