RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: coombs on Sunday 04 March 18 16:21 GMT (UK)
-
May be answering my own question here but is it because they are dead that they are so fascinating?
Especially researching your ancestors, the fact you get so invested in someone who died 200 years ago or more, seems quite important.
-
In these days when we know so much about living people and so little, by comparison, about our ancestors, except for tantalising snippets it is natural now the means are available to try to find out more.
To "flesh out the bones" so to speak.
We are of them, maybe physical likeness,character similarities etc.
If only we could speak to them.
The questions we wish we could ask---.
There are so many reasons.In my case a longing for first hand accounts of some interesting events,,some tragic, others really inspiring.
Now no-one is still alive who had known these people there is a real sense of loss.
Whatever the reason I feel we are keeping their memory alive by researching their lives.
And how fortunate I feel when I find out about them , what hardships and mostly met with astonishing fortitude .
Good luck in your research. Viktoria.
-
In these days when we know so much about living people and so little, by comparison, about our ancestors, except for tantalising snippets it is natural now the means are available to try to find out more.
To "flesh out the bones" so to speak.
We are of them, maybe physical likeness,character similarities etc.
If only we could speak to them.
The questions we wish we could ask---.
There are so many reasons.In my case a longing for first hand accounts of some interesting events,,some tragic, others really inspiring.
Now no-one is still alive who had known these people there is a real sense of loss.
Whatever the reason I feel we are keeping their memory alive by researching their lives.
And how fortunate I feel when I find out about them , what hardships and mostly met with astonishing fortitude .
Good luck in your research. Viktoria.
Very true. We know much about the living. People who died centuries ago are more fascinating. They cannot speak any more so we have to try and find out as much as possible about them.
-
Getting on for three years ago I started to try and find out more about my grandfather, who died 15 years before I was born. Not only did I find that he was actually my great grandfather, but I got so sucked in to this whole game that I now know more about my ancestors than many of them probably knew about themselves. I also discovered that my sweet little old aunt was actually my grandmother and she was a bit of a "ladette" in the 1930s.
I've subsequently got increasingly interested in anything Victorian.
Martin
-
In my case it`s the unanswered questions that arise from research, i.e why did my 2x gt grandmother Margaret not keep my gt grandmother Alice with her. There are trees online with Margaret`s 3 other daughters, but there was also a son who died at 5 days old and another son who I have found on the 1891 Census. All these 6 children were illegitimate but Alice was the only one to live with her father.
Also, on my Scottish side why my gtgrandfather left his wife and son, changing his surname to thta of his mother.
I`ll never know but I do ponder on it almost to the point of obsession !!!
-
Wills can be good but I know of several ancestors who seemed to have property, (such as they are listed in a directory as a freeholder and weaver) or they were a tradesman and had children but never left a will. It was probably a private agreement that was taken or another reason. More people did not leave a will than those who did.
-
What I have a hard time grasping is how you don't wanna be friends with people who are alive. You wanna worship those that have passed on, and that's perfectly fine and great, but why do you look down on someone that is alive? Seems a bit disrespectful to the living. there has to be a balance.
-
Intevel, a lot of people on RootsChat have a hard time grasping why you're so determined to pick fights over things that haven't even been said.
Remember, first impressions are important and this is only your first day here.
Carol
-
Intevel I am just sending you a PM
Regards
Sarah
Admin
-
What I have a hard time grasping is how you don't wanna be friends with people who are alive. You wanna worship those that have passed on, and that's perfectly fine and great, but why do you look down on someone that is alive? Seems a bit disrespectful to the living. there has to be a balance.
I can't see anywhere on this thread where someone has said that. The whole idea of Rootschat is to find out more about our ancestors. There are lots of other media where people can contact living relatives. I think if you took time to read through some of the other threads you will find that many people on here have made contact with living relatives and have become good friends with them.
-
Why are the dead so interesting...because we are nosey...and we like to find skeletons and we love a bit of scandal...it proves they were human and makes them more real ;D
Carol
-
Why are the dead so interesting...because we are nosey...and we like to find skeletons and we love a bit of scandal...it proves they were human and makes them more real ;D
Carol
at least you're to the point.
-
Why are the dead so interesting...because we are nosey...and we like to find skeletons and we love a bit of scandal...it proves they were human and makes them more real ;D
Carol
Oh yes very nosey. It doesn't matter if they died a few years ago or a few thousand years ago, they can still be interesting. I have recently discovered a direct ancestor called Stephen Borde whose family had a manor in Cuckfield, Sussex called Borde Hill. His grandfather Stephen Borde born c1490 was the brother of writer and physician Andrew Borde I think. Stephen was born c1565 and died in 1630. He was actually knighted in 1603 in Whitehall.
-
What I have a hard time grasping is how you don't wanna be friends with people who are alive. You wanna worship those that have passed on, and that's perfectly fine and great, but why do you look down on someone that is alive? Seems a bit disrespectful to the living. there has to be a balance.
You're casting your aspersions rather widely!
Are you a mind reader? Can you see into other people's every day lives?
I doubt it, but if you can and do, then you would know that we do not keep in touch with our kith and kin on public websites like this. For those who live near us, we visit. For those who live further away, we keep in touch by phone or Skype, or private email.
If you are one of the many who have made an approach to the owner of an online tree, who you suspect is a cousin, and not received a response - then join the club and lighten up and try not to accuse all and sundry of doing the same.
-
Why are the dead so interesting I thought they were dead when I first set out to discover who in my family had died in WWI. During that first cautious step it dawned on me that I'd discoveed which line had passed down the arthritis to some of my cousins and I. Another revelation during that initial venture was discovering my daughter's love of making and designing pottery was in her genes. I've pinpointed the person who passed the music gene to one of my sons and a couple of 2nd cousins across the Pond. Back in the early 1970s my OH came home and and announced he was never going to work for anyone ever again (gulp, gulp, blooty gulp). I didn't know it at the time but I shouldn't have worried - his lines are full of people who trod the same path and made a success of it.
My ancestors aren't dead, they're living in people that I know and love.
-
What a lovely answer Rena
-
Why are the dead so interesting...because we are nosey...and we like to find skeletons and we love a bit of scandal...it proves they were human and makes them more real ;D
Carol
Researching one branch of my family was like watching a year's worth of Eastenders on fast-forward ;D
To answer your original question coombs, I have no idea why the dead are so interesting.... but to me, there are so many interesting aspects to genealogy - following people's movements around the country, looking at changing trends of names and jobs, reading newspaper obituaries which adds more detail to people's lives.
-
Researching them can be very very useful.
My daughter has pernicious anaemia. she was going to have some tests done which were probably unpleasant,because the specialist said "Oh,that`s good you at least don`t have to go through that".
I had been called in to the consulting room because my daughter was not aware of our family`s health history.
When I said that a maternal aunt,died aged 16 (1910),and my paternal GGrandmother died (1905),a nd my mother in law still alive ,had it, the specialist looked no further .
That was useful but it is more to have some connection with the people who came before us and who must have shaped our health and character traits,even just by us inheriting things from them.
I have made more contacts with cousins ,helped them as they have helped me,swapped photographs etc than ever before.
It has been most rewarding and the help and kindness from RootsChatters has been a revelation.
Viktoria
-
.........................................My ancestors aren't dead, they're living in people that I know and love.
Beautiful :)
Frank.
-
Ditto... ;D
Carol
-
Researching them can be very very useful.
My daughter has pernicious anaemia.
Viktoria
Victoria, my OH's grandmother suffered from that when the treatment was that she had to eat one and a half pounds of RAW liver each day :o
-
Yes, the same with my maternal aunt-whom I never knew of course,nor my G Grandma.
My Mum said Blanche used to cry because of the raw liver.The sad thing is it would do no good because sufferers can not assimilate the Vitamins in the B complex , via the digestion.
Blanche died lying on the settee,my Mum was present,she was next in age to Blanche .She would be 14.
It can sometimes be caused by overuse of indigestion remedies which kill off something called the Intrinsic Factor,so inhibiting the absorption of Vitamin B.
The test is called The Schilling test,must be either unpleasant or a real nuisance.
The heart must be tested too.
What a lot of enjoyment we get from our research,the more we find out the more we want to know.
I am coming back to haunt my family if they don`t research my history .
They know a lot of course but there are many more things to find out. ::)
Viktoria.
-
Yes, the same with my maternal aunt-whom I never knew of course,nor my G Grandma.
My Mum said Blanche used to cry because of the raw liver.The sad thing is it would do no good because sufferers can not assimilate the Vitamins in the B complex , via the digestion.
Blanche died lying on the settee,my Mum was present,she was next in age to Blanche .She would be 14.
It can sometimes be caused by overuse of indigestion remedies which kill off something called the Intrinsic Factor,so inhibiting the absorption of Vitamin B.
The test is called The Schilling test,must be either unpleasant or a real nuisance.
The heart must be tested too.
What a lot of enjoyment we get from our research,the more we find out the more we want to know.
I am coming back to haunt my family if they don`t research my history .
They know a lot of course but there are many more things to find out. ::)
Viktoria.
That's so sad Victoria. She had the rough end of the stick didn't she. My OHs grandmother is the one who told me about the liver and she lived to be 96. She told me because I mentioned my mother was being treated (with medication) for pernicious anaemia when she was in her 40s - thank goodness she came through that okay.
lol - fingers crossed that you don't need to come back to haunt anyone :D
-
These days treated by injection every twelve weeks. :)
-
May be answering my own question here but is it because they are dead that they are so fascinating?
Especially researching your ancestors, the fact you get so invested in someone who died 200 years ago or more, seems quite important.
This is something I've pondered ever since the genealogy bug first bit me about 17 years ago. I love the research and I'm good at it but it's more than that. Why is it so important to me? I don't fully understand it myself.
It has something to do with a yearning to belong. It's like missing the small hometown that we left when I was young and the way I feel when I go back and walk the same streets I walked as a girl. This is me. This is where I am from. This is where I was formed.
As Rena so eloquently expressed it, our ancestors are also a part of us, at a molecular level that we can't see but we recognize through our lived experience. In learning about them, we learn about ourselves: where we came from, where we belong.
When I started, I wanted to learn about the grandmother I had never known. Who was she? Why had she left my grandfather and her two young children and never returned? Why didn't we belong to her, and her to us, as it should have been?
Regards,
Josephine
-
I often find that the occupations of our ancestors carry on through the generations which fascinates me when I compare the working practice, tools of the trade and work schedule, then and now.
Fishermen/Seamen, Shoemakers/Cobblers, Seamstresses/Dressmakers, Carters/Lorry Drivers, Blacksmiths and Soldiers to name but a few ;D ;D
It's a history lesson that I never learned in any classroom.
I won't mention the felons ;D ;D
Carol
-
That's an interesting point, Carol. I'm guessing that tradition has been eroded to a great extent, with automation, the loss of family farms, the transfer of most manufacturing jobs to other countries, etc.
This isn't the same thing, but I've long been fascinated by old wooden boxes and wooden shoe lasts, and I was tickled to learn that one of my g-grandfathers worked in a wooden box factory and several of my ancestors were shoemakers. It's probably just a coincidence but I think it's kind of neat.
Regards,
Josephine
P.S. Some of my ancestors got in trouble with the law, too. :o
-
And it is surprising how we underestimate how people moved around. Of course not as much as today but often our ancestors did move around, they went where the work was. If you find for instance a Lancashire surname in 1700s Suffolk then it may mean they moved there. Maybe a Lancs soldier was in the army, left and settled in Suffolk, or was a fisherman on the Suffolk coast and settled there. Or they were the son or grandson/daughter of a vicar who was transferred to Suffolk.
-
I dip into ancestry a couple of times a year. It's not an ongoing hobby. Three things make it interesting for me:
- finding out where my ancestors (geographically) came from (Wales, Devon, Ireland)
- discovering more about local (and national) history through the personal 'stories' of my ancestors
- getting a sense of how it would be like to live 200 years ago
-
And it is surprising how we underestimate how people moved around. Of course not as much as today but often our ancestors did move around, they went where the work was. If you find for instance a Lancashire surname in 1700s Suffolk then it may mean they moved there. Maybe a Lancs soldier was in the army, left and settled in Suffolk, or was a fisherman on the Suffolk coast and settled there. Or they were the son or grandson/daughter of a vicar who was transferred to Suffolk.
Definitely some names give a clue - my 18th century family soldier brought a bride with a southern given name back up north with him. I'd like to extend on your thoughts coombs but this time on movement of single girls. It's on such puzzling occasions that I mentally thank my primary school teacher for persisting in teaching us youngsters how to work out and solve those awful maths "Problems". It's understandable that men moved around but how and why would a young working girl move away from home. I use the surroundings such as those described on Genuki for clues. I have one such girl married in London away from her family in Yorkshire in the late 1700s but dead before the first census. The answer was that she worked in the "big house" for the local estate owner and travelled down to London with the rest of the household whenever the master & mistress moved between their houses.On one occasion she met & married a 'servant' coachman. I've found other young girls moved away from their home town across county borders and discovered that there was usually a familial connection that caused their movement, such as an extended family member with a different surname had recommended a teaching job, or a domestic servant position.
-
It (FH) has also been described as "The democratisation of history" All very well learning about kings and queens etc , and battles.. but who were the poor ......s that did all the real work?
I remember Jeremy Paxman on an early WDYTYA, was absolutely seething at the way his ancestor had been referred to as "your pauper" and treated accordingly. If you do not learn from history, you are condemned to repeat it!
-
It (FH) has also been described as "The democratisation of history" All very well learning about kings and queens etc , and battles.. but who were the poor ......s that did all the real work?
I remember Jeremy Paxman on an early WDYTYA, was absolutely seething at the way his ancestor had been referred to as "your pauper" and treated accordingly. If you do not learn from history, you are condemned to repeat it!
I'm passionate about the little man too, although I think it began when I read the announcement of my father's death in the magazine his company published. Usually a death was reported with a potted history of the ex worker's time at the company but all my father got was the notice of his death, no mention of his occupation, or patents, etc. He had a massive turnout of his co workers at his funeral for which I shall be eternally grateful.
Thus, all my ancestors and some of their siblings have notes about their lives. Great aunts supplied me with snippets about their grandparents and other kin, such as education, how low the ceilings were, flagged floors, musical instruments played, parties held, how 2d a week pocket money was spent, catching wild birds to supplement their diet, etc., but those born earlier than the 1850s I've had to research information about their homes and livelihoods including their employers or partners in some cases.
I've had some hard lessons too - and that's not to trust online family tree facilities. I had my father's main paternal line goig back to the 1700s on gencircles, another lady was doing a one name study of the name and she had hers on there too but she didn't have the personal notes that mine had. One day gencircles disappeared and the new owners informed me they'd only bought the name, thus my tree had vanished.
-
Come on, lets face it, the ancestors are just "dying" to tell us about our history. ::) ::) ::)
Malky
-
Come on, lets face it, the ancestors are just "dying" to tell us about our history. ::) ::) ::)
Malky
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Yeah, the deadwood wouldn't they
-
"Yeah, the deadwood wouldn't they"
Yes, stage by stage ::) ::) ::)
Malky
-
Whip that crack away.
-
Whip that crack away.
Suggest you give some mortar to that mason who'll fix that crack for you ;D
-
It was a mortar which caused the crack in the first place ::) ::) ::)
Malky
-
And it is surprising how we underestimate how people moved around. Of course not as much as today but often our ancestors did move around, they went where the work was. If you find for instance a Lancashire surname in 1700s Suffolk then it may mean they moved there. Maybe a Lancs soldier was in the army, left and settled in Suffolk, or was a fisherman on the Suffolk coast and settled there. Or they were the son or grandson/daughter of a vicar who was transferred to Suffolk.
Definitely some names give a clue - my 18th century family soldier brought a bride with a southern given name back up north with him. I'd like to extend on your thoughts coombs but this time on movement of single girls. It's on such puzzling occasions that I mentally thank my primary school teacher for persisting in teaching us youngsters how to work out and solve those awful maths "Problems". It's understandable that men moved around but how and why would a young working girl move away from home. I use the surroundings such as those described on Genuki for clues. I have one such girl married in London away from her family in Yorkshire in the late 1700s but dead before the first census. The answer was that she worked in the "big house" for the local estate owner and travelled down to London with the rest of the household whenever the master & mistress moved between their houses.On one occasion she met & married a 'servant' coachman. I've found other young girls moved away from their home town across county borders and discovered that there was usually a familial connection that caused their movement, such as an extended family member with a different surname had recommended a teaching job, or a domestic servant position.
In 1765 my ancestor William Inkpen married in Oxford city. He was a servant of St Peter In The East. Prior to 1765 there has been no known occurrence of the surname Inkpen in Oxfordshire and most were from Dorset or Sussex/Kent. He died in 1769, no age given in his burial but he was said to be "over 21" when he married in 1765. Wed by licence. Witnesses were from the wife's side. I have a feeling William was not from Oxfordshire.
In 1759 my husbandman ancestor William Balaam wed Sarah Muncaster in Weeley, Essex. Muncaster is certainly not an Essex name. it is found up North mainly. Again she could have been a servant whose boss had property in Essex and she settled there and left service once she wed.
-
I've said this before - apologies! :-* :-*
I was told many years ago, that gentry, landowners, etc. deliberately engaged staff from outside the local area - in that way, the staff could not "go home to Mum" if things got a bit tough! :-X
-
My ancestors came together to make me who I am today. I partly got started researching my tree to try and find out If I belonged anywhere. I grew up being told I was an interlouper and not welcome. I became addicted. It's partly the thrill of the hunt for information, it's fascinating discovering how historical events influenced my ancestors lives and how (sometimes) they were involved in historical events.
I have made friends through researching my family history do it is not to the exclusion of the living.
-
my grans sister answered a post to become a bride in the Yukon where they were mining for gold.
she married the man but was not happy, a shortage of women placed her in geat jeopardy both her husband and his brother were fighting over her, eventually she had had enough, so she contacted the red cross to take her back home, by this time she was pregnant again, one in her arms not yet a year old and the other was 2-3 yrs old.
she managed to get everyone packed up and sneaked away one early morning to meet the red cross person who took her and her children to the boat to bring them home,
what she did not know was that she had hidden, a gold nugget in her babies shawl, but so had her eldest daughter hidden a nugget in amongst her own clothes and in the babies clothes.
when they returned she was able to buy a house, just close to the hill that goes up to the house with the large gardeb thats open to the public whose name i cant remember, she lived there for years, my mums cousins names were Genevieve, Virginia and David.she was a manageress for poole pottery in the shop they had in Poole.
-
virginia became an architect Genevieve became a fun loving girl who popped out of a cake in an inaugural party of a mayor of poole's party. dont know about david
-
I think they are interesting because so many of them did things which we never could.
Some made their living by sheer physical work. Some had trades which have died out. Some moved to completely different countries. Others never left their small village. Some even did naughty things.
All things "different" are more interesting. If you work in a supermarket you are not likely to be interested in how other supermarket workers live their lives - you already know. Far more interesting to find out about someone who joined the army and fought in a battle, or went to India and became a tea planter.
-
Well as I may have a lead on James Smith I wonder if there is some truth in the family story of Irish ancestors, maybe via London then to Oxford. Family stories can be passed down through several generations.