As "genealogists" we seek to follow the family history back as far as it goes.
Cheers
Jack Gee
I'd be interested to hear the opinion of others on this, Jack. I set out to find out about my grandfather who died 15 years before I was born. I found out that he was actually my great grandfather, due to a family conspiracy, and I have no great wish to go back much beyond 1850. I feel I can relate to people over the last 150 odd years, and imagine their lives, but I actually think it gets a bit meaningless if you go back much further. Am I alone in this view?
Martin
An interesting question Martin but can we really imagine the lives of our ancestors other than our parents or perhaps grandparent’s generation.
Life has changed so much in the years I have lived that my children do not really have any idea what my life was like as a child, it was easier for me to imagine my parents’ lives as children or even my grandparents’ lives as children than for my children to put themselves in my place.
Why do I think that? Because of technology, I was raised in a village or rural community, my life was similar to my mother’s life and her parents’ lives before her, but my children apart from being brought up in a city grew up at a time when technology thrived.
For example we had a single coal fire in the house I grew up in which was in the living room, it was lit in the morning and allowed to die overnight, my children had a centrally heated house where heat was available 24 hours a day.
We had no telephone or TV my children had TV & a house phone from birth and individual mobile phones as soon as they started working.
Growing up in a rural setting I could relate to my ancestors lives far more easily than my children could relate to them or even my early life.
Thinking about it apart from technology the difference is not so much the time difference (years) as the difference in location there was not a vast difference between my early life and my great grandparents’ lives, there was however a huge difference between my children’s early lives and my early life.
On the other hand my wife was brought up in a city and again discounting technology there is a far smaller difference between her early life and our children’s early life.
There is a 13 year age gap between my wife and myself but in that time period and regional differences (she is from East London, Essex, where as I am from Scotland) her parents had a TV and a house phone etc.
Another difference is I grew up at a time when horses were very much present on the scene, they were still being used on local farms but much of the farm machinery was being brought to the village smithy to have tow bars attached so they could be pulled by tractor.
However where my wife lived there were few horses about except for rag & bone men a few riding horses for leisure.
Cheers
Guy