ag labs

[coombs]

During lambing times and spring harvests, a single ag lab may have met a single woman while working 40 or 50 miles from where he usually worked, and took her back to where he usually lived.

[Wulfsige]

It would seem then, from some of the above, that a comparison of the actual date of the decennial census with the time of the farming year might be required to enable a sensible guess.

[coombs]

By the 1840s trains were becoming more popular so some ag labs probably travelled on trains to help out at other farms a distance away. Not sure how expensive they were though back then.

[BumbleB]

Hiring fairs -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiring_and_mop_fairs

[BumbleB]

I was also told by a historian that indoor staff were recruited a good distance from the location where they would be working - so they couldn't just "up and leave".  The attached is the 1871 census entry for Oulton Hall staff in Little Budworth, Cheshire.  The only local person was the Usher who was born in Tarporley, just a few miles away.

[BumbleB]

And the 1901 for the same property -

[Rena]

During lambing times and spring harvests, a single ag lab may have met a single woman while working 40 or 50 miles from where he usually worked, and took her back to where he usually lived.

I have found when that happens, the bride will return to her mother's home for the birth of her first baby.  The babies that follow are usually born in the area where the father works.

[coombs]

I was also told by a historian that indoor staff were recruited a good distance from the location where they would be working - so they couldn't just "up and leave".  The attached is the 1871 census entry for Oulton Hall staff in Little Budworth, Cheshire.  The only local person was the Usher who was born in Tarporley, just a few miles away.

Yes that was true, my great gran from Oxford worked in service in Bexhill, Sussex in the 1911 census. Several train rides from Oxford away. Although she lived in a Hackney convent for a while beforehand as she train for domestic service.

My ag lab ancestor was had up in 1886 for not providing enough for his wife and children and he said he had to "go away to find work".

[Wulfsige]

I can understand the long moves of people 'in service', like my grandmother from Perthshire being employed in Kensington, and my grandfather, from Norfolk, a groom with horses, being in Cornwall in one census; it's the ag labs that puzzle me, that is, ones who continue as ag labs but miles away - though there are clues to follow up in what is written above.