How my workingclass ancestors lived

I guess most people when doing their genealogy wonders what was life like for my ancestors. If your ancestors were of the upper class you have a lot of books and even television shows about their life style, but if they were of the lower workingclass there are only a few books and some documentaries that give you some idea about their lives, but you must look hard and be lucky to find them.

I know that my ancestors were workingclass in Scotland. My parents told about their lives growing up and I think some of that does relate to older generations. I was lucky to find two books on the history of Scottish working people by T.C. Smout; The History of the Scottish People 1560 – 1830 and The Century of the Scottish People 1830 – 1950. They both gave a good account of the common people of Scotland with their everyday struggles that must have been part of my ancestor’s life.  PBS put on some shows about life of the poor in London with a series of shows 1860 Victorian Slums, then 1870, 1880, 1890 and finally 1900 Victorian Slums even if none of my family lived in London at that time they must have had similar things happen to them in Glasgow.

The Manhattan Lower East Side Tenement Museum is well worth a visit if you want to learn about immigrant’s life in New York City in the early 19^th century. There are more and more books, documentaries, and museums that try to show what life was like in bygone eras.

Once you have an idea of your family’s location, ethic group, and social status you should look for books, documentaries and museums that will give you an idea of how your family lived.    

A Picture is worth a thousand words

One thing I wanted to show in the genealogical history of my family was what life was like for our ancestors. Photography only came into being in about the mid nineteenth century so unless you are lucky enough to have aristocrats in your family that had oil painting of themselves you must rely on documents like birth, marriage, death, census records and maybe a journal or letters to tell their story.

          So, I started collecting old family photos from both my wife’s family and my own family photos. The first anyone should do is to try and get the older family members to identify the date, people and places in the old photos so you and future generations know what they are looking at. A lot of people don’t think of writing descriptions with their photos so once they are gone people must guess who, what and when are in the photo. We should remember that new photos will be old photos someday so adding descriptions to your photos is a good idea, not making the same mistake that past generations made in their photos.

          I had the thought of trying to get photos from Google map of Addresses of our ancestors. I found that only a few remain many lived in cities like New York, Glasgow or Boston that have had urban renewal so fairly new buildings are where my ancestors had lived. The churches where they were baptized and married are an exception many have not changed that much over the centuries. I try to look for old photos of the places that my ancestor had lived either through the internet, libraries or historical societies that may have old photos and newspaper of places that they had lived.

         

Julie Bowen: Who do You Think You Are?

Actress Julie Bowen from the Television Show Modern Family was the subject of this weeks Who do you think you are? They went into two of her ancestors on her Mother’s side, one who they call Big Charley. Who is Julie’s Great-Grandfather who during World War one was the head of agency that rounded up German-Americans that some thought was a threat and put them in camps. This is a dark part of American History I didn’t Know about and I have read Howard Zinn’s books so I know a little about that side, but this is a new one on me.

          Another one was Julie’s 4^th times Great-Grandfather on her Mother’s father’s side who was a doctor in Pennsylvania before the Civil War. He ran the local underground railroad. So he was one of the good guys who was fighting the dark side of American History.    

Courteney Cox; who do you think you are?

Courteney Cox is an actress that is most famous for playing Monica on the TV show “Friends”. She was the subject of the latest “Who do you think you are?” Show which traced her ancestry back to William the Conqueror who defeated the English in 1066. One thing it showed is that once your pedigree chart gets some royal blood on it then there are already more charts waiting for you to add to your chart.

Per an English Genealogist on the show one of Courteney’s ancestors murdered King Edward the second by sticking a red-hot poker up his ass (he put it in a nicer way). This Englishman said that this was “after King Edward fell out of favor because of his failures on the battle field”. I happen to have read a history book in which this event was described and what the English Genealogist didn’t want to say was that this event occurred after the Battle of Bannockburn in which the Scots nocked the hell out of the English army.  

I have found that the records of working class people get rarer as you go back through the centuries until even the church records run out. The fact that your direct ancestors double each generation depending where they lived there is a good chance you will get some noble blood on your chart too.

What’s in a name?

One of the most frustrating things about looking for a person in genealogical records is that you find that a least two people from the same area that have the same name.  I am mostly talking about the British Isles, but I find that Germany is just as bad. It seems that they had a small pool of names to choose from, girls are named Mary, Margaret, Sarah, Ann(e) and Bridget. The boys are named George, Peter, John, Hugh Timothy and Thomas in the UK and Johann, Friederick in Germany.

Now I have a Great-Grandmother named Margaret Armstrong that I found was born in Manchester England in 1845 and she had a brother named George Armstrong. I also found that she married my Great-Grandfather Donald Wilkes in Newcastle on Tyne in 1865. Now I found a Margaret and George Armstrong living with a family in Newcastle on the 1861 UK Census, but in reverse order and this Margaret Armstrong is on record of marrying a person from that family. It even says she was born in Manchester so even if a lot of the information seems right it is not her.

Another case is on my wife’s side with her Great-Grandmother Bridget Kerrigan who I know from all the US Census was born in Ireland in the 1820’s. The age of Bridget on most of the US Census calculate her birth date out to be around 1822-23, Now I found both her sons that were also born in Ireland were baptized in Westmeath Ireland with the dates and parents being correct, so I am fairly sure that Bridget and her husband John Kane were from Westmeath Ireland. I bet you guessed that I found more people named Bridget Kerrigan, in fact Westmeath if filled with people named Kerrigan, which happens when you are looking at ancestral homes of your ancestors. Another person that was also looking for Bridget Kerrigan found a record of a Bridget Kerigan being baptized in 1827 in Westmeath and I found a Bridget Kerrigan in court records suing someone in 1834. Which might be right if she was born about 1822 where she would be about 12 years old, but if she was born in 1827 she would have been only 7 and would be more improbable.

Another common frustration is the spelling of names, but I will get into that in another post for I don’t like to make these posts too long. I don’t if anyone reads it or not, but I still like to make as easy as possible.

Eulogy from Scotland

I Received a letter from my cousin Anne Reilly who lives here on Long Island, now Anne is a Daughter of my father’s older sister Mary. Anne said she received a letter with a eulogy of my other cousin Ann Gallacher Hutchison who lived back in Scotland and who is the Daughter of my father’s younger sister Vera. The letter sent to Anne Reilly by Angela Hutchison Walker who is Ann Gallacher Hutchison’s Daughte

          Anyway, the eulogy gave a detailed account of Ann Gallacher Hutchison’s life, but was written for folks who knew her. So, I modified it into a biography of Ann adding full names of her parents and husband as well as the full names of places. So, her descendants will better understand her life of growing up in a small Scottish town in the latter part of the 20^th Century.

    This is the first time I used a eulogy in this way, but I did write a brief biography of my sister when she died my niece turned it into a eulogy.  I think it is a good idea to use eulogies to add life to your ancestor’s story.

2017 a new year of research part one.

 I begin this year 2017 as I started many past years looking to Ireland for any information about either my wife or my family. There is some hope that this will be the year that more Irish Catholic Record open up. The Irish records so far only go back as far as the 1860’s. since every line that I have traced to Ireland fled is the 1840’s. My wife’s family to America and my family to Scotland. Now the documents such as Census or Marriage Registry just show Ireland as the place of birth. Now I do have one lead on the Wallace family (My Grandmother’s family) which seems to have been from Tyrone county Ireland. I am hopeful the new year will bring new insights into my family.