How Far Back?

evolutionLast week’s post turned out to be much longer than I’d intended.  This week I thought I’d share a few thoughts about how far back you can reasonably expect to go back in your tree.

I’ve had this blog post in mind for a couple of years – ever since I asked one of my students at the end of a six-week beginners’ course whether he’d enjoyed it, and was told in no uncertain terms that he’d only got back to 1780.

There were three thoughts that sprang to my mind.

Firstly, to be able to get back almost two hundred and thirty five years in six weeks is pretty good going.  In these days of internet research, it can be very easy to click a few buttons and go whizzing back through the centuries like some sort of demented time-traveller.  In the days before the internet and before the big companies like Find My Past and Ancestry, research took place in records offices and archives, and you could spend an entire day searching for Great-Great-Grandma’s marriage – even longer if it turned out she wasn’t married in the parish you thought she was, and you had to trawl through neighbouring parishes, or it turned out she was Non-Conformist, or she hadn’t been married in that particular town and you ended up having to make wild guesses as to which parish and which church it might have been. And if it was a different county, it might take months, even years, to track her down.

And, of course, just because my student had completed a beginner’s course didn’t mean that he could never do any more research.  Tracing your family tree doesn’t end when the course does.

Secondly, the further back you go, the fewer the records.  Civil Registration didn’t start until 1837; the earliest detailed surviving census is 1841.  Before then we’re dependent on parish registers – some of which don’t survive, and none of which contain, prior to 1837, the wealth of detail that Civil Registration records do.  Rate Books and Electoral Registers only account for people who were wealthy enough to contribute to the town rate, or who met the property qualification for enfranchisement – and before 1832 there were very few people indeed who qualified.  Unless your family never moved from one small parish, were  very rich, came from the aristocracy or the landed gentry, or were criminals, you’re highly unlikely to be able to get back much before 1700, if that.  And once you get back to the Civil War, you discover that Cromwell’s Parliament forbade the parish register system, setting up instead a form of civil registration which has not survived.

But, supposing that, like my student, you’re back to 1780: well, as I say, this is a whopping 235 years ago.  Genealogists take, as a rule of thumb, three or four generations to each century – so from the earliest ancestor to yourself, in 235 years you may have discovered eight generations.  If so, you’re back to a great-great-great-great-great-grandparent.

It looks a bit more impressive written down like that, doesn’t it?  This is a person who you were almost certainly completely unaware of six weeks ago.  And now you know their name and may well know where they lived and what they did for a living.

My final thought concerns that long-ago ancestor and the world in which they lived.  You can start to recreate that world by looking at their occupation – some occupations simply don’t exist any more – you can look at the local area, and at world events.  Maps, as I said last week, can help you here.  You can visit local museums, or see what a local history society has to offer.  You might visit a stately home or National Trust property in the area: even if your ancestor didn’t own it, someone had to bring the coal in or clean the boots, and that person certainly wasn’t the lady of the manor.

One useful thing to do, which helps place your ancestors in context, is to create a timeline.  This doesn’t have to be very detailed, but, with a little imagination it can tell you an awful lot.

Let’s see what was happening in the 1780s.

The American War of Independence is still raging – it will not end until 1783.  Slavery has not been abolished, although anti-slavery attitudes are growing.  Transportation to Australia will begin in 1787.  News of the death of Captain Cook has not long reached England. We are in the early days of the Industrial Revolution: factories are springing up. The first cast iron bridge in the world was constructed in 1779.  The Sunday School movement offers a basic education to children for whom any form of education has previously been denied. Popular “entertainments” include bull-baiting and cock-fighting.  The Times newspaper begans publication. The French Revolution has not yet begun, and those parts of British history which we remember vaguely from our own schooldays – Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo, Nelson dying at Trafalger – are still in the future.  In 1780 Jane Austen is a child of five, and it is to be another thirty-one years before her first novel is published. George III is King: his first bout of madness will not be diagnosed until 1788.

(For the record, it has taken me longer to type this paragraph than to research it).

Suddenly we start to appreciate what life might have been like for great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who, we realise, might well have fought in the Napoleonic Wars, or worked as a navvy for Thomas Telford on the London to Holyhead Road.  He may have been a spectator at Stafford market on that day in 1800 when Cupid Hodson, unable to divorce his wife, placed a halter around her neck, took her to the marketplace and sold her to the highest bidder for five shillings and sixpence. (I should add that Mrs Hodson was apparently quite happy about this: after the bidding, she accompanied both men to a nearby tavern to seal the bargain with a glass or two of ale.)

Selling a WifechgSelling a wife at Smithfield Market, 1812

No-one will ever tell you that tracing your family tree is easy.  But I can assure you that, whilst at times it may be highly frustrating, it’s great fun.

 

About kate

Experienced genealogist but virgin blogger...
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