Our ancestors lived in a village all their lives? Would this make the search for family history so much easier? Would it be so much fun if it was? Personally, I do not think so.
The fact is that while many of our ancestors were born, raised, married and died in a village, district or county, many of them moved frequently and often many miles from their birthplace.
My paternal grandmother (a Devonian) has a maternal lineage that can be traced back to the early 1600s in Devon, but his father was born in Leith, Edinburgh. His family was in Leith at the 1881 census, the census of 1891 the family were in Seacombe, Cheshire and in 1901 the family settled in Sholing, Hampshire.
My paternal grandfather, a long line in Nottinghamshire, had a mother from Yorkshire and a 3x great grandmother was born in Norfolk.
Generally, people moved where the work was (almost like we do today). My grandfather GT GT, a coal miner, worked the mines in Nottinghamshire, but in 1881 he was mining in County Durham. Other families of miners from Yorkshire moved to Wales or wherever there were mines. Weavers moved from their rural areas, where there had been a cottage industry to big cities and towns to the newly opened factories.
In 1841, 22% of the working population were agricultural workers and 44% were involved in manufacturing, so the chances of your ancestors being involved in these two areas would be very high.
In 1851, for the first time for a great nation, there were more of the population living in urban areas than in rural areas.
While our ancestors may have moved into towns and cities in order to better provide for their families. Factory work has provided a more regular income that affected seasonal agricultural work, their living standard did not necessarily take place. With the overcrowding, poor sanitation and a high mortality rate, it must have been a difficult decision.
Many brothers and sisters my ancestors settled in London districts such as Islington, Westminster and Tottenham. What is a culture shock it must have been for them. Especially those who have left the village, very rural. In 1861, the population of London has 2,803,289 and twenty years later, when the census of 1881, was a huge 3,815,544. Such distance hailed from the village of Woodbury, Devon (1871 census population was 1466) who had moved to London to ply his trade as a shoemaker. He then returned to Devon, but many have not.
So, yes, it would be easier for us to find our ancestors had they stayed conveniently placed (do not they realize that 150 years later we are trying to locate them?). In this way, we discover that the pipe is very similar to what drives us to move. We see how industrialization affected real people with real lives and the impact this has had on our lives today.
Posted on April 7, 2010.
