Wouldn't it be great if we could talk to our ancestors? Ask them questions and listen to their stories? One of the sad truths of life is that most of us are not terribly interested in family history in our younger years, and are not too keen to sit and chat for hours with our living ancestors while they're still around. That's something I was guilty of and now regret somewhat. I only ever knew one of my four Grandparents - my Maternal Grandmother who was born in 1891, and I also knew her sister, who was born in 1887. I last saw them when I was about 14. Today I ponder on that from time to time, wishing that all those years ago I'd had some concept of how precious that was. 1891 and 1887. And I knew them!
For some reason, our ancestry generally becomes more important to us as we get a bit older - perhaps it's because we've become ancestors ourselves and we're a bit more aware of our own mortality, subconsciously hoping that those who come after us will know a bit about us, and that we won't be completely forgotten within a generation or two.
For some reason, our ancestry generally becomes more important to us as we get a bit older - perhaps it's because we've become ancestors ourselves and we're a bit more aware of our own mortality, subconsciously hoping that those who come after us will know a bit about us, and that we won't be completely forgotten within a generation or two.
For most of us, our ancestral history is not spectacular. Most ordinary people come from a long line (actually many lines) of other ordinary people, with just a few here and there who stand out. But as we go to work everyday, seemingly having very little impact on the world, we, like our ancestors, are doing our bit, playing our part, however immeasurably tiny that may be, in building the present and the future for those who come after us. Our kids and grandkids each carry with them something from us, something we passed on to them, which plays a part in who and what they become. It's not always identifiable, but it's there.
Similarly, we all carry something from our ancestors. They are the building blocks of which we are made, and no matter how noble or humble they may have been, they each did their bit in their own way to build their world and ours. A family tree which starts with us at the top and expands downwards with each generation could be compared to a pyramid of cards - pull any one out from within the stack and it falls apart, and we would simply not be there.
So for those of us who enjoy being alive, who have loved their parents and grandparents, their kids and their grandkids, and cherish the love and joy they've given us over our lifetime, there exists a certain debt of appreciation and acknowledgement of those people before our time whose lives came together over many centuries and entwined into complex threads of history to form the warp and weft of the very fabric of which we are composed. And that debt is the purpose of this work - to tell their story, our story. To find the people who came together, each with a tiny fragment, and joined those tiny fragments to bring about our very existence, and to acknowledge them and make them known.
I haven't yet found a way to talk directly to my ancestors. They're not listed in the White or Yellow Pages. But through slow, often painstaking and frustrating research, (made much easier with modern technology, I have to say) perhaps they are able to talk to me. Sometimes I feel as if they actually are talking to me! Regardless of their wealth or social standing, many of our ancestors and other antecedents left traces of themselves in a wonderful array of records - tiny snippets of their lives which are the fibres from which the likes of me can create a tapestry, albeit a little patchy here and there.
I've been putting together a fairly comprehensive history of my family for a couple of years now, and this blog is a narrative of that work for my family to read. But if you're not one of the family and you happen to have stumbled upon it, please don't feel you have to leave - you may find it interesting!
Because I'm writing and "publishing" this narrative whilst still researching, some of the information will change as I discover new facts and details, find and correct errors and unearth the odd missing link. Rather than go back and alter what I've already written and uploaded (and you have hopefully already read), I will maintain an Update section in which I will add new findings and make corrections. So, if you're still interested, keep an eye out for updates!
Most of the information I've used to compile this history has come from Ancestry.co.uk - either from records such as Census reports, Baptism and Marriage records, Burial records and the like, or from other members' family trees. The Lancashire Online Parish Clerks Project has also been a very useful resource, sometimes providing answers which perhaps haven't yet made their way into Ancestry's system, or are simply more "findable" because the database is not as huge. Some information has come from my mother's notes, stories and photos, a little from my Aunty, and a very little bit from my own memory.
Researching my family history has turned out to be a very intriguing and captivating hobby. It can be frustrating, but it's also very enjoyable to slowly put together a picture of the past, as little by little I find out more about the people and their movements - and take a peek into their lives and life in general in days gone by.
A family history is a story with no beginning and no end, because no matter how far back we go, however many generations we uncover, there was always a generation before them. And following my own generation, there are already two more generations from me and my siblings, and still more from older cousins.
The greatest abundance of easily retrievable information in our family history comes from the period of the Industrial Revolution, and is centred on two fundamental regions: Lancashire in Northern England and Belfast, Northern Ireland. The earliest ancestors I've been able to trace "accurately" (which means their identities have usually been "confirmed" by at least two corroborating sources of information) were born in the mid 1700's, when the Industrial Revolution was just starting to roll.
Tip: To help gain a geographical perspective while reading the following sections, you might like to open a new tab and go to Google Maps. Search for Chorley UK, then zoom out a little at a time until you can see the towns of Preston, Bolton and Blackburn. At this zoom level, drag the map around to spot Lancaster to the North, Manchester to the South East, and Southport to the West. As you read place names you can now look where they are in relation to each other.
Researching my family history has turned out to be a very intriguing and captivating hobby. It can be frustrating, but it's also very enjoyable to slowly put together a picture of the past, as little by little I find out more about the people and their movements - and take a peek into their lives and life in general in days gone by.
A family history is a story with no beginning and no end, because no matter how far back we go, however many generations we uncover, there was always a generation before them. And following my own generation, there are already two more generations from me and my siblings, and still more from older cousins.
The greatest abundance of easily retrievable information in our family history comes from the period of the Industrial Revolution, and is centred on two fundamental regions: Lancashire in Northern England and Belfast, Northern Ireland. The earliest ancestors I've been able to trace "accurately" (which means their identities have usually been "confirmed" by at least two corroborating sources of information) were born in the mid 1700's, when the Industrial Revolution was just starting to roll.
In researching this family history I've found many interesting revelations, and many frustrating "dead-ends". I've made contact with several other Ancestry Members researching the same ancestors as I am, and discovered we have common ancestors a few generations back, making us varying degrees of cousins. I even discovered that a lifelong friend is, in fact, my 4th cousin once removed! Ancestry's system of tree sharing and information swapping has proven to be an invaluable tool in uncovering our family's past. Users happily share their own findings, old photos and other documents, saving countless hours of searching. There are traps, however, as I have found that information from other Members' trees can contain inaccuracies (as can mine, I should point out). For example, a few members have James Cooper dying in Chorley in January 1881. They have his name in a burial record to prove it. But if he did die in January 1881, why would he show up with his family in the census of 1881, which was recorded on April 3rd? Clearly, it is easy to jump to the wrong conclusions!
Finding accurate information and confirming it can be challenging, and sometimes actual positive confirmation is pretty much impossible. Most of any history we read is a combination of demonstrable, recorded fact, mixed with varying levels of supposition, speculation and interpretation. Writing ancestral history is no different. Although for many of our ancestors I've found what seems to be lots of information, what must be remembered is that even with the most comprehensive history of an individual, the data points are separated by several years. So while I may have a birth and baptism record for someone born in 1869, a census record for 1871, again for 1881, then a marriage record for 1889, and census for 1891, 1901 and 1911, the distance between data points ranges from two years to ten years, and a lot can happen in that time. Gaps in the story are left to be filled by the imagination, at least until new information comes to light. And this is part of the fun! As historians we must aim to be as accurate as possible with the information we gather, and try to prove beyond doubt the identities of the Ancestors we discover, but in the bigger picture, complete history is barely possible and not that critical - we gather as much accurate information as we can, and the rest we can make up, while trying, of course, to make the "in-fills" as factual and plausible as possible, to avoid writing nonsense.
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