Barbara J. Starmans - Tracing Your Ancestors Lives: A Guide to Social History for Family Historians

TRACING YOUR ANCESTORS LIVES

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

A Guide to Social History for Family Historians

Barbara J. Starmans

First published in Great Britain in 2017
PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Barbara J. Starmans, 2017

ISBN 978 1 47387 971 3
eISBN 978 1 47387 973 7
Mobi ISBN 978 1 47387 972 0

The right of Barbara J. Starmans to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

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Concentrating on the history of the UK, Tracing Your Ancestors Lives is not intended as a comprehensive study of social history but instead an exploration of the various aspects of the topic of particular interest to you, the family historian. This book is a guide to your journey beyond the names, dates and places in your pedigree charts back to the time and place where your ancestors lived. Use the research advice, resources and case studies in this book as you learn about your ancestors, their families and the society they lived in and record their stories for the generations to come.

All the illustrations are from the authors collection except those for which another source is given.

Social history is the study of the lives of ordinary people, a view of history from the bottom up, instead of from the top down. Rather than studying politics and wars or memorizing the successions of kings and queens, learn about the day-to-day lives of your ancestors and place them in the context of their time and place. Journey back through the centuries to experience how your forebears lived, worked and played. Learn about their occupations, their homes and their communities to understand their views on religion, family and traditions.Your ancestors are not just names and dates. They each have a story to tell, a life full of triumphs and tragedy, punctuated at times with hope and at others with despair. They loved, and they lost. They succeeded, and they failed. Like us, they took several steps forward and then were pushed back by circumstances beyond their control. They faced difficult decisions and hard times. They hungered for sustenance, for love and for life in times and places that are at once very different but in other ways so very much the same as the four dimensions of our own world. Our ancestors are the people that we would most like to meet, the ones who shaped our fates and determined our destinies. It is time we got to know them.

The surface area of our planet is about 196.9 million square miles and there have been 525,600 minutes in every one of the years that have passed since our ancestors were born and died. Within that immense time-space continuum, it is estimated that over 107 billion people have walked on earth since man first appeared. Even by limiting our view of social history to just the most recent millennium and to the 94,000 or so square miles of the United Kingdom, the dimensions of all those yesterdays are astounding in their apparent infinitude, and are beyond the scope of this book. Instead, throughout the chapters in this guide to social history, you will learn how to research the circumstances of your own individual ancestors life so you can tell their story with the objectivity, empathy and compassion that comes from a thorough understanding of the realities of their era.

Imagine that you could draw up a chair by the fire at your ancestors house and have a cup of tea with them. Dont you long to ask them not just the who, when or where questions, but the more important questions of how and why? If only it were possible to travel back in time, our research would be so much easier. Instead, use the study of social history to view your ancestors life stories from their unique perspective instead of through your own twenty-first century eyes. As you learn more about their circumstances and the time and place they lived in, you will become more familiar with your ancestors lives and be able to surmise what forces drove them to the decisions they made and the paths they chose to follow.