Follow the Money!

If there's one paradox that's more important - predominant you might say - when starting to research your family history to any appreciable depth, it's this: "True or false: 'our ancestors didn't move far from home'?"  I've come to realise in the last few weeks just how much - or how little - I've learned the importance of this over the years.  More than once, I've tripped over - no, 'blundered into' would express it better - a minor brickwall where, in times past, I've picked up a marriage or a death from the other side of the country, applied it to someone born in Suffolk and then not been able to trace any further links to him or her.  

At that point, I would have left it as 'just another puzzle' and moved on.  Now I can see the solution, to broaden the date range of the subject, perhaps apply a 'wild card' and look again, locally.  He/she is there, but the age doesn't quite match, or the spelling of the name is different.  Conversely, it is sometimes quite amazing how far people did move and it's important to take into consideration why they might have moved, and when it was that they might have done so.  I've sometimes proved (to my own satisfaction at least) that I've got the right spouse or census entry, but asked myself, 'how did he meet her?'  

In the 20th century, of course, the two World Wars accounted for many romantic discoveries between people who would otherwise never have met.  I've often wondered why my uncle, for example, came out of the army in 1919 and settled in Derbyshire with the widow of someone from the Gloucestershire Regiment (... and how she met him in the first place!)

In the case of many families, the agricultural depression of mid-19th century drove people great distances to find work.  Most lines of my family had sons or daughters who moved to the mining or mill towns of the midlands and north.  One of the families I've been looking at during these last few weeks had a son who moved to Derbyshire in the 1850s and became a coal miner and my great-great-uncle, whom I wrote about last week, went to Canada in the 1880s.  

In some ways, it's helpful that movement was less in earlier centuries.  Finding anyone in indexed records is more difficult once you get beyond (in other words, into a period before) recognised milestones in recording history: 1911, the inclusion of mother's maiden name in birth registration indexes; 1866, the inclusion of ages in death registration indexes; 1851, the first census to include place of birth; 1837, the start of civil registration in England & Wales.  Beyond these we are reliant on parish registrations of baptisms, burials and marriages, and here again there are milestones, beyond which fewer local indexes are likely to exist: 1813 when Roses Act introduced formal recording of baptisms and burials, and 1754 when the Hardwick Marriage Act did the same for marriages and introduced the recording of banns of marriage.

Where there are no indexes, it is important to know where people lived and to be able to get to the appropriate record office to search records for one place at a time.  If someone isn't where we're looking, it's hard to know where next to look.  One of my former bosses - I've forgotten which one - told me the key to unravelling a mystery was to 'follow the money' and that's certainly true here.  In many ways the pattern of life remained unchanged for centuries.  A young man would find work near the home that had raised him.  If he thought he could better himself, he would change jobs and, if that meant going farther than an acceptable daily commute, then he would move nearer the job.  

Only the distance has changed down the years, according to the transport available.  In the eighteenth century few young men could afford their own horse, so the alternative would be to work within the village or only a few miles away.  With the advent of the bicycle, work could be a little further away without needing a move of home and cars made a similar difference during the twentieth century.

The same consideration applied to the move of a home.  In earlier times, possessions would be few and could be loaded onto a borrowed wagon, drawn by a borrowed horse; in industrial towns and cities, families would move from one street to the next or even in the same one, not for a different job but to accommodate an increasing family, and much could be moved by hand cart or simply carried by hand from one home to the next.  The coming of the railway age made movement up and down the country far more possible.

My own parents both died in the home they had moved into as newly-weds in 1948.  They benefited from it being a new house, and were able to have larger items delivered directly there.  I was never told, but I imagine the smaller items they had collected during their engagement would have been loaded onto a farm trailer and drawn from my mother's home two streets away.  I suspect the necessary upheaval and transport were the main reasons that she was always reluctant to move to a smaller place once she was on her own.

And in my own case, the only significant move I've made was to Hertfordshire, prompted by work, and carried out by professionals.  Other minor changes of address have been accomplished piecemeal by my own efforts with the help of friends.  Like my mother, and for similar reasons, I have no desire to make any more ... although we've all heard of the commentator's curse!