Thursday 14 April 2016

A-Z Challenge 2016: L is for Local History

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com
Is there a town, village, or hamlet where your ancestors lived for centuries?  Have you ever thought of looking at the place as well as the people?  Local history can be an excellent companion to your genealogical research.  It may explain why your ancestors had a certain occupation, provide glimpses into their gene pool, or point you in the direction of certain records you had not thought of yet (such as school registers – and you know the name of the school!).

An example is the subject of The Murch Blog’s “J is for Jerom Murch 1807-1895”.  He was born in Honiton, Devon, England, but married a Norfolk lass.  This would be confusing (Norfolk is hundreds of miles away), unless I had done some more research on him and included local history.  Jerom started as a Unitarian minister – in Norfolk!

The Society for One-Place Studies or the Register of One-Place Studies may well be able to help.  If the place you want to research isn’t already being studied – maybe you would like to join and start your own Study!

© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved

7 comments:

  1. So true! The more I research my King family, millers of Loddiswell in Devon, the more I am learning about the citizens of Loddiswell. The same names crop up on censuses, tithe apportionment, oath lists, marriages through the years. Who stayed and who emigrated. All very interesting.

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    1. I'm finding the same about my ancestors - and a lot of them came from Loddiswell too! You've probably seen their names in passing. Talk about small worlds...

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  2. This is what happened to me 10 years ago when I was doing a family line in an small extinct village in Hungary. I indexed the census for this town, then started indexing the Catholic records, and then, the immigrants records, and well, it never ends with these One Place Studies!

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    1. And don't you find that you start recognising people who are not part of your own ancestry? "There's the miller and his family; there's the blacksmith and his family" and so on. You really start feeling close to these people.

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  3. Local and family history go together like a horse and carriage. You can't have one without the other.

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    1. I think more and more people are starting to realise this.

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  4. I think we can't do one without the other. One has to look into this because there is truth there

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