Hi, it's Jo here.
First the great news. Lady Beware is finished, it’s in New York, my agent and editor love it, it’s off to be copy edited, and given that it’s a June book, it’ll probably boomerang back on me next week to go over that. Which is why I’m playing now.
It’s my tradition to play with genealogy over Christmas. Of course that didn’t happen this winter, but for the past week I’ve been poking around, mostly in censuses, looking for pieces of the puzzle.
That’s what it is to me – a complicated jigsaw puzzle. There are unlikely to be any dramatic revelations or hints of royal blood on either side. The Beverleys go back to itinerant labourers in Yorkshire and the Beadles were dock and brickyard workers in Kent; the Dunns and Carrs were much the same in Ireland.
But I love censuses and the feel of peeping inside lives in the past. Of course this is also great for a writer of historical fiction. For most censuses, a person has to subscribe to search for records, but the Mormons has the 1881 censuses for the US, Canada, and and Wales up on their genealogy site. As a result, they’re free everywhere. (Some other sites are ancestry.com and findmypast.com.)
For years I’ve been meaning to look at a typical English village through this window, to see what’s there. This year, I decided to do it. I’m not posting the whole thing here as it turns out to be rather long. I’m giving my thoughts. If you want to read more plus the census details,
it’s on my website here.
But I offer this to those of you who are writing historical fiction set in the past in as a way to gain greater insight, especially for those of you writing about England from afar. Of course 1881 is long after any periods I use, but I doubt Burton Pidsea had changed that much in 100 years.
I knew nothing about Burton Pidsea. I simply searched the census for a John Brown born between 1790 and 1810, reckoning that would cut the numbers down. Burton Pidsea sounded promising, so I picked that one – a shoemaker.
On genuki.org.uk, I found this description of the place in the 1820s, at a time much closer to my fictional periods.
"BURTON PIDSEA, a parish in the wapentake of Holderness, and liberty of St. Peter's; 4 miles E. of Hedon. A neat and pleasant village, the houses of which are well built, and afford an extensive prospect of the surrounding country. The church is a small building… patrons Dean and Chapter of York, with a lofty tower apparently of great antiquity. The incumbent is the Rev. Jonathan Dixon, vicar; here is likewise a Methodist chapel, built in 1820. Pop. 378."
Go to the Genuki page.
I recommend genuki for researching historical locations in the UK. You can go here for a picture of the above mentioned church, which is typical of parish churches in villages around .
Picture of Church
This site has pictures of modern Burton Pidsea.
And this interesting site provides a google map. If you click on satellite, you’ll see the geography. It looks as if geodaisy will do this for any place, which is great.
There are many 19th century town and village directories on line, which also give an idea of a place, and also of the trades and professions of the time.
Here's one.
What I learned from this.
That I didn’t pick the best village. This one is very agricultural and doesn’t have that many tradespeople. In this census, we find three shoemakers, four bricklayers, a joiner and wheelwright. (BTW, a carpenter builds houses, a joiner makes furniture.) Two more wheelwrights, two innkeepers, a grocer, a schoolmaster, two market carriers, a butcher, two tailors, a shepherd, two blacksmiths, three jobbing gardeners, a cowkeeper (which might mean a dairyman) a corn miller, a retired surgeon (did he do any doctoring if necessary?) a rector. The range of trades seems strange to me, with too many of some and none of others. The bricklaying family produced sons who spread out through Yorkshire.
The people who have servants are:
The rector, the large farmers (servants in addition to farm labourers), the wheelwrights, the grocer, the innkeeper and the butcher. (Two servants and a large family. Butchers were known for healthy families because they ate well. Today’s frowning on meat didn’t apply back then when it was a luxury for many.)
The retired surgeon and his widowed sister have one servant.
Emily Baxter, widow of a prosperous farmer, has a cook/housekeeper and a housemaid.
Mary Ann Ford, an annuitant has a female servant.
The large Wilkinson family (7 children and the possibility of more because the youngest is only 8 months) has three men designated as servants and two daughters as “servants at home.” As he’s listed as an agricultural labourer, the male servants seem unlikely. More likely to be lodgers. The two older girls could be kept at home to help their mother.
The widowed schoolteacher’s younger daughter is designated as housekeeper.
People weren’t as settled back then as we assume -- as I assume, at least. The labourers in particular don’t often stay in one place. Less than half the households in the 1881 census had been there in 1861 in any form. (This might not be true of some of the married women. It’s hard to be sure of them unless they have an unusual name. Hyena? Who thought of that one?)
For example, Daniel Blanchard, one of the wheelwrights, was living in Sproatley in 1861.
William Poulter, an agricultural labourer, was born in Cambridgeshire, a long way from Burton Pidsea,. In 1861 he was 17 and living with his widowed mother in his place of birth, Ickleton, one of six children which she supported by taking in laundry. An 18-year-old daughter was working in a paper factory, and William was working as a labourer. Now, in 1881, he’s a recent widower (his youngest child is one year) with five children. Some families don’t seem to get a break, generation to generation.
A couple of other things. It looks as if most people married someone of about their own age, and many were still together at an older age, so they weren’t dying off to a dramatic extent. Some women have born many children, and some appear to have had children into their forties. I’m suspicious about the rector’s wife having a one-year-old at age 55, however. I suspect a transcription problem. I think she’s 35.
Note John Brown at the grand old age of 90. No, people didn’t die of in their thirties as we are sometimes told.
And finally, something I’ve noticed before. Despite our image of the extended family, older people did not live with their married children. Unmarried children frequently lived with their parents until they married, and if a married child lost their spouse a retired parent, especially the mother, would move in to help. But many, many people 60 and over live alone or as couples. Often their children would be in the same village and available to help, but I don’t find the multigenerational model in general use.
So, do any of these details surprise you?
Do you already use genealogical resources for finding out about the past, or even about a specific location you're using in a book?
And have you ever heard of someone called Hyena before?
Jo