Did Your Ancestor Work As A Puddler?

Old occupations and their names can leave us scratching our heads or sometimes even raising a smile at the unusual names.  

We can learn much about our ancestors' lives from their occupations and they can provide a social history as people moved from agricultural based jobs to industrial and white collar work.

So how do we find out what our ancestors did for a living and what other information can we find out from their occupation?

Usually we find out our ancestors' occupations from birth, marriage and death records along with census records.  There are many other sources of information too such as trade directories and even family papers that have been kept over the years.

Matching their occupation to where our ancestors lived means that we can research local workplaces to find out where they are likely to have worked. In some cases there is only one possible workplace but even if it's not possible initially to find only one potential workplace, with a list of probable employers, there is every possibility of finding lists of employees or trade directories which can highlight where your ancestor worked.

Another aspect of this research is to look at the conditions in which your ancestor worked.  Was it dangerous?  How many hours did they work?  What was the pay like?

Using a "puddler" as our example, we can see how expanding this basic information will build up a picture of someone's life.

A puddler was highly skilled and dangerous occupation which required physical strength, stamina and sustained concentration.

Puddlers were also known a iron puddlers and they were employed in iron works to turn brittle pig iron into malleable wrought iron during the late 18th century and the 19th century.  This meant that they had to be skilled practical chemists along with being strong and have great endurance and mental strength in extreme conditions.

They worked long hours and were unlikely to reach the age of 50 given the dangerous conditions in which they worked.  It could be a relatively well paid job due to its skill and danger however not everyone was paid well as some employers took advantage of their employees.

Iron Puddler

The process of changing the iron from pig iron to wrought iron involved adding chemicals to the iron at a very high temperature and with no monitoring devices, the puddlers had to gauge for themselves when the iron was ready for the next stage of the process.

Puddlers had to stir a ball of some five hundredweight of molten iron to expose it to the flame and often had to carry the molten balls around.

There was no safety equipment in those days and the puddlers worked in extreme heat. The trade paper "Iron" noted in 1882 that in warm weather it was no uncommon thing to see a puddler drop down dead.

As one puddler called JJ Davies recalled:

 I am like some frantic baker in the inferno kneading a batch of iron bread for the devil's breakfast.

If you are interested in finding out about your ancestors' occupations, then please get in touch for a no obligation chat to find how we can help.

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Tracing 19th Century Military Personnel Records

One of our current clients has asked us to look for the details of an ancestor's military service in the 19th century.

It is possible to track down individual details alongside the general details of where people served in the 19th century even though individual service personnel were less well documented then than in later times. We have managed to track down the service details for our client's ancestor and have photos of his ancestor's grave which is located some many thousand miles away from Scotland. 

Many people joined the services in the 19th century but sometimes this does not sit easily with their descendants as it often involved the armed forces imposing rule on other countries' populations. This in itself though is not a reason to ignore this aspect of their lives.

There were many reasons why people joined the military and most people who joined up were certainly unaware of the life that they would lead overseas or the conditions that would be imposed on local communities.  Many were press ganged into the military and it is well documented that people were often plied with alcohol to entice them to take the king/queen's shilling.

Others joined because they believed the recruitment information that said that they would be offered a good life.  This was often true to a point.  Wages in industry could be more but there was an uncertainty to that life whilst the military offered an extended family along with a roof over your head, meals and clothing.  With a population shifting from place to place for work and dreadful conditions in many cities or poverty in the countryside, the military life could often seem like an attractive proposition.

Imagine what life must have been like for these recruits? Training tended to be square bashing without any specialist training for going overseas. They were sent overseas without any idea of when or if they would return.  For the officers, life was generally better but for the ordinary soldiers conditions were often basic and many died from disease or the poor conditions in which they lived.  In some cases, certain postings were seen as a death sentence whatever your rank.   

Thinking about how our ancestors coped with these conditions and what they must have thought of the politicians and senior military commanders who sent them to these places thousands of miles from home can be interesting and there are many documented accounts of conditions available from places such as the National Archives.

If you are interested in finding out about your ancestors' military service - in whatever century, then please get in touch to see how we can help.

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Corroboration Is Key To Successful Family Tree Research

The excitement of discovering new members of our family tree is a highlight of most people's searches.  New discoveries usually bring more areas of the family to explore and more questions too!

It's important that before you embark on these new avenues, you check that your research can be corroborated or if you have not done this, how you can check that it is accurate.

Two stories come to mind with information that we have been asked to investigate which illustrate in different ways, why it is important to check information is accurate.

The first involves someone who was working back through the generations when they hit a brick wall.  They had little knowledge of one branch of the family but with an usual surname and a known location for where the family had lived at one time, they had decided to check birth records for their great grandfather who they thought was born towards the end of the 19th century.

Sure enough, they found a record for the correct name and father's name (they had not known the mother's name) and in the year that they were expecting to find the birth.  It had taken place in the neighbouring town to which they had known the family had lived at a later date.  Sensibly, they checked this unusual surname for anyone else living in the area but the only details that came up in that area was for the birth certificate of a sibling so all seemed well.  

They asked Kin Tree to look further into this as their great, great grandparents had come from Ireland and after hitting a brick wall, they wanted our expertise in Irish research to help reveal the next chapter of their family's story.  

Our first job is always to review the information that we have been given. We had asked why they were sure this was the birth of their great grandfather and they of course explained about the location.

Without that definite link, we decided to look further into their great grandfather's life and given his date of birth, we looked for a World War 1 record for him and discovered that he had died in 1917.  This was a key fact as the family's actual great grandfather had died in the late 1950s! 

We did track down the right family for them however and indeed their Irish family too.  This shows why it is important to not make assumptions!

The second example was based on a genuine mistake by a family rather than an assumption however it was compounded by accepting that someone else's family tree was accurate when it was not.

This time, there had been lots of work done on the tree in question including documents to corroborate the information.  Kin Tree had been contacted to see if we could take the tree further back or make suggestions for further investigation.  We were reviewing the information and checking it for accuracy and overall it was fine until we got to the early 1860s.  A mother had died in the same year that her baby was born, let's call the baby Mary Smith.  The family had noticed that the mother had not appeared in the 1871 census and checked for a death and found that the mother had indeed died the year that Mary was born.

The mother's name was quite common and she had been born before statutory records. Unfortunately they had been unable to track down a birth certificate for her.  It seemed too that the couple must have been married before statutory records had started too as they could find no record there either.

Next, the family turned to the family tree hints and suggestions that appear on some of the more popular family tree sites.  These can be great for swapping information and finding new branches of your family tree. There, they found someone else who had Mary's details and the details of Mary's descendants on their own tree. A distant relative it seemed! These matched the family's own research into Mary's descendants. 

As luck would have it, there were also details of Mary's mother and her ancestors.  Our family even went to the bother of contacting the other tree owner to find out how they had tracked down Mary's mother's birth,. This led to them realising that they had missed a vital record that had been there all the time.  The other tree holder was happy to swap information too.

What we discovered though when cross referencing the information was that the birth certificate that had been found for Mary belonged to a different Mary Smith!  Coincidence meant that they had the same name and their parents had the same names too.  (Mary's parents' names had come from Mary's marriage certificate). Also, both babies' mothers died when they were infants.  

The problem was that our family had only checked if there was a death for Mary's mother but had not taken a note of the specific details of the death.  When we checked it properly, we found that the lady in question had died the year that our Mary was born but some months before Mary's birth! The other family tree listing Mary's family incorrectly had made the same mistake it seemed - although they later said that they had copied the details from another tree and had not checked themselves!  

Both these cases show us the need to check information carefully and to not make assumptions.

So this reminds us to 

1. Check all records and take copies or notes of the details.
2. Don't assume that the first record you come to that seems to fit is the correct one unless you have overwhelming supporting evidence.
3. Fill in all details of these records into your family tree. 
4. Cross reference to highlight any anomalies. A family tree programme can help to flag these up.
5. Always review your information before moving on to the next task.
6. Be honest with yourself about your information as otherwise you could be wasting time and money barking up the wrong family tree!
7. If you are looking online at other people's family tree information remember that it may be inaccurate so check the details yourself. 
8. Contact Kin Tree for a review of your information or for further help on where to go next with your family tree.

For more information on researching your family tree:

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How To Write About Your Own Life

Whilst researching your family history is in itself an absorbing and interesting hobby, most people also hope that they information that they have collated will be passed on down through the generations.

It can be easy to forget about your own personal story or feel that you have nothing to contribute. Don't forget though that as you are interested in your ancestors' lives, descendants will be interested in your own story.  Although we might record the big events in life and find them easy to document, it is often the small things that you find out that make your ancestors' stories really come to life.

So how do you start to do this in a meaningful way? What to write about and what to leave out?  What if you don't feel confident in writing about your own life?

A great way to start is by thinking about one of your ancestors who you did not get a chance to meet and think about what you would have liked to ask them if you had been given a chance.  

Write down a list of questions - it doesn't matter if it's a long or a short list. Sometimes it can be difficult to think of questions but usually once you get started, it gets easier as ideas start to flow.  You can try to write your list all in one go or over a period of time. If you like to write electronically then write your questions using this format and if you prefer pen and paper then use those.  The thing is to feel as comfortable as possible with the format.

After this and in your own time, start to answer these questions but for yourself.  If you can't think of something to write about a specific question then leave it.  Most of us can write down a few words at least about places where we have lived or worked.  It doesn't need to be a long piece of writing if you don't like writing much.  Anything that you write will be precious to your descendants.

It can also be good for inspiration to think about how things have changed in your lifetime.  The rate at which technology is changing our lives for example, is surprising and any observations that you make about changes that you have seen would be interesting to future family historians.

Radio Times listing

So what kind of observations might you make? 

It could be something as simple as tv schedules.  It is not long since everyone relied on a weekly magazine or magazines to check out what their next week's viewing would be for example.

Now with television guides available on your television set, catch up television and guides and news accessed online in a variety of ways, it would be interesting for future generations to know how much these magazines were a part of every day life. 

Your descendants will treasure your thoughts and memories even if they are simply a few notes on a scrap of paper.  However, it is also possible to expand on this by writing it up or by getting it written up into a fuller piece. Even if you don't have personal photos etc to add to this, a little research can easily be done to add some images.

At Kin Tree we are experts in writing up family stories so even if you are only looking for some advice or guidance, please get in touch for a chat.

For more information on researching  and writing about your family tree:

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Why Cross Referencing Is Important

OK, we are going to say it.... Some family research is not exciting!  However, we are going to qualify that by saying, the bits that might seem less fun can actually turn out to be the most exciting as they can solve a few puzzles.

The bits that can seem less exciting are often when you need to write down all your facts and cross reference them.  It can be, for example that you have all the birth, marriage and death records for a couple and have found all their children too.  You may have also checked some census records and they always seem to live in the same place.  It may seem pointless to write down the details from every census but it can be remarkable what you find.

This can be particularly helpful where there has been some unclear handwriting on a record.  Perhaps a name that is unclear on one record shows up more legibly in another. This can be of particular importance when it is pre statutory BMD records.  There can be little information on church records, especially about women.  Maybe you have recorded a marriage and the woman's mother's name is not clear.  you take a stab at it but without an accurate name, you can look no further for records. At another time, you record a census record where an unexpected name turns up.  By cross referencing, you can check if it relates to the name that was unclear.  Even thought the census record should record the relationship with the head of the household, it is very common for these to be recorded incorrectly or even transcribed incorrectly. 

It is not simply handwriting that is a good reason for cross referencing. One one occasion, we had a census record where a child's birth was recorded.  Before the census, the child's father had died.  We had not found a record of his death but his widow had remarried and had noted that she was a widow on her new marriage certificate.  Later, we had tracked down her late husband's death (he had died abroad) and through cross checking, we realised that he could not be the father of the last child as he was dead before this child could be conceived.  We had not looked further into this child's birth at this stage as it was the sibling of the ancestors that we were researching.  It turned out to be an interesting story, if sad.  The child had been born in the poorhouse but through these records, we were able to piece what had happened to the family after the father's death.  Only by cross referencing all the information on this family were we able to piece this story together fully.

For more information on researching your family tree:

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Keep Asking Those Family Members!

Every family tree begins with the information that you already know and normally the next step is to ask other family members for details.  Once you have these then it may seem like you will have exhausted your family's knowledge but nothing could be further from the truth.

At the start, we tend to ask for names and dates of birth, marriages and deaths.  If our relatives have documents or photos this is great too and most are happy to allow copies to be made.

People often think they are giving you everything they have but will later find, when clearing out a box or things in the loft, that they have all sorts of other items that can help to build your family's story.

There is normally someone in the family that is good at keeping family information so ask in your family about who is normally the best source of information. However ask everybody for information as everyone has their own experiences and knowledge that is unique to them. If anyone in the family passes away then sensitively ask if you could look at any family information that is found if a family member is going through paperwork, photographs or other items.

Old letters, diaries, address books, jewellery and medals are common finds from a clear out of a loft when a family is moving home or simply having a tidy up.  Sometimes there will be more unusual items too. All these items can help to build the details of your ancestors.  At Kn Tree we are expert in explaining the significance of objects from the everyday to the unusual and what they tell us about your family.

In amongst this treasure trove, it is also common to find more documents such as certificates also.  These things are often stored away carefully but are also often forgotten about until they are unearthed for some other reason.  So it is good to ask your relatives to remember your family tree research if they later come across anything related to your ancestors.

Older relatives are good sources of information on family life and other information however people often remark that these relatives can be reluctant to talk or have seemed to have forgotten any details.  Sometimes there may have been a family rift or an event and they do not want to discuss it or anything in relation to it. Never press on a particular issue but of course, it can also be that you do not know of an issue so don't know there may be a sensitive point.  

There are ways to chat though where you will not be stepping on toes and this can help with those relatives that are simply not great conversationalists too!

Try to avoid the type of question which makes it easy to say yes or no.  For example, do not ask

Did you like school?

Instead, you could ask

What was school like when you were there?

Similarly, if you want to know more about home life then a question asking about home life might not get much of a response if it was not happy or they are someone who is not much of a talker but by saying

What was it like in your neighbourhood when you were growing up?

This can be a great starting point to find out more about family life.  The social history of a family brings it to life more than simple names and dates. 

For more information on unearthing family treasures and talking to family members :

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How Social Media Can Help Your Family Tree Research

Social media can help you in your family tree research  in a number of ways. 

1. Keeping You Up-To-Date

Genealogy sites such as Kin Tree, Ancestry and Find My Past have Facebook and Twitter pages along with blogs where you can keep abreast of all the latests news.  Even if you don't use them for anything else, it's worth checking these out and connecting with their pages t make sure that you don't miss out.

2.Tracking Down Living Relations

If you have an idea of where an unknown relative is based then a search on social media can be very fruitful. It also has the advantage of allowing them to check you out and to see you are a genuine person and not a scammer.

3. Surname Groups

Social media is full of groups who share the same surname.  This can be helpful in a number of ways.  Firstly, you can find out about the surname and where people are located in the world. Secondly, you may find a family connection. Lastly, other people researching the same surname may be able to give you pointers or have information on the family name that is useful to you.

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4. Historical and Geographical Groups

There are many social media pages out there who are interested in events or places with which your ancestors were connected.  most are friendly and helpful and can fill you in on details that you may not have found anywhere else.

5. Answering questions

Try putting in a search on Twitter for example, for something for which you have questions. In this example (below) the phrase "Seaforth Highlanders" was used and below gives you a flavour of the results.  You can select to look for people called "Seaforth Highlanders", where the phrase is used (as we did) or to look for images.

Bonnie Saunders ‏@Glasstreasures21 Sep

Here is today's feature for you. This is The Seaforth Highlanders Badge Plate. I hope you all enjoy and... http://fb.me/2s3HTQSFK 

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•  Reply 
•  Retweet 
•  Favorite 

We Are The Dead ‏@WeAreTheDead20 Sep

Pte. Eric Oswald Cleugh (Seaforth Highlanders of Canada). Dec. 27, 1942.

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Valour and Gallantry ‏@VC_GC3 Sep

VC: Lance Corporal Robert McBeath (Seaforth Highlanders) First World War http://bit.ly/Xy46jh  #VC

Retweeted by ScotsMilitaryHistory

6. Ask A Community

There are many social media communities out there or a variety of topics where you can simply ask a question.  People are generous with their help and will be glad to help you find information or point you in the right direction.

At Kin Tree, we are experts in the use of social media so please don't hesitate to contact us for more information.

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