tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1527613590529958801.post6048839258601625062..comments2024-03-21T19:08:05.737-07:00Comments on Genealogy's Star: A Few Interesting Dates for GenealogistsJames Tannerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02989059644120454647noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1527613590529958801.post-36438516528662269032016-04-08T18:56:54.684-07:002016-04-08T18:56:54.684-07:00Your examples of ignorance of our own American his...Your examples of ignorance of our own American history (not to mention history of the countries of our ancestors) match my own experience: at local cultural fairs, none of the children and 95 % of the adults cannot locate Germany or Poland on a map of Europe. Wretched, dismal education results. We do our best at the cultural fairs, but actually get to so few. . . .LJHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00545567121588273476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1527613590529958801.post-69448654195508888782016-04-08T07:31:42.604-07:002016-04-08T07:31:42.604-07:00Well those adults are definitely unforgivably igno...Well those adults are definitely unforgivably ignorant about their country's history. It is one thing not knowing for example what happened to bring Theodore Roosevelt to power. It is quite another not knowing even the approximate date of the bloodiest war in the country's history!<br /><br />Beyond the indictment of the US education system not even one of them knowing until after several prompts the importance of even knowing international history is shown by the US civil war as well. For example if a family in Lancashire suddenly upped sticks and moved somewhere else in the early 1860's then there is a decent chance that the US civil war was to blame. Given Lancashire's dependence on textiles, namely cotton, the US civil war caused a massive supply disruption for the Lancashire cotton mills. That lead to mass unemployment and a period of huge economic disruption for the county. Consequently the mystery family move might be them going somewhere else for better job prospects.<br /><br />That's a much more obscure example of the importance of knowing history as it would be unreasonable to expect someone in the UK to automatically know the dates of the US civil war and its effects on the cotton industry in Lancashire. However it reinforces the importance of general historical knowledge in understanding why our ancestors moved house at a particular time and undertook other actions when they did.<br /><br />I know that in my tree there's one particularly intriguing meeting of a couple that I have not been able to figure out. In the 1851 census they were living as "man and wife" in Kingswinford in the Black Country with him aged 22 and her aged 17. However a few weeks later I have their marriage certificate in Dudley. From the later census returns and her father's occupation on the marriage certificate I am pretty sure that I have traced her pre-1851 and from what I can tell she was certainly not 17 at the time of the marriage!<br /><br />If I have the family correctly traced she was 14 at the time of her marriage which would have been legal at the time with parental consent but exceedingly unusual. It doesn't appear to have been a shotgun wedding because so far as I am aware they were married in May 1851 and the first child was born in March 1852. However it was irregular in pattern because it was near the home of the groom and not near the home of the bride as would have been traditional. That and the 1851 census suggest some kind of elopement in progress.<br /><br />Besides her age at the time of the marriage and the marriage's location, the really intriguing bit is how did a 14 year-old confectioner's daughter from Warwickshire come to meet a miner from the Black Country in the first place? The places they came from are about 35 miles apart. By 1851 railway lines had been built to places within a few miles of where they lived making the journey much more likely than pre-railway. But why did she come to his area or he go to her area or they both go to a third area and end up meeting? In this case I can't think of any local or national historical events which might provide the catalyst for the meeting. However in many similar cases there would be candidate triggering events that a general knowledge of history would suggest.David Newtonnoreply@blogger.com