Genealogy - One Reason Why

What could possibly be the draw of researching in old dusty books for names, dates, and places? Yawn! Boring! Right? I thought this when I was in high school and even in college, learning the history of the United States or the state where I was raised and went to college. I thought memorizing random dates, names, places was pointless. Who is going to remember these names, dates, locations anyways?

As you can see from the previous paragraph, I was young and very short-sighted. I started loving history when researching my family tree and learning about them. Many may say Genealogy is about names, dates, and places; this is true. However, for me, Genealogy is more than the basic facts of name, date, and location. Since beginning the journey of learning about my ancestors, I found that understanding what was going on in their lives (history) helps to put flesh on those bones. I have begun to understand them better. For example, I discovered one of my great, great, great grandmothers in the 1881 Census of the United Kingdom was 81 years old, a widow, and was living in a workhouse. I thought, what is a workhouse? I had no idea, so being inquisitive, I went to google and typed in workhouses. I started learning more about them, their purpose, etc...history. During the last year of her life, she was in a workhouse because she was poor, needed assistance, and passed away when she was eighty-one years old. I had deep compassion for this grandmother, living alone without the comforts of her children and grandchildren in the later part of life. 

I have learned to love history as I search census records, birth, marriage, death records as I continue my research. Researching census records can give you a glimpse into their occupation (some of which through research do not exist anymore), whether they owned or rented the residence, and where they lived, among other things. As I continue the genealogical research of my family tree, I love to learn more about their lives and have begun understanding history in a way that is more applicable to my life. Whether this is a function of being older and hopefully wiser is unclear. It may be a combination of both things. Their lives are similar to ours. The more we learn about the history of our ancestors' lives, the better we can understand ourselves and learn from the past. 

If you would like to read more about workhouses, click here and it will take you to my review of workhouses.

The Workhouse

As I have done my own family research, I have learned a great deal about those that have passed on before me. One of my great-great grandmothers Joan Taylor, lived in England in the 1800's. Her life had many challenges. She was married when she turned 21 years of age. Joan and her husband George Storey had 3 children, with the last one being born 2 years prior to the death of her husband. Joan remarried to a Joseph Carman  in 1833 and had 5 more children. Her second husband died at the age of 51 leaving Joan, age 50, with the task to raise the children. As far as I can tell, Joan never remarried. Near the end of her life in 1881 in the Morpeth Northumberland Workhouse. She was alone and without means to support her self and lived the remainder of her life in the Morpeth Northumberland Workhouse.

You may be wondering "What is a workhouse?" Simply put a workhouse was place that was under the jurisdiction of the government or parish, that provided room and board for vagrants and the poor. The workhouses seperated families as soon as they entered into the workhouse. The husband, wife, and/or children were not allowed to speak to each other and could be punished if they tried to communicate. The people that entered into the workhouse were segregated by age and sex. The workhouses provided homes for unwed pregnant women, elderly, or ill people would enter into the workhouse for assistance.

Some of the people that entered into the workhouses were there only for a brief period of  time and others would enter and leave the workhouses several times during their lives.  One such person was the famous actor, Charlie Chaplin. He lived briefly as an inmate of the Lambeth Union workhouse with his mother and siblings. If you would like to learn more about Charlie Chaplin's life in the workhouse system click Workhouse memories and then click on the picture of Charlie Chaplin.  I you would like to the site and learn more about the workhouse system, click on The Workhouse. If you would like to search for your ancestor, click  the Workhouse records.