C is for Community: A-Z Challenge 2020

My Theme

Family History Meets Local History - 

Sources and Stories from England & Scotland  

C is for COMMUNITY  - at the heart of my family history and local  history theme, when we come to look at where our ancestors lived.   Resources abound  to give us a sense of place, including:

• Census returns 
• Valuation returns   
• Local history books and maps 
• Local libraries, historical societies and archive centres - with their associated web sites and blogs.
• Local newspapers
• Following the ancestral trail and making a visit. 

So Find Out:

• What kind of community was your ancestral home?  Rural, industrial,, coastal, mountainous, isolated?  What was its population and its social structure. 
• Who were neighbours?  Look beyond the census page listing for your  ancestor  to see who was living round about  - were they all in the same occuaption e.g. miners, millworkers?  Were other family members close by?
• What were the chief occupations?
• Where did your ancestors  go to school? 
• Where did they worship?  
• How might they have spent their limited leisure time?
• How did they travel around? 
• What key events might they have witnessed - national and local? 
• What about local legends, local songs, local food & drink, local worthies?

 

St. Chad's Church in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire in springtime with its carpet of crocuses. The church is at the centre of my family history - where my mother's Danson family were baptised, married & buried back to 1736. My parents married here and I was baptised in the  church.     A photograph taken by my Uncle, Harry Rawcliffe Danson.  

I make a point of always including in my family narratives a chapter on the places most connected with them, illustrated with photographs, vintage postcard. maps etc.  On my blog, the page tab "People and Places" gives  a summary of my main  "ancestral home".                                                               
                                                         

My father grew up in Broseley, Shropshire  across the river from the more famous town of Ironbridge,now  a World Heritage site and often described  as the "Cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

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  River Severn flowing between Broseley and Ironbridge
  

   

  
  

  The famous 100 feet span of the Ironbridge, linking Broseley  and Ironbridge, completed in 1779.   My grandfather Albert Ernest Weston had a 35 minute walk (one way), crossing the bridge to Coalbrookdale where he worked in the power station. 

  
  

   

   All Saints Parish Church, Broseley was where my father sang in the  choir  from the age of seven.  Regular reports on church activities  in the local press convey a picture of what Dad could have well been involved in.

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 My mother's family came from Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire - a much older settlement than its more famous neighbour, the seaside resort of  Blackpool.  The Doomsday Book of 1086 recorded three unnamed  churches in the Fylde, one thought to be St. Chad’s and the first documentary evidence comes from a deed of 1094.  Registers date from1591 and the oldest part of the present church,  the Tower dates from before 1638.Danson ancestors back to 1736 were baptised, married and buried there, and my brother and I were baptised  there. 

 

Reminders of the past are visible in the  Market Square, with its market cross, stone slab for selling fish, whipping post, and stocks – and in more recent times the War Memorial with the names of  my great uncles, John and George Danson remembered. 

The only photograph I have of my great grandfather, James Danson  -  the happy bearded figure, posing in the  stocks in the Market Square.   The image bears out comments  from my mother and aunt that "Granny had a difficult time with him". James and Maria had eleven children, (nine surviving infancy) - eight sons and finally one daughter, my great aunt Jennie.  This photograph came from Jennie's collection
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All your work can put your ancestors in a wider context and convey a more rounded  picture of their lives - plus adding  further interest to your own research.  I shall be exploring these issues and their resources in future posts e.g. directories, events,  farming, leisure, newspapers,  occupations, and travel - and much more! 

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Next - onto D for DIRECTORIES