F is a Farmer’s Life - A-Z Challenge 2020

My Theme

 Family History Meets Local History
Sources and Stories from England & Scotland 

Most  of us must count ancestors who worked  in FARMING, whether as farmers, shepherds, hinds, carters, dairy maids, domestic servants  and  ag. labs  -  but how to find out more about their lives? 

My great grandfather, Robert Rawcliffe, was in 1861 a carter in Hambleton, Lancashire.  This old photogaph show a carter in Earlston in the Scottish Borders - an essential occupation in the transporting of goods. 

Realistically records on farming ancestors  are likely to focus on  landed gentry and tenant farmers, rather than their workers.  I live in a rural region and my archive centre has a wealth of information that can provide background on estates,  and life in agricultural communities.  For example:

• Advertisements of sale of stock 
• Auction Mart records
• Border Union Agricultural Society, with records going back to 1813, including minute books, membership lists, lists of prize winners at the annual show which remains today a major event  for the  farming community
• Drawings of farm machinery
• Field name surveys
• Farmers' Club & Pastoral Societies - members lists and minute books
  
• Individual farm records - day books, account books etc. 
• Scottish valuation rolls, published annually from c.1855 are useful in giving the names (head only) of the tenant and occupier of property and give us a picture, for example,  of the size of an estate and the different occupations involved in it management. 
• Local  newspaper reports on sales, hirin fairs, etc. 

You may find such titbits as this - a record from the Border Union Show, noting  that A. S. Pringle won prizes in 1876 in the class of "Implements of Husbandry"  for "a self acting horse rake" and "a turnip topping and tailing machine".   

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Have you come across farming ancestors  in census returns,  where their children were all born in different parishes?  A sure indication that their father had found work through local Hiring Fairs - key events in the farming calendar where men and women  farm workers would gather to bargain with prospective farmers for work, and hopefully secure a position for the following 6-12 months.  Fairs  were reported  regularly in the local press - a key source of information on wages and conditions of service at a  particular time.

Hiring Fairs were also social occasions with a rare opportunity for friends and family to meet and enjoy side shows and stalls, with in Earlston  often all-day dancing in the Corn Exchange, and a chance to take teas in the Masonic Hall or a dram in one of the public houses.  

Hiring Fair in Earlston in  the Scottish Borders, 1909

 Hiring Fairs lost their importance in the First World War and had largely died out by the time of the Second World War, with vacancies  advertise din the local press. 

 

 A typical listing of farming jobs advrtised in "The Southern Reporter":  10th March 1936.  Note that no pay is quoted, and many posts stipupulated, along with the man, a wife to look after cows and poultry and strong boy(s) to assist on the farm.  

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So there is no shortage of  background information available on the kind of life your farming ancestors would be leading.  For instance I have come across in census returns a woman aged 48 described an Ag. Lab. Can you imagine what it must have been like doing hard physical work over many hours  in poor weather?  

Lives for you to reflect in your family history writing