Continuing My Journey Through German Records

By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student I chose Locating Places in Germany  as my second German course from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies  and I am happy I did. This course is packed with information to help you track down where in Germany your ancestor came from and how to locate the records for that location. Module 1 explains some of the pitfalls when trying to identify where in Germany your ancestor came from. It is easy to make a bad assumption. Some towns have the same name as other larger jurisdictions and there might be more than one town with the same name. This makes sense considering we have the same thing here in the United States. There is an Appling, Georgia (town) and an Appling County, Georgia. Appling the town isn’t even in Appling County, it is in Columbia County. I live in Harlem, Georgia, not to be confused with Harlem, New York.  Another thing to consider is the name of the town could have changed when another country took over that area. The borders were constantly changing. To learn more about this consider taking Introduction to German Research for North Americans  which gives a great basic history of Germany and the jurisdictional changes. You can learn more about this course in my previous blog post. Module 2 goes on to explain the different jurisdictional levels and it covers all of the German-speaking areas of Europe. Knowing the political divisions and at which level records are held will save…

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Finishing Up English Occupations

By Shannon Bennett, Student Well, I just finished English: Occupations-Professions and Trades and took the final. Wow, that was all around awesome, but definitely not for the faint of heart. I think I need a couple days to recover so it is a good thing that I have a few days before the next one starts! This course really makes me wish I knew more about my UK ancestors. Jumping the pond has not been easy for me. Well, if I am completely honest it’s been nearly impossible. Why do my ancestors not want us to know where they came from?! For those of you lucky enough to live there, or know more details about their ancestors, I can’t recommend this course enough. You should seriously consider taking it particularly if you have run into brick walls. It gives you great resources to check out for research as well as amazing information on social history and what different occupations were. My most recent UK ancestor immigrated to the US in 1820. Before that it was a steady stream all the way back to the Mayflower. My husband on the other hand has a much closer ancestor. His great-grandmother and her family immigrated to New York from Ystradyfodwg, Glamorgan, Wales in 1882. Even better, his mother shared stories with us that her grandmother told us about growing up there.  Elizabeth Pittard immigrated at the age of 14 and she had amazing stories about her father working in a coal mine. I…

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The Professions

By Shannon Bennett, Student Modules 4-8 of English: Occupations–Professions and Trades covers a wide variety of different occupations, laws and rules associated with them, plus lots of little bits of information that I think I digested. Once again, I stuffed information in my head and hoped that the sponge took it all in. In the future I see using this course as a great reference book when I track down English ancestors! Instead of doing an overview of the modules, I thought I would pick out a couple of occupations that I found interesting. I hope you do too because the instructor did an excellent job of presenting the information on each of them. Needless to say, it was hard to whittle it down to just a few to talk about. Domestic Service We know that from early days most women had responsibilities to the family and home. Yes, many did work side-by-side with their husbands or family members be it in stores or in the fields, but women’s work was defined by society.They were responsible for feeding and clothing the family in addition to any paid work they did outside of the home. Then with the Compulsory Education Acts of 1870 and 1880 women were better situated for different and better paying jobs, not just those of laundress, spinner, or cook. Dr. Penelope Christensen tells us that in the 1851 census, “servant” was the second most common occupation, after agricultural laborer, in England. I was enthralled reading about the…

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An Apprentice in the Family

By Shannon Bennett, Student In English: Occupations – Professions and Trades, Module 2  we jumped right in and learned quite a bit about the apprentice system in England. Wow, that was a lot of interesting, new, and eye opening information for me. I think I will continue to process it for a while. I knew from history books that the apprentice system was complicated and long running but I really didn’t understand all the nuances that were involved.  Learning all the laws helped me understand what the changes were then and how they could affect what I found from a genealogical perspective. In fact, I did not know that there were three kinds of apprenticeship: trade, poor, and charity. Each of those categories had different rules and regulations as well. Plus, depending on which your ancestor fell under could determine what information would be available to you and where you could find it. That’s right, nothing can be easy can it?! What really struck me was the amount of potential genealogical information that is out there. If you knew that your ancestor worked an occupation that would require apprenticeship you could be in luck with the family knowledge you could uncover. It makes me want to go look a little harder for those papers that could be out there about my family! For instance, if you had an ancestor who was a trade apprentice you could potentially learn the following information about them from register books: Name and age of…

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Learning More About English Occupations

By Shannon Bennett, Student Many of my and my husband’s family come from England. Lots. Lots and lots. Did I say quite a few?  Well, needless to say I am intrigued by the records that are over there but at times I do not understand exactly what is being said. We sort of speak the same language. I am sure some of you can relate. Even here in the US our words have evolved over time. For example I had an ancestor who was a paperhanger. What in the world did that mean?  After I researched it I learned he hung wallpaper (in addition to painting houses and odd stints as a carpenter). It occurred to me that as I delved deeper into various records across the pond that I might come into more and more occupations that I didn’t quite understand, let alone understand the way the labor system was set up there. Thankfully there is a course I can take through The National Institute to help me learn all about this side of genealogy. My next course is English: Occupations. Professions and Trades by Dr. Penelope Christensen.  I have to say it looks intriguing!  Looking over the syllabus it really looks like it is going to cover a wide range of information across a variety of fields. Most of our family ancestors were farmers or miners with a couple who were merchants or had a trade. While none of them were professionals, I think it will be interesting…

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