As family historians, we collect names, dates, and places but too often we fail to look closely at that information. Choose an ancestral family and examine all the information you have gathered. What was the area in which they lived like at the time? Rural, urban, or suburban? Was it an ethnic community? Was it a community of well-to-do professionals or did most of the neighbors list “laborer†as their occupation? How old were the parents when they married? How old were they when they had children? How old were the children when a parent died? If you know the cause of death, was it preceded by a prolonged illness? What impact might the answers to these questions have had on their lives? The implications may also affect the course of your research.
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This is a very exciting and fun thing to do! I’ve started writing biographical sketches for ancestors and so the exercise of looking at the times they lived in is very important. A bonus was that I felt I knew the person by the time I’d placed them in the context of the times.
Sue Edminster