Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Agricultaural Labourers

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Agricultaural Labourers

    How many of us put our head in our hands and sigh in dismay when we find an ag lab in our family tree? I know I did when every single direct line decendant for 5 generations was an ag lab.

    A new book has been launched by the SOG to combat the Ag Lab blues... well worth buying.
    Last edited by Guest; 08-12-07, 10:59. Reason: contravened advertising guidelines

  • #2
    I love my ag labs. They are so much easier to trace than my wealthy lot.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Harrys mum View Post
      I love my ag labs. They are so much easier to trace than my wealthy lot.
      That's so true!
      You know where you are with Agri Labs.
      Ok, they might promoted to horseman or cowman etc, and they might move to the next village, but they didn't call their kids soppy, guaranteed-to-be-mistranscribed names and they invariably married a nice girl from their own village - so much easier to trace!

      Comment


      • #4
        What went wrong with my Ag Labs then?
        They either went off & joined the army or followed the railways to London. I got the shock of my life when I found my Londoners were actually from Yorkshire & Notts! :D

        Go to the Family History Quests website to see a premise of this new booklet from the SOG.
        Vivienne passed away July 2013

        Comment


        • #5
          I hope you do not mind me resurrecting this one from GR that I put there a couple of years ago.

          In the Liverpool Family History Magazine June 02 I found the following about Ag Labs and it did put a different slant on my Ag labs, even though many went into the Army and "escaped" to London. I felt that it put a very different slant on our Ag Labs. They are the salt of the Earth and we should all be proud of them! I know I am!

          'Food For Thought - He must have been an Ag Lab '

          'Ask yourselves whether you know the gestation period for a sheep or a cow, and you can't read or write to make a note of it. The ag lab knew when the animal would calve by observing the position of the stars and work it out from that, or from the particular religious festivals being celebrated in church at the appropriate times.

          Reading and writing is one thing, but it wasn't necessary. Numeracy, however, or a limited knowledge of it, was essential so as to count his or his master’s livestock and his own money and to tell the time. It was no good thinking that 7 o'clock came immediately
          after three bells had just struck on the church clock!

          There was no electricity, the lanes were bad and there was no health
          service. The Ag lab knew how to make his own rush lights to light his home, the shortest and driest route between 2 places and which herbs to pick as remedies for his families' ailments. He knew his neighbours far better than we know ours. We isolate ourselves in our cars and in front of our television sets. He relied on neighbours with different skills from his, to help him out when the need arose. He was thrifty where we borrow on bits of plastic he and his family had to make ends meet regardless or with great shame go on the parish.

          Yes, he could even forecast his local weather by watching the reactions of wildlife and plants to changing conditions. He was far better at it than any of us from our centrally heated homes and offices. He knew how to thatch and how to get straight straw for thatching whereas we send for experts to fix a cracked slate.

          He was tough. He could walk for days behind a plough, pulled by a team of horses, and still walk miles to church each Sunday. A 20 mile walk, laden with produce or purchases to and from market each week was also the norm for some. No fancily equipped gymnasium for him, yet he was fitter than today's health freaks, who maybe should take a lesson or two from his ancestors.

          Can you use a sickle or scythe from dawn to dusk, in all weathers? Can you snare a rabbit for dinner or cut beanpoles from a hedge in a manner that will promote further growth? Can you mix your own whitewash, or train a dog to hunt or round up sheep for you? Come to that can you milk a cow or slaughter and butcher a sheep or pig?

          So-called ag labs were no fools. They survived and very few of us would be here to read this if they hadn't!

          Leave your car at home and walk to work tomorrow, even if it is five miles, your ancestor did!'


          Janet

          Comment


          • #6
            I don't see what is so bad about ag labs - they provided the country with food to keep us going (we didn't have to import stuff we could grow here). Many of mine lived to their 80s and beyond, so it certainly was better than working in a factory.

            As stated above, they tended to stay in their own village or maybe the one next to it and are relatively easy to trace.
            ~ with love from Little Nell~
            Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

            Comment


            • #7
              And your humble ag lab can even throw you a massive surprise now and then!

              I've told this before, but my humble ag lab Wade Stubbs disappeared, dead I presumed, and it was years before I was bored enough to try to find his death. Couldn't, and finally as an act of desperation, googled his name.

              Well! He had been left a fortune by an unmarried uncle,(of the same name) who had vast estates in the Turks and Caicos Islands and he had hot-footed it out there with his family, to enjoy his new found riches.

              The museum on Caicos is made up of largely Wade Stubbs items, including church registers, estate "doings", lists of slaves etc, and I have been able to extend this side of the family by at least 200 people.

              OC

              Comment


              • #8
                My family on both sides have many Ag Labs. I love to think of them back then out in the fields hard at work but free of a poor dirty city. Enjoy life my lot must have,they made a lot of children all surviving into adulthood!!
                One branch did find their way to London on the railways. My grt grandad wanted to work with horses as did his father. Back then horses were used on the railway and thats how he ended up there.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Most of my ag labs passed on the numerous skills they learned (for example they would have been involved with constructing simple walls/fences, aiding and abetting the local blacksmith a times) to their descendants. These descendants tended to go into self employment (one such chap became a blacksmith/whitesmith/heating engineer and bell hanger according to directories for 1881, 1883 and beyond).

                  It is only after the outbreak of WW1 that the military side of things really started and weird and wonderful combinations of names emerged and lots of distant far flung places appear.


                  I could go on and try to make OC envious, my son of an ag lab who joined the army, became a brigadier, gained the DSO and earned an OBE was discovered just this week. Better get some more detail first though!!
                  Last edited by Glen in Tinsel Knickers; 08-12-07, 16:35.
                  http://www.flickr.com/photos/50125734@N06/

                  Joseph Goulson 1701-1780
                  My sledging hammer lies declined, my bellows too have lost their wind
                  My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd, and in the dust my vice is laid

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Am I the only person without an AgLab?...I'm feeling quite left out,;)
                    Sue

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I have loads Sue, :D what can you swap me one for? :D:D

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        A lot of mine were Ag Labs or stonewall builders up in Yorkshire. Some weren't that easy to trace though as quite a few went off to Australia or Canada, so they didn't all stay put in their villages.
                        Stella passed away December 2014

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Some of my Ag Labs emigrated to NSW in the period 1839 to 1845 and most became farmers/ pioneers. One very enterprising AL great grandfather left his native Colchester, became a seaman and eventually arrived in Sydney about 1872. Somewhere along the way he became literate, worked as a journalist and became a politician in NSW government. During his political career he tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce a temperance bill banning alcohol. He also authored various articles and a book about the Temperance Movement and the Good Templars.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Actually my family show the changes in economic history - they are nearly all ag labs in 1841 and 1851 and then begin to move to towns, chiefly London, to do other jobs. In Norfolk 4 of my gt uncles joined the Metropolitan Police and one the City of London police. This shows the decline in agricultural work and the opportunities opened up through being literate.

                            Meanwhile, husband's Welsh lot, whom I'd foolishly imagined would be sheep minders (!) were all in the heavily industrialised South Wales area, working as miners, and as iron/tin works labourers (including the women, who only stopped to drop another baby).
                            ~ with love from Little Nell~
                            Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              A lot of my family were Ag lab and a few still are, Even me for a few years had our own animals, grew our own food and really enjoyed the life.
                              Must stop there, making myself miserable as I now work in a supermarket:(


                              Have you booked your holidays yet ?
                              Why not come to Norfolk we have some great churches for you to photograph



                              Shake my family tree and watch the nuts fall.


                              Looking for Druce-Berkshire. Auvache , James, Hughes - London. Turp - Essex. Dipple, - Herefordshire.

                              Regional Co ordinator Eastern Region

                              Comment


                              • #16
                                I'v got Ag:labourers in both sides of my tree, and 1 or 2 blacksmiths as well , it answers the question as to where our son got his size and strengh from LOL
                                Sheila
                                P S and the dratted Butler
                                I think, therefore I am. Descarte

                                Comment


                                • #17
                                  One of my Ag lab ancestors died in the late 1820s at the age of 68, after falling off a wagon-load of hay! No pensions back then. Obviously a case of keep working, 'til you drop.


                                  Helen
                                  Helen

                                  http://www.familytreeforum.com/wiki/...enSmithToo-296

                                  Comment


                                  • #18
                                    Originally posted by bev&kev View Post
                                    That's so true!
                                    You know where you are with Agri Labs.
                                    Ok, they might promoted to horseman or cowman etc, and they might move to the next village, but they didn't call their kids soppy, guaranteed-to-be-mistranscribed names and they invariably married a nice girl from their own village - so much easier to trace!
                                    I don't know Bev, mine called theirs names like Theophilia (which is spelt differently every time I find it recorded), Philadelphia, Luna and Keziah.

                                    Comment


                                    • #19
                                      Blimey Velma!!!
                                      Did your Agri Labs have ideas above their station perhaps, lol
                                      Luna ......?? New Age , early hippy Agri Labs???

                                      Comment


                                      • #20
                                        Originally posted by Velma Dinkley View Post
                                        I don't know Bev, mine called theirs names like Theophilia (which is spelt differently every time I find it recorded), Philadelphia, Luna and Keziah.
                                        What accent? I'm thinking that maybe Luna was Lorna.....?

                                        Comment

                                        Working...
                                        X