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  • Ag Lab

    Hello, I don't know if this is the right forum for this, but, I have just been listening to the ABC ( Australia ) and a rep from ancestry.au has just been on the airwaves., and told us all that in the census Ag Lab is an euphuism for peasant. As I have more Ag Labs than you can poke a stick at in my tree,as do most of us, I thought it was funny ;)
    Sheila
    I think, therefore I am. Descarte

  • #2
    Got plenty of them, too, Sheila . But a peasant was an ag. lab...what's the problem?

    Beverley



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    • #3
      Mind you, some described as ag labs were actually members of the farmer's family, so not peasants!
      KiteRunner

      Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good... laugh"
      (Indigo Girls, "Watershed")

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      • #4
        My hubby refers to me coming from sturdy peasant stock :D due to the arge numbers of Ag labs in my tree. He on the other hand hasn't got an Ag Lab in sight and I have made it my lifes mission to find one for him ;)

        Nothing wrong at all with being a peasant.
        Helen
        Support the S.O.P.H.I.E. campaign, Stamp Out Predudice Hatred + Intolerance Everywhere.

        Visit the website at http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com/index1.html

        http://www.illamasqua.com/about/sophie/

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        • #5
          I guess it all depends on how you define a peasant. All peasants were engaged in agricultural labour....not all agricultural labourers were peasants. From what I understand....and I am very willing to be corrected...... peasants had a tie with a particular tract of land...either as freemen or as serfs, whereas an ag. lab could just as easily have been part of a mobile work force. Or as Kite suggests, a member of the farmer's family.

          I have a number of Wiltshire ag labs who alternated as stone masons and quarry workers....I don't think they would qualify as peasants.

          It is not necessarily a derogatory term, although it was often used that way

          Beverley



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          • #6
            Nothing wrong with ag labs. I have loads in my tree. In fact as 80% of population of the UK were working on the land until approx 1850's that means that most of us are descendants of this very important field of work. after all if it were not for the Ag Lab most of us would have starved to death!

            However, If you really research into your family tree, you will no doubt find that going further back that many of your ag labs were molecatchers, bailiffs, gamekeepers, farmers and families of farmers as well as other now long forgotten occupations.

            I would also suggest that "peasant" is not a word usually used in the UK language unless you are referring to the real peasants back in the Middle Ages who were subject to serfdom. However, the term "peasant" can be used as slang meaning a person who is just not like others, for want of a better way of putting it, and this would be classed as a term of abuse of another person and could be connected to any occupation that might be seen as lowly in another person's eyes, and after all we might want to call our bankers "peasants" at this present time!!!

            Have you not seen the "Ode to the Ag Lab"? Powerful stuff if you have not read it.

            Janet
            Last edited by Janet; 08-10-08, 14:27.

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            • #7
              Here you go for all those who have not seen the following about our Ag Labs and apologies to those who are already in the know!

              I found the following in the Liverpool Family History Magazine June 02 and it puts 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!:D

              '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
              Last edited by Janet; 08-10-08, 14:27.

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              • #8
                The reason I thought it funny, was because one of mine on the 1841/1851 census was a farmer then in 1861 census he was a Ag Lab, but lo and behold on the 1871 census he was a Farmer again. Times change . On this birth certificate Daniel's father was a Blacksmith, and in the end so was Daniel Ag Lab's that's pushing it

                Sheila
                I think, therefore I am. Descarte

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                • #9
                  I have an ancestor who is described as an ag lab on one census. He OWNED the 500 acre farm where he had lived for decades!

                  If it is a euphemism for anything, ag lab is a euphemism for worker on the land!

                  (I do get annoyed when this kind of inaccuracy is broadcast as fact.)

                  OC

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                  • #10
                    Most of my lot were ag labs. Occasionally one or other would be dignified with a more specific title, such as husbandman, game keeper or oxman.

                    They graduated through better transport and education into town jobs and became footmen, butlers, lodging house keepers, policemen etc.

                    But both my grandfathers had their roots firmly in the farming tradition of the rural communities they were born in. Angus was a blacksmith - though in his life he also worked as a shoe repairer and a chauffeur. Jeuel was a labourer before working in a brewery, a distillery and then as a photographic artist before he opened a picture framer's shop.
                    ~ with love from Little Nell~
                    Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                    • #11
                      Thankyou Janet for the article on Ag Labs.
                      I have printed it out and popped it in my family history folder along with my own Ag Labs.
                      I knew they worked long hours in varying weather, but hadn't realised just how 'cluey' they were.
                      Val

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                      • #12
                        I would also like to add that if you had a big farm then you would want a Blacksmith close by to shoe all your horses and do all those jobs that a Blacksmith would do for farmers, and the jobs were many, though most are now lost in the history of time. This is why practically every village had its Blacksmith. I have Blacksmiths in both Ireland and Scotland, though have not yet found any in my English Roots, which I have found surprising. I am sure that one day they will surface.

                        I am proud of all my tradespeople throughout the ages and I do think that it is a pity that the whole world has lost this affection for trades and industry, which did so much to give us all the wealth that we now possess .....er or not!

                        Tradespeople of whatever occupation have probably left the most comprehensive records that can be found, well outside the real wealthy!! I have hundreds of Kellys Directory references to all trades and have Gamekeepers Licences, Bailifffs Documents, Apprenticeship Records of all descriptions as well as Poor Law Records of every kind from Bastardy Bonds to Settlement Certs, so I have been able to build up comprehensive pictures of my Ag Lab ancestors. Even some of their wills are fascinating, not much money to leave, but fasinating documents of the minutiae of the Social History of their times.

                        Like OC, it rather irritates me when people go off at a tangent talking about Ag Labs on a census and trying to make out it is a euphemism for the word "peasant".

                        Conversely, I have found that many Irish people who emigrated called themselves "farmers", instead of Agricultural Labourers. because they thought that would sound better in their new country of adoption! However, from Ireland few would be farmers, and most would be Ag Labs because until about 1920 most Irish farms were rented from the landowner not owned! So the most they could possibly be would be Tenant Farmers, which is still very different from being a Farmer, and most tenant farmers stayed in Ireland. All the Landowners stayed. It was their offspring that left for better climes after having been RENTED a few feet of barren ground to "farm". This gave them the right to call themselves farmers! Do you know "Spin" is not a new invention!

                        Val

                        I am pleased you found the Ag Lab Ode useful. If it just converts one person each time I produce it, then that makes me happy for all Ag Labs everywhere.

                        Janet
                        Last edited by Janet; 09-10-08, 11:08.

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                        • #13
                          I have always assumed that "peasant", as a word, was rooted in the French word "paysan(ne)" - meaning (as I understand it) someone of the "pays"/countryside. As such it was a pretty neutral word - except that it implied practical skills and solid worth. Not particularly glamorous, but seriously useful!

                          Christine
                          Researching: BENNETT (Leics/Birmingham-ish) - incl. Leonard BENNETT in Detroit & Florida ; WARR/WOR, STRATFORD & GARDNER/GARNAR (Oxon); CHRISTMAS, RUSSELL, PAFOOT/PAFFORD (Hants); BIGWOOD, HAYLER/HAILOR (Sussex); LANCASTER (Beds, Berks, Wilts) - plus - COCKS (Spitalfields, Liverpool, Plymouth); RUSE/ROWSE, TREMEER, WADLIN(G)/WADLETON (Devonport, E Cornwall); GOULD (S Devon); CHAPMAN, HALL/HOLE, HORN (N Devon); BARRON, SCANTLEBURY (Mevagissey)...

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                          • #14
                            Have just been doing a Crossword with a clue: Medieval workers on the land''
                            .....and Peasants is the answer :D
                            Dorothy G

                            searching Gillett (Preston/Sheffield). Campbell and Hepburn in Glasgow

                            There's no such thing as a Free Lunch

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