nic
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Post by nic on Dec 13, 2014 22:33:21 GMT
Pete, I have just seen this thread. I am happy for you to use the photo and would be interested in seeing the book when published. I have photos of some of the other brothers, but they served in the Royal Artillery, not the Salford Pals. Jox, Do get in touch with me if you want to. You can find my email address through my web site. Best wishes, Nic
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Post by prospectroad on Dec 14, 2014 19:46:06 GMT
Nic, brilliant, thank you so much.
If you'd like to put a post about your book we'd be very interested.
Best regards Pete
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nic
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Post by nic on Dec 15, 2014 22:12:31 GMT
Pete,
As requested - I hope this is not too long. Best wishes, Nic
For many years, I researched my family history, finding out details of direct ancestors in both my parents’ families, going back into the seventeenth century. What interested me most was not their names, dates of birth etc, but what I found out about the way in which ordinary people lived.
I wrote up what I learnt about my mother’s family, the Ashtons. This was published by Alan Sutton Publishing in 1995 as English Roots – a family history. My aim was to provide a clear and detailed description of everyday life, from the 1630s until the present day. English Roots examines the social and economic history of those years, as seen through the eyes of ten generations of one family. For over two centuries, the Ashtons lived in hamlets in the Derbyshire Peak District. They were small-scale farmers, but were also engaged in spinning and weaving, and lead mining. In the 1830s, during the Industrial Revolution, they moved to Manchester.
English Roots covers many subjects, starting with Thomas Ashton's service in the Civil War and the persecution of Catholics during the middle of the seventeenth century. Some features, such as the barmote courts, which regulated lead mining, are peculiar to Derbyshire, but many aspects of their everyday existence mirror the lives of the vast majority of ordinary English people through the ages.
Preface to English Roots – a family history, written by Professor David Hey An interest in one's ancestors is a natural human concern, shared by people all over the world and throughout time. Until recently, however, only the pedigrees of the great and the mighty appeared in print. The family histories of ordinary people were passed down orally, and like the published histories of noble and gentry families these accounts were often romanticised without strict regard to the truth.
A great change has occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The establishment of record offices throughout the country, the availability of printed records or transcripts on microfiche or microfilm, the foundation of numerous family history societies, and the chance to join taught courses on how to trace a family tree have made it possible for everyone who is interested to do his or her own research. The romantic myths are soon stripped away as the enquiry proceeds. Instead, a much more satisfying and accurate picture emerges.
Another welcome change is that family historians are no longer content with constructing a family tree. That is merely the starting point of an enquiry into how the various members of one's family lived: what their homes were like, how they earned their living, what their spiritual concerns were, and so on. Such questions naturally lead on to an interest in the local history of the places where they settled. The family historian then wants to know how the story that has been unravelled fits into the general patterns of British social and economic history. How typical, or how unusual, was the family's experience? Such a progression of interest is not simply a one-way process, however, for the findings of family historians, when placed together, are beginning to add a great deal to our knowledge of the past and are influencing the ways that professional historians pursue their research. Family history is part of a movement that approaches history from the viewpoint of ordinary people, rather than from that of those in power.
A few years ago, I expressed the hope that, 'One day we shall have a number of substantial family histories on our shelves, not just the histories of aristocratic and gentry families but of the ordinary men and women who were far more numerous and whose stories are often just as interesting as anyone else's. When that day arrives we shall have a much better understanding of the social and economic history of England.' Nic Madge's book is an important step in that direction. It is concerned with the Ashton family who in the seventeenth century were small farmers in the Peak District of Derbyshire. They first appear in local records at the time of the Civil War, when they were tenants of the Eyres, an ancient and prolific gentry family who were much involved in the lead trade. The family were living in a simple, one-hearth cottage when the hearth tax was levied after the Restoration. One can hardly get more 'ordinary' than that!
Nic Madge makes good use of the sources that are available to family and local historians in the early modern period - parish registers, probate records, tax returns, accounts of the overseers of the poor, etc. He uses these not only to trace his own family, but to place them firmly in an historical context, both locally and nationally. For a few generations the Ashtons moved from one farmhouse or cottage to another within a few miles radius of the place where they were first recorded. In this, they were entirely typical of country-folk in the Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian periods.
The decision made by a member of the family to move to a large industrial town in the first half of the nineteenth century was one taken by many other people at that time. Sometime during the 1820s or 30s Robert Ashton left for Manchester, where he found employment as a house servant. His children were to do better as Manchester's economy flourished. By this time, the records are fuller and photography had been invented, so much more information can be found about working-class families. Nic Madge uses a wide range of sources to good effect. He carries his story into the twentieth century, up to the time of his own memories of his grandparents and their children. He ends with a brief account of the records he has used, with the aim of persuading others to trace the histories of their own 'ordinary families' in this way, against the background of national social history.
The story of the Ashtons is therefore of wider interest than might be supposed, for it demonstrates how a family that for generations had lived in the countryside became urbanised. Life in Victorian Manchester was very different indeed from that in a seventeenth century hamlet, remotely sited in the Peak District.
David Hey Professor of Local and Family History University of Sheffield
Introduction to English Roots – a family history The quest which led to the writing of this book originally started on a Welsh beach, when, as a boy, I asked my parents how I was related to some distant cousins. My parents drew a rough family tree in the sand. My subsequent visits to local record offices initially concentrated on solving the genealogical puzzle of who begat whom and when each person died. As the many, many thousands of people, who have researched their own families can testify, this was an intriguing, not to say obsessive, exercise in detective work. It was however a personal and relatively (in two senses of the word) limited activity.
It proved though to be only the starting point in discovering far more about the way in which ordinary people lived their lives. As I traced back the families of several grandparents and great-grandparents, I found masses of fascinating information, particularly about the Ashtons, my mother's family. English record offices are full of literally tons of documents which, when put together, portray the day to day life of the average English man and woman during the last few centuries. Some of it is very personal information, like the list of cooking implements in the inventory prepared in 1703 and attached to Mary Ashton's will or the threat of a manorial court to fine Robert Ashton in 1706 if he did not remove the midden or dung-hill which he had heaped against the wall of a neighbour's cottage. Other documents, like the Militia Muster Roll prepared in 1639 listing "all the able men for warre" in Derbyshire, or the taxation returns from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, showed more obviously how the family fitted into society as a whole.
For me the most interesting aspects of history are the way in which ordinary people went about their day to day lives, and the way in which the lot of the common people has changed as the years have gone by. Despite the increase of interest in social history, these are subjects about which only a small proportion of authors have written. Historical biographers have understandably written about the famous. Most of the family histories which have been published have described the landed gentry or nobility. There are accounts of poverty and the operation of the Poor Laws, particularly in the nineteenth century, but the mass of the population, who were neither rich nor poor, have largely slipped through the net.
The aim which I set myself in writing English Roots was to recount the social and economic history of the last three hundred and fifty years, as seen through the eyes of one family, who could be taken as being representative of the population as a whole. I wanted to describe the changes in their lives, and the reasons for them, against the background of the transformation which society in general was undergoing. The Ashtons happen to have been my mother's family, but they were typical of the vast majority of English people. In the 1640s the way of life in the English countryside was in many ways far closer to that of medieval times than to that of the modern day. Four-fifths of the English population were tilling the land. The Ashtons were no exception. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were "husbandmen", farming a few acres of land which they rented from the Lord of the Manor, making their own bread and brewing their own beer and living as a largely self-sufficient family unit. In the early nineteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, there was widespread migration from the countryside to the new industrial cities. The Ashtons followed the national trend, moving to Manchester in the late 1820s or early 1830s, and then to the suburbs in the 1920s. Their story is not just a journey though time. It is a journey from a rural hamlet to a vast industrial city. It is also an account of the transformation from a simple self-sufficient way of life to a complex urban economy.
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Post by prospectroad on Dec 17, 2014 23:18:43 GMT
Nic, English Roots sounds fascinating and the idea of gaining a better understanding of our ancestors certainly resonates with me and, I'd guess, will appeal to many others on the forum.
Thanks for sharing.
Best regards Pete
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Post by shred on Apr 30, 2016 13:58:35 GMT
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