Discovering More About Your Agricultural Labouring Ancestors (242)

This course might have been called "Finding your Agricultural Labouring Ancestors" but few genealogists have any difficulty discovering ag labs on their family tree. They jump out from census returns, certificates and parish registers with unfailing regularity. Agricultural labourers are not all the same. The labourer on sheep farm in Northumberland led a very different life from someone who worked on an arable farm in Lincolnshire, or a fruit farm in Kent. This course helps to set Ag. Labs. in a broader context and suggests sources that will reveal more about the lives of those rural ancestors and the farms on which they worked. The focus is on British farming from 1700-1950.

Students will work towards compiling a case study of a chosen agricultural labouring ancestors during the course. The course is mostly focussed on research in England and Wales but also includes many Scottish resources.

Aim: To enable students to find out more about their agricultural labouring ancestors, to set them in a broader context and to use a range of sources to find out more about their lives.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course students will be able to:

• understand some of the key developments in the history of British agriculture over the past three hundred years.
• use a variety of sources that might help to identify and find out more about, the farm upon which your ancestors worked.
• access sources that will help you to better understand your agricultural labouring ancestors and the land that they worked.
• describe your ancestors' daily and seasonal life.
• understand your ancestors' working and living conditions.
• describe some of the hazards that faced those working on the land.
• compile a case study for an agricultural labouring ancestor.

Reading List:

Students often ask us for recommended reading for their courses, that they can look at before the course starts. Here is a suggested book list for this course.