Researching an ancestor’s business and occupation is a key part of genealogical research and investigating one’s family history. Discovering what a great-great-grandfather or grandmother worked as will always be of interest in and of itself to someone investigating their family history, but beyond this a lot of ancillary information can be gleaned from learning their occupation. For instance, if they owned a business of some kind or were a leading merchant in a town it will reveal that they came from a fairly high socio-economic class. That said, determining this kind of information can often be more difficult than identifying when and where a person was born, which kind of information is much more accessible through church records or records of civil registration. Yet, with a bit of perseverance such records can be found, particularly so if an ancestor hailed from a city or town where many municipal records are extant for.[1]
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The benefits of researching occupational history
There is considerable value in trying to determine the occupation that an ancestor might have had or if they owned a business. Firstly, this information is revelatory in and of itself. It also points can reveal all manner of other things concerning a person. For instance, determining what a person worked at provides a range of other information about their socio-economic status and what kind of material life they and their family might have enjoyed. If their exact place of residence is unclear, but their occupation can be determined, the latter information can provide clues as to the former. A farmer, for instance, almost certainly would have lived in the countryside, whereas a factory worker in the nineteenth century, prior to the twentieth-century flight to the suburbs, would have lived fairly centrally within a city or town. If a person worked as a lawyer in the late nineteenth century then they would potentially have been of a high enough socio-economic group that they could have had their home connected to the electricity grids that were beginning to appear in large cities from the 1870s onwards. Determining what a person worked as in times gone by reveals far more than just what their profession was.[2]
Difficulties in researching an ancestor's occupation
While it will always be of interest to any family historian or genealogist to determine what kind of work an ancestor did or if they ran a business of their own, there are also a lot of difficulties involved in doing this. Specifically, the kind of research involved can be difficult to carry out, much more so than discovering some of the other key information involved in genealogical research. Generally speaking, it is somewhat straight-forward to carry out genealogical research on when an ancestor might have been born, where they lived, if they got married and who to, and if they had children, and when they died. This kind of material is generally found in records that are the bread and butter of genealogical research, namely religious records and civil records. A birth cert, whether it is one produced by a church prior to the nineteenth century or one that was government produced after civil registrations were introduced in the nineteenth century, will, for instance, give the details of when someone was born. The same applies for marriage records, death records, etc. Censuses will augment this type of research. And one will typically find records of this kind in the obvious locations: national libraries and archives, county records’ office, ecclesiastical archives, and so forth.[3]
The same cannot be said for looking for information on an ancestor’s occupation or business. The records that might be available for this are much more hit and miss, and also more idiosyncratic for different countries, regions, cities and even villages. Very often one will need a much more in-depth knowledge of municipal records and economic records in order to know where to look. Moreover, there is no guarantee that a person will be able to find the information they are looking for. However, don’t be dissuaded. There are clear ways of going about this. For instance, if a person lived in a city or large town, then a good place to start will be the archives section of the local city library. These will typically have records pertaining to local businesses or lists of freemen of the city or town. Larger cities might even have city and business directories[4]
Depending on what time period the ancestor that is being research lived in national censuses might well have the information that is needed. Over time censuses have become more and more detailed, requiring people to fill in details of their occupation or if they own a business. This can become much more tenuous the further back in time you go, and of course if you go back before the nineteenth century, and certainly before the mid-eighteenth century, there are no national censuses available.[5]
In countries where there are very few census records available for the nineteenth century, an alternative source of information are newspaper records, which often contain advertisements indicating who in the town worked as a seamstress, tailor, grocer, publican and so forth. Again, though, these are only really of utility from the 1820s and 1830s when people began advertising their services in newspapers in large numbers. As such, if you are looking to discover the occupation of an ancestor in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, you will need to be tenacious, but it is possible with persistence to find records that will reveal this information, particularly so if the person lived in a city or town where municipal records were more common.[6]
Case study of a London ancestor
To illustrate all of this, consider the case of someone who might know that an ancestor lived in London in the eighteenth century, but not much else besides. The first modern, national census in Britain was only carried out in 1841. Therefore these are not applicable for determining the occupation of an eighteenth-century Londoner. Similarly, while newspapers proliferated in the eighteenth century, they didn’t yet contain a large amount of advertising.
Luckily, however, London is a city with some of the best historical municipal records of any city in the world. The city’s corporation, for instance, kept records of freemen and aldermen of the city, ones which might contain details of an ancestor’s occupation. There were also over 70 livery companies or guilds in London by the eighteenth century and these regulated the activities of all manner of tradespeople all across the English capital, be they clothworkers, fishmongers and goldsmiths to playing-card makers and the manufacturers of fans. These companies were some of the great municipal record-keepers of early modern times and kept extensive lists of members which can reveal much about the people of London and what they worked at going back centuries.[7]
Beyond these a wide range of other municipal records for London can reveal details about an ancestor’s occupation or a business he or she might have owned. For instance, documents were produced by the city corporation when fires occurred so that insurance claims could be settled, while charity records are often of use in this instance as well. All of these records will be found in a range of archives in central London, namely London Metropolitan Archives,[8] the Guildhall Library[9] and the archives of the individual livery companies located in the streets of the old City of London on the north side of the River Thames.[10] This is just one example of how an ancestor’s occupation can be researched in a major city. Wherever an ancestor came from, while the records available might not be as extensive as the English capital, there will always be avenues to investigate.
See also
Explore more about occupational history
- U.S. City Directories records collection on MyHeritage
- Australia, Business Register records collection on MyHeritage
- New York City, Department of Buildings Job Applications records collection on MyHeritage
- English Occupation, Apprenticeship and Guild Records at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Foundations of Irish Genealogy 12: Occupational Records at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.thoughtco.com/discovering-the-occupations-of-your-ancestors-1422324
- ↑ F. Musgrove, ‘Middle-Class Education and Employment in the Nineteenth Century’, in The Economic History Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1959), pp. 99–111.
- ↑ https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2019/03/finding-your-ancestors-occupation
- ↑ https://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/73267?lang=en
- ↑ https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/census-records/
- ↑ https://blog.newspapers.com/telling-your-ancestors-life-story-with-newspapers/
- ↑ https://www.londonroll.org/
- ↑ https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/history-and-heritage/london-metropolitan-archives
- ↑ https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/history-and-heritage/guildhall-library
- ↑ https://search.lma.gov.uk/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/RESEARCH_GUIDES/web_detail_rg/SISN+85?SESSIONSEARCH