Second Cousins Once Removed

Aerin

Aerin

Grey Havens
It's time again for our weekly genealogy thread! This week's theme is "The Daily Lives of our Ancestors." Again, please feel free to post anything of genealogical interest. But I hope many of you will have something to share on this broad (and to me, fascinating) topic.

For me, one of the most interesting things about doing family history research is learning about how different our ancestors' lives were from ours in so many ways, and how rapidly things have changed. Old correspondence and photos shed light on recent generations, and historical records (such as wills and even the census) tell us a lot about earlier generations.

I was reminded of this topic by some posts in the thread started below by Fionnan2 on the effects of technology. In particular, Darkstone reminded us of how our modern technology has changed the face of housework:

"New technology that's supposed to make things easier usually increases one's work load! For example, in the old days one took the carpets out and cleaned them once a year during spring cleaning. Then someone invented the vacuum cleaner and now instead of cleaning the carpets once a year we clean them once a week! .... Similarly, used to people would wear the same clothes all week and then wash them on the weekend. Then someone invented the washing machine and now we wear different clothes every day and wash far more clothes on the washing day than our ancestors ever did. (I won't even mention bed linens.) "

This made me think of old family correspondence in which my great-grandmothers, great-aunts, even aunts, etc., described what they had been up to -- sewing clothing for the family, annually washing the curtains and beating the rugs, cleaning the residue of coal smoke off the walls in the spring, planting and harvesting, canning fruits and vegetables, putting potatoes in the root cellar, raising a brood of chicks, skinning and dressing the rabbits uncle shot, tending the family cemetery.

Other differences have to do with the difficulties of travel, and with isolation and distance. Visiting relatives even in the same county was an expedition, and people often came to stay for a few days, to make it worth the trip. The automobile brought new freedom, but until the roads caught up with the new technology, auto trips could be real adventures! The advent of radio also marked a major change in how people related to the world (in places where there was reception, anyway), and the newfangled phonograph and the moving pictures changed the ways people entertained themselves.

In rural areas (where more than half the U.S. population lived until around 1920), one's circle of friends, acquaintances, and potential mates was quite constricted by today's standards. My own genealogy database contains many examples of two or more brothers in one family marrying two or more sisters in another family -- something much rarer today -- not to mention many marriages among distant cousins (and even a few first cousins). And it was not uncommon for widows or widowers to marry their widowed brothers- or sisters-in-law.

It's interesting to me how the circumstances of daily life affected demographics. Until the 20th century, huge families were the rule -- not just because of the absence of birth control, but because many hands were needed on the farm, and many children did not survive to adulthood. It was the norm for women to start bearing children as soon as they were married (often in their late teens) and to continue having a child every two years or so until they died or were too old to conceive. Many women spent their entire adult lives either pregnant or nursing. Extended families stayed together; the oldest daughter took over "keeping house" when her mother died in childbirth in her 40s; widowers with young children remarried quickly; sons inherited the family farm or their fathers' trades; elderly parents were looked after at home until they died (sometimes by a son or daughter who never married).

I am fortunate to have many letters written by my relatives in the early 1900s. Later this week, I will try to find and post some excerpts that shed light on differences in our ways of life, even within the past century. Please share some of your own stories or observations.
 
I know that for my rural farming family (mother's) the twentieth century brought great changes in technology. My grandfather started out, of course, farming with horses in the early 20th century. He got a car sometime around 1920. He got a tractor in the late 20s or early 30s. My sister (born in 1943) remembers Grandpa's horses, so even if he didn't use them, they were still alive in the late 40s. There was no electricity in the old house. My grandfather built a new house for my grandmother in the late 1930s. This new house had electricity and running water. There was a shower and toilet in the basement; we weren't allowed to use either, but took baths in a tub and used the outhouse. In the 1960s, they put a bathroom on the 2nd floor, but we were only allowed to use it in the middle of the night. The drinking water was still hand-pumped and carried to the house in a bucket. The water for washing was from the cistern which was buried beside the house.

I remember my grandmother canning on her old wood-burning stove, which she saved and put into the basement. She did the laundry in a washer with the rinse tubs that sat along side and had a wringer on top. She didn't have a dryer and so hung her clothes outside in the warmer weather and I suppose in the basement in the winter.

She worked from sun rise to sun set. She had the American schedule of wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday, mend on Wednesday, clean on Thursday and Friday, bake on Saturday, and, of course, no work was done on Sunday. Meals were cold and only the farm animals were taken care of by the men. Everyone went visiting in their community.

After my grandparents were forced to move to town in the late 60s, my uncle had a deep well drilled and had water pumped to the house. Now it is a house with a modern water system.

In rural areas (where more than half the U.S. population lived until around 1920), one's circle of friends, acquaintances, and potential mates was quite constricted by today's standards. My own genealogy database contains many examples of two or more brothers in one family marrying two or more sisters in another family -- something much rarer today -- not to mention many marriages among distant cousins (and even a few first cousins). And it was not uncommon for widows or widowers to marry their widowed brothers- or sisters-in-law.
Click to expand...

I also have places in the family tree where more than one sibling in the family married siblings. I suppose that when you went to visit your new family, you saw someone who would be perfect for a sibling of yours or when your sibling came to visit, he or she met your in-laws with predictable results.

Our family certainly has smaller numbers each generation (with exceptions). My great-grandparents had 9 living children, my mother's parents had 4 children, I had 2 and my sister had one. And my two children and my sister's one don't have children. Mine don't want any and her's is getting married in a couple of months and says she wants children.

The only letters or diaries I have are from my mother. She kept her diary from 1936 through the end of 1942. I have letters young men wrote to her during WWII and lots of letters and copies of her answers between her and my father. You get a completely different view of your parents to see them as young people and not just as your parents. I was interested to read them; my sister won't read them.
 
The water for washing was from the cistern which was buried beside the house.
Click to expand...

By the time I knew my father's parents, they weren't farming any more, and they had moved "to town" (a town of about 200!) and had indoor plumbing, etc. But all their water came from a cistern, and when we went to visit, we were constantly admonished to avoid wasting water, which included minimizing our trips to the toilet -- a tough concept for little children! Though they were no longer farming, they did have a large vegetable garden and an apple tree in the front yard, and my grandmother did extensive canning. I especially loved her homemade applesauce, made from their own apples.

She did the laundry in a washer with the rinse tubs that sat along side and had a wringer on top. She didn't have a dryer and so hung her clothes outside in the warmer weather and I suppose in the basement in the winter.
Click to expand...

This is exactly how my mother's mother did laundry. When I was very little, I loved to hang out in the basement and watch her put the sheets through the wringer. My grandparents had a large house with many bedrooms, which they operated as a tourist home (for overnight guests), so there were many sheets to wash! When they were hung out to dry, they filled the backyard. My grandmother also had a wonderful electric ironing machine, with a heated roller, through which one could feed the folded sheets. Given the volume of sheets she had to iron, it was an essential aid!

Our family certainly has smaller numbers each generation (with exceptions).
Click to expand...
In my family's case, families shrank a little ahead of the general trend. My four sets of great-grandparents had 7, 4, 6 (3 of whom died very young) and 1 (my grandmother, who was acutely conscious of being unusual, as an only child). My father was one of three children, and my mother had only one half-brother. As if to make up for this shrinkage, my mother had 6 kids, and my father's sister had 5. The cousins have reproduced abundantly, but neither I nor any of my brother has kids or is likely to.

The only letters or diaries I have are from my mother. She kept her diary from 1936 through the end of 1942. I have letters young men wrote to her during WWII and lots of letters and copies of her answers between her and my father. You get a completely different view of your parents to see them as young people and not just as your parents. I was interested to read them; my sister won't read them.
Click to expand...

My mother started to keep a diary when she was in elementary school and kept it up all her life (though not very regularly at first). One definitely gets a different view! So far, I've just read bits and pieces (including the first time she mentions my father in her college diary), but I hope eventually to find time to read all of her diaries. I don't feel funny about it, because my mother always considered herself a writer, and one gets the feeling that she was recording her life in part for posterity. I've also got letters young men wrote her during WWII (before she met my father), but I haven't had a chance to read them yet.
 
She was born in a 14-bedroom, three-story house in Waltham, Massachusetts that had been in the family for generations. It had a secret passage! She did not know this until one day, her grandmother took her and her sister into the dining room and had each of them stand against the closed doors on either side, close their eyes. and count to 10. When they opened their eyes, their grandmother had disappeared! There was a secret panel in the wall that led to a passage to another room.

Like many houses dating from Colonial times, the kitchen was in a separate adjoining building for fear of fire. They had a summer home in Scituate* on the coast south of Boston that was also in the family for generations. She and her siblings were sent to school in France (traveling by ocean liner) and sometimes did not see their parents for months on end. She never learned to cook until she was married; servants did that.

They lost nearly everything in the Depression, including the houses. Her father hung on to the business, but had to let most of the employees go. They were more like family to him than his own children, and he was so stressed over this he died soon after of what we suspect was a bleeding ulcer. Sadly, the big house was torn down before I ever got to see it. I did get to see the "summer house," which was bigger than the house I grew up in. The house in "Dan in Real Life" reminds me of it somewhat.

*the joke is that there is no correct way to pronounce "Scituate." I can't even spell out how my mother says it. Somewhere between sit-you-it and sit-chew-it, all syllables equal emphasis.
 
Last edited:
Grandfather had it built in the 1910's. Being in a small Midwest city, it did have electricity; but I remember the old wringer washer in the cellar, and the coal chute where coal could be dumped directly into a bin near the furnace. There was a full bathroom upstairs, but we were never allowed to take a shower, only baths; years later Mom found out that was just because her parents didn't want to "dirty" the wall tile!

But they had lots of pear trees, and apple, in their backyard, plus a garden, and Grandma canned everything. She also put out brown sugar for our cereal, and often set down a small plate of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies...at breakfast!

Oh, that women's work schedule - even my mom adhered strictly to it, until into the 1960's. I remember helping her with the ironing, she'd let me do my dad's handkerchiefs when I was big enough to work at the ironing board.

My dad made furniture, some of which was handed down to me, so I have a home-made glass-door china cabinet, and a bureau, and a chifferobe.

My dad's parents were farmers, and had only an outhouse until sometime in the 1940's. Out on their kitchen porch was an old hand-pump for water. Grandma cooked breakfast for hours on end every morning: most of my relatives lived nearby, and they'd come in at odd hours from working in the fields, and would expect a plate of food; her percolator coffee pot was constantly brewing.

I have a fork which belonged to my mother's father's mother. Apparently each person in that household had their own plate and utensils, and after a meal each was expected to clean their own items, and place them back on the table for the next meal.
 
of a story one of my brothers recently told me. My mother's parents in the early 1940s purchased a somewhat grand house (for its time and place) with the intent of turning it into a medical clinic. (They must have gotten it relatively cheap, as they were not rich by any means.) When the clinic plan didn't work out, they stayed and operated the house as a sort of bed-and-breakfast. Anyway, the house and grounds had what were curiosities to us kids, such as a gazebo, an old tennis court, a cupola, a laundry chute, a pool table, and a butler's pantry with a buzzer that could be operated by pressing a button on the dining room floor. It was fun to explore, though a bit scary when we were very little. And, of course, we had to stay out of the way of the "tourists."

My brother told me he remembers being lost in the house one time, going down some unfamiliar dark stairs, and being greatly relieved to come out in the kitchen, where my grandmother didn't seem at all surprised to see him. It seems he had accidentally discovered the "servants' stairs," which went directly from the second-story hallway to the kitchen. We subsequently found them very handy in games of hide and seek.

That is a shame you never got to see the house in Waltham! I recently discovered that the home of my GGGGGG grandfather, John Cope, has been saved from demolition and restored, in East Bradford, Chester Co., PA. Of course, his descendants made considerable changes and additions over the years; it eventually accumulated 15 rooms and four stories, but fell into terrible disrepair and was nearly torn down. It's now on the market (for a bundle).
 
the loads of food. As farmer's my grandparents ate at a different schedule than we did in town. Breakfast was whenever you got up. There was lunch at 10, which was cake or cookies and coffee for adults and kool-aid for kids. Then dinner was at 12 noon. At three was lunch again, which was some wonderful rye bread and cake, and supper at 6 p.m. We always had a snack at 8:30 before we all went to bed. There were always cookies in the cookie jar and cake in the tin-lined bread drawer. There was usually pie for dessert at dinner and either rhubarb or cherry "sauce" (which actually was just canned rhubarb or cherries). Coffee was always on the back of the stove. I guess by the end of the day the coffee would stand by itself. Grandma would just add more coffee and water to the pot and it would boil all day.
 
mother always considered herself a writer
Click to expand...

My mother didn't consider herself a writer until she had written a family history for her grandchildren. When my sister and I were little, we would always ask her to tell us stories about her life or about family history. So, we grew up hearing about family. My mother's life with my father was worthy of a "romance magazine" story. He would order to to leave then beg her to come back. This went on for 13 years. She married my step-father so she wouldn't marry my father again, but this marriage lasted for 47 years. Needless to say, we bugged her to write the story of her life with my dad. She did this right at the end of her life, but after he died in 2000, she said she couldn't remember any more. She said she finally let it all go when he died. After she died, I took the story and edited it and gave it to her grandchildren as she had intended to do.

Of my cousins, only one of us had more than 2 or 3 children. She was the religious fundamentalist and didn't believe in birth control. One never married, but none of the rest of us have had more than 3 children.
 
That constant pot of coffee: Dad always said it was the best coffee he'd ever had, and yes, I think by the end of the day you could stick a spoon in it, and it would stay upright!

That's a lot of cake! [laugh] But they spent so much time out-of-doors, working in the fields and gardens, that they expended all that energy.
 
My Mum used to make a stew like your coffee, said it was a family recipe she learnt from her mum, who I guess learnt it from hers. She'd throw a whole heap of meat and veges and dumplings in at the start of the week and just keep adding to it over the week. By the end it could just about walk onto your bowl LOL. Couldn't imagine doing anything like that now.
 
Last edited:
LOL! I hope she kept it heated all the time, still, I wonder what condition some of the stuff in it was in! [crazy]
 
that we used to eat that stuff, makes me feel nauseous now [crazy]. And she didn't keep it heated, said it was safest to let it cool overnight and then re-heat it the following afternoon. Errk imagine all the nasties we were eating... scuse me gonna be sick...
 
Not sure anyone will see this, because the thread is about to be bumped by Fiesta, but I just made one of the saddest entries into my genealogy database ever. The family were not my ancestors, but a collateral line, not very closely related. Of 8 children born to these parents, 6 died before the age of 5. I don't have death dates for the other two, so I don't know whether they actually survived to adulthood. The children did not all die within a short period, so it wasn't an epidemic. What really got me, though, was that three of the children who died had the same name -- William. It used to be common for parents to "recycle" names; if a child died young, the next child of the same sex often was given the same name. In this case, they named three sons William, and all of them died very young.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top