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| Work, Ford Madox Brown, Public Domain |
A whole new route of ancestral exploration can be opened up
if you know what your relative’s occupation was. Many of mine were
“ag labs” or crofters, and there is, as far as I know, no comprehensive list of
everyone in those lines of work, but when they were nurses, weavers, clergymen,
police officers, or miners, I might have better success.
Many libraries, archives, and historical societies maintain occupation-specific lists or indexes of local people, such as Renfrewshire Heritage Centre’s collection of Paisley weavers, hammermen and tailors’ records.
Glasgow City Archives holds a computerised database of police officers' service records up to 1939. The records themselves include information about the officers and their families.
Other sources are freely available online, and hopefully one or two of my suggestions here will give you some ideas to pursue.
Specific occupations
One resource that has been useful for my research on a couple of branches of the family is the Clergy of the Church of England Directory, 1540-1835. This reference tool not only lists ordained clergy, but also shows the chronological order in which they served in each parish – in effect, providing a bit of history for the area, too.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Book Trade Index provided a ready-made career timeline for my 3rd great-grandfather,
Thomas Paterson, a lithographic printer in Glasgow. Anyone in the
Scottish printing or publishing trades, including booksellers, stationers and
papermakers, may be listed here.
If your relative operated their printing or publishing
business in England or Wales, the British Book Trade Index, hosted by the Bodleian Library,
covers similar occupations up until 1851.
Working on the railways has always been a hazardous job, and
the Railway Work, Life & Death website has for some
years been compiling a database of those who met with accidents in the course
of their railway occupations. This covers Britain and Ireland from the late 1800s until the Second World War.
House historians as well as genealogists may find the Dictionary of Scottish Architects 1660-1980 valuable. It
gives biographical details plus a list of the known works of each architect in
Scotland, and in turn a history of each of their buildings. For instance, the
entry for Glasgow School of Art has a chronology showing events
in its history, from the 1896 competition held for its design until an award for its
lighting in 1990. A list of the unsuccessful competition entrants
reads like a who's who of eminent Scottish architects of the day.
Voluntary Work
People who did unpaid work may also be found in lists, such
as the Red Cross Volunteers of WWI. More than 90,000 individuals
volunteered for the organisation, both at home and overseas, during the Great
War.
A quick surname search finds a woman who sewed bandages for 2 hours every fortnight
for 4 years, and was awarded the Red X Badge and Certificate in recognition of
her work.
Other entries include those for well-known figures such as Agatha Christie and E. M.
Forster.
E-books
It’s not only databases that can give you significant leads
for your family tree. E-books that might be obscure or difficult to
source on paper can be found if you know where to look – in this case,
the FamilySearch Catalogue, which when searched by
ancestral surname, includes this handy volume in its results:
A Whispering in the Hearth – Lives of our Scottish Coalmining
Ancestors The author documents her mining ancestors, along with
useful background information about the work of all those who laboured in the
industry, what life was like for them, and the areas of Scotland that
coalmining covered. You can read it online, or download individual pages or the
whole book, in PDF format.
I've listed other e-book and digital sources, like trade directories, that could prove helpful in a previous blog post.
Directory of Directories
If you haven’t already heard of Cyndi’s List, it’s one of the longest-running genealogy websites around. Divided into categories and sub-categories, it includes a directory of occupation-related resources that are relevant to family historians. Delve into the links and related subjects and get lost for a while!
Social Media
If you’re interested in learning about some of the more obscure occupations in your family tree, follow @ScientistSoph on Twitter where Sophie Kay regularly posts her #OccupationOfTheDay.
