52 Ancestors Week 6: Earning a Living

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 6

The theme for Week 6 is "Earning a Living." Knowing how our ancestors earned a living can give us insight into their lives. What occupations have you seen in your family? Is there an ancestor whose occupation wouldn't exist today or one whose job really resonates with you?

Still waiting for the day when "second assistant space whale scrubber" becomes a reality. It's gotta be be a better gig than "dancing monkey on the Internet". =P

Comments

Chris, thank you for this question.

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Off Topic: Chris if you like to read Sci Fi/fantasy you might be attracted to the short story "Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette who advance the space whale concept ever so cleverly (with a wink and a nod to Douglass Adams) in their story about space pirates and their 'ship' called the Lavinia Whateley which is, (drum roll please) a captured space whale. The heroine of the story, a wannabe novice pirate called Black Alice, is basically a 2nd assistant whale scrubber.

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Wow! I'll have to check that out. Thanks, Leigh!

Here's my blog for this week: https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2024/02/52-ancestors-week-6-earning-living.html

Catching up after being sick.

Answer 1

Most of my ancestors were farmers or planters. One that I traced back to England was listed as an apothecary! How cool is that? He resonates with me as well as my grandmother, Edwina Courtney King Blaylock, who was a registered nurse. They both resonate with me because I am a medical coder so we all three share some type of occupation within the healthcare system!

Answer 2

Interesting.

My biological paternal grandfather was a cook and a pool hustler when he wasn't in the military.

My first step dad was a Navy man before he became a lawman in Chicago. He had a hand in capturing Richard Speck and was witness to the race riots in Chicago.

My adopted maternal grandfather was in the Navy and worked at Toledo Scale.

My adopted paternal grandfather owned a heating and cooling company (he installed AC and furnaces)

I would have loved to go into the military, but my disability prevented it.

Answer 3

My 3 x GGF Martin Sheridan was listed as the town scavenger and a labourer on the 1871 England Census

This may not be as bad as it sounds. The town scavengers were paid to collect rubbish, ashes and the contents of the communal privies. On previous censuses he was just a labourer.

Perhaps a step up!

This job does still exist, but in a different way, Sometimes called waste pickers or ragpickers, scavengers usually collect from streets, dumpsites, or landfills. They collect reusable and recyclable material to sell, reintegrating it into the economy's production process. This happens in cities and towns across much of the southern hemisphere. .I have seen multiple videos of whole families picking through landfills for anything usable or saleable.

Comments

One of the names of the scavenger occupation in Sweden was "nattmannen", literally "the night man". One of my relatives was born in 1824 in the night man's house in Ystad.

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In Japan, and perhaps some other places, there are people who collect from public restrooms and it is used as fertilizer on crop lands.

Answer 4

Since the days of reconstruction, my family consisted of entrepreneurs. Merchants, builders, equipment operators, a few politicians and some in sales. Before the civil war there were more doctors, clergy, farmers and politicians.

Answer 5

My great-grandfather, Frank Scrivener Sr., broke a 200-year tradition of family farming to head off to the city for a career in business. I wrote about his life and career here:

https://annesgenealogyadventures.blogspot.com/2024/02/52-ancestors-2024-week-6-earning-living.html

Answer 6

This is a 1932 Muskogee, Oklahoma newspaper article showing my paternal grandfather C. A. Lovelace getting an order of chairs ready to ship to Hawaii. My grandfather had local farmers make these ladder back chairs, and he sold them in his furniture store where he often unholstered furniture. I have two of these chairs in my home. 

Answer 7

This is a story of inspiration. While growing up in the American west my grandfather used to tell me about his grandfather who was a cattle rancher and business manager and who learned (full charge) bookkeeping and the double entry record system in order to effectively maintain an accurate view of the household outflows and revenue inflows . By learning bookkeeping great great grandfather ensured he had the professional skills needed to provide the support he owed his four (concurrent) wives and their 32 children. His hard work was an inspiration to me and once I discovered, in high school, that I also had an aptitude for numbers and solving complex word problems I started taking high school bookkeeping classes. It was after my first A grade that I realized I might be on to something; a dependable, reliable skill with which to earn a living and I might be good at it. While growing up no one had ever talked to me about earning a living. I guess 'they' thought it would occur through osmosis which is silly because girls were still being kept in the dark ages and were expected to marry and have children, period. This awareness, of my new aptitude, was a revelation. I had nothing against marriage as a career but I wasn't going to pin my hopes and happiness on that path, particularly because I knew early on I couldn't have children. So, great great grandfather's choice and my natural talent came to the rescue. It's like I received his message from the grave (figurately); it all fell into place and I continued through grad school in Accountancy never regreting a moment. Thank you great great grandpa!

Answer 8

What I find interesting is how my father's side has a diversity of occupations and my mother's side has hardly any.  She was a teacher.  For her family that's diversity.  Her family was filled with farmers and tailors.  They fed and clothed people.

Dad was a meteorologist.  Be honest.  How many family members and ancestors do you know that selected a weatherman as an occupation?  But I see it as reflective of a bunch of people who had different ideas of how to earn a living.  Sure there was the odd farmer or cordwainer (shoemaker) like Mom's family. Feed people, clothe people. But the others...

Borrowing from Monty Python, And Now For Something Completely Different:  Plaster Decorator, Marching Band Musician, Carriage Maker, Deep Sea Captain, Ship Builder, Miller, Justice of the Peace, Medical Missionary, Suffragette, Military Physician, Sunday School Teacher, Reeve, Saw Mill Owner, Raft Logger, Postage Stamp Merchant, Mural and Sign Artist, and Inn Keeper.

Answer 9

Rouquier-3 My grandfather Ferdinand  Francois Rouquier was a French chef who worked in three private clubs in Chicago  the Union League Club, and two in the Cleveland area. I tried to go into the culinary college but couldn't make the grade so I became a short order cook for several restaurants in Hawaii, California and Ohio. My sister has the cooking skills to make a beautiful French meal. Me I can cook a wonderful rice pilaf that my Mom got from her mom. My grandfather never gave us his recipes as chef's never do. OH well I still love cooking French foods.

Answer 10

I've come across so many different professions in my research.

Some interesting ones that come to mind:

Hendriks-2644 was a sea trader ca. 1790, sailing between Lisbon and Saint Petersburg and everything in between. This one time his ship was damaged and newspapers wrote about the ship and crew being lost. Couple of months later he turned up alive and well.

Gordinou_de_Gouberville-13 was an innkeeper around the year 1800, he took over the inn from his mother's side when he was just 21 years old. The inn had already been in the family for 200 years, and is still operated today (another 200 years later) by one of his descendants (and thus a distant cousin of mine).

Not an ancestor but I found this far away (in time and in distance!) cousin(-in-law) MacDermott-152 that was one of the first science fiction fans in the 20s/30s. He had a toy company that made plastic toy space helmets in the 50s! If anyone can connect him to some US-profiles, please do!

Looking at my closest four generations: On my mother's side we have professions like navyman, accountant, bicycle dealer (owned a shop), dry cleaner (owned a shop), mason and factory worker for the men. And for the women, my mother was a nurse and my great-grandmother had to make a living after her divorce (in the 50s) and did manicure and pedicure among other jobs.

On my father's side it's civil engineer, shipyard worker, fisherman, farmer farmer farmer farmer farmer... ;) Oh, and my great-grandfather also was a pallbearer!

Answer 11

My families have all of the normal occupations, but the one that registers with me is mathematician.  My father was a mathematician, my mother was working on her doctorate in mathematics when she met my father, my younger brother is a mathematician, his wife is a statistician, my sister is a physicist (closest enough), her husband is a physicist and my nephew just started working on his doctorate in mathematics.

I tell my friends that I grew up in the 1960's version of The Big Bang Theory.

P.S.  I am not a mathematician.  

 

Answer 12

On my dad's birth certificate, his fathers occupation is listed as Debty Sheriff. We've all gotten a kick out of that. During WWII both my grandfathers worked at Garwood building tank engines, so neither of them had to go overseas. My mom's dad did several things to include baggage handler, salesman, delivering ice (this is how he met my grandmother). Most of my dad's side worked in the mines and most of my mom's side were farmers.

Answer 13

My great-great-grandfather Ole Eriksen (1830-1906) was born on Agnalt Farm, Sarpsborg, Tune, Smaalenenes, Norway.  The sharecroppers were finally able to buy the farms they ran in 1846, but the deal came with an unreasonable condition from the Norwegian government: every year Tune Vicarage was to have 48 acres of wood harvested, all sawlogs needed by the parsonage, 27 loads of fencing, and large quantities of firewood delivered - all for free - as well as free barley to the priest of Raade, so slave labor of a form continued for the farmers until 1958 (yes, 1958).

Ole took up the trade of leatherworker and married Marthe Marie Arnesdatter in 1852.  They had 3 sons and two daughters.  In 1872, when Ole (42) and Marthe Marie (43) and their children migrated to the USA and homesteaded near Brainerd City, Crow Wing County, Minnesota, his occupation was listed as shoemaker.  By 1880, he had a small shop at 12 S 5th Street in downtown Brainerd (now the SW corner of the Mid Minnesota Federal Credit Union lot).

But shoemaker Ole Eriksen had other skills up his sleeve, he also made musical instruments.  He fashioned a violin that he used to supplement his shoemaking income by playing for dances and other entertainment. Some members of the Swedish-Lutheran Church that the family attended were outraged that he played for dances, but Ole sought the advice of the minister who encouraged him to continue to play.  Olé, Ole!

Comments

An excellent answer to the question, why did your GGGGF emigrate from Norway. Thanks for sharing it.

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They were part of over a million people in the "Great 19th Century Norwegian Migration".  At the start of the 21st century, more people of Norwegian descent (5.5m) lived in the USA than in Norway (4.5m).  Religious freedom was a driver, but many came for land and economic freedom.  Forget "global warming" nonsense, they were also fleeing a little ice age that had lasted from about 1300 to 1850.  And Ole was the youngest of five brothers in a farming family, three >15 years older from a different mother who had died a decade before he was born.  Furthermore, his father had drowned in 1935 when he was only 5, so he wasn't raised in a strong patriarchal family.  I imagine that he perceived his future in Norway as bleak.

Answer 14

For this week I went into the category "Occupations". There my sports-nerd ego found "Athletes". Within the athletes, there is "Tennis". Let's see if there is someone unconnected... Wait, Chris Evert is still unconnected?

She isn't anymore, I could connect her to her Luxembourgish/Belgian ancestry.

Comments

Oh, Jelena, you're great.  Week after week you find and connect and the rest of us reminisce.

Answer 15

A few weeks ago I received this picture of my first cousin three times removed Karl Paul Steurenthaler and his family harvesting grapes around the 1930s. They were from the Markgräflerland area, where the climate is a lot warmer than up here in Black Forest, where farmers focus on cattle and a bit of crops. Therefor it was quite interesting for me to see the equipment that was fairly unknown to me.

Comments

Florian, thank you for sharing this wonderful photo.

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I love the photo, Florian. Were they making wine? Or was it for the market ?  Or was it just for the family to eat?

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Thanks for liking it. I would assume that they did wine.

Answer 16

Well, my family on my dad's side were mostly farmers to moonshiners.

My dad's most interesting jobs were: working for NASA as a parts runner during the moon landing, he actually got to see the rockets up close enough to touch them. He was also a priest for the Eastern Orthodx church.

Grandpa Ernie Wine was Railroad Engineer for the B and O  Railroad. I believe he drove the line from Parkerburg West Virginia to Clarksburg.

GGGG Grandpa Smithy Wine was Fiddler and Minster in Braxton County being one of the first Minister in Braxton to allow African Americans into his church.

On my mom's side they mostly worked at the steal mills in Johnstown Pa.

Answer 17

Kirk Douglas attended St. Lawrence College, Canton, New York in the 1930s.   He is referred to as "Arriving on the back of a garbage truck" is a few articles.  In reality, his father was a
collector of rags, which were used at that time to make high quality paper and it was a quite lucrative occupation.  My cousin was attending it at the same time and that is where he got his acting moniker.  I don't think she had direct contact with him.

Answer 18

My great-grandfather began his training as a sailor at 12 in Hamburg, Germany. Sailing through the world he went from cook for the crew to cabin boy and then sailor. Then he came to Chile and opened a restaurant, and after that he worked as an electrical technician for Siemens-Schuckertwerke. He installed the first traffic light and built the first neonatal incubator in Santiago, Chile.

Answer 19

Many followed the trade: Farming, Traders and Scouts, Military, Preachers, Doctors, medical practioners ie. nursing/caregiving, Educators, Artisans, Trailblazers, Road Builders, and Engineers.