History

[elingregory]

History, by which I mean the bits of it that people have heard about, is never as far away as one might think.

I was listening to my mother reminisce recently and she was talking about her father having visited an uncle who was a warder at Dartmoor Prison, around 1900 or so. Cue lots of Grimpen Mire imaginings from me. This impression was multiplied ten fold when I made some comments about transport - ie that he must have travelled by train - and she agreed that he had for the first part of the journey but when he reached Exeter he transferred to the regularly scheduled stage coach.

A stage coach! My grandpa travelled by stage coach when he was a little boy! He must have seen ostlers and team changing and maybe on the wilder bits they were on the look out for highwaymen? [Okay, that's probably silly but having an over-active imagination is what I DO.]

Comments

[beckyblack]

I know what you mean; I get the same feeling whenever I remember that before she got married my grandmother was in service as a housemaid. I can watch a show like Downton Abbey and think, I'm just two generations away from domestic service being probably the best of the very few career options open to me.

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

Haven't we come a long way? Domestic service or factory work - what a choice.

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

When my mother was a little girl, she shared a bedroom with her grandmother. the grandmother, (my great-grandmother,) remembered seeing Lincoln's funeral train come through New York.

My mother was born in 1919. My grandmother was born in 1888. her mother was born in 1855!

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

Lincoln's funeral! That six degrees of separation thing can get quite exciting when you look at it from an historical perspective. The generations chalk up the years quite quickly.

[gaycrow.livejournal.com]

That's amazing ... real Georgette Heyer stuff.

It's a bit frightening, though, that I remember our bread being delivered by a horse and cart, and our milk was delivered from a van with vats. Mum left a billy can on the front verandah.

I feel like an ancient crone!

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

You? Never!!

I read somewhere that one could take a peasant from the 14th century and plonk him down in a rural setting in 1900 and there wouldn't be anything you could explain to him quite easily - even stam trains are easily demonstable. Just 50 years later and society had altered so much even in the countryside the poor guy would think it was all witchcraft and these days it wouldn't happen at all because he'd be too unhygeinic!

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

That's really exciting - history becomes so much more tangible indeed if one's own family members are involved in some manner.

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

It does. A few months ago I had a long conversation with a man who was one of the three children rescued from the wreck of the City of Benares during WW2. That's a harrowing story, but when one is face to face with someone who was there, who can point to part of the deck on a picture of the ship and say "That's where I last saw my brother and sister" it becomes that much more 'real'.