Conference quark::human_relations-v1

        According to rumour, my father's father's father was a livestock
        rearer in Northern Wales (not exactly sure where) and at least
        slightly involved in the then equivalent of Plaid Cymru.  No
        doubt if I'd have been alive then, I'd have been brought up as
        an anti-English Welshman, odd as I am English ...........

        Lifestyle ?  Well, a stone cottage no doubt, no running water,
        working with the animals (sheep and goats mainly) and most of
        the social life centred around the Wesleyan Methodist church
        or the village pub.  Possibly, like many in those days, finding
        insufficient livelihood there, I'd have ended up migrating to
        Liverpool (as I think he did) to work on the docks.  Ironic
        that he was so pro-Wales but had to come to England in the end.

    Easy - I'd be dead.  I've had several bad infections in my life,
    any one of which would have killed me 100 years ago. (This, of
    course, assumes I survived my own birth and the usual "children's
    diseases" - whooping cough, diphtheria, tuberculosis, etc.)
    
    					andrew            

    My grandmother (mom's side of the family) was raised in a (now
    lavender) farmhouse which is across from the Monroe Tavern in
    Lexington, MA (Near where Seasons Four is).  They had servants do most
    of the work.  She was raised in pleasant society, treated to an
    education at Harvard, and married a staunch Navy man.  She miraculously
    survived tuberculosis at age 2.  I do not know what her father did, but
    as she was descended from both Winthrops and Monroes, I suspect
    something businessy or political in the Boston area. 
    
    My great grandmother on my father's side was the first white woman
    in Poca-something-or-other county in West Virginia.  It was probably
    extremely tough back then, what with all the indians and the land
    in its raw, natural state.  but what a challenge!
    
    -Jody
    
    

    oops.  mea culpa.  Harvard didn't have women back then - it was
    Radcliffe she went to.  
    
    -Jody
    

    100 years ago my great grandmother was newly married.  Her husband
    was a sea captain that took potatoes and other farm products to
    the Carolinas in schooners.  He returned with coal for the winter.
    She accompanied him in the early years of the marriage and did all
    the cooking for the crew.  There was a huge wood stove in the galley
    and according to a book on the Northeast schooners Mrs. Closson
    was an excellent cook, well known for her biscuits and gravy.  
    
    She became pregnant early in the marriage and continued to work
    with her husband until the child was born.  After the birth she
    stayed home with the children and managed the household without
    a husband for the most part.  They lived in Ellsworth, Maine on
    a river.  She fished, had a garden that fed them winter and summer
    and a few animals for meat and chickens for eggs.  
    
    These people were so typical of the Yankee image, strong, independent,
    quiet and self-sufficient.
    
    

RE: .5

	That sounds neat!

	Lesse, 100 years ago I would have lived in Ireland and been
	a member of the working class. (ie: relatively poor) I probably
	would have either worked on a farm, raised dogs for racing
	or hunting, or worked in a factory.. I would have been a member
	of a large family..

	Geez, things are so different nowadays... Life is so fast..

						mike

    100 years ago next monday, my maternal grandmother was born.  We
    will be celebrating her 100 years with her at her favoriate resturant,
    Denny's.  She lives alone in Florida.  When I visited her last
    September, she gave me the following advice, "Take good care of
    you eyes and don't ever retire."
    
    She was born in Frankfort, the youngest of three sisters.  Her family
    moved to the U.S. when she was three.  She was a real cinderella
    and eloped with my grandfather when she was 19.  He was a traveling
    salesman for a chemical company.  I could go on for ever with their
    stories and the stories from my faternal great-grandmother who died at
    101 years of age in 1953.  She told stories of the Indians braking
    into the hose and shooting a bear through the door.  Exciting and
    H A R D times.  Give me the present & future.
    
    Marty

    100 years ago my grandfather was a small boy in a small town in
    Missouri.  His family were recent immigrants from Whales.  His father
    did as much farming as he could, and occasionally took a job doing
    what would now be called "Safety Engineer" in various coal mines
    in the eastern US.
    
    Elizabeth
    

    I'd be the village wizard. The man in town who no one knows where
    he came from. I'd live in a stone house with inventions that no
    one could explain. Running water, plumbing, etc.,. I'd tell stories
    about visions from another world where rode mechanical horses and
    drank canned beverages and read Dave Barry articles........
    

    Skipping by Andrew's comment (I'd be dead, too, several times over),
    I'd be a writer or a college professor, in math or philosophy. 
    
    	Jon

    
    I'd probably be in England.  My great-grandparents on my father's 
    side were of English Nobility.   
    
    Since it was (is?) considered taboo for a person of nobility to
    marry a commoner (my grandfather), my grandparents moved to this
    country early in their marriage.  They came to Lowell, MA, and
    established a pig farm in what was commonly referred to as the 
    Swede Village area of the city, some seventy years ago.
    
    On my mother's side, I'd have been in Forge Village (Westford),
    MA.  My great-grandfather worked in the mills, now Murray Printing.
    In fact, my great-aunt lives in her childhood home, the home my
    mother was born in 60+ years ago.
    
    Either way, I'd have grown up in an English background.
    
    Beckie
       
    
 

    Well I knew my father's mother, mother, and she was born in 1869 so 
    that is pretty close to being 100 years ago...she was a farmer';s
    wife in the mid west...and that was a pretty rough life to live.
    
   So if I went with that side of the family I would have been a farmer's
   wife.  and since I like to read and learn I probably would have been
    a teacher.
    
    on the other side my mother's family would have come from the mills
    in wales and england ...I think my grandmother had an uncle who
    immegrated who fought in the civil war...so on that side my family
    would have been mill or factory workers..
    
    and if you talk about my kids..four of the five had black fathers..
    so 100 years ago their ancestors woul have probably been trying
    to make a living about 15 years after the end of slavery...
    
    

    On my mom's side: Both of my mother's parents were from Prince Edward
      island, Canada.  They both grew up on farms, one Irish (Murphy)
      and the other Scottish (my grandmother, MacDonald).  My grandmother
      never got beyond sixth grade. She claims she quit because she
      was just too frisky for school.  They both come from huge families.
      I imagine if I was lucky enough to snare a husband, quite the
      task if had my present "bawdy" sense of humour and sharp tongue,
      then I would probably just be churning out babies.  My grandparents
      did move to Somerville, MA before churning out their own children.
    
    On my dad's side:  My dad was adopted and I have no immediate family
      on his side.  All "great" aunts and uncles and second cousins.
      They do all still live up in Maine.  My dad's real name was Duffy
      and I believe he was adopted in Maine also, so I imagine his first
      family would have been from the area.  No doubt I'd be a "Maine-iac"
      and came fairly close to being one anyways, except my Mom insisted
      on moving back down to Somerville after their second year of
    marriage.
    
    
                                         cj
    

    I'd leave the farm and work on the railroads (sigh).
    Good old days before they got so damn unionized. The end of
    childhood illusions was when I learned about those.

        Let's see. I was born in 1951. My great-grandfathers are the
        generation who were about my age 100 years ago. They were:
        William Henry Burrows b. 1865 who lived in Belle Plains, Iowa;
        Frank Elmer Stull a habadasher from Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Elder
        Holmes Jonathan Davison, b. 6 May 1853, born to a family of Nova
        Scotian sea captains and Baptist churchmen, who became a Mormon
        churchman and moved to Missouri; and Heman Foster Trites who was
        born in Moncton, New Brunswick and died in South Portland Maine. 
        
        In general, then, my great-grandfathers were men from middle
        class Maritime and Middle-American families--solid yankees. They
        were, as far as family verbal history tells it, generally small
        men capable of tremendous forcefulness which was somewhat
        surprising given their generally quiet demeanors. They were, on
        the whole, moderately well educated and prosperous, though with
        no very great worldly ambitions.
        
        In many ways, I feel much more like my New England / Maritime
        ancestors than my midwestern ones. If I imagine myself in the
        past, it is almost always in great-grandfather Davison's family.
        
        Assuming that I was born into great-grandfather Holmes's family,
        my father would have been Capt. Gould Nelson Davison, a master
        mariner, Baptist Deacon and after retiring from the sea, a
        farmer. At least one of my brothers and a brother-in-law would
        also be sea captains. The brother-in-law would take my sister
        with him on his travels to the South Seas where they would
        minister to the natives. 

        Having been a bit of a lay minister when I was in high school, I
        imagine that if I had lived a century or two ago, I probably
        would have been a Deacon like many of my Davison ancestors. Some
        of them, like my great-great-grandfather were both sea captains
        and churchmen. Since I fancy myself as both a philosopher and an
        engineer in this life, I suspect that I would have been both a
        churchman and an engineer (though of hardware rather than
        software) of some sort, perhaps a designer of ships or nautical
        gear.
        
        As I have a bit of an urge to roam, and as I have posited that I
        would be some sort of nautical engineer, I think that I would
        have gone to sea with my father, brother, or brother-in-law in
        order to get a good practical understanding of ships and the sea
        and to see the world, a practical understanding of which is
        important to a man of the cloth, which I also posit to have been
        one of my callings.
        
        I suspect I'd have had a modest education (perhaps like my
        great-grandfather at the Acadia Academy), and a fair collection
        of books. I would have kept a house by the sea, with a work shop
        in which to design and build things. Beyond my books, tools
        and the furnishings of my house, I don't suspect that I would
        have had much in the way of possessions.
        
        I'd like to think that I would have married a woman with as
        adventerous a spirit as my great-great-aunt. Since I love music,
        but can't make it, I'd hope that she was musically talented so
        that the house would have music. We would have had a number of
        children, about every two years, starting somewhat earlier than
        we did in this life, and I fear with more lost babies than the
        one miscarriage, although most of my Davison ancestors only lost
        one or two children out of families from 6 to 20.
        
        All-in-all, it would not have been a bad life. It may sound a
        bit optimistic given how we often think of our ancestors, but as
        clearly as I can make out it is not that far from how my family
        actually lived back then.
        
        JimB. 

	And you would have been a terrific fencer too JimB.... :-)

						mike

    Sounds lovely Jim.
    

        No, no, I said "Baptist deacon" not "Jesuit priest".
        
        JimB.

    re: .0
    
    Jan 4, 1888 .... depends on which "granparenting" path. If I went
    back through my mothers father, I'd be in (Liverpool England);
    possibily a machinist, since my grandfather was a machinist and
    a Mason (there's good expectation his father was also a  Mason ).
    
    In all possibility had four or five children, of which only 3 survived.
    
    
    Bob