One-Place Studies: Studying a Village

This 20-minute pre-recorded lecture will explain why it is important to research the communities within which our ancestors lived. We tend to look at our ancestors in isolation or within family groups. Your own life can’t just be summed up by the facts on your birth, marriage and death certificates or the occupations and addresses you’ve entered on your census returns, and neither can your ancestors’ lives. Your ancestors were 3-dimensional, interesting, vibrant people who interacted with their surroundings and the people they shared geographical space with. Building a database of historical residents can give you a unique perspective into the lives of your own family. Using parish registers and other parish records, censuses, electoral registers, newspaper articles and using records found in local and national archives, we can build up a vivid picture about what life was like for our ancestors and their neighbours. To really know our ancestors we must get to know the people our ancestors knew - the other people who would have had an impact on our ancestors’ lives: their friends, neighbours, workmates, the people who served them in local shops, the doctors who cared for them and the employers who gave them a job. One-placers may also discover other aspects of their ancestors’ lives, such as local customs, their working conditions and what they did in their leisure time. A one-place study is the next best thing to a time machine! Using my one-place study of Dunster as a case study, I will illustrate a methodology for starting a one-place study.