Week 34 has a prompt of "Non-Population", which is a prompt that initially didn't make much sense to me until I discovered that several of the United States censuses had additional schedules which are referred to as non-population schedules. A mystery solved.
As I have no US ancestors, I've decided to take a slightly different approach.
Several of my ancestors, when they first came to Australia, took up land and settled down to farm, several in quite isolated areas, distant from towns and even nearest neighbours. What must their lives have been like, in the days before the easy transport of motor vehicles and the instant communication of telephones and internet. We take such things for much for granted today, but before they existed the isolation must have had a profound impact on the lives of our ancestors.
For those who were the first generation of my family to arrive in Australia, the distances must have seemed vast, and the isolation even more extreme in such an alien landscape. No easy access to things like medicine, no popping down the street to the local shops when supplies of something ran out. For several, the nearest store was several hours away, and a visit to town might be only a once-a-month event. Several of my ancestors came from big families, and suddenly found themselves on the other side of the world, establishing themselves in a strange land on a farm hours from other people, with no easy means of transport.
Communicating to family in the old country - even for those who were
literate and had the means to send letters - would have taken months,
and yet more months for a reply to arrive. The isolation would have
been extreme. Non-Population indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment