Finding out about the social lives of our ancestors can be immensely challenging. While work and home often generated official records, leisure activities and social gatherings were less likely to be recorded in official documents.
While our ancestors' social lives are a challenge to uncover, there are resources available that can help you in your research. Memberships of sporting teams, clubs and associations, church groups, societies and boards can provide valuable information. For the wealthier class, social events were often reported in local newspapers, as were sporting results. Newspapers can also provide context on the social activities available to our ancestors, even is they are not named in reports.
The following newspaper article reports on an amateur concert held in the town of West Bergholt, where some of my ancestors lived. Chair J. T. Argent (John Thompson Argent) is one of my direct ancestors, and the pianiste of the evening, Miss Ada E, Argent was one of his daughters.
Another insight into the social lives of my forebears was in an article from the Essex Standard from Saturday 21 June 1884, reporting on a pigeon shooting match in which my Great Great Grandfather Walter Green took part.
So check out what is available to flesh out the lives of those we are researching. The details of social lives provide so much more insight than simply dates and places - they bring our ancestors to life in so many ways.
