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Asa
03-04-13, 10:09
Isn't it wonderful when you get something a little bit more precise? I sometimes get farm labourers or carter and occasionally a gamekeeper or bailiff but mostly, like everyone else, I just get Ag Lab. I've just revisited a 4 x great grandmother on the 1861 after a long time and have realised it says she was widow of a corn porter - my ancestor has now been taken out of the realms of the bland and I can vaguely visualise him doing something!

Olde Crone
03-04-13, 11:46
Asa

My 3 x GGF is on the census described as an Ag lab. I was quite startled therefore, to get a copy of his will and discover that he owned nearly 1000 acres of farmland!

OC

Asa
03-04-13, 12:08
Blimey, OC - I've had one or two who've crossed over (both ways) but that's a lot of land for an Ag Lab to end up with. I suppose either he remained humble of the enumerator wasn't impressed...

Len of the Chilterns
03-04-13, 16:11
You must have inherited a pile. Can you spare a fiver for a mere ag lab descendant?

Margaret in Burton
03-04-13, 18:08
My great great grandfather was always Ag Lab on census, on his son's birth cert he is a Husbandman, which I think means he worked with the animals on the farm.

ElizabethHerts
03-04-13, 19:05
I have seen ag labs and farmers in abundance on my tree, but my recent research has uncovered ancestors in Buckinghamshire who are described as dairymen. In the 1700s they seemed to do pretty well, but after 1800 it appears this occupation didn't reap such good rewards.

Shona
03-04-13, 19:33
I've got a few 'cow boys'. Yee-ha!

Olde Crone
03-04-13, 23:04
I have a feeling he was telling the census enumerator to mind his own business! Either that, or the enumerator decided to take him down a few pegs, lol.

OC

Nell
06-04-13, 10:48
Asa

I do agree. "Ag lab" is a catch-all for people who helped put food on the table of millions. I do have a game-keeper, a cowman, an oxman and a husbandman in my tree which is a bit more precise. I also have one Gloucestershire gt x 3 grandmother who is listed as an ag lab on the census. I'm sure many other women also worked in the fields but it just wasn't recorded.

It was a precarious job though, not much work in the winter, very physical and nothing if you were injured or unwell. However, I think the physical exercise, fresh air and no doubt access to fresh veg is why so many of my ag labs lived well into their 80s and beyond.

Asa
06-04-13, 12:14
I've got a cowboy! I forgot about him:)

Nell, I think you're probably right about the long lives they could achieve. Although, I have got a dircet ancestor who died falling from a haystack at the age of 66 so it had its perils:-)

Olde Crone
06-04-13, 12:55
Asa

I think that was probably my biggest surprise overall, when I first started doing family history - how OLD most of my ancestors were when they died. Many of my rural ones died in their 70s, 80s and 90s. My Scottish 4 x GGM was still "keeper of Torrey Lighthouse" at the age 0f 94!!!!

OC

tenterfieldjulie
07-04-13, 09:05
Wow I am impressed to be a lighthouse keeper .. but at that age wow wow

I have lots of ag labs, but my most interesting, are the Jaffrey lot in 1841 in Roxburgh - John 80 Pauper Helen 30 ag lab Elizabeth 12 ag lab .. No sign of John or Helen in 1851, but Betsey now 22 is a house servant ... So what did a 12 yr old female ag lab do in Roxburgh in 1841 .. milk cows ? Julie

Shona
07-04-13, 09:33
Wow I am impressed to be a lighthouse keeper .. but at that age wow wow

I have lots of ag labs, but my most interesting, are the Jaffrey lot in 1841 in Roxburgh - John 80 Pauper Helen 30 ag lab Elizabeth 12 ag lab .. No sign of John or Helen in 1851, but Betsey now 22 is a house servant ... So what did a 12 yr old female ag lab do in Roxburgh in 1841 .. milk cows ? Julie

The 12-year-old Ag Labs in Scotland would have helped look after animals in the fields, bring cows in for milking, cleaning the yards and byres, collect water, etc. They would also do jobs like hand-thinning young turnips. Later on in the year, it was tattie picking. I've got some wonderful reports from school teachers in the 19th century complaining that children wouldn't turn up when it was turnip and potato time. Even in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Scottish schools closed down when it was time to lift the potatoes - my mum remembers going into the fields to do this.

tenterfieldjulie
07-04-13, 10:22
Erm growing up on a dairy, I know all about cleaning the feed troughs and washing down the bails .. but that was after school lol and I seem to remember that I often escaped .. the lovely man who worked for Dad often covered for me !!
I don't think I would have considered myself an ag lab but I suppose I was .. I know I wasn't very good at driving a tractor at hay baling time .. lots of rather colourful language when I managed to hit lots of bumps .. accidentally ofcourse ..

Phoenix
07-04-13, 10:51
I suspect that one of the problems with ag labs is that at different seasons they would be doing different jobs. The team man cannot having been ploughing through the whole year, though I suspect the shepherd simply wasn't recognised till later in life.

Interestingly re child-labour, I went to a talk on the subject where they pointed out that the census question was something like "what is your regular occupation?" so that most children would be down as scholars when much of their time would be spent on bird scaring, running errands, holding horses etc etc, depending on where they lived.

tenterfieldjulie
07-04-13, 11:10
I know in Cornwall some of my family's children were put down as scholars when they were down the mines ..

Asa
07-04-13, 11:49
I remember from one or two of Thomas Hardy's books how labourers did different things according to the seasons.

My great x 3 grandmother Elizabeth Smith was a 'domestic labourer' at the age of 85 - I'm assuming she retired before she died at 93 but I don't know :)

tenterfieldjulie
07-04-13, 12:27
I'm sure all the fresh air and exercise helped keep them young..

Phoenix
07-04-13, 12:34
Presumably infant mortality also took care of many of those who might not have made old bones in any case.

Durham Lady
07-04-13, 12:39
The 12-year-old Ag Labs in Scotland would have helped look after animals in the fields, bring cows in for milking, cleaning the yards and byres, collect water, etc. They would also do jobs like hand-thinning young turnips. Later on in the year, it was tattie picking. I've got some wonderful reports from school teachers in the 19th century complaining that children wouldn't turn up when it was turnip and potato time. Even in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Scottish schools closed down when it was time to lift the potatoes - my mum remembers going into the fields to do this.

My senior school in Washington, Co. Durham always had a week off when it was time to lift the potatoes. We would go earn a few back breaking pennies by working on the picking. Yes it was in the 50's.

Olde Crone
07-04-13, 13:13
At school in Dumfries in the 1960s, there was a week's holiday for tattie picking.

OC

Shona
07-04-13, 14:22
I used to help my Argyll grannie at tattie-picking time - late 1960s, I think. Can't remember if I had time off school for it, though. Next followed the ritual of digging 'the pit' to store the spuds - alternate layers of potatoes, straw and soil. The tatties kept right through winter.

Macbev
08-04-13, 04:39
Not so different in Australia either, when the 'big boys' at country schools would go missing at seeding, harvest and shearing times to help mum and dad on the farm....this also in the 1950s

Nell
12-04-13, 11:14
Lots of school logs recorded absences for children to pick stones, harvest etc.