Family History

 

I wonder if this is true?

Do our forefathers live in our heritage?

I suspect there is some truth in this, but I see problems.  For a start, while I know much about my family's history, what if I knew nothing?  Imagine I had been dumped at birth, my dad often mumbled something about this, then I would not have the family influences upon me, how much heritage would I carry with me?  

Knowing my parents does mean I am influenced by what influenced them, both family and the world in which I lived.  My father was born when his father was 62, his mother dumped him within six years because of the drinking and this left a mark on dad.  So, in that sense his history leaves a mark on me, especially as dad was born before the Great War, and I after the second.  By the time I was a teenager the world he expected to find had changed, wealth was growing, housing, NHS, radio and now TVs existed, and in the year he died men landed on the moon.  Such a change in his lifetime, this clashed with my outlook as an adolescent.      

My mothers mother died in childbirth, how did this affect her?  Her father lost three wives this way!  Growing up in a poor mining family, the entire town was poor, they shared the hardships with others around them, did this make them better people?  Six long months of the General Strike pulled people together in mining areas, did this influence her outlook?

Remembering how miners were 'enslaved' from 1609 until 1799, and the situation did not improve much after this for many years, how did that influence me, a lazy, well fed, insolent brat?  Not much it appears.  It was years before I understood what the family's had gone through, years before I realised how much they gave for me and others.  Years before I began to realise just how lucky I was to have this family and not one of the others around me. 

Clearly our immediate family influenced our outlook, but is this because the society around them influenced them more?  Society was different one hundred years ago, not always better.  The society in which one side worked down dangerous mines, merely a big hole in the ground, or farmed large areas of land during economic ups and downs, must have influenced their outlook.  Miners pull together, farmers are on their own.

How much of that gave my fathers side a reputation for decency and constant grumbling?  The mothers side always good honest thoughtful, but no fools, people.  Are the generations far from me better because of their forefathers, and can we see influences in them today I wonder?

Anyway, that is today's homework.  I will mark your answers tomorrow.