Easy mistake to make!

Since Hilary's been so excited about finding her Grandad at the memorial in London, I decided it was time for me to have another look at my family history. I signed up to one of my favorite sites - ancestry.co.uk and started to trawl through the censuses.

We've found lots of our family on the various censuses, and they're all agricultural labourers, and farmers and other everyday workers - nothing wrong with that, but I came across one of Grandad Beattie's ancestors who was a lawyer! In 1851 and 1861! I was thrilled! I rang my Grandma to tell her - she was suitably impressed and then I rang my Dad. We discussed how interesting that was - a lawyer in those days would have been unusual - education, money, influence! I told Dad it was sad, 'cause by the 1871 census his wife was listed as a widow, and the kids were all listed as servants for other families. What a come down I was saying. Such a shame for them to have such a good life and then end up with nothing when he died!

Dad decided to look at what the lawyer's dad did on the 1841 census to see if this power and influence had been passed through the family. To our surprise, the lawyer's dad was just an agricultural labourer - for half a second we wonder how the son of an Ag Lab could have become a lawyer...until he noticed that our lawyer was listed on the 1841 census as a sawyer...

...sawyer, lawyer...easy mistake to make! Turns out my bragging was in vain! I see now that the S of sawyer looks the same as the s of scholar, but I think it also looks like the L of Lab - dock furtherup.

The good news is I made my dad's day! He laughed and laughed at my fall from grace! He was going to ring grandma and to put her straight - hope he lets her down gently - we all liked the idea of even one fancy ancestor!