if you lived then

[burntcopper]

AFP lot may remember me pointing out something when camping (can't remember if it was before or after our plans for the apocalypse), where I'd come across some bugger bemoaning that no-one these days had any idea about the land, and how would we do in our ancestors' place as peasants when confronted by the situation. Which led me to go 'excuse me, but my ancestors wouldn't know one end of the horse from the other when it came to ploughing either. We were the ones who made the plough or fixed the damn thing when it broke.'

My ancestors having been skilled craftsmen for the most part (aside from a few mill owners and smugglers). One of the main surnames is Cooper, which tells you a lot right there. And considering your position in society is normally derived from what your family does, and how social mobility isn't all that great in this country, I do love it when people sigh about how they'd have loved to live in past times with servants or been servants. Somehow this type of person seems to forget that there was a whole big section in between.

Hi, I'm from the skilled working class that provided glass, smiths, barrel makers, foremen of mines and toolmakers. How about you?

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[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

Urban working class in England, as far as I know, with poultry farmers back in the ancestry somewhere (Fowler); the obligatory convict ancestor (I believe he stole a loaf of bread, but that could be family legend standing in for 'we have no idea because records are shonky') leading to urban working-class / subsistence farming in the outer west of Sydney; cane farm hands in Queensland, until for reasons unknown that branch of the family moved down to live on the breadline as urban working class (I believe my grandfather drove a milk truck) in the outer west of Sydney.

Oh HAI, as far as I know, I'm only the second person on either side of my family to get a university degree, and the other one is my uncle who graduated in his forties.