I've got an Ag Lab!

For those not in the genealogy know this is short for Agricultural Labourer. Before the great move to the towns in the late 1800's a huge proportion of the population was employed doing ag labbing hence the abbreviation - you see it all the time on the census documents, the enumerator's simply couldn't face writing it umpteen times a page. Once you get back to about the 1850's most people's family trees are awash with them. Apart that is from mine. I have 10 generations of townies, following an amazing range of trades. Searching back for 400 years I couldn't find a single ag lab - until now!

I finally organised myself enough to go to the Kent Record Office in Maidstone. I was following up the trail of my gt grandfather Frederick Dalton Denness who was born in the Eastry Workhouse in 1850 (strange how that phrase has acquired glamour - a bit like the Australians who all want to find themselves convict ancestors - there's even a website where you can get a 'virtual' convict ancestor). Because he was illegitimate all I have on his birth certificate was his mother's name Rebecca - nowhere else to go beyond, a genealogical cul de sac. I had always hoped that there might be something in the workhouse records to show who the father was or something to connect Rebecca to her parents so I could carry the trail back.

Going to a record office is very exciting. You have to produce piles of identity and two of the traditionally awful photos and they give you your CARN ticket. Then you negotiate a dimly lit room full of very silent serious people and whirring microfilm machines. Then you have to work out the index system, then try and understand the machine instruction, then you load the film wrongly and it whizzes off the end, then you fiddle about with the zoom control and the focus and finally ----- you get to see the records.

And there he was. I whizzed right past him at first, down simply as ' admitted male' 'Rebecca Dennis' April 21st 1850 BORN... Then I saw it was him: 'baptised 9th May Fredk Dalton 15th May discharged.' and a final nugget of information - 'charged to Parish of Ash ' . Finally I'd got a place to look up in the census. By now I've used up an hour and a half of my two hours. Was it worth ploughing through reels of illegible census? You bet!
Back to the indexes and the microfilms looking for the 1841 census for Ash. Aargh, there is a whole reel with about 10 subdividisions just for the village of Ash. I've no actual address -it's a needle in a haystack! The writing of the first division is almost invisible - and by now I've only 15 minutes left!
4 divisions in. to my astonishment, I found her. Rebecca Dennis, age 20 living with her parents William Dennis aged 70 and Mary aged 60. And what was William? An Ag Lab! Finally I have a connection with the soil! I have a rural past! My dreams of living in the country are not doomed by genetics!!
At that point the bell went, metaphorically speaking, and I had to rush to gather all my papers, return my red box, hand in my microfilm key and go.
And now I can't wait to go back. I've got another whole generation and a parish and an aproximate date of birth. I've jumped over the gap in the tracks and I'm off again. Maybe I can even track down Frederick's father...... any Daltons in Ash?? Are there more Ag Labs waiting to be discovered down in Kent. Or is William just a blip? The Victorian equivalent of a hippy dropout? I'll probably discover HIS father was the village blacksmith. Certainly rural ties didn't hold young Fred. I've followed him through the census. It appears he hoofed it out of Kent as soon as he had a trade under his belt and is next discovered living in Tottenham Court Road set up as a venetian blind maker. He married the girl next door, the daughter of a line of Gloucestershire builders and stone masons.
I'm London born and bred. As I go back in time my family tree radiates out from London like the spider web of roads that brought my ancestors in. Scotland, Ireland, Norfolk, Kent, Gloucestershire. Townies - drawn to the biggest Town of all. Artisans and tradesmen, moving from trade to trade and from town to town as circumstances and technology changed. And one lone Ag Lab.
Cheers, William!