On this day in history, billions of events occurred. Some of these turned out to be important in the grand scheme of things, but most were individually insignificant. For the people they happened to, however, they were literally life and death. History remembers them only within records, providing that records were kept and survived the ravages of time.
I want to remember some of these people that I never met and whom I know nothing about, other than the dates they were born, or baptised, or married, or sentenced, or died.
So I’m going to begin a series in which I will feature an event that happened ‘on this day’. I once had a free trial with Ancestry (the genealogy research website) and every so often they invite me to a free access weekend, when I can look at selected record sets. Last time this happened, I just browsed with very minimal keyword searches and I found information on lots of random people from the past. They’re not famous (unless they are and I haven’t realised it) but they left imprints of their lives in various official records. I’m going to tell you about at least one of these ordinary people every month. Data protection rules don’t apply to the deceased, but if by some wonderful chance I end up featuring your ancestor on my blog, I will of course remove the information if requested. I won’t be using images of actual documents, as these are copyrighted.
I look forward to introducing you to some people of the past.
Sounds really interesting!
It is interesting to me and I hope a few other people will like it too 🙂
This sounds like it’s going to be a very interesting series.
Yes, I hope it will be of interest to some readers. Thank you 🙂
Well I’m aa bit slow to get on board but I really love this idea. Ordinary people have interestin, amazing and often heartbreaking lives. You only have to see a show like Who Do You Think You Are? to see how interesting an ordinary people can be. I’ll look forwrad to more of these. 🙂
Thanks 🙂 It is fascinating to find out about people from the past and just get a tiny glimpse into their lives. I have one of these posts planned every month, for at least the next few months. I like these ordinary folk to be celebrated and remembered 🙂
I’ll definitely look forward to them 🙂
Great series!
Thanks! I have a couple more planned and then the series will end, but I’m sure to do something similar after that.