Do you feel closer or more proud of your poor ancestors?

[blaencoch]

My mum and my dad came from very different families. My dad's family in the 1890s were English speaking Welsh. They were solicitors and accountants. Had big houses with servants.

My mum's family were coal miners in the valleys. They spoke only Welsh. They were poor. 14 people in 4 rooms.

But, I feel fare more proud and connected with the poor family, than I do the middle class? Despite the fact that I live a life far closer to those in my dad's family (heck even I'm a lawyer).

Both sides dirt poor as far back as I’ve been able to get, and both sides from a part of the county that was particularly devastated by the Famine. So mainly I think of the pure luck or greater physical stamina or whatever it was that meant they survived to pass on their genes.

Because she’s not poor. It helps her believe she’s achieved everything she has through meritocracy.

I don’t know about proud but I’ve been humbled by what many of my ancestors had to endure and how they overcame significant adversity.

All my family were poor on both sides. Within 4 generations everything is signed X and so it continues back. Poor agricultural workers in East Anglia and poor factory workers in London. I think this is true for most of us- rich ancestors are the exception.

I don't feel pride. I do wonder what their lives were like and marvel at how much easier my own is. It would be nice to know more about them but of course that's much harder with poor people who didn't leave paperwork and portraits behind.

Not proud but certainly more interested in the poor ones (unknown fathers, children taken away and put in homes etc) than in the very middle class, "respectable " ones.

I get it, Op. It’s a sort of awe. My x3 great grandfather was orphaned at two. By 14 he was in the workhouse, alone. He made it to the Midlands at 17, married, raised a family. Travelled for work during the height of the Industrial Revolution as a pipe moulder. Was the first pipe moulder in the newly-built Stanton ironworks longshop in 1867. Died young from illness and overwork. I don’t have that tenacity, but if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I get it.

Everyone was poor on both sides of my lineage. I don’t really feel ‘proud’ but I do feel a great sense of awe for what they - especially the women - Lee t through and bloody tough they were. Even just as far back as my grandmother - raised 14 kids, all those pregnancies and labours and babies to feed! And all living in a tiny cottage with no indoor toilet and having to fetch water from a well. Hardy stock!

Excuse many typos!

All of mine were poor...

I agree with this though. I'm English but only because most of my ancestors had to come here to avoid starving to death.

Whether they knew that England was the cause of them starving I don't know?

It must have been horrific to see so many people around you die from starvation...

1 million dead. 2 million refugees.

I definitely think it's resulted in a lot of generational trauma.

That’s not remotely what the OP is saying.

Jesus Christ - the snark.

What’s she’s saying is that she’s proud of them because they got through some serious shit that she cannot imagine. She hopes they would be pleased their GGGD did well.

I don't have a word for what I feel...not pride, perhaps gratitude?

I'm conscious that I live a life of enormous privilege sort of built on the back of their lives of hard work and misery if you see what I mean?

As I said in my previous post, lots of generational trauma so many of them (the men especially) were bastards but perhaps many more of us would be if we were living their lives...

All sides of my family were dirt poor, illiterate farm labourers and domestic servants. Huge families in one room.

Extreme poverty everywhere

I have done some family tree research and literally none of them were middle class. So I have nothing to compare to. All were agricultural workers then miners. I think one even, very sadly died in a work house. Another, my grandma's grandad or poss great grandad died in a mining disaster. My own grandad who is still alive was a miner too.

I feel very sad, but also proud of their struggles. It makes me think on a regular basis how happy and secure and safe my life is. But it also makes me very aware of social justice issues.

Rubbish.
How many people who currently live in dire poverty are “proud” of their ancestors who also lived in dire poverty?
It comes from a position of privilege and distance from poverty.

I don't feel anything. I didn't know them. They're an interesting piece of history nothing more, I don't feel in any way connected.

Maybe not proud per se , but interested in what you find out at the lives they lead.
a sister of my gg(possibly g ) grandad , met a man coming through their rural village , he wooed her , he was 27 she was 17, he encouraged her to help him steal some horses . Both caught , went to county goal , then sent to a city goal . She was sentenced to hard labour and to be sent to Australia . Family appealed via local vicar as they were illiterate to no avail . She was shipped off to Australia ( from memory for 7 years ) married a fellow felon , they went to America and he murdered her within 9 months of getting there . All that happened in her short life of less than 25/26 .
Her name was Charity .

Although i wouldn't be here if it weren't for everyone's individual action, I think it's more interesting to know how poorer ancestors survived as that's clearly harder. Survival isn't a problem for those with money.

I'm not quite sure how I feel. Gutted when children die young, sometimes taking the mother with them. Feel quite proud of the craftsman, wonder a lot about the riches to rags and how that must have been.

I can't exactly do anything about ancestors so not proud or ashamed. They are what they are

I feel quite proud of my mum. She was born in a long line of poverty and I am fascinated how she went from an over crowded slum with outdoor loo and a tin bath in front of a fire, to owning her own property with indoor bathroom.

Some of it was all her own hard work. She even went to the high court to move forward sex equality in one area of law. Some of it was riding on the wave of social change after ww2.

But earlier ancestors, i find interssting in a bit of a disconnected way. I suppose it makes things like the highland clearences, or glasgow slums seem a bit more personal but its so far from my life now.

I definitely think humbled is the word for me. I come from generations of manual workers who had large families in very small houses. I have found no evidence of terrible poverty or workhouses but it’s a very different life to mine. My father grew up in one room with three siblings and his parents.

One part of the family all lived in the same small network of streets for generations. I visited recently and saw the tiny house my grandmother was born in, and you could see the house her mother was born in from the front door. Everyone worked in the local mill. I wonder what that life was like, marrying the neighbours you’d known all your life and all your families being connected.

I've lived in relative poverty as a lone parent and I am proud of my single mother ancestors as I can understand how much tougher it would have been for them, both day to day raising children on next to nothing, and the judgement they would have been subjected to.

I’m clearly in the minority here, and that’s fine.
I grew up in dire poverty. I find it distasteful that someone who clearly lives a very privileged life is taking pride in the suffering of someone they’ve never met.
As I say, I’m the 1% here. I’m not NT so I’m happy to accept I’m the strange one.

The poverty I found was confronting. One woman was prosecuted because her daughter died of malnutrition. Reading between the lines of the court records Dad was spending his day labourers pay at the pub on the way home.

I don't know about the PP but I am not at all 'very privileged' for a person living in the UK today. So it's nothing to do with thinking I have achieved anything through meritocracy, I earn little more than mw. I feel the same pride for relatives I did know like my GGM. So it's okay to feel that way about her but not her mother?