~i put this in my family tree blog~but then decided to add it here too~
how funny it is to feel connections and feelings for long gone ancestors who you have never met and had died before even your parents and grandparents were born?
i have been doing some more digging away at my family tree, concentrating on direct grand/great grand/great great...you get the idea!
i decided last night to look again at my maternal grandparents line and found that my great, great, great granddad George was, in the 1871 census and inmate of the Wiltshire County Asylum, listed as an 'inmate-lunatic'
it made me feel sad reading this, having this document in front of me, although online; but the fact it was not the original took away none of the sadness i felt for this long gone relative.
it made me wonder what it really was, the reason for his being there and labeled that way.
of course in this day and age there are many more reasons for peoples mental health problems that would have been called something totally differently over a hundred yars ago.
what made me feel better was that in the 1881 census he was home with his family again.
i have been doing some more digging away at my family tree, concentrating on direct grand/great grand/great great...you get the idea!
i decided last night to look again at my maternal grandparents line and found that my great, great, great granddad George was, in the 1871 census and inmate of the Wiltshire County Asylum, listed as an 'inmate-lunatic'
it made me feel sad reading this, having this document in front of me, although online; but the fact it was not the original took away none of the sadness i felt for this long gone relative.
it made me wonder what it really was, the reason for his being there and labeled that way.
of course in this day and age there are many more reasons for peoples mental health problems that would have been called something totally differently over a hundred yars ago.
what made me feel better was that in the 1881 census he was home with his family again.
1 comment:
Lunatic? Hmmmmm I wonder. Most of us today would be locked up if we admitted our innermost thoughts to a psycologist....see can't even spell the word I'm sure.
I can imagin most of us alternative living people would fit the criterea for being locked up, but they'd have to drag me screaming and kicking :o)
I've done my family history too and find some VERY weird coincidences makes you really wonder how much of us and our memory is genetic!
In love and light,
Sue xxx
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