Transcript of AE 982 - Discovering Our Family Descends From European Royalty with Jo Smissen

How's it going? Welcome to this interview episode today. It's happened, it's happened. I twisted her arm, and I got her back on the podcast. So, my mother is on the podcast, today.

And we talk about a whole bunch of things related to family history, specifically our family history, and how my mum ended up finding out that we were related to some pretty incredible characters throughout European history going back at least, I think a thousand years.

So, it's an interesting story. It's not a 100%- We're not 100% sure, but we're 99% sure that it's true. So, take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, without any further ado, guys, I give you my mother, Jo Smissen. Enjoy the episode. So, welcome to the podcast, Mum. Are you pumped?

Yes, my son.

What was- What was the little Jedi reference?

Just- It's just an interesting experience.

Bring this closer to your mouth. Yeah, you'll get the microphone etiquette down. Don't be afraid to lean forward to it. Yeah.

Right.

Or bring it towards you. Bring it up towards you. There you go. There you go. How does that feel?

My friend the microphone.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, what does it feel like being on the podcast? You were on a while ago. I wonder what episode that was. I have to look it up whilst you're telling us what it's like.

I don't remember. It was such a long time ago. I was probably talking with you and Ian.

Yeah. In fact, the last episode was about you growing up in the 1960s.

No.

Yeah, yeah. From Episode 650, growing up in 1960s Australia with Jo Smissen. So, I guess we can't really cover the same topic.

I've got no idea what I said. Do you remember what you asked?

We talked about collecting stamps and a bunch of other things, yeah, moving around.

Nobody collects stamps anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting. Well, I guess we could talk about similar sort of stuff. We had- I had Dad on the podcast recently for the module about his childhood. And he talked about a whole bunch of these interesting things, like having a horse and cart deliver milk and bread and stuff like that. But I think you had a bit of a different childhood because you had quite a bit of moving around, didn't you, as a child?

Compared to Dad.

Compared to Dad, yes, because I was born in the UK, and I lived there for about six weeks.

What was it like?

I have absolutely no memory whatsoever, although a few years ago I actually went and visited my hometown for the first time and that was- That was really interesting and I actually feel quite attached to the place, it's just a little English village, but I feel quite attached to it.

I don't remember it as a baby, but I have memories as an adult now of going back and taking my parents back and actually seeing it a bit through their eyes, visiting the places that they visited.

That's probably a good topic for this podcast, potentially, then. How you feel as a European Australian with, what, the majority of your heritage being great British or English effectively. Right. Dads got Scottish in him, but you're pretty much pure English.

Pretty much.

And maybe the connection to a country that you didn't grow up in, but you visited multiple times and are probably influenced by culturally and comparing it to Australia. So, I mean, you were born there, you then grew up in Australia. Would you say that from your sort of perspective that childhood in Australia-

Well, I guess you wouldn't know what it's like in Great Britain. But do you think if you got to choose from the start now, you would say I would 100% go Australia? Or would you be- Do you feel now like you missed something, and you were like, I wonder what a British childhood would have been like?

No. No.

Sorry Great British listeners. No.

...Because...

No kangaroo's, right?

I'm- I've been an Australian citizen since birth, I was registered as an Australian citizen because my parents were Australian. So, there was no real personal connection for me to the UK other than the oddity, I suppose, of being born there. It's never actually been a part of my growing up. My parents were Australian, their parents were Australian, and my family goes back between four or six generations Australian.

We can tie in the family history stuff, which I think you've just- You've got a little twinkle in your eye. I have a feeling you've just cottoned on to that, as well. Okay.

So, to me, I'm Australian through and through. But for reasons that were outside of my control, obviously, my parents were in the UK when they got married and when I was born, but then they pretty much came back to Australia straight away. They couldn't go back to their hometown, which was Brisbane, because my Dad had a job in Adelaide. So, we went straight to Adelaide and my childhood was in Adelaide.

I feel like when I was growing up- Maybe the older I got, maybe once I was in my 20s, there was always this feeling- I don't know if you had it, but this sort of like, I am Australian but I'm still made to sort of realise that I'm not Australian, like Indigenous people are Australian. I'm somewhat of a- It doesn't feel like you're 100% the same as those guys because you do have this kind of ancestry in another country.

Did you ever feel like any kind of connection with Great Britain or with England or like when you went there for the very first time that, you know, you could remember, maybe the first time after you were born, did you feel like this is the homeland, this is the ancestral homeland?

Like, I would imagine an indigenous person from Australia or- An Australian indigenous person, if they'd grown up overseas, would feel coming back to Australia or coming to Australia for the first time. Did that ever hit you? I feel like that would hit me.

...Mean going back to England?

Yeah, I feel like if I went to England for the first time, I would be like shit, you know, for thousands of years, my, effectively, all of my ancestry was in here, Scotland and maybe a little bit of East Germany. But this small region of the world is where my DNA comes from. And like, I'll be like, you know, the soil has the bones and the blood of my ancestors in this soil.

They've died over wars, they were, you know, had children, they'd fallen in love in this location.

I think maybe over the last few years since I've been doing my family history, I might have had those feelings. And in fact, I've only been back to the UK twice in recent years. So, I never went back as a young person. We simply didn't have the resources for me to be able to do that.

I feel you.

I never went back. Even when we first travelled, when we had enough money to travel, we went to the United States and Canada because that's where Ian's sister lives and that's where your cousins are. And he was working for a Canadian company, so most of our travel or most of my travel has been in North America and Canada.

And subsidised.

And subsidised.

By work, right?

My frequent flyer points.

That's it, too, by Dad. Yeah.

Exactly. So, visiting the UK, really, I visited for the first time on my parents- In the year of my parent's 60th wedding anniversary. So, that's like- That's 60 years since my birth.

So, that would be like me doing it in another 25 years.

And so, it was interesting to me, it was fascinating to me, and I loved going to English places. But apart from- Apart from the little village where I was born, which I've now been to 3 times. I don't...

It's the most visited place for you in England, is it?

Pretty much. I don't know that there's any other place that I felt a particular association with. Now that I've been uncovering my roots a bit more and particularly the roots that go back to medieval times. Now, that is interesting to me. And that means that there are buildings that have been there for hundreds of years, even more, that I could visit, and I could have some sense of...

My great, g-g-g-g-g-g-great grandfather own this place.

Something like that. But apart from that...

Yeah.

...I'm Australian. I've never felt anything other than Australian.

Really?

My generation, I guess we were a privileged generation. We saw ourselves as Australian. There wasn't- I don't know, I'm not even sure how to put it. But we identified very strongly as Australian, we didn't feel guilty about being Australian, we were Australians.

And in- The interesting thing, though, is in probably two generations before that, in my grandparents' time, they still saw themselves as English and they still saw England as the home country.

Even if they'd never been there.

Yeah. And all those soldiers who fought in WWI and WWII from Australia were defending the motherland.

Yeah.

So, two generations ago, there was quite a different feeling and a different relationship with Britain, particularly Britain.

And I guess that would have been about the time that federation took place. So, it's not surprising then that, you know, two generations ago, like my grandparents, grandparents would have been born in the late eighteen hundreds. Right. Maybe the early nineteen hundreds. So, it would have been either around the time or just after Australia actually became a country prior to which it would have seen itself...

Probably, yeah, maybe a generation after. But they still lingered a long time, this colonial attachment to Great Britain, particularly Great Britain. Now some of my ancestors are German, but, and perhaps this is a legacy of wars as well. There isn't that connection with Germany, although there are places where there are lots of Germans that live like in South Australia, in the Barossa Valley, like in Toowoomba, where my ancestors came.

Where it's a very big German community and they probably do feel strongly German. But that wasn't my upbringing. That kind of- By the time- It's all distilled out of me, I'm Australian. That's all I am.

So, would you call your parents royalists?

Yes, I would. My mother particularly, yeah.

Do you want to describe what that is and how it manifests itself? Because it's something for me I still find very peculiar.

So, obviously in Australia, we are still part of the Commonwealth. We're not a republic. And...

So, we have no prep- for me that effectively means we have no president, we have a prime minister, and the head of state is the queen.

That's right.

And she does nothing.

Though, it's a titular- It's a ceremonial position, but it's still a reality that Australia is- Yeah. I know it's governed by Britain, even though in reality we govern ourselves and there's been a referendum and there's lots of debate about whether we should be a republic or not. It usually falls down because people don't want to change the status quo.

And there are real fears about what kind of a president would we have and, you know, the queen- We can deal with the queen. She's kind of distant. She has a representative in Australia. In- For the most part, they don't interfere in Australian politics, although there have been at least one celebrated occasion where that happened.

Was this Gough Whitlam?

Yeah, this was the dismissal of Gough Whitlam by the Governor-General.

Who is can only be fired by the Queen, right?

Well, yeah, by the Queen, through...

But he can get rid of the leader of Australia.

Yes. And it was a very complicated situation, and it was very politically driven, but it happened. But for the most part, we can deal with the Queen, you know, she's distant, she doesn't really interfere with our politics.

She's got other shit to deal with, yeah.

We look to countries that have presidents, I think, and we go, well, this is really kind of giving somebody, one person a lot of power in our government. And I think that a lot of people are not sure about how that would actually...

Really?

...Work.

I hadn't really thought about it, apart from the fact that I assume that people just didn't want to let go of the British ties.

Well, you know, it sells itself as that. But it's more. It's more, what is having a president mean? And...

It would be weird, I think, for me at least. Probably you, too, being like, yeah, we have an Australian president. Like that change, that initial switch. Right. Like from going from pounds to dollars must have been a real shock to the system. I would imagine it'd be the same if it's like, oh, he's the leader of a party, but they can, you know, the prime minister can be ditched, or the party can change things.

But at once it's the president, if he's voted in, it's like, no, no, no, there's no ditching him.

Yeah. And, you know, there are different... ...There are different models around the world and they're not all good examples of what we might like to follow. But I think it is the great unknown for people who are nervous about what it would be like to be a republic.

So, what does Nanna and Grandpa, what do they really do in terms of being royalists? What does that- What does that look like on a yearly basis, I guess?

I think, well, perhaps it means they have a more of an attachment to Great Britain than I do...

Yep.

...A generation later. And, you know, they've grown up in an era where there was much more attachment. But I think my mother has a real attachment to the royal family and- I don't know, perhaps it's a bit of a fairy tale. I'm not quite sure what it is.

Bring this a little bit closer.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Well, she got the letter from the Queen, right? For her sixtieth wedding anniversary.

Yes. We organised that.

Yeah.

It doesn't come out of nowhere; you actually have to...

Oh, I would imagine the Queen is not in a rush to by default, have to write a letter for every single person who has their sixtieth wedding anniversary. I'm sure she's like, you ask, and I'll sign my name.

You have to go through your member of parliament who goes through, you know, whatever channels they go through to get the letter from the Queen. And in fact, they ended up with a letter from the Queen, a letter from the prime minister and a letter from their local member. So, everybody was excited about his sixtieth wedding anniversary.

Yeah. That's just nuts. So- But, yeah, it is a weird thing, isn't it, right? Did you think the same growing up? Seeing a lot of people making so much fuss over the royal family, watching weddings on TV, having the full thing televised, where I would imagine in America they would be like, what.

But it's like a movie. It's like a fairy tale. It doesn't- It's not that real in our lives, if that makes sense.

No.

It's interesting. And again, now I go back in my history, I am more connected than I thought to royalty. And so, it's actually more fascinating to me than it used to be. But, I don't know, it's an interesting institution.

So, what got you so interested in family history, Mum? Take us down that road.

What got me interested in family history?

Why is it such a kick? Right. Like, quite often I come over and you have these diagrams of people's names and family trees written out on the table on different pieces of paper with highlighters and notes, and it looks like you've been- You haven't slept for days, you haven't showered in a week. Like, why is it such a fascinating thing? I'm not making fun of you. I'm sort of playing it up a bit. But I know how much you love it.

And it seems to give you a great kick and you find out really interesting stuff. So, what is it about?

Because, you know, at the heart of it, what it is, is a puzzle.

Yeah.

And I'm a puzzler. And I have a brain that sees patterns and likes to put things together. And so, it's putting together where we came from, and it gets really interesting. And you hit places where you have to actually be quite clever to figure out how, you know, what relationships there are and what's the next step back and- Because I can only do it from a distance and I rely on online resources when I'm researching British history...

As opposed to being an actual historian that's in the- On the ground in Germany or Britain.

Yeah. And going to archives and actually getting out the microfiche and the documents and going through them page by page. There's a little bit of that that you can do online, but there's a lot of things that you rely on indexes, and you rely on the search engines of things like ancestry to actually pull up the records that might be useful to you.

And then you have to use your own common sense and understanding to decide whether it fits with the puzzle that you're putting together in terms of putting your family together.

When you say some of the stuff that's a real headache is when other people have put things together in a sort of half arsed manner and you're like, a lot of this is so wrong.

Don't even get me started. There are some really sloppy researchers out there, let me tell you. But yes. And honestly, I've made some good connections, I wouldn't say- They're not people I keep up with all the time.

Yeah.

But there were a couple of people who I met through corresponding in ancestry. And because I had my DNA tested and a few people got thrown up. Well, lots of people. But...

That you linked with, as in, family members.

Yeah, they were family members and it looked like they could tell me about places where I had gaps. And in fact, I met a couple of them when I went to the UK. And that was a really great experience. And we explored some towns where, you know, where certain branches of my family came from. Went around churchyards, had a look at lots of headstones. Nah, it was fun.

Let's get to the interesting part then. You ended up finding out that we were related to royalty and a lot of famous names in great British history, and I guess Western Europe, European history. How did that- How did you make that connection? And then who did you find out that we were related to?

Okay. So, I followed the family back in Lancashire...

Yeah.

...Through births, deaths, marriage records. There's actually some really good indexes outside of ancestry in Lancashire, and you just follow the family back. And I think I took it back to about 1700. And this isn't going to make sense to a lot of people, but it threw up a name that was unusual. So, the name Cordelia came up in my family...

As a surname?

No, as a first name.

Okay.

Girl's name.

Yeah.

And when unusual names come up, it actually helps you research because they're not common. And when you find matches in other lines and you investigate whether it's your line or not- I mean, it gives you leads to follow, essentially. Whereas if it had been a common name...

John Smith.

...It wouldn't necessarily have had a lot of leads to follow. So, I guess I'd go through the normal channels of births, deaths, marriages, I got back to about 1700. And then because it was unusual, I kind of made a bit of a leap to a family of a baronet in the area which had similar names. And then I found some other references that actually had pedigrees in them that were, I guess, supplied by families to readers at particular times.

So, for historians out there, they're not primary sources, they're secondary or tertiary sources, but they're based on records from the town. And that took me back another few generations. And I tapped into the family of this baronet, so not descended from a baronet, but hooked back into the family a generation or two before that. And once you hook into somebody who has their family documented...

Yeah. The aristocracy.

...The aristocracy, then you can go back a lot of generations. And so, as part of that, I investigated some of the women who married into the family. And one of them, there's quite a bit of data out of it or quite- Or some trees that have been done for her, which show her descent from medieval royalty.

And then if you trace that back in detail, I pretty much discovered that the medieval royalty or medieval knights, they intermarried so much that you pretty much become related to every major family in the medieval period.

So, who was some of the big names that you were kind of like blown away to find out you were related to or descended from?

Of course, William the Conqueror is the big...

Yeah.

...It's the big name and it appears- So, I have to say, you know, I'm 99% sure that I'm on the right track here.

Yeah.

But I'm only basing my research on...

God damn it, Joanna. My daughter in the background. Jesus.

...Secondary resources, so I'm pretty certain I'm on the right track, but I'm open if somebody said, no, no, you got it wrong for this reason.

Yeah.

But I'm pretty certain I'm on the right track here.

...To be debunked.

I'm quite open to being debunked. If somebody wants to challenge me, go right ahead. But no William the Conqueror. But even more interesting is the fact that I can trace my- Or can trace us back to 12 of the 15 known companions of William the Conqueror who were there at the Battle of Hastings.

Really?

So, you know, William the Conqueror is kind of fun, but it's the other people who he brought or who were his mates, and most of them were related to him in some form, the major names that I remembered anyway. And so, they- And they all intermarried and, whatever, through time.

This is a big thing, right? You end up being related to all the other royal families because they all intermarried in order to keep the wealth in the family, so.

And forge alliances. It was all about forging alliances and keeping control of assets. And so, from William the Conqueror, we follow down through to Edward the first, and then after that we drop off into lesser lineages.

Yeah. Yeah.

But, no...

Wasn't the first sort of king of England in there, too, was it Alfred the Great or...

Oh, yes. And again, see William the Conqueror...

He's the one that did it, huh?

He married a descendant of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne, the big French- The French king who's well known for leaving lots of descendants. And so, through that marriage, that kind of ties us into Saxon's, ties us into French royalty and then, of course, they intermarried across Europe. So, lots of different lineages.

Well, you got to Rollo, right? The Viking king.

That time, because he's the ancestor of William the Conqueror...

Yeah.

...Who came into Normandy and was allowed to establish in Normandy.

It was so funny when you were telling me this, because when I started learning about this, I was watching the TV shows, The Last Kingdom, which is about Alfred the Great and his interaction with the Danes and Wessex and fighting amongst themselves and everything like that.

As well as Vikings, the TV show, which is sort of a weird mishmash of historical fact and fiction, because you've got like Ragnar Lothbrok, who's this- I don't know if he's- I think he was an actual person, but I think a lot of everything that he did is a bit mythical now. But his brother in the TV show is Rollo and in real life, I don't think they were anywhere near connected.

I don't think so either.

But Rollo does go to France, and I think Charlemagne- Is it Charlemagne who's there, and he marries into- In the TV show he marries his daughter and ends up becoming a Frank.

I don't think it's that simple.

Yeah.

Think, Charlemagne was a few generations before that...

That was how the TV show was all done. So, it was like these big names are all coming up and I was like, okay, so these- I'm like, holy crap. I'm actually theoretically potentially related to some of these huge names that did these things.

Yeah. And you go back, but you get to a point and realise the furthest you can go back in that line and other lines track about that far back. So, that's, what, about the eight hundreds or something.

Yeah.

Well, period of the Vikings. Right.

Yeah. And then then before that it becomes more the stuff of legends, you know, people have recorded history. They don't tend to be contemporary sources and they're romanticising and mixing up a whole lot of stuff that happened and perhaps gelling it around certain names that have become legendary. So, I'm no- I have to say, I'm no historical expert, I'm no historian.

But my feeling is that many of the lines you can pretty reliably trace back- Many of the major lines, to about the eight hundreds. And then before that, it becomes more the matter of legend.

Cloudy and foggy.

Yeah.

What happens with, say, Rome? I mean, this might be out of your wheelhouse in terms of what you dabble with. But are there people today who can claim direct lineage from, say, you know, Augustus Caesar and a bunch of these other famous Romans?

Or did we lose a lot in between that period of Rome ending, you know, in the first few hundred years AD and then the sort of dark ages and then only later the kind of royal families end up recording things properly again?

I don't know, because I've really only been following British history.

Yeah.

The closest I've come to a Roman ancestor, I suppose, is following through the line of our history. And I'm pretty sure it's the one that goes back through the Welsh princes. And the Welsh princes at some point claimed descent from a Roman centurion.

Whether or not that's true, though.

That's right.

Yeah.

But that, I think is the closest I've come to a line that might claim descendant- To be descended from Romans. But again, if you're doing your history closer to Rome and those, you know, maybe there's more information and not the big gap. I don't know enough. Yeah.

I can't imagine what it's like living there.

There's a lot of years in between the Romans and when history started to be more reliably recorded and records taken, and people named in a way that can actually trace.

So, out of these historians- I don't mean historians. Figures in history to sort of finish up with, which one would you like to have met?

That is a very good question.

And why?

Yes. I think that some of the women I would like to have met because they're more shadowy figures and yet their histories are still there, and I'm sorry, I can't remember the names off the top of my head. But there's women who were- There's one particular woman who was abducted from an abb- Basically she became a nun at a very young age and lived her life in an abbey became the abyss.

But her family all died around her and she suddenly found herself the heiress to a huge fortune and lots of land. And this guy came and abducted her from the abbey...

...Marry me. Give me your stuff.

Who knows? But they had kids, so.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Thanks.

So, he wanted her land and her resources, and she was abducted or escaped from the abbey. Who knows what actually happened and had a family life.

That'll be an interesting story.

And there's a few stories like that where women were either forcibly or with their consent abducted. Because one of the interesting things, I guess, I found in looking at medieval families is that particularly with the barons, it was the king or the pope who- But mostly the king who controlled marriage rights. And they could be sold to families.

So, some other family could have control of the marriage of your children, or the travels of your children. So, it was all a complex web of alliances and making sure nobody had too much. And- So- what did I start this with?

Well, that's who you'd want to know about. Yeah, who you'd like to talk to about.

That's right. So, often, you know, often marriages were set up without the consent of the two people involved. Yes, so there were situations where people took their lives into their own hands. The other person I would really like to meet is a woman called Lucy of Bolingbroke. Lucy of Bolingbroke, and you can Google her. She's a fantastic woman. She had three husbands and probably children by them all, certainly by the second and third...

I'm assuming all these husbands died before- Well, at least the first two.

Yes. All three of her husbands, she outlived... ...All three of her husbands. And there is a record of a letter that was written to the king asking not to be remarried...

Please, for the love of God.

So, I think she had to pay a fine. So, women were married multiple times, but they could, in fact, pay their way out of being married.

What was the benefit to the king of making sure that someone like this woman kept having husbands? Was it because he didn't want a woman to have the ultimate control of the estate or the money or...?

This particular woman was descended from a Saxon family, so she was a Saxon heiress, and the three husbands were Normans in succession...

So, it was all political.

So, it was all about managing control of her assets.

And, what, I would imagine he would be like, well, we've got this, you know, bachelorette widow, again, we might as well marry her off to some other guy who...

She can't look after her own estates. Heaven forbid. We need one of our allies in charge of that particular part of the country, so...

Yeah, yeah. So, it's in my interest to make sure these two get married.

That's right. And they will have children, sons, presumably, who will then take over running of the property and be allies to the king, as well.

So, through your sort of family research, what have you kind of learnt about the lives of these people in terms of their daily life? Was it a life that you would be like, you know what, I would love to have lived this person's life? Or is it the kind of thing where you're like, I am so fucking happy that I am born today because this sounds like a shit way to go? Like...

Yeah, I'd like to do more reading because, you know, obviously dates and family groupings or whatever tell you one part of the story, but they don't tell you a lot about people's lives. So, I'd like to do more reading. And there is more written now about medieval lives. I'd like to do more reading about what their lives were actually like, but that seems like, you know, they were at the whim of their superiors. Pretty much.

And it was a harsh life and a brutal life in many ways, for both men and women. I think women had more power than you think. I see stories...

I've always thought that.

I've seen stories over and over again of men who died quite young, leaving their sons too young to be able to manage their property...

And the evil overlooking woman comes in...

...Their mother- Their mother would be- Would look after their interests until they came of age...

And never wants to give it up.

And then often the woman would then go and spend the rest of her life quietly in an abbey. So, I feel like they had their... ...They had their marriage organised for them...

Yeah.

...They did their duty by having lots of children...

Oh, okay.

...They may have done their duty by looking after their son's assets until they became of age. But once the sons took over, what job was there for the woman?

I was wondering if the sons were just like, there's not enough room for the two of us.

Quite possibly so.

You're going to have to go to the abbey and become a nun.

And so, they just kind of tapped out and had a quiet life after that.

Yeah...

Paid another fine so they didn't have to get married again and headed off.

But did you- You saw quite a bit in this sort of research of the same generation doing the same job, too, right. It was not like you had a lot of opportunities. It was your dad did this, your grandfather did this, so you're going to do this...

Oh, alright. So, we're talking about- We're talking more about in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds now.

Well, recently, yeah, we can talk about that. Obviously, it's a little harder the further back you go. But I would imagine you know a little bit more about that because there's more people, too.

Yeah, and it seemed like particularly before the...

Industrial revolution.

Industrial revolution. Thank you, Peter.

See it in your eyes. I can see it in your eyes. And I know where the story's going. Yeah.

Yeah. So, before the Industrial Revolution, you know, our ancestors were weavers and their father before them was a weaver. And as far back as you can trace...

What do they do?

I think they wove. Pretty much they sat in their little room at the top of their house, with their loom. And...

Made...

...Wove fabric, that they then sold on. And that was their job. Or we have one branch of the family who were Cutlers and they made... ...They made... No.

Probably similar to the word Cutlass.

They made pen blades for penknives. Pen blades.

Yeah.

And in fact, one of the family was a scissor-putter-together, that was his job.

Togetherer.

The scissor-putter-together. And he must have put the pairs that make up scissors together for the entire- His entire working life, census after census after census he has the same job.

Well, I guess once you're good at something your like, I'm not re-educating myself or upskilling, you know. The towns already got a blacksmith.

Yeah. But then in the Industrial Revolution, there was a lot of movement of people, particularly from towns into cities and other jobs. While the mills in the area where our family came from, which was a textile area. Instead of having people who just were in their houses with their loom making fabric, things were made in mills and people started to work in mills and factories and all of those sorts of things.

I always find it so interesting how the more modern we got throughout history, the less quality we had in our lives, at least up until probably the, I don't know, maybe the eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds. It seems like when you had hunter gatherers, they had a healthier diet than when agriculture was formed and people started living in groups that were, you know, farming things because all of a sudden, they had a great deal less food.

And so, I think from some of the things I've been watching and reading recently, I was learning that the diets actually became much worse when they suddenly were living together and developing agriculture. But it was obviously a trade-off where they were like, well, now we have surplus food, it's just not much of a variety. And we've got safety in numbers, and we can...

And the security of living in one place and fencing it off, so that you can fight off your neighbours more easily.

Well, you don't have to move from place to place to place, you know, but it's interesting health wise, you know, you then have all of these diseases that come with living together and these other issues like, you probably coming into conflict more often with other groups.

And then when we get up to the industrial revolution and people moving out of the country into cities, we're obviously dealing with much worse conditions in terms of health. Right. With pollution...

Well, the squalor.

...The disease, the squalor, yeah, of living in just horrible conditions.

...Horrible conditions. But the other thing that really got me in learning about these kind of professions is that there must have been so much injury to do with RSI. Imagine you're a weaver and the loom is propelled by your foot. So, you spent a lot of time standing on one leg, just pressing the loom with the- Or the loom lever with the other leg.

And that's what you have to do. And you have to do it fast because you actually want to...

Move the wheel.

...Move the way and make a lot of money. A lot of these in the cutlery industry, there was a lot of, you know, there were Filers who spent a lot of time filing and they would have got metal file things in their lungs and all sorts of horrible disea- And miners.

Yeah, well, black lung, right, in the mines. Did you hear about monkey shoulder?

No.

Heard of that? That's a type of whisky, but it's named after the guys who used to do the physical shovelling of the barley as it was being moulted. So, it's effectively- The barley's been wet, you know, so that it would germinate, create all these different proteins and everything inside of each, you know, little husk.

And then they need to stop that with either heat or smoke or both in order to prevent the thing completely turning into a plant, right, a little seedling. And so, whilst they're moulting it, the guys have to get up, the smoke or the heat would come through the ground in, well, the roof and they would be on top of it shovelling this stuff.

But because they were shovelling it, obviously the same way constantly, day in, day out, they end up with this shoulder that's lower than the other. That's kind of like deformed because they're having to do this repeated...

Yeah.

...Movement. And it was the same with archers, right. I think archery, they end up with a deformed back where one side is much more muscular than the other because they're not switching from side to side. They pick one side where they're holding it out straight and the other one's pulling. So, you have this Push-Pull tension that's not symmetrical. So...

There must have been so many of those kinds of injuries.

The just deformed bodies and...

That's right. And, you know, people died a lot younger, so...

Often in horrific ways.

Yeah, we won't even go there.

Yeah, well, and they had children in working in these factories. Right. You know, that may be something worth talking about. What would life have been like as a child in the eighteen hundreds?

Well, I think it depends very much on where you were, but certainly in the...

Well, you wouldn't have been playing in the streets though, right. You didn't have a teenage year or period...

...Probably were playing in the streets, kids were out in the streets the whole time. But certainly, in the mills, the cotton mills and the silk mills, which is where a lot of our family came from, the children were used to collect all of the bits that fell off underneath the looms. And so, they could do that while they were very little.

So, from a very young age, they became workers in the cotton factory to bring home a bit of extra for their family. And in fact, it was the mills who ran the schools, so the kids would work in the morning or the afternoon and do schooling in the alternate time when they finally brought in schools for these kids.

But that they were doing a job that was potentially lethal, too. Right. It wasn't uncommon for them to have limbs ripped off or die because of these machinery in these factories where there was no health or safety regulations, it was just, get underneath the huge moving parts...

I imagine it was a very dangerous thing to do. And if you are not careful, you could easily get injured. Although I haven't seen many records in our family or in the research that I've done where people have...

Children have died at work.

Well, or it's not recorded. Yeah. It's even- When infants die, generally, it's not recorded as... Well, you'd have to after about the 1840s, you can get the individual records, but you've got to pay for it, so.

Would you have had a teenage period of life? Like, that seems to be a sort of luxury that we have today, right. Back in those sort of industrial revolutionary times, you would imagine, and well, and beforehand, as soon as you're able to move around and carry things, you're pretty much set to work on the farm or in the factory or something.

Because a lot of the time the families require- They can't sustain the family of a single person's income. They need any children that they have to be bringing in income as well to pay for rent and food and whatever else, right.

For sure. And in other places, like in the towns, particularly, a lot of the kids, if they weren't working in a mill, if it wasn't a mill town or anything like that, they'd be servants. A lot of the young people in the families that I've looked at are servants from a very- From quite an early- Well, as teenagers they become servants.

Bring this closer. You wonder how much abuse they'd cop then, too, because not only would they have been in a position of, you know, not a position of power, in a position of vulnerability, but also probably a lower class, right, to people that they're serving.

So, we see all these TV shows coming out about what it's like to be a young woman or a young man in these, you know, the sixteen hundreds, seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds. It must have been, yeah, you know, pretty difficult.

Who knows. But maybe it was also a mark of- A pride to actually be a servant in a well-to-do house. I don't know enough about it to actually be able to say, but I'm sure the servants had their hierarchy and there were, you know, you started at the bottom as a scullery maid or something and worked your way up.

What's a scullery maid?

I think scullery is more like kind of cleaning the floors or...

Yeah, okay.

...To do with laundries.

Yeah. All the really hard labour stuff.

Google scullery everybody...

Yeah.

...Because I'm not sure.

...Spell that. Is it scullery maid?

With a "C". "S-C".

Oh, there we go. Okay, duties of the scullery maid included the most physical and demanding tasks in the kitchen, such as cleaning and scouring the floor, stoves, sinks, pots and dishes.

Yep, there you go.

Damn. Yeah, that would have been brutal.

And then you work your way up to a lady's maid and all you have to do is help someone get dressed, do their hair. Nice.

Those would have been the times. Well, we can probably finish up there, Mum. I think, I probably kept you enough, but yeah. So, you recommend other people listening to this if they are interested in family history, that it's a pursuit worth following?

Look I- Yes. Yes...

Hesitation.

Well, I think you have to be interested. And for me, like I said, it's a big puzzle. And I like- I'm a researcher, that's my training. And so, I get a kick out of solving problems and finding tricky situations. And even if it's not my direct family and actually putting together trees that might help...

I'll have to do Kel's family in Brazil, that'll be a different level of difficulty.

Yes. I don't know what Brazilian records are like. German records I've got into and they're, of course, all in German, old German.

Bet you can start recognising different words and titles...

And you can find resources that help you translate certain words. So, you start to know what you're looking for.

But do you think everyone's pretty much got an interesting story at some point in, you know, if you dive into your ancestry and you can get 2 records, there's going to be something in there you're going to find that's going to be like, wow, I had no idea that was lying there.

I think so. Yeah. There are lots of surprises.

Yeah.

And it is- It's fascinating to find out the kinds of occupations your ancestors had and to start to think about what their lives might have been like.

When to put today into perspective. Right. To sort of have a better understanding...

It does, and it makes you realise how lucky you are, how lucky we are.

All good. Mums recovering from a lot of different diseases and the...

Not COVID. Not COVID.

...Just diseases from Noah's day-care.

Three negative COVID tests later. I'm fine.

I had one last question. What were we talking about?

We were talking about researching family history.

I know, but more specifically, just then. I had a good question. There was something there, it was- We can't leave the episode on me just saying, I had an awesome question.

We talked about finding out the kinds of jobs that your ancestors did. We talked about researching Brazilian family history and how difficult that would be.

That would be hard. I've- It's totally lost me, unfortunately. Yeah, totally forgotten. Totally forgotten. But it would be interesting to do Kel's because she's got a mix of indigenous, South American, five different African countries...

Probably you would have to go back. Yeah, but you'd probably have to go back quite a few generations to actually find all those separate lines, because I suspect that the- It's been a mishmash for a long time.

That it's been a pot full of things mixing together. I remember what the question is. What do you think of the TV show, who do you think you are? Would you recommend people check that out? That's a really good question, my son.

Mum's loving being on the podcast.

That's because I'm pretending that nobody's even watching.

Wait, wait, wait. People are watching?!

Oh no. I love the British version, which was the first version.

Yeah.

And the thing I love about it is that they tend to talk a lot about social history and not just about the trees and the people that are in the celebrities' backgrounds, but they talk a lot about the social history and what was going on at the time. I find that the American and the Australian versions focus much more on the person and their wow factor and how excited they get about finding out what they find out.

Yeah.

And to me, they're less interesting. And they've also taken what I find infuriating in TV shows. They've taken this approach of telling you what's going to happen...

Before it happens.

...Before it happens. And your like, the whole point that I watched this is for the suspense.

And then you go on a break, and you come back from the break, and they tell you again everything that they've found to that point. I hate being treated like a two-year-old when I'm watching TV.

Yeah, that was a good show. I guess that effectively the premise is that they get a person and they dive into their history. It's usually a famous person that you'll know from TV.

Well, it's always a celebrity of some sort and some you know, and some you don't.

Yeah.

And they focus on a particular part of their history. And there've been some absolutely fascinating stories on the British show. I find the Australian ones tend to focus on convicts.

Yeah.

Everybody gets so excited about having convicts in their ancestry that that has been a lot of the shows that I've watched.

Whereas back in the day, your grandpa- Or your parents probably never wanted to talk about that kind of...

No convicts in our family.

Jesus Christ. No one...

Absolutely none.

...No one, no one.

No.

Yeah. The other show I was going to recommend is, what was the worst job in history? I'm trying to work it out. Wait a second. It is the worst jobs in history. So, this is by- What's his name? Baldrick? What's his name, again?

Oh, yes, that's his name.

I've gotta give you his actual name. I always forget, but Baldrick, is Tony Robinson. That his name?

Could be.

Yeah, it's- Yeah. It's Tony Robinson. He's the British actor who played Baldrick in whatever TV show it used to be, but that's what I always know him...

Blackadder.

Blackadder, there you go. Yeah, so he's really interesting. But yeah, he goes through all of these horrible, horrible jobs generally throughout...

There's a woman who's done it recently, as well.

Oh, okay. I've only seen the old one from like the early 2000s.

There might be a guy and a woman more recently who have kind of done dirty jobs.

Yeah.

They're not quite the historians that he is.

Yeah.

But- No, they're fun.

Sweet. Pizzas here, guys. We've got to bail. Sorry. Dads come in and just giving us the thumbs up, so. Thank you for joining us Mum. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

No worries.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, dropping these knowledge bombs and overcoming your fear and anxiety and sitting in the hot seat.

The very little I know about history.

The whole point is just get on here and talk and give people access to Australian English. So, thank you. Thank you very much.

Yes, but you, my son, are a descendant of William the Conqueror. Do not forget that.

99% chance, yeah. According to Mum. Thanks, guys.

And Charlemagne, and Alfred the Great.

See ya.

Among others.

Bye. Bye.

Bye everyone.