Wednesday, July 18, 2012

F is for ... FARMERS!


Special thanks to Alona at Gould Genealogy for coming up with the Family History Through the Alphabet challenge!


F is for ... FARMERS!


Seriously.  Who doesn't have farmers in their family tree?  Of course, when you think about it, they really didn't have a need for a "customer service representative" or even a "paralegal" back in the day.  Unless you lived in the city, you were most likely a farmer.


Out of 3 sets of great-grandparents and 6 sets of great-great-grandparents, two-thirds of them were farmers.  (I am missing an entire branch of my tree because my maternal grandfather was adopted and I haven't found his biological family yet - but his adopted family were definitely not farmers).


That's right, 6 out of 9 direct ancestors were farmers.  A few had grain farms, but most are just listed as general farms.  They were all in South Dakota.  One of them was a farmer in Quebec, Canada before he wandered south and ... wait for it ... had a farm.


My great-grandfather, Thomas Patrick Slowey, was a farmer until sometime between 1940 and 1945, when he went to work in some sort of alcohol plant.  He was in his mid to late 40s at the time, so he older than the maximum age to be drafted for the war.  I'm guessing that he was working to assist the war effort.  If anyone knows anything about these types of plants, I would be very interested in learning more about them.


Oh ... the three who weren't farmers?  They are all on my maternal grandmother's branch.  They lived in Indiana.  One worked for the railroad; the other two were machinists in a garage.


Do we share any ancestors?
Please email me at lostancestors [at] gmail [dot] com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't find your A,B,C,D and E posts in this "challenge" as well as G,H,I and J??? Please show me the way. Cheers, Catherine

Unknown said...

Catherine ... you can click on the "alphabet geneaalogy" tag (or something similar ... I'm posting from my phone at work, so I can't see my actual blog post) to see the prior posts. Unfortunately, I'm way behind and don't have G, H, I, or J yet :)

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