If you’ve got the family history bug and are busy identifying and locating ancestors from the distant or more recent past, then a useful way to get the most from that information is by using it alongside demographics. By looking into the circumstances that form the setting for your family’s history, you can begin to see how typical they were. Historians call this putting your family history in context. In doing this, you can explore how individual family members relate to broader historical trends. You may even begin to see aspects of the relationship between individual ancestors and their society.

You could find out about that context by reading historical accounts of the period, place or activity associated with your ancestors. Similarly, by turning to historical demographics you can find out about ‘average’ or ‘typical’ population trends, including birth, marriage and death rates, economic activity and geographical mobility. If you know what the average person or family was doing at any particular time, then you can see how your particular family in the past measures up. Were they going with the flow and acting in similar ways to the majority of others? Or were they doing something different?

Demographic statistics are based on information from, for example, census reports or parish records. Data from these sources are used to calculate an average birth rate, or to find out the average age at which people married, when they died, how many children they had and so on.

Historical demographers have worked on many periods, from medieval times to the 20th century. Family historians may well find statistics based on the census reports of 1841-1901 particularly helpful, as these post-date civil registration for births, marriages and deaths which began in England in 1837. But first, a word of caution. Despite the wealth of information demographics can offer, we should note various limitations. National averages can mask local or regional variations, and averages don’t necessarily take into account differences based on sex, class, disability or ethnicity.

Also, in his book A Clearer Sense of the Census, (1996), Edward Higgs discusses the reliability of census data, which is the basis of much demographic work. He notes that the quality of the final data may have been affected by the way information was collected initially. Poorly paid and managed enumerators transcribed data from a form filled in by the householder (who may or may not have been sufficiently willing or literate to participate accurately) into their census enumerator’s book (CEB). Although this transcription was supposed to be double-checked, there is plenty of scope for inconsistency and error. To properly understand the comparison between your particular family and the statistical average, you should bear these considerations in mind.

Accepting this caution, how can you use historical averages? The historian Michael Anderson outlines two areas where demography can be helpful, and perhaps surprising, to family historians: migration and stability, and moral codes.

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Content last updated: 09/11/2005

About our expert

Evelyn Kerslake is an Associate Lecturer with the Open University and teaches on the course Start Writing Family History. She has published widely in the areas of information management and library history.

Evelyn's publications include Training for Part-time and Temporary Workers (1996) and Gendering Library History (2000). She was co-recipient of the 2001 UK Library History award for work on The History of Librarianship and Gender.

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