Books Provide Odd, Interesting Details

Genealogists are perpetual learners ever on the hunt for new ancestors. While we’re searching, we can’t help but learn something about history. At the very least, we gain an appreciation for events that occurred when our grandparents walked this Earth.

We want and need, really, to know where and when these people lived and how they were influenced by the day’s politics and religious mores. Learning how these people fit into their world’s larger picture can lead to a strange assortment of books in one’s genealogy room.

Notice the word “room.” After a few years of heritage hunting, it becomes necessary to devote an entire room to this irresistible, unrelenting hobby. Followed, a few years later, by requiring an even larger room.

At our house, it became obvious we were asking too much of the one-time bedroom that we simultaneously called a “den,” “office” and “computer room.” Once the kids grew and left that bedroom empty, we installed a computer and printer, followed closely by a scanner, copier, telephone, fax and all things genealogical, including two filing cabinets, a closetful of supplies and 20 fat surname notebooks of families I’m researching.

Obviously we needed more space, so we remodeled the basement.

My quest is never sated for learning who my ancestors are, where they lived, what their countryside looked like, what was going on in their daily lives, even what kind of underwear they wore. There is actually a book called “The History of Underclothes,” by C. Wilet and Phillis Cunnington, detailing the “unders” of our ancestors from medieval times through the 1930s.

Clothing was so dear in past ages that some of our Colonial ancestors’ clothes were willed to them, creating a new appreciation for the term “hand-me-downs.” A son might inherit his father’s precious nightcap, which was usually red, maybe to suggest the idea of warmth, the authors wrote.

Probably since time began, women have been accused of vanity, but we’re not alone in wanting to make a good appearance. In Colonial times, men’s legs were considered sexy. Fashion of the day was tight breeches, to which some vainglorious men added padded, artificial calves to enhance the shapeliness of their legs.

Another book in my “eclectic library” is “Life in a Medieval Castle” by Joseph and Frances Gies, which states castle keepers hired separate staffs for the pantry, larder, buttery and kitchen. There were dispensers, cupbearers, fruiterers, a slaughterer, baker, brewer; someone to look after the tablecloths, one to make wafers, another to make candles. My ancestors back then were no doubt staff members, not family.

I especially like the series of history books David Freeman Hawke wrote, starting with “Everyday Life in Early America.” He suggests our ancestors’ first shelters were biodegradable huts, no bigger than 20 feet by 20 feet, and no higher than a story and a half. The house becomes even smaller when you envision the many, many children parents had a few hundred years ago.

Fireplaces in early homes would have given modern-day safety inspectors nightmares, built as they were from logs plastered with clay. Short doorways were another feature of early homes, “forcing a visitor to stoop as he entered,” Hawke wrote. That required the visitor to enter the room headfirst, bent double, “and if unfriendly was thus easy to disarm.”

At first glance, “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America,” by David Hackett Fischer, is daunting with its 900-plus pages. But it can’t be beat for a thorough look at the Europeans’ first days in the land that was to become America.

Tell me of your favorite book you would otherwise not own if you hadn’t tripped into becoming a genealogist.