Non-travellers

I stumbled across this bit of social history written in the 1851
census for 85 Church St, Ferfield, Norfolk.

Mary Emms, Head, Unmarried, Aged 95. Under Rank, Profession, or
Occupation is written:

"Ag Pauper never been more than 8 miles from Ferfield in her life".

Before the bicycle and without a horse, how much travelling would a
country dweller do in those times anyway?

Chris Watts...

A great deal further than you might expect. Certainly to the nearest market
town.
Mine, in rural Norfolk, managed to range over a radius of about 20miles.

CWatters...

I've got a marriage between two people born about 150 miles apart.

Brian Taylor...

I would invite speculation on possible reasons for a traveller of mine:

Mary Emery chr (Wesleyan) Daventry, Northants in 1823 to an established
farming family, m Samuel Philp, mason, in Camelford, Cornwall (CofE) in
1851. The distance is easily 200 miles, and she is described as otp at
marriage.

They had one child in Camelford, then later settled in Daventry. No other
links found from either family to the other area.

My thought is church work (Wesleyan), but they married and christened one
CofE in Cornwall. No church workers found in her family, but he has both an
Uncle and Aunt overseas in the ministry (Wesleyan in Australia and Bible
Christian in Canada).

What was Mary doing in Cornwall?

Eve McLaughlin...

Some of them very little beyond the occasional jaunt to the market town
(max six miles); some might get jobs all over the county or out of the
county. Some girls entered domestic service with the local gentry, went
up to London with them in the Season, got 'loaned' to a sister in law or
cousin in the next county, chased a passing soldier to his next camp,
married a carrier and travelled with him, or an intinerant brush maker
and wandered miles every summer, selling the stock.

Phil C....

Yes - it's very hard to generalise. I've got several humble rural
C19th ancestors who married quite a long way from home - Norfolk to
Beds, Beds to Cheltenham, everywhere to London etc. I suspect domestic
service moved them about. Others seem to have moved about quite a bit
because of working in building trades - I suppose they moved with the
work as people do now. Having been born in a small place and then
moving a large distance has made people with common names much easier
for me to positively identify in censuses.

OTOH, I used (1970s) to live opposite a corner shop run by a woman
who'd hardly left home in her life. She'd been on holiday once and
cried to think of her shop being empty so she never went again. A few
years ago knew somebody who lived in a Lincs village and was almost
proud to say that he'd never been to Lincoln in his life. People a
relative knew in a Northants village in the 1970s certainly never
ventured beyond the local market town about 5 miles away. A few years
a go my wife took her elderly parents to Holland - the first time
they'd ever been abroad.

Mary Emms seems to have no ambition, no distracting men, maybe got a
domestic job locally at 12 and stuck with it all her life. And much good
did it do her, poor old wench.

Halmyre...

On a similar note, there was a programme on TV some time ago which
featured two elderly brothers who owned a farm in Norfolk(?). Their
father, who was still alive, had never once spent a night away from the
farm.

Eve McLaughlin...

I remember meeting a Lincolnshire cousin who prided himself on sticking
to his roots
' I went to London once - I didn't like it'.

Conversely, there was a small man called Charlie, in a small Herts
village. His grandfather was born there, his father was born there and
both died there. And Charlie later died there.
But gfr was a soldier and every child but his last was born in
locations worldwide; and father (the last) was a railway engineer, who
not only travelled round Britain but to S America, France, Eastern
Europe etc, with his wife (married in Scotland) and family. Charlie was
born in France and only came back 'home' when his father was injured and
left an invalid.