Trades and Professions - The Family Historians Guide

By Stuart A. Raymond. 64 pages.

Family history is not just about tracing our ancestors' births, marriages, and deaths. It is also about understanding our ancestors' lives. In order to do that, we need to consult a variety of different sources. Occupational sources are particularly important, since work took up most of their time.

A huge amount of information about our ancestors can be discovered by consulting the records of their occupations. Employers kept records of their employees. Trade unions, professional associations, and trade guilds kept records of their members. And bureaucratic attempts to reg­ulate particular trades and professions created mountains of paper. A wide range of archives survive, and can be consulted by researchers.

This is the first book to provide a general overview of occupational sources for family historians. Its aim is to tell you where to find infor­mation about your ancestors' occupations. Its author, Stuart Raymond, is a well known author of handbooks and guides for genealogists. Some of his other books are shown below.