GATHERING EVIDENCE OF DISEASE & DISASTER

Using parish & other records to determine how climate and epidemics impacted our ancestors’ lives

Natural phenomena have significantly affected the lives and livelihoods of our ancestors. Such events, in many instances, were important in influencing decisions to relocate, perhaps even as much as factors like religious persecution, cultural differences, economics, poverty, land ownership restrictions, war or politics.

Major sources of information

Finding information that demonstrates what events occurred and how they impacted people and communities is an important part of constructing complete family histories. Following are some of the major sources of such information.

Family stories

Some people are fortunate to have had parents or grandparents recount their life experiences. Mother Nature may have been involved in some of these stories, imposing her wrath to the extent people lost homes or livelihoods, were injured or killed, or decided to move.

While older relatives are alive it is of value to ask them questions with respect to natural events:

• Did any family members witness physical changes to their habitat?
• Did anyone have to move from their place of birth because of those changes?
• Did anyone change occupations?
• Was anyone injured or killed?

Parish & church records

Parish or church registers are obviously important sources of information about people, particularly from the pre-19th century. They contain the basic data about individuals – births, marriages and deaths (BMD). It is important to go beyond just looking for people and dates, though. In combination with other types of records, registers can yield valuable information about the environments and habitats in which ancestors lived.

• Long-term data

Using BMD register entries recorded over long time periods allows analyses to be made of any trends that may have been related to natural events.

The graph in Figure 1 was produced from the total yearly BMD entries in the Plympton St.