Getting Them Where They Lived

So where did they live, those ancestors of yours? The place, the particular dwelling and the district where it was found, can tell so much about their lives. But you have to get the timing right. Because places can change out of all recognition over time. What was once a fashionable address can go down in the world quickly once the movers and shakers move on.

I am reminded of how places change every day when I walk around my community which used to be full of houses and townhouses rising two stories from the ground at most. The past five years or so, condo towers have risen higher than the trees which used to seem an impressive height. The current thinking is to pull down what was there and replace it. But that is not the only way that places are altered.

Once stately homes where one family was waited on by live-in servants can be divided into flats and peopled with tenants who pay ever increasing rents. This is particularly apt to happen in cities and university towns where space is at a premium.

Space at a premium, I'm sure that would have boggled the minds of our forbears who arrived in the New World where it seemed that there was nothing by space and trees. Timing is everything.