Some researchers are lucky to have generations of their families living in one small town or village far into the past. In that case studying the local history makes a great deal of sense. Building up a picture of the environment for the decades your family lived in the locale and the people they lived among can paint a picture of their lives while filling in the social context.
Other researchers come from families who immigrated, staying in the new city or country and continuing their lives there. But what of the people and families who rebounded: heading to a new place, living there for a while and then heading back to where they came from or somewhere in the vicinity. What did they anticipate when they went home?
There are members of my past family who did just that. My maternal grandfather came to Canada from England in 1911 and returned in the 1930s. Did things turn out as he expected? He probably couldn't have predicted another war at that point any more than he could have anticipated the depression that sent him home. But still, the country he returned to hadn't stayed still while he was gone. Things change sometimes so much that a person can barely recognize the place.
That's what I've seen in my own life, having lived in Halifax for two different periods as well as doing the same in Vancouver. Every time was different. Things, place and people had changed. Any of our ancestors who moved back and forth would have been able to attest to that.
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