This is the first study to use pedigrees of a mainstream English population to determine cousin marriage rates amongst ordinary labourers, tradesmen and farmers, and to demonstrate the association between cousin marriage, occupation, religious affiliation, geographical mobility and illegitimate reproductive experience. Using birthplace rather than place of residence, it shows the geographical source of spouses, their parents and grandparents. The marriage prospects of parents of illegitimate children and the children themselves are described, along with the association between being the mother of an illegitimate child and both low geographical mobility and high rates of cousin marriage.

The aim of this project was to determine the birthplaces of spouses married in two parishes in England, how many married their relatives and how illegitimacy affected marital outcomes for all concerned. It considered the effect of religion and social class on the marital aspects of geographic mobility, consanguinity and illegitimacy. This project used a wide array of primary documentary sources that have recently become widely available to construct a database of over 22,000 individuals who lived in southwest Wiltshire in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The author arranged the individuals in family groups and traced pedigrees for several generations. Information was included on religious affiliation, occupation and other variables, enabling the researcher to consider aspects of marital choices. It quantified separately the level of geographical mobility, consanguinity and illegitimacy, and then was able to consider the linkages between these aspects of marriage patterns. Geographical mobility calculated from birthplace was higher than estimates derived from residence prior to marriage. Catholics were found to be more inbred than Anglicans, despite having a lower level of 1st cousin marriage. Social class influenced consanguinity, as did illegitimate reproductive experience and geographical mobility. Mothers of illegitimate children were less mobile than other women, and more likely to marry their cousins. Family experience, particularly that of siblings, influenced illegitimacy and consanguinity rates. The interactions between geographical mobility, consanguinity and illegitimacy were complex and acted differently depending on social class. Members of higher social classes such as farmers had greater geographical mobility and higher levels of consanguinity, whereas amongst labourers, consanguineous marriage was associated with lower levels of geographical mobility. There was an association between being the mother of an illegitimate child and consanguineous marriage, but only amongst the labouring class.

Illegitimacy, Family, and Stigma is the first full-length exploration of what it was like to be illegitimate in eighteenth-century England, a period of 'sexual revolution', unprecedented increase in illegitimate births, and intense debate over children's rights to state support. Using the words of illegitimate individuals and their families preserved in letters, diaries, poor relief, and court documents, this study reveals the impact of illegitimacy across the life cycle. How did illegitimacy affect children's early years, and their relationships with parents, siblings, and wider family as they grew up? Did illegitimacy limit education, occupation, or marriage chances? What were individuals' experiences of shame and stigma, and how did being illegitimate affect their sense of identity? Historian Kate Gibson investigates the circumstances that governed families' responses, from love and pragmatic acceptance, to secrecy and exclusion. In a major reframing of assumptions that illegitimacy was experienced only among the poor, this volume tells the stories of individuals from across the socio-economic scale, including children of royalty, physicians and lawyers, servants and agricultural labourers. It demonstrates that the stigma of illegitimacy operated along a spectrum, varying according to the type of parental relationship, the child's race, gender, and socio-economic status. Financial resources and the class-based ideals of parenthood or family life had a significant impact on how families reacted to illegitimacy. Class became more important over the eighteenth century, under the influence of Enlightenment ideals of tolerance, sensibility, and redemption. The child of sin was now recast as a pitiable object of charity, but this applied only to those who could fit narrow parameters of genteel tragedy. This vivid investigation of the meaning of illegitimacy gets to the heart of powerful inequalities in families, communities, and the state.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, family history is the place where two great oceans of research are meeting: family historians outside the academy, with traditionally trained, often university-employed historians. This collection is both a testament to dialogue and an analysis of the dynamics of recent family history that derives from the confluence of professional historians with family historians, their common causes and conversations. It brings together leading and emerging Australian and New Zealand scholars to consider the relationship between family history and the discipline of history, and the potential of family history to extend the scope of historical inquiry, even to revitalise the discipline. In Anglo-Western culture, the roots of the discipline’s professionalisation lay in efforts to reconstruct history as objective knowledge, to extend its subject matter and to enlarge the scale of historical enquiry. Family history, almost by definition, is often inescapably personal and localised. How, then, have historians responded to this resurgence of interest in the personal and the local, and how has it influenced the thought and practice of historical enquiry?

Over a half century, a small Indiana town hosts a circus troupe during the off-seasons in linked stories “as graceful as any acrobat’s high-wire act” (San Francisco Chronicle). A Story Prize Finalist From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima, a place that feels as classic as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and as wondrous as a first trip to the Big Top. In Lima, an elephant can change the course of a man's life—or the manner of his death. Jennie Dixianna entices men with her dazzling Spin of Death and keeps them in line with secrets locked in a cedar box. The lonely wife of the show’s manager has each room of her house painted like a sideshow banner, indulging her desperate passion for a young painter. And a former clown seeks consolation from his loveless marriage in his post-circus job at Clown Alley Cleaners. In this collection of linked stories spanning decades, Cathy Day follows the circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page. “[An] exquisite story collection.” —The Washington Post “Often funny, always graceful, and rich with a mix of historical and imaginative detail.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Sublimely imaginative and affecting.” —The Boston Globe

The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland's history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland's identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors' wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.