Monday 9 April 2012

A-Z Challenge: H is for Hiring Fairs

Hiring Fairs were usually held annually in market towns.  They were set up to enable employers to find employees (and vice versa, of course) - usually domestics and farm labourers.  If your ancestors were in one place for a long time, then suddenly moved, it may well have been because they had been attracted to a nearby Hiring Fair, the husband (usually) got hired some way away, and so the whole family moved.  Maybe your ancestor was a single man when he went to a Hiring Fair, then he was hired, found a wife locally, and settled down - and thus, your ancestors moved.

One of the most well-known Hiring Fairs appear in the novels of Thomas Hardy, such as Far From the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and the most well-known of all: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Copyright

You may NOT use the contents of this site for commercial purposes without explicit written permission from the author and blog owner. Commercial purposes includes blogs with ads and income generating features, and/or blogs or sites using feed content as a replacement for original content. Full content usage is not permitted.

You Might Also Be Interested In

Total Pageviews

Blog Archive