Question of the Week: Is there an occupation that was in your family for generations?

Question

Was there a certain profession, occupation, trade, or business that was in your family for multiple generations?

Tell us with an answer below. You can also answer on Facebook or share the question image with friends and family on social media to get them talking.

Comments

Speaking on behalf of my mother and father, this is the most simple question in the world for me to answer:  Farmer.   

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4 generations, from father to son, were coal miners in the US and UK.

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My father, grandfather, and great grandfather were all coal miners

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5 generations of mariners on Cape Cod, MA, and NY.

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Farmers since 1820's Daisy Ricetti born Craigie.

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I have heard that I have five generations of Fire Chief in Newburyport Ma. Not sure if it is consecutive though.

Answer 1

Family History "Invited to Australia to manage vast estates for English aristocracy"

Actual fact mostly convicts.

Comments

Laughed out load at this one.

Answer 2

seems to be carpenter since 1900 and prior to that farm labourer.

Answer 3

I come from a long history of Cultivators/Farmers/Landed Gentry/Farm Laborers and Horse Traders.

Comments

I have a lot of farmers in my family also.

Answer 4

Coal miners and farmers.

Answer 5

Other than farmer, many of my ancestors and other relatives were preachers.

Answer 6

Farming, all kinds of farming

Comments

Farmers and ministers clear back to the 1600's

Answer 7

Dr's, preachers and outlaws. I guess self-employment is a theme, more than an occupation.

Comments

Love it

Answer 8

An unusual number of my mother's family members were in law enforcement.

Answer 9

My great-great grandfather, Edward Herlein, was a prominent lithographer in Philadelphia. His sons, brothers, and nephews followed a similar trade. I've traced his family back to Fürth, Bavaria, where we find several Herlein's working in the lithography trade. It's clear these individuals must somehow be connected, I just need to figure out how.

Answer 10

34 Farmers, 16 Railroadmen, 14 Postmasters and 10 Teachers on BOTH sides of the family!

Answer 11

Agricultural Labourers. 

Answer 12

A couple of generations of harbour pilots, and then many, many generations of fishermen.

Answer 13

Lots of lawyers and military officers, as well as landowners, on my mother's side.

Lots of STEM folks on my father's side (except me).

Answer 14

Pre-1900’s generational occupations were Farmers, Farmers, ... and also Farmers.

There are many other ancestral jobs I have found, but I have not completed enough research to find significant multi-generational legacies for other occupations yet.  

If I go beyond my own research, stretch the definition of occupation and leverage WikiTree’s Relationship Finder there is a more creative response. There was a generational family occupation of “Duke of Normandy”. Then in 1066 one decided to add “King of England” as a generational job. Their descendant lines still of course eventually became farmers before they got to me.

Comments

Two of my ancestors were sureties for the Magna Carta (Richard de Clare & Gilbert de Clare), Robert de Beaumont was one of William the Conqueror's generals, and Geoffrey of Anjou (Plantagenet) was Queen Matilda's spouse.  Or so says ancestry.com

Answer 15

Does "hell raising" count?

Comments

Yes, it does!

Answer 16

The earliest record is that the family left Ireland, pre-famine, for Newfoundland, where they were "engaged in the fishing industry."  Moved on to the US where they were split between farming and railroads.  Stories are that this caused a rift among them.

Answer 17

I was going to say agricultural labourer but we do have 3 generations of software engineers.

Comments

Three generations is pretty good. My son and I are software engineers, my dad did work on electronics for a while in the vacuum tube era, and I had an uncle that worked at IBM for years, including on the first drum hard drives (stored a whopping 10 MB I think, in something the size of a washing machine).

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I recall that when I was an office manager in the early 1980s we bought a massive 5MB HDD for over £2000. We thought we would never fill it up!!!!!! Prior to that we were working off 180KB floppies.

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English Electric Deuce, Ferranti Mark 1 *, but really got going with an IBM 704.

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Them Floppies were wonderful things.

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When mum arrived in Germany, she worked in the backoffice of a bank. She calls the IBM computers they had at that time (late 1960s/early 1970s) "tractors"

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Recently heard that is now 4 generations

Answer 18

Until education became attainable...

Farmer, farmer, farmer, with an occasion blacksmith thrown in.

Comments

Same for me

Answer 19

Farmers, lumbermen, legislators, gold miners. My great grandfather ran a stage stop, along with his wife and children.

Answer 20

most of my folks were farmers. 

I also have a cigar maker in Florida, a whaler off the coast of Long Island, New York; a pharmacist, and a couple of governors.