Peter Price the Pittsburgh Puddler
How learning about a working-class ancestor has shaped my view of myself.
Over the years, genealogy research has become much more than an engaging hobby to me. It has helped me build a more complete picture of who I am, and it has pulled my identity into sharper focus by illuminating previously unknown parts of my family history.
One of my favorite ways to develop a picture of an ancestor is to look for documents to help me find out about their occupations. Many websites allow researchers to search their databases and then look at scanned copies of records.
The classic place to discover about jobs is to look at the census records. One of my Welsh ancestors, Peter Price, immigrated to the USA in 1851. He settled in Pittsburgh, PA, and on the 1860 census, at 31 years of age, he was listed as a “Boiler of Iron.” He and his wife Jane, who was also born in Wales, had 10 children over the course of their life together, and her occupation on most census records was listed as “Keeping House.” Both of these occupations were challenging ways to make a living in the 1800s.
Each census is different, and the 1870 census has a lot of information. On that census it notes that neither Peter nor Jane could read or write. But it…
