Genealogy Chat

Apologies for posting and then going offline, but I wondered what other people thought was a feasible 'courting distance' in times past, when walking was the main mode of transport.

Would a couple meet 'halfway', or would he be expected to go to her, which might halve the courting radius?

What would 'walking distance' be considered as in the past?

Difficult to say because in country areas they might have hitched a lift on a farm wagon.

Do you have a specific in mind with regard to area.

My gt grandmother lived in the Stanstead area and my gt grandfather in the East end. She had a child in 1896 which was not his registered in Herts, but they married early 1897...how did they meet I wonder?

He was a carman when they married.....did they meet on his deliveries perhaps? or had she left the baby with her parents and travelled to London to work? All something we are never going to know now

Kucinta
Where and when would this be?

Sometimes seasonal work played a part.
Hop pickers in Herefordshire villages were often helped by miners from South Wales who worked a few weeks in the countryside and often ended up with a village-born wife.
My parents met miles from either of their homes, when Dad returned from a stint with the army in India and went to see his sister who was working in Slough and was introduced to her friend, my mum.

Gwyn

I just wondered in general. I suppose it's one of those 'how long is a piece' of string' questions.

Sometimes it might help in working out possible marriages in relation to birth places etc.

I take your point about hitching lifts in wagons, and I guess girls also went into service,or, shades of Thomas Hardy novels, were hired at fairs to work at farms etc some distance from their homes, and might meet beaus near their work place, but still go home to marry, and then move to their new husband's parish.

I just wondered what, in those more hardy (no pun intended) days, walking distance might be considered to be.

I guess it might also depend on how attracted the couple were!

My family are largely agricultural based in the 19th century. Those in Warwickshire are entirely confined to a circle of about three miles radius, and where the couple come from different villages, they tended to settle in the husband's parish (suggesting that it was the women who moved to find work in service and then met her husband where she was working).

A three mile radius sounds about right, because a good walking pace is around four miles an hour, and I should imagine that agricultural workers rarely had as much as a couple of hours to spare.

However, I only recently discovered, on making a systematic effort to find one female in 1851 just before she married locally, that she had been in service 50 miles from her village. She would have had to have been very determined if she walked back after that stint in service!

Thanks for that, Ivy, and everyone else.

Don't forget friend/family connections. My father was orphaned at an early age so I never met my grandparents. They lived in completely different places, and I got to wondering how they met. Turns out they were 1st cousins. Oh dear.
Jan

My Gr.Gr.Grandparents were married in 1823. They lived about 25 miles apart. However my Gr.Gr.Grandfather was a Higgler, a hawker of eggs and poultry. So I presume they met when he sold his goods at the house where she was working.

My parents didn't go far to do their courting in the late 1920,s He chatted her up over the back garden fence as they were next door neighbours. She agreed to met him on a date but didn't show up and he dissed her for a few weeks after that .

When they did finally talk again he asked her why and she said she thought he was joking when he asked her. They went out and the rest is history. They were married for 45 years when dad passed away

My great grandmother was from York and my great grandfather was from Barrow-in-Furness! No idea how or where they met, although maybe on a day out at the seaside or something like that. They got married in Burnley and then settled in Barrow after that.