From One Small Square To Another

        Mental pictures of the life and times of the ancestors can be hard to develop. This is especially difficult if these ancestors lived many years in the past. My Jones ancestors started their journeys before any such surname existed. Finding the culture that wrapped them in daily living became a challenge one little step at a time. The following figure is my mental image of how my ancestors might have built some of their existence one small square at a time.

       Now it certainly helped when they stared to write important social principles into some agreeable form such as a law book. It is from this series of writings that has been used to piece together some social images. [Beginning from post starting this past March 7th.] 

       The small squares colored above are drawn using simple graph paper and, in my mind, helped organize a number of items scattered about as to the daily living arrangement over many generations. Let's see now, each small square represents a single toft. [Post March 12th] It is colored "pink" and contained 4 acres of land surrounding the founding owner (proprietor). Having family and moving on down the family tree, each son when of legal age could join the father with his own toft and family sharing the fruit of their joint endeavors. They called this "shareland" [Post of March 14th] and, indeed it was giving the growing family a place to call their own. 

       Next, as each son had his sons, the family joined these shared lands into a "holding" which grew in size to around 64 acres. Four "shareland" to each "holding" [Post of March 21] is shown colored blue. Each generation would occupy at least 30 years (birth to marriage 20 years and youngin's around the hearth the next 10 years). However, during this period a lifetime was considered 60 years! [Hywel Dda, The Law, p. 123.] Anyway, you can begin to picture the conflicts that could arise when four of these "holdings" reached 256 acres called a "townland" and bumped against a not so close family member.       All told, this would cover around 180 years of family growth. Do you get the picture one small square to another?