Societies have always had a pecking order. Are we revising history based on modern bias?

Families who don't move house for decades accumulate a good deal of stuff. In the basement reposes the toaster that Dad was going to fix sometime. Forgotten in a cookbook is a coupon for 25 cents off a box of cereal, redeemable before December 31, 1966.

I grew up in such a household. When it rained I pored over old books and learned all sorts of trivia. I was fascinated by a booklet showing the shoulder patches of generals, ranging from five-star down through the several varieties. An array of army and navy ranks had neatly descending titles and uniform adjuncts; I could see that a captain in the navy was a bigger fish than an army captain.

Class distinctions were easy when people were arranged in order-general-colonel-major-captain-lieutenant, admiral-commodore-captain-commander-lieutenant-and everyone knew where they stood.

The same was true in the peerage. After royalty, lords stepped downwards from duke through marquis, earl and viscount to baron, and then the not-quite-so-noble baronets, knights, esquires-and the rest.

Traditionally societies were candid about the existence of class distinctions, although we like to pretend there are none nowadays. There were those one would invite to spend a weekend at one's country house, or to a dinner party. They were one's equals, whereas those one met for lunch might be business acquaintances or folks best entertained on neutral ground. One spoke to some-briefly-at a function, but did not spend more time with them than courtesy required. Then there were those one employed for their expertise but regarded simply as "the help," and those individuals one just did not know.

Genealogists conducting research would do well to understand that there are now, and always have been, striations within any community. People tended to observe those nuances when they married. Some "married beneath them" or "married up." Most people, most of the time, chose partners having backgrounds similar to or at least compatible with their own.

Let's say in 1845 a shoemaker's daughter married a man named Richard Smith. In the town there were three young men of that name. One was a barrister soon to become a member of the legislative assembly, the second was lieutenant in the Royal Navy and a member of a landed family in England, and the third was a carpenter. Which one is the most likely husband for the cobbler's daughter?

People occasionally did form alliances across barriers of class and creed, although they were more likely to marry outside their ethnicity or church than they were to defy convention and wed beyond their social status. This wasn't necessarily due to snobbery-it was just as likely to have come about because people were usually thrown into social proximity with their peers, rather than with people from different backgrounds.

However consider what the French called mésalliances in the case of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. If Edward had married Princess Drusilla of Dragistan, he would have remained king. The fact that Edward married a divorcée was a good pretext for abdictation, but marriage to a person of non-royal lineage no doubt also irked the establishment.

People have always been expected to "know their place." The military and naval system of ranks symbolized in the uniform, like the gradations in the titles of the aristocracy, are helpful. A private knows immediately he has put his foot in it when he takes in the uniform worn by someone whom he has beaten to the last good parking place. When there are no outward signs of status except driving a car that takes money to buy, or owning a fancy set of golf clubs, we fall back on subtler hints known to those who recognize the true value system at work in a supposedly classless society.

Modern genealogists have to appreciate how their ancestors thought about such things, and not attempt to forge unrealistic links between their families and those higher up in the world of their times.

Dr. Terrence M. Punch is the resident genealogist on CBC Radio and editor of Genealogist's Handbook for Atlantic Canada Research.