How respectable were your ancestors? Your response may well be, “Well, what do you mean by respectable?” The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com) offers four definitions for this adjective:

1. worthy of respect; estimable
2. decent or correct in character or behavior; proper
3. a : fair in size or quantity <respectable amount> b : moderately good; tolerable
4. fit to be seen; presentable

We all hope that our ancestors are worthy of respect and decent on character, I’m sure. Were they fair in size or quantity? Some of our ancestors certainly were not slim, wistful little things, to be sure. And we certainly hope that our ancestors were presentable in appearance. (Perhaps we’d better check those old photographs now!)

All of these definitions of ‘respectable’ sound pretty good to me, but the chances are that not all of our ancestors were “worthy of respect” within the family or within their communities. That becomes an important consideration when we try to place our ancestors into geographical and historical context. It isn’t unusual to omit the social contexts of the time and place, and social context is a mighty influence in our ancestors’ lives. “Respectability” often made a big difference in whether a person was accepted into or ostracized from a particular group, and degrees of respectability determined social tolerance of a person in a community or a community’s sub-group.

In "Along Those Lines..." this week, let’s consider just a few of the social characteristics and mores that may have influence our ancestors’ place in a community, and how that may have influenced their lives.

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