I had a great grandfather who was born into a poor family in the south west of England in the 1870's. He was given a job as an errand boy by a local clergyman, who was sent to work in the north west and took the boy with him when he went. This clergyman and his wife had no children, and in those pre-welfare state days, philanthropy was encouraged.My great grandfather was given an education - possibly by the clergyman himself? - as a result of which he went to Oxford to study science, and later achieved a successful academic career. Patrick Bronte, father of Charlotte, also came from a agricultural labouring family (in Ireland) and was also encouraged and supported in a similar way.I would love to talk to this relative (who died three years before I was born) about what it was like for him to cross what was, in the nineteenth century, such a huge social divide; and to be able to give his son opportunities his own father could never have dreamed of.