The Bootmaker's boy:

[thesearcher]

While I have been looking into my family's history a common thread has been that some of the sons became successful in ways their parents may not have foreseen. I suppose that's still true today but in the Georgian/Victorian era was it probably due to the increase in general education for ordinary people, twinned with the huge increases in opportuniites? For example.. a bootmaker's son in Liverpool becoming a grain broker, a coachman's son in Hampstead also becoming a grain broker....that seems a leap across the classes to me.
Is there any way of finding out which schools a boy or girl went to if they were not at boarding school?
How did people enter the grain trade to train as a broker?
Would there be another explaination?

[Jan1954]

If you can pin down where they were living it should help you to identify local schools that were likely for them to have attended. Then, the relevant County Records Office may have such records in their holdings. It may well be that the younger generation saw the way that trades were changing and decided to diversify into flourishing occupations.

I have a similar theme with one of my great grandfathers, but at a much later time. For generations the family had been blacksmiths but he ended up owning his own laundry as that business was on the increase and smithying was waning.