With voting day less than a month away, I thought of searching voter lists for an ancestor. These are public records. One must be a resident to vote, so finding an ancestor on a list verifies town of residence at the time of registration. Other town documents such as tax lists may hold the clue you need. Ask your town clerk what kinds of old records may have lists of residents. Sometimes, even if the town no longer has them, they may be held at a library or historical society.
Fred’s ancestor, Peter Brawn lived in a time when local towns were just becoming established, and he moved quite frequently, so he is a hard man to pin down. Photocopies of old voting lists in the Thompson Free Library held him and his sons for several years when I could find no other record of them. Of course my favorite first “go to” resource is the decennial census.
Every 10 years, the federal government conducts a census, which at one time, was supposed to list every person in America. As you can imagine, many people were missed, and many names were misspelled or otherwise lost. That being said, that still means that millions of residents are correctly listed in those old censuses. These records have become public information for 1790-1930, and I am anxiously awaiting the release of the 1940 census, scheduled for April 2, 2012.
Most researchers go right to Ancestry.com where they have them online and indexed. If you do not have a subscription, you may use the Bangor Public Library to make the search. The BPL staff are very helpful to novices. In between those 10-year censuses, however, many of our ancestors were busily relocating themselves and their families (like Peter). Finding Peter in Foxcroft in 1800 and 1810 does not mean he lived there all of those 10 years.
If you are lucky enough to have ancestors from large cities (or even the smaller ones) there may be city directories which will give you residences. Our Gallaghers lived in Hartford, Conn. for decades, and at first we traced a few known ancestors this way. Once we started “collecting” evidence about people we found with the same last name, we began discovering connections we might not have otherwise tracked down.
There are often baptisms and weddings to trace through church records. But do not forget that many churches compile directories of their memberships, too. High school and college yearbooks, and alumni directories may be a source to look into.
Finally, do not forget that boundaries have changed over the years, and originally, when towns did not exist, the county would have held early records. Some early information for this area are in old Cumberland County records from the days when Maine only had three (that’s right, three, not 16) counties.
So keep in mind that Americans are a mobile people, if you can’t find your ancestor where you thought he or she lived, maybe he moved!
Editor’s note: This regular column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society. The group meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at the Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center, 163 Van Buren Road, Caribou, at 6:30 p.m. Guests and prospective members are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501. Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft, who has been doing genealogy for over 30 years, is a freelance genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader e-mails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com.
