Want to get a clearer picture of your whole family tree but lack information about your forebears because they weren’t wealthy? Check out My Family Pattern’s blog series to see how you can still find your ancestors!
There’s a certain sense of wonder that comes with discovering your roots, so it’s unsurprising that family trees are a topic of interest among many people. Maybe you’re one of those people. Maybe you want to find out more about your ancestors. And if your great-great-great-great-great grandfather was a wealthy estate owner, then things just got a lot easier for you.
But life is rarely that simple, and neither is history. For example, if you want the complete picture, you probably want information on your great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s siblings and cousins, but if they weren’t nearly as rich as he was, that historical trail may run cold pretty quickly. Or worse yet, maybe no one in your family was particularly rich, leading them to fade into obscurity…
Luckily, Rick T. Wilson of My Family Pattern has discovered ways for you to unearth your less prominent ancestors from the annals, and he has taken the liberty to compile everything he’s found into a series of blogs! Using examples from his own journey to find his ancestral links, Wilson can give you the information you need to shed light on the furthest branches of your family tree!
Visit https://myfamilypattern.com/poor-ancestors-are-not-invisible-part-1-pension-applications/ to read the first part of the blog series!
An unfortunate fact of the world is that historical biases can lead to some pretty big gaps in the records. According to Wilson, while estate records and land deeds are some of the best sources of names and vital statistics for more ancient members of an individual’s family tree, such archives may not be available to you if your ancestors were poor or didn’t own land. History favors the rich and the prominent, while the less fortunate individuals tend to vanish without a trace.
But all is not lost. In the blogs, Wilson explores unconventional sources and indirect evidence that family historians may use to identify your ancestors, including pension applications that date back as far as 1788. He notes that these applications often contain detailed information related to birth, current and past places of residence, and years of service in the army, and that you can use these pieces of data in conjunction with autosomal DNA matches to track your distant relatives. This is, in fact, something that Wilson himself did to track his 5x great-grandfather!
Wilson says that poorhouse records can also provide contextual information about your ancestors, including the circumstances that led to them becoming impoverished, the time of admission into the poorhouse, any allowances they may have received, and whether they had school-aged children. Furthermore, as impoverished individuals were more likely to borrow money, additional information can be gleaned from debtor records and civil court cases.
Of course, this is all a very brief summary of Wilson’s research. If you want the details, visit https://myfamilypattern.com/poor-ancestors-are-not-invisible-part-2-poorhouse-records/ to read the second part of the series!
And boy, does Wilson really know what he’s talking about. As a Genealogy Patternologist with over 30 years of experience in genealogical research, Wilson founded My Family Pattern to help others like him discover their roots. Wilson has been working with Y-DNA since 2006 and autosomal DNA since 2011.
“Genealogical pattern recognition is about attending to the small details found in every record, such as an unfamiliar name or location, and then correlating them with known information,” says Wilson. “It’s about understanding early migration routes and historical context, and then finding patterns within DNA matches that are more nuanced than surnames. This is what I do.”
Even if your ancestors weren’t particularly wealthy, that doesn’t mean your family doesn’t have a rich history! Like an undiscovered treasure trove, your ancestors’ stories are just waiting for you to dig them up and bring them to light. With all the right sources, even the most distant of relatives will be right at your fingertips!
Check out the third part of the series on debtor records. Visit https://myfamilypattern.com/poor-ancestors-are-not-invisible-part-3-debtor-records/ to read all about it!
