Small Time Criminals in the Family Tree

Were any of your ancestors idle, dissolute, lewd, wanton, or lascivious? Did they sleep in outhouses, sheds, barns, or unoccupied buildings? Did they habitually neglect their jobs? Were they unable to give a good account of themselves?

This laundry list of wayward habits, according to the law in territorial New Mexico, identified a vagrant. The broadly-defined vagrancy law further extended its reach to include runaways, brawlers, pilferers, loiterers, gamblers, confidence men, drunkards, and common street walkers.
County jail logs clearly show that vagrancy was a popular pastime in nineteenth-century New Mexico. Vagrants, who accounted for the bulk of the jail population, usually paid a small fine and/or spent a few days in jail.

When we think of criminals in our family tree, we usually look under the rug for the big guns. You know, the black sheep cousins who did time in the big house for impressive crimes such as bank robbery, murder, and horse theft.

If you really want to tread down the slippery path of uncovering family scandals, don't overlook the little guy--the small-time lawbreaker.

While it's certainly possible that you might find a big-time criminal lurking in the family tree branches, you're more likely to find ancestors...

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Tips from the Pros: Switched Names?

There are many ways a relative's name can get tangled up in a record's index. In addition to spelling, phonetic, and transcription errors, there is always the chance that the creator of the original record switched the first and last names of the individual mentioned in the record.

Felix Navigato was a thirty-seven-year-old real estate broker serving as a census taker for the 1930 census in Chicago, Illinois. On 23 April 1930, as a part of his enumeration duties, he visited a boarding house at 415 East 115th Street in Chicago. Most of the residents were Greek immigrants; Navigato was an Italian-American. The possibility that some of the boarders may not have been home at the time of Navigato's visit increases the chance that something was reported incorrectly.

One of the residents at...

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