IN2GENEALOGY
a call to arms IT WON’T BLOW YOUR SOCKS OFF BY CAROLINE POINTER
Do you have a political issue that you are passionate about? Many of us do, and so did our ancestors. I believe Henry Brooks Adams said it best when he wrote in a letter to Charles Francis Adams, Jr. in 1858,
“There are two things that seem to be at the bottom of our constitutions; one is a continual tendency towards politics; the other is family pride; and it is strange how these two feelings run through all of us.”
Family historians have “family pride” down pat. Sometimes we have family pride when we start researching, and we want to @ind more of it, or maybe, we want to @ind out the “why” behind our pride. Sometimes, because our “present” family doesn’t give us much to be proud of, we begin researching to @ind family pride somewhere in our familial lines. However, whether you are trying to learn more about your ancestors by putting @lesh on the skeleton of your family, whether you’d like to know if your ancestors voted and/or how they voted, or whether you are trying to substitute for the loss of the 1890 census, politics, believe it or not, can help. There are records to be found and consulted both online and of@line to aid family history researchers in @inding out more about their ancestors’ political endeavors. The key to @inding them is knowing where to look, which may seem a little obvious, but family researchers can get stuck in looking in the same places at the same things in the same exact way. Therefore, the following guide to @inding your ancestors’ political