The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is to post everyday (except Sunday) in the month of April 2016 starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z. The theme I chose is Genealogy Tips. At the end I will give a related post from my blog Genealogy: Beyond the BMD.
V is for Voting
My 2x great grandmother was Elizabeth Nichols of Charleton, Devon. I have found her sister Sarah at many occasions in trouble with the law. Now I find that her brother Samuel got her and her husband involved in an election scandal in Devon, England.
The following are excerpts from the Totnes Election Committee hearings of 1866 in the matter of paying for votes during the elections of 1863.
The players here are Sarah (Nichols) Crawford, who is married to Henry Crawford, and her brother Samuel Nichols Jr.
Part of Testimony of Henry Crawford
Testimony of Sarah (Nichols) Crawford
We may find our ancestors in Poll Books, Electoral Registers or Voters Lists. The link below will take you to some online Poll Books - the earliest I found was for Aberdeen in 1696.
Related Posts: Time to Vote
I recently completed an indexing project for Greene County in Virginia. I indexed voter registration books. I was surprised at how much valuable genealogical information is in them. Some pinpointed exactly where someone lived (ex: half mile south of the county seat). If people had the same name, the registrar might have indicated a relationship with a pencil notation saying something like "brother of John" or "son of Ben." You can track if someone moved between censuses because the date and location of transfer were specified. Lots of good info in voter reg books.
ReplyDeleteYours seem to hold much more info than ours, which just give name, address and profession.
ReplyDeleteWe are fortunate in Australia that many electoral rolls from the 20th century are available online via Ancestry. The provide many clues for tracking family movements and putting together family groups - so useful for surname studies.
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