Review: Tracing Your Poor Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians by Stuart A. Raymond

Tracing Your Poor Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians by Stuart A. Raymond, Pen & Sword, 2020, 196 p.; indexes, notes, illustrations, photographs.

If you are a genealogist, you have probably identified several ancestors in your tree who were poor. In this guide, Stuart Raymond sets out to help genealogists and local historians locate information about their poorer ancestors who lived in England or Wales. He begins by providing a general history of the poor in that geographic area and introduces the reader to the institutions and systems created to address the issues of poverty, such as Poor Law, Prisons, Charities, and later, the formation of the Welfare State. 

The discussion around charities is extensive and comprehensive. The author looks at the many specific types of charity, including almshouses, apprenticeships, education, orphanages and children’s homes, hospitals, and other places of refuge. Wherever online databases exist for the records of these institutions, Raymond provides the URL along with pertinent details about the database. 

An entire chapter is devoted to the documentation of paupers during the time of Elizabethan Poor Laws, and another for the period after 1834 when the New Poor Law was adopted. The management of the poor during each of these eras left behind many records, including settlement certificates and examinations, removal orders, pauper apprenticeships indenture records, overseer accounts, vestry minutes, pauper lists, inventories and letters, workhouse documents, relief lists, bastardy records, vaccination records, school lists and more. 

Other chapters contain specifics about the lives of vagrants, criminals, and debtors and provide information about the types of records available for research. Each chapter includes a bibliography for further reading. 

This information-rich guidebook is just the thing to help genealogists understand the rules and societal expectations that the working poor, the unemployed and destitute were forced to live under in England. It also describes the many types of records that were created to keep track of the poor, and where these documents may be found today. Many are online, but the author makes a point of encouraging readers to do their in-person, on-site research, as well. This book will be extremely beneficial to the genealogist who wants to better understand their less-advantaged ancestors and the challenges faced in their day-to-day lives. Highly recommended.