Rich Resources for Poor Ancestors

One of the most difficult problems in genealogy is researching our more obscure families—the ones who didn’t hold office, avoided the city clerk and were generally so poor we assume they didn’t leave a paper trail. Yet, we can find a surprising amount of information on our less fortunate forebears. “The poor have always been with us…” and various entities throughout our history have provided relief to them. If we focus on records in a particular locality at a given time period, we may find the nugget that solves our research problem.