Every family has a few scandals in its past and there usually tends to be a few black sheep out there somewhere. Family historians run across family secrets on a regular basis. These secrets, if looked at closely, can often do much more than bring hidden things to light. The records produced by illicit events can often help in filling in blanks in the family and can even extend the family pedigree. Records produced by criminal activity can reveal much about not only the criminal, but about the crime, the family and associates.
Don’t expect to find much dealing with your ancestor’s petty crimes and misdemeanors in records found in the United States. Most misdemeanor records tend to be purged at the local level every so often and haven’t survived to this day. Purges of the files often take place every 2 to 10 years, depending on the record type.
Even State Archives will purge this type of record. In some cases you might be able to locate local jail records.
If your ancestor or relative happened to land in jail during a census year, you might find him listed as an inmate in the census record. In some cases, the jails will be enumerated within the population schedules. In other cases, he may be listed in the “supplemental schedules.” One of the supplemental schedules was the “Inhabitants in Prison” form.
In my collection, I have a copy of the above form for Baker City, Oregon – June 1, 1880. There are three inmates in the Baker County Jail, all interned for larceny. Included in this select group was Wm. Boone, who had been there since March 22. It is noted that he was not at hard labor.
In some cases you can go online and search the jail records. In most cases this will just give you relatively current information, but these records can be interesting. This is all great fun – as long as it all happened years ago and the culprit wasn’t your mother. If it was… well, that’s another story.