Bad Girls, Bad Boys - We're Gonna Come For You

Back when genealogy was of interest only to blue bloods looking to prove relationships to royalty or war heroes, researchers didn't closely embrace the black sheep in the family.

However, in today's world of genealogy, quite often we can be downright delighted to discover a scoundrel and share the tales with friends.

We may actively seek those deceased aunts and uncles about whom old-timers in the family only whispered and eagerly dig for details of the renegade relative. Or at other times, we might stumble upon a miscreant forebear while we're doing routine research.

The Internet has made this much easier because we can do wide-sweeping searches through sites such as Ancestry .com.

As more records are digitized or abstracted and placed online, it becomes harder to ignore the disinherited Uncle Joe, who can pop out of nowhere with a single search entry.

Censuses are among the most basic and earliest of records to which every family historian turns, and we no longer have to know the state in which an individual might have lived. Digitized census records can be searched nationwide with a click at HeritageQuest, which is available through your local library remotely with a user card, or at Ancestry.com.

He Did More Than Carpentry

Recently, I found a humorous entry in the 1910 DeKalb County, Ill., census. The family was that of carpenter Lorenzo D. Spicer and his wife, Mary. Living with them was their 38-year-old son, Frank. In the column that enumerated "trade or profession," the census taker wrote "psycic sic - deceiver !! of weak minded folks." In the adjacent column that asked for "general nature of industry," the census taker wrote "Fraud."

I can only guess that either the census taker had a personal history with Frank or perhaps Frank had a general reputation in the community. I stumbled across this entry - Frank was not the object of my research, so I didn't spend much time questioning the relationship between him and the census taker.

But I was curious enough to check the 1900 and 1920 censuses to see what other enumerators had to say about Frank's occupation. In 1900, Frank was living with his parents, and the box for occupation was empty, most likely meaning he didn't have a job.

Keeping House Of Ill Repute

In 1920, apparently his father was dead since Mary was shown as head of the household. Frank was the only other person living there, and he listed his occupation as "carpenter," which is what his father had done. Perhaps he cleaned up his act once his father died.

In 1870, the census shows that 37-year-old Julia Eckert's occupation was "keeping house." Routinely, these are the words entered by the wife and mother in an average household. Typically, the husband was head of the household, perhaps as a farmer, merchant, carpenter or other standard profession for the time. Sometimes when a woman was head of the household with the occupation "keeping house," we assume or the census shows she was a widow.

But analysis of the other residents of the household that Julia headed showed she was not a commonplace housekeeper. In the household were Lizzie Bradshaw, 19; Mary Shackleford, 23; Mattie Vaughn 24; and William Shackleford, 5. Lizzie, Mary and Mattie's occupation was "sporting woman." No, they were not athletes. They were prostitutes, and Julia was the madam and therefore a housekeeper in a nontraditional sense in a home on Rose Hill Street in Lexington, Ky.

In the 1880 household of Robert Coulter in Fort Gratiot, St. Clair County, Mo., lived a boarder named Charles Moor. His occupation was shown as "boarder (horse thief)." Here again we are left to wonder whether this was a comment from the census taker's knowledge, Coulter told the census taker his boarder was a horse thief or old Charles himself proudly bragged to the enumerator.

Stuck In The Jailhouse

Meanwhile, over in Trenton, N.J., several census pages were used to name all the residents of the state penitentiary. Though most of the inmates were shown with the occupations (farmers, carpenters, etc.) they would have had outside the prison, two caught my eye because their apparent crimes were shown as their occupations. Casper Brocker was a tramp, and Marcella Metzler was an abortionist.

Fifty-year-old William Wade of Pottsgrove in the Upper District, Montgomery County, Pa., was head of his own household. His occupation was noted as "professional thief." Is that opposed to an amateur thief? Perhaps that was his way of bragging about being a good thief. After all, he wasn't in prison.

Finally, down in Kemper County, Miss., P.H. Gulley lived with his wife and three children, two servants and a grandchild. His occupation was shown as "farmer," but the census taker also had written into the small space "assassin or murderer." Certainly this begs some researcher to dig deeper to get the story behind this apparent comment from the enumerator.

Since there obviously are so many colorful ancestors out there, it should be no surprise that someone formed a Black Sheep Society.

Calling himself the flockmaster, Jeff Scism describes the society's purpose as that of learning and sharing. The group's goal is to find alternate routes of research around the "wall of silence" that families put around unsavory members.

You can read about the group at lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Genealogical_ Societies/BlackSheep.html or read its archived mail list at archiver.rootsweb.com/th/ index/BlackSheep.

Sharon Tate Moody is a genealogist certified by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Send your genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of BayLife, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606, or stmoody0720@