Another great guide for family history fans. This has great resource ideas, tips, tricks, and so much more for finding those missing ancestors.

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Tracing Your Marginalised Ancestors is a resource and history guide and part of a series for family/amateur historians written and collated by Dr. Janet Few. Due out 30th April 2024 from Pen & Sword, it's 168 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This book is especially written for readers who are researching their family history, and especially those branches of family who were not mainstream and who were often less well documented due to substance abuse, crimes (many of which are no longer considered crimes, such as bankruptcy), mental illness, and very often simply ethnicity.

There are numerous resources and links to reference materials and libraries included here. The appendices include an alphabetical glossary, links lists (slanted toward sources in the UK), a bibliography as well as links to modern day resources to visit.

This would be an excellent choice for public library acquisition, for gift giving to amateur historians/family archivists, and for the home reference library.

Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Absolutely accurate and valuable for anyone conducting genealogical research lacking a thorough view of the archival reality that could be accessed (e.g., prison archives, care homes, asylums; archival records scattered around national archives that one might not have considered). Each chapter concludes with a real-life example: true stories of people "like many others," albeit more unfortunate, whose histories the archives can reveal to us. An excellent encouragement to delve deeper: in some cases, our marginalized ancestors can tell us much more than those who were fortunate enough to lead such ordinary lives that they disappear into the oblivion of the centuries.

An important caveat: obviously, the instructions provided in the book are only applicable to archival research in the United Kingdom. They are so precise and specific that reading would be useless for those conducting genealogical research on archival realities different from the British one.

Many TV shows and books about geneology tend to focus on the people whose ancestors were royalty or landed gentry. They pose no challenge at all to research.

Far more interesting to many of us is this book about marginalised ancestors. These were people who were poor, sick, illegitimate; lawbreakers, or just discriminated against.

I was particularly interested to read it because in my family tree I have a few marginalised ancestors who were illiterate, ended up in workhouses or alms houses, or had unmarked graves because they were poor. I was interested to read Janet Few's tips on how to find their stories.

It's a fascinating book. Each chapter ends with the story of a marginalised person. I now have more reference sources to flesh out the notes in my family tree on some of my long forgotten ancestors. This book is published on Feb 29. Thanks to NetGalley and Pen & Sword for the advance copy.

Description & Review …
Definition of marginalised: According to the Oxford Dictionary, an adjective meaning “(of a person, group, or concept) treated as insignificant or peripheral.” NOTE: the spelling in the United States is marginalized.

In this book, marginalized (I am a USA reviewer.) may be, for example, low society, alcoholism, witchcraft, prostitution, ethnicity, criminal (remember that many so-called crimes of yesteryear are not considered so today), discrimination — let a wealthy man lose his fortune in yesteryear and even today. He’ll soon know what marginalization is about.

A key fact concerning this book is it is based in Great Britain. References are made to the “colonies” and the United States, but the book is for those researching the British Isles.

Other important elements: an index and a robust “References and Further Reading” which includes links to websites. "Tracing Your Marginalised Ancestors" has a 29-Feb-2024 publish date on NetGalley, but 30-Apr-2024 on Amazon. My NetGalley review copy is a DRC (digital review copy); however, according to Amazon, the book will only be available in paperback (208 pages). Neither NetGalley nor the publisher, Pen & Sword, Pen & Sword Family History, asked or required a positive review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The Introduction begins by stating that the book is to help family historians with British ancestry with behaviors or conditions that may have led to their marginalization or discrimination. A latter paragraph warns that the subjects may make for “uncomfortable reading”. Also noted — women were “sidelined” in many areas but there is not a chapter specifically about women.

Chapter titles (note, these may be modified before publishing): Poverty, Criminality, Immigration and Ethnicity, Prostitution, Illegitimacy, The Inebriate, Sickness and Disability, Mental Ill-Health, The Romany (gypsy) and Traveller Community, Witchcraft, Religious Belief, Sexuality, and Conscientious Objection and Desertion.

My genealogy research is still 99% in the United States. I have traced some ancestors to Great Britain but I have not started researching “overseas” yet. However, that does not mean that we “colonists” should ignore this book. It has some fascinating facts. Such as Oliver Cromwell, remember him, made an order in 1656 that all vagrants having no means of support were to be transported to the Americas. I have ancestors who arrived well 1656 but I need to check my data to see the ones that came during that time. Did you know that Virginia finally prohibited the importation of convicts in 1670, followed in 1676 by Maryland? Remember that a person could be labeled a “convict” in those times for something far from criminal.

Each chapter has a “story” based on a real person that has the “marginalization” of the chapter title.

This book is well-researched and is a great addition to genealogy research and I highly recommend it.

#TracingYourMarginalisedAncestors #NetGalley

A Great genealogy book on finding your hard to find ancestors who weren't part of the main stream so to speak. Great edition to any genealogy library.

This was a truly fascinating look back through history via our ancestors who were not princes or doctors or knights. The book was organized into different sections based on different reasons some groups were marginalized, such as because they were poor, disabled, or of the wrong ethnicity. Every section has a wealth of information about the history and conditions related to each subject.
What makes this book really interesting is that the sections ended with basically a case study where a particular person's history is traced and readers can learn what kind of sources make that possible. This would be really helpful for someone learning to do genealogy, especially because most of our ancestors probably didn't stand out much.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

I needed this!
My great great* grandmother left her husband in England and stole away to America with her parents and other mormon converts. She tole his two children by making the boy dress like a girl.
Once she got here she pretended she was a widow. But he was still alive and living. Apparently he was an alcoholic. The story could be way off though. Maybe he just didn't want to convert to mormonism.
Essentially the family forgot about him.
I needed to know more and this book helped!
Thank you thank you thank you for granting my wish!