This political season, many Americans have learned the party preferences of their relatives, (whether they wanted to or not). The knowledge may have sparked genealogists’ interest in learning if their ancestors favored elephants or donkeys. Ancestry.com has tips on how to find out.
For many people, Facebook has become increasing more volatile as the 2012 Presidential Election progressed. Some of my relatives posted, (or, I should say, reposted), images with words on them that were of a political nature and that contained information that was not factual. My relatives who chose to broadcast their political views this way were not interested in having a dialogue, or a discussion, or even learning more about how to discern facts from misinformation. They just wanted to start an argument!
Many of us probably do not want to hear one more word about politics from certain relatives. However, this current volatile political season may have caused genealogists to wonder how their ancestors voted. How many generations preferred a certain political party? Why did some ancestors choose the opposite one? What was going on in America at the time that might have influenced the opinions of your ancestors?
Ancestry.com has a useful tool that can help genealogists who have a membership to find answers to those kinds of questions. You can search through voter lists and census information for clues.
They advise that you look at each and every question that your ancestor was asked by an enumerator, and think about what that question would have meant to your ancestor at the time. Some census takers may have asked for, and recorded, the political party that a person preferred or was registered with.
Around 40 years ago, it was common for women to vote the same way that their husband did, according to a Time Magazine article. If you have discovered the political party preference of a male ancestor, you might be able to conclude which candidates his wife voted for. (This does not automatically mean that she truly wanted to vote that way, in all situations).
Is your family united in their selection of political party? It might be interesting to find out how many generations back that preference goes. If your relatives are politically divided, you might want to see if you can discover when that rift started, and what the circumstances were that caused it.
Image by LaMenta3 on Flickr