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Last year, I was looking up the siblings of my 3x great grandmother, hoping to find where their parents were from.

Imagine my surprise when I found one of them, Horace Jones, in the Northampton, Massachusetts County Jail in the 1880 census!

TBH, I was shocked at first but then excited at the many paths this new discovery could take me down.

Horace is definitely a black sheep in an already very black sheep branch of the family. After his jail stint, he married for the second time, had a kid, then disappeared.

Not all our family members are going to be perfect and innocent. You may have found one of your relatives in a jail or prison and been as surprised as I was.

These people can turn into great stories if you can dig a little deeper and learn more about the crime and punishment!

If you’ve found a jailbird in your family tree, you may be wondering how to find prison records, and what other types of records there are to delve into.

Types of correctional institutions

First, let’s break down the basic types of correctional institutions that your forebear may have found themselves in.

Jails are local facilities that hold people for a short time before trial or for minor crimes committed. They’re run by cities or counties.

State prisons are for people who committed state crimes, such as murder or robbery.

Federal prisons are for those who committed federal crimes, like tax fraud. The federal prison system started in 1891 with the Three Prisons Act. This created federal prisons at Leavenworth (KS), Atlanta, and McNeil Island (WA). In the 1920s, women’s prisons were created.

Genealogy resources about incarcerated people

Census records

Look for your relative listed as an inmate or prisoner. For a lot of us, this is how we find out our family member was incarcerated in the first place.

Prison and jail records

Prison and jail records can tell you what crime the person committed and what their sentence was. It can also give marital status, a physical description, and where they were from. Some records may say whether they had been imprisoned before.

Some prison and jail records still exist, but there’s no central place where they’re kept. Many will be offline in archives and other institutions, but luckily, some are now online.

Not Frisco has a list of Alcatraz inmates and their crimes.

Ancestry has many prisoner collections, like Montana county and state prisons, Alabama convict records, and Texas convict registers. They also have records for other countries.

FamilySearch also has US and international prison record collections. One really interesting set is for prison births at the Philadelphia County Prison.

There’s also a prison register for San Quentin, and records from the Yuma, Arizona territorial prison, among others. There are others available only at a Family History Library, like the Concord, New Hampshire state prison register of convicts.

GenealogyToday has prison reports from several states under its subscription plan. It also has mug shots.

Police and arrest reports

Police and arrest reports can be harder to find but are worth looking for. They can give the date and time the crime occurred, the charge, where it took place, who arrested the person, and any witnesses. Mug shots, birth dates, and where they lived might also be included.

I Dream of Genealogy has links to records for a handful of states.

FamilySearch has Sacramento, California records of arrest.

Court records

Court records can be huge for learning much more about the crime your relative committed. They can include witness testimonies, correspondence, and details about the person and the crime they were accused of.

Most court records are still only found at the county courthouse, but some indexes and full records are online. The Oshkosh, Wisconsin court records index or the criminal court records for Hawkins County, Tennessee are two examples.

Execution records

Yes, looking up execution records sounds morbid. But they do give the date of death, the crime committed, age, and occupation of the executed. And they might be the only record left on what happened to your ancestor.

DeathPenaltyUSA has lists by state of people executed from 1607 to 1976, with some basic information about them and their crime.

West Virginia Archives & History has a list of executed prisoners in the West Virginia Penitentiary.

Alabama Department of Corrections shows executions since 1927.

The National Parks Service has a list of men executed at Fort Smith from 1873 to 1896.

Newspapers

Newspaper articles are great for learning about the crime and arrest, even if they might be written in a sensational style.

Some great newspaper sites to try are:

Chronicling America, which has newspapers from 1789-1963.

GenealogyBank is a subscription-based site with newspapers from 1690 to today. 95% of the 13,000 papers there are exclusive to them.

Elephind has over 4300 newspaper titles you can search.

The Ancestor Hunt has a huge list of newspapers, organized by state.

Local and State and National archives and societies

Local, state, and national archives may have some or all of the above-mentioned resources. Some may have only indexes online and you’ll have to request copies of the actual documents or visit in person. If going in person, be sure to use a repository visit checklist to ensure you’re prepared for your visit and don’t waste any time.

The Idaho State Historical Society has an Old Idaho Penitentiary Inmates Catalog. This has aliases, photos, correspondence, sentencing information, and more. The Oklahoma Historical Society has prisoner photograph and fingerprint cards.

The Washington State Archives has a Walla Walla Penitentiary database with record extracts for 10,000 inmates from 1887 to 1922. The files may have the parents' birthplaces, military service, marital status, photographs, physical description, names of relatives, and court records.

The National Archives also has many collections for penitentiaries. Record Group 129: Records of the Bureau of Prisons, 1870 – 2009 is the main collection, with a bunch of sub-collections helpful to people looking for genealogical information.

Just a few of those sub-collections are:

Inmate case files for Atlanta prisoners from 1902-1922
Records Regarding Federal Penitentiary Inmates Inducted Into the U.S. Army, 1943 – 1945
Records of Penitentiary Sentences from 1897 – 1907
The Island Lantern, a journal by the prisoners at McNeil Island Penitentiary. The journals were published from 1924-1980.
There are also series for inmate photos, parole books, criminal history sheets, and much more. They also have research guides and name indexes for a few of the federal prisons.

Be sure to also check town and county historical societies, as they could have files from the local jails.

Other online resources

Black Sheep Ancestors has links to outlaw and criminal ancestor searches, court records, and executions in the US. There's also some UK and Canada resources.

The Criminal Ancestors Facebook group helps people find criminal records for genealogy.

If they committed a federal crime, Ancestry has F.B.I. Deceased Criminal Identification Files.

Patterson Smith, an antiquarian bookseller, has created a database of true crime detective magazines with info on victims, perpetrators, crime location, and year.

In summary

Finding something unusual or unexpected about your ancestors, like that they were in jail, adds more colorful history to your family tree and can be fun to research and explore.

The different types of resources to investigate your convict relatives can teach you a lot about them. You can learn anything from a physical description to what their family relationships were (based on who testified for them, etc.) to biographical details like where they were born.

Have you come across any of your family in a jail or prison while doing genealogy research? Have you found any records to learn more about what happened?

Have You Found A Criminal In Your Family Tree? Here’s How To Learn More.

Types of correctional institutions

Genealogy resources about incarcerated people

Other online resources

Related posts

In summary