May 16, 2012
With Mother’s Day just past and Father’s Day approaching, genealogists would love to have a complete family history—to find and document all the members of their family.
And—as the following family story illustrates–so would the police!
Richard Dugdale (1841-1883) was studying prisoners for the Prison Association of New York. In reviewing the prison inmates at the Ulster County Jail he was surprised to find that 17 of them were members of one family.
He began a genealogical study and found that the Jukes family descended from a man named “Max Jukes,” who was born in New York in the early 1700s. The Jukes family tree grew to 1,500 criminals or other relatives—many of whom had a history of trouble with the law or with society in general.
According to Wikipedia the Jukes family study was picked up by Arthur H. Estabrook who brought that number up to 2,820 criminal relatives.
Read about the Jukes family history of crime here:
- “A Bad Family Tree Grows One More Criminal to the Defective Jukes Genealogy.” Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), 1 November 1913, page 1.
- “Genealogy of Crime.” Daily Chronicle and Sentinel (Augusta, Georgia), 22 September 1875, page 1.
Having a good family is a great factor in becoming a better person, but it doesn’t explain your behavior and wrongdoings. We all have a choice in life.