Ancestry Magazine

It is a biological fact that we have an equal number of male and female ancestors. Yet it is an historic truth that there are never as many records for the females as the males in our ancestry. It’s the reason we reach so many dead ends and leave more barren branches on the right side of our family tree than the left. “Who was your father’s father’s father?” is generally an easier question to answer than “Who was your mother’s mother’s mother?”

Finding the lost ladies in your lineage is a persistent challenge. In the past, men were the keepers of the public records. They were generally better educated and held positions of public power such as clergymen, politicians, and clerks. Many of the social records generated by both men and women — letters, journals, family Bibles, and memorabilia — were typically saved and passed down within the family by our female ancestors. It’s ironic that while the caretakers of these records are female, they are often the people we know so little about.

Names and places are critical to the successful pursuit of ancestors. When women marry we can lose track of not only their names, but often their places of birth and early residences as they move into new communities or migrate to other regions with their husbands. It is a double whammy that hits our research with a glaring gap. Unless there is an accurate record of the woman’s maiden name when she marries, we rarely have another opportunity to find her origins. But once we discover who she is, we can often add another set of parents, hers, to a family.

There are well-known tricks to tracking down those elusive females. These include naming patterns, community relations, land deeds, census records and the correct interpretation of them, and so much more. Several prominent genealogists have books, lectures, or tapes devoted to the subject. These individuals include Elizabeth Shown Mills, Sharon Carmack, Sandra Luebking, and David Dearborn. I recommend investigating these resources for more depth on the subject.

My most successful pursuits involve searching collateral lines. While luck seems to play some role in finding female ancestors, more and more good genealogists are learning that focusing on direct lines limits research, while probing the families of siblings and cousins yields connections.

I’d like to review some ways I’ve been successful using collateral lines and unusual documents in researching the females in my ancestry. By doing so, I’ve not only discovered lost names and relationships but also a heightened awareness of how they lived their lives.

An Immigrant Changes Her Name
My grandmother’s mother, Maria Schaefer, came from Prussia, Germany, to Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1854 wh en she was ten years old. I knew her maiden name and immigration date from census records and a marriage certificate. There are two witnesses listed on the certificate with the same last name, Caroline and Ferdinand. Although Schaefer is a very common name, I was hopeful they were related. For some reason my grandmother was extremely secretive about her mother’s past, so we have no family stories to take Maria back to her German roots.

After five years of searching for Maria in immigration records and ships passenger lists, and finding only the wrong ages, dates, or names, I finally took a closer look at a microfiche record in the Family History Library of emigrants leaving Potsdam, Germany. Listed on a card for one Schaefer family were the names Maria, Ferdinand, and Caroline, along with other family members. But Maria was the name of the mother, not a daughter. Looking more closely at one name, Dorothea Friedericke, a ten-year-old, I gasped out loud when I realized she had the identical 20 April 1844 birth date as my great-grandmother Maria.

Abandoning earlier assumptions and following intuition with this new data, I was able to place the family in various towns adjacent to Erie, Pennsylvania. There are still more records to investigate before I can completely confirm that Dorothea Friedericke is indeed Maria, but in my heart I’m convinced she is the same person. Discovering this may also have solved the mystery of a middle initial that has puzzled me for years, as it only appears on her gravestone. It is the letter “D.”

Documents of a Different Nature
Sometimes we know a woman’s name but learn more about her life through atypical documents recorded during her lifetime. Jonathan Richardson and Sarah Fudge had four children who were orphaned before they reached adulthood. They were placed under guardianship and a gap of eighteen years appears in the record before my great-great-grandmother Rebecca W. Richardson marries J oseph Collingwood in 1848 at the advanced age of thirty-two years.

A land deed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, recorded shortly after Rebecca’s marriage, includes a Schedule A. It is a list of more than forty of Rebecca’s personal articles, accumulated during her years as a single woman, legally recorded to assure that her valuables come with her and stay with her in her new home. Each article is valued, and the total nears six hundred dollars. At the end of the list is written: “The above articles of Furniture, Silver ware, … carpets, &c. are to constitute the household furnishing of said Rebecca W. after her marriage and are expected to be placed in a house in Leyden Street Plymouth, hired and to be occupied by said Joseph W. and his family.” Documents like this, as well as letters and manuscripts archived in historical societies and libraries around the country, contribute to our understanding of the lives of our female ancestors.

Personal insights are also gleaned from tales told and recorded by pioneer women. Laura Ingalls Wilder is one such person who popularized frontier tales for children. My Kent family went from Massachusetts to New York to Ohio to Michigan. While Rebecca Richardson Collingwood was setting up her new home in Plymouth, another great-great-grandmother of mine, Laura Almena Kent (future mother-in-law of Rebecca’s son), was homesteading in Michigan. As an early pioneer woman in that state, she had memories that future generations wanted to hear. In her late sixties she was asked by her local historical society to reminisce upon her experiences. Her handwritten notes as well as a printed document recording her words and the event are vital elements in the record of that family. They are typical of some of the interesting tales waiting to be found in local historical societies and newspaper archives around the country. While not considered primary evidence, they certainly add to a collection of clues and enliven a family&r squo;s history.

Clues in census records should also not be overlooked. My widowed great-great-grandmother Mary Carpenter Prescott is listed on the 1870 census with five children, living in the home of her parents, Daniel and Abigail Carpenter. Later, in the 1900 census, after the death of her parents, Mary Prescott is listed in the same house with a divorced daughter, Emma Chamberlain, and another daughter’s orphaned child, Louise Richmond. Three women in one household with a direct relationship yet no common surname. Before seeing this record I never knew of Emma’s marriage or of a granddaughter with no parents. Before censuses recorded relationships, we could only speculate why different surnames are within one household, but that speculation is often an easy lead to a possible relationship.

The Aunt Who Gave to Her Nieces
Within collateral lines, my favorite relations are the maiden aunts and widows. Typically it is they who are the self-designated keepers of the family genealogies. While most published genealogies are written by men, they are often compiled with information provided via correspondence to women around the country. These women, freed from commitments to husbands and children, have the time and interest to pursue family connections. Additionally, the spinsters are often resilient and independent enough, some may even say stubborn enough, to perpetuate the survival of information for the female side of the family.

Yet another of my great-great-grandmothers, Deborah Provost, was named after a maiden aunt. This particular great-great of mine and her aunt are in my primary matrilineal or “umbilical” line. I have a tremendous interest in tracing it back as far as the women will take me. Unfortunately, until recently, I was only able to reach Deborah’s mother, my third great-grandmother, Catherine Parker.

While men bequeath property and wealth in their wills, women divvy out the more sentimental items. If they are thorough in their naming of heirs, and because they have no children of their own, you can discover significant relationships within a childless woman’s legal documents. (The same is true of bachelor uncles and childless couples.) Fortunately for me, the passing down of memorabilia from one female to another is still going strong in my family. An aunt gave me a very old photograph of a very old woman. She is identified as Deborah Parker, sister of Catherine Parker Provost. In tracking down this very great Aunt Deborah of mine, I discovered a gold mine of relationships.

As genealogists, we sometimes get fixated on finding wills for the men in our family, yet we often overlook the fact that females, too, can have estates to be probated. I found Deborah Parker’s 1872 will in the New Jersey State Archives. In it, twenty-three family members (including fourteen nieces and one nephew) were named and identified. Most of them were new to me. I was able to add spouses to siblings and children to couples, complete with surnames and relationships. I even learned that most of Deborah’s siblings were dead, so I could put a limit on my search for their death dates. The following is just one example of the many relationships identified: “I give to Deborah Peeke daughter my deceased Sister Catharine my Gold Watch, I give to Kate wife of John Schenck and daughter of the above Rebecca Parker my small Feather Bed, I give to my niece Emma Arnold daughter of my deceased sister Susan my Wash Stand.”

Armed with this information I can better trace the families to the present-day and follow my lineage through collaterals. Before transcribing Deborah Parker’s will I did not know her father’s name, but through the additional family data gathered as a result of all these rediscovered relations, I was able to go back one more generation in this family to Jacob Parker and his wife Susan. Predictably, there’s now another puzzle in my umbilical line, a s there is yet no evidence of Jacob’s wife Susan’s maiden name or family.

In family history research, solving one puzzle always leads to at least one more. But searching collateral lines and exploring documents thoroughly can lead to a better understanding of the family and may perhaps even place missing ancestors back into your lineage—even those elusive females.

Laura G. Prescott is the director of marketing for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.