Issue 20.17
Ancestry recently released tips for finding the stories of the women in your family Tree. In honor of Mother’s Day, I’ll share some of it with you. The mothers and other women in our family history research all have stories to tell, but sometimes these stories get overlooked with the men in our family tree taking the center stage in many records.
We tend to look at our family history through the eyes of the men of the family. Make a deliberate effort to look at the records you have through her eyes. For example, we always look to learn more about a man’s experiences going off to war, but what did it mean to the wife whose husband went off to fight? Would she have to take over the running of a family business or farm? How old were their children at the time? Timelines are essential tools in family history and can be very helpful in putting women’s lives into perspective. Arrange every event you know of chronologically for the women you are researching. How old was she when she got married? Began having children? Lost her husband? Looking at your timeline through the woman’s eyes will give you better insights into her life and will also likely prompt more questions and lead you down an even more revealing research path.
I love to compare the census records. Did you know that most men age 10 years every ten years but most women do not? Look at your female ancestor’s ages in the census records and you may find she only ages 8 or 9 years in between census records. You can find on some census records how many living children she has and how many children she gave birth to. This often leads you to look for missing children. You can look for large spans of years between children and see if the husband is out of the picture or if you are missing a child. Mothers are often found in later census records living with one of her daughter’s families or in that of a son with a deceased wife.
If your Mother has passed on as mine has, spend some time studying the lives of the mothers in your family tree. Learn about them and the sacrifices they made so that you are here today. Happy Mother’s Day!
For more information, contact Shanna Jones shannasjones@Msn.com