Many family historians come across a seemingly insurmountable barrier where there is no record of a woman's maiden name when researching female lines. This is a particular problem in pre-civil registration British records and owes its origins to both old customs and the laws of the time, but the concepts apply to family history researchers anywhere.
While this booklet cannot supply you with the answers, it will hopefully give the reader some strategies that may resolve this problem.
Written as course notes for lectures that Graham Jaunay (a South Australian professional genealogist) gives, this booklet is designed to give the research some ideas on how to go about researching the maternal line. Some examples are provided as well as web address [please note: examples and web addresses are UK related].
Contents:
Background to the problem
Women in society
Women in the eyes of the law
Women and education
How the problem reveals itself
Some strategies worth ppursuing
- Focus on the woman herself
- Check out the people around the woman
- Check the associates of her husband
- Find out how women of the time lived
- Undertake a deductive search of records
Where to find records
