Julie Miller is a professional genealogist and a well-known speaker and author. She has written a newspaper article that should be required reading for all beginning genealogists. Shucks, I know a bunch of us "old timers" can also benefit from this article!
Julie writes:
Julie writes:
Identifying females is one of the hardest challenges genealogists face.
You can read the entire article in the Broomfield (Colorado) Enterprise at http://www.broomfieldenterprise.com/ci_13579528.
It might be that only the first name and married surname are known. Or perhaps a daughter disappears from census records and it is not known whom she married. The biggest obstacle when researching women is that their name changed when they married. This is compounded by fewer records. Before the 20th century, women did not have the same rights as men and, therefore, they generated considerably fewer records. Although few research problems are as difficult as finding the identity of females in our family history, there are records and strategies that can be used to overcome the challenges.
