In this empowering virtual event celebrating Women’s History Month, Ancestry’s Corporate Genealogist Crista Cowan is joined by Ancestry ProGenealogist Angie Bush to highlight five extraordinary women who profoundly shaped the records and scientific systems genealogists rely on today. Angie explains that historical documents and databases do not just magically appear; they are often the result of fierce advocacy and social reform. The primary objective of the session is to show researchers how the efforts of these influential women—from improving maternal mortality to formalizing missing soldier lists—created the essential evidence needed to find everyday ancestors in our family trees.
The webinar is structured as an exploration of these historical figures and the specific records they helped generate. Angie details how Frances Perkins’s labor reforms led to the creation of Social Security and the highly detailed SS-5 applications, how Julia Clifford Lathrop’s US Children's Bureau standardized birth certificates, and how Clara Barton’s tracking of missing Civil War soldiers enabled the rich widow's pension files. The presentation also covers Dr. Rebecca Crumpler's post-war medical work, which is preserved in Freedmen's Bureau records, and Barbara McClintock's Nobel-winning discovery of genetic recombination, which makes modern DNA matching possible. The session concludes with a compelling case study by colleague Tanner Tolman that combines DNA matching, an SS-5 record, and Arabic naming conventions to reunite two sisters who migrated to different countries.
Chapters:
Introduction to Women Record-Makers
Frances Perkins & Social Security
Julia Lathrop & Birth Registrations
Barton, Crumpler & The Civil War Era
Barbara McClintock & Genetic Recombination
Search the Social Security Applications and Claims Index or the free Freedmen's Bureau collections on Ancestry today to uncover the hidden stories of your ancestors using the systems these extraordinary women built.