In this virtual event celebrating National Women's History Month and the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States, Ancestry’s Corporate Genealogist Crista Cowan tackles one of the most common genealogical hurdles: finding the maiden names of female ancestors. Noting that over half of Americans cannot name all four of their grandmothers' maiden names, Cowan explains how women have historically been obscured in records that were primarily kept by and for men. The key objective of this session is to provide foundational tree-building rules—such as always entering women by their maiden name or using five underscores to flag an unknown name—and to equip researchers with specialized strategies to uncover the identities of the women who built their families.
This session is structured around practical research methodologies and a real-time case study of Crista’s own ancestor. Crista breaks down the evolution of the US Federal Census, explaining why records prior to 1880 present significant challenges for identifying women and their family relationships. To overcome these hurdles, she emphasizes that a woman's children are her most critical paper trail, advising researchers to trace every single child to their death to find parental clues on death certificates or obituaries. The presentation also explores how to effectively mine alternative records where women are more likely to appear, such as marriage records, widows' military pensions, probate wills, and historical newspapers. Finally, Crista demonstrates how to use Ancestry tools like private Notes, the Stickies feature, and Tree Tags to organize research, concluding with a homework assignment to write a two-sentence narrative about a female ancestor's life.
Chapters:
- The Golden Rule of Maiden Names
- Navigate US Census Challenges
- Top Strategies for Finding Women
- Organizing Research on Ancestry
- Searching Smart & Telling Her Story
Pick one woman in your family tree whose maiden name is unknown, trace the historical records of all her children, and use Ancestry's search tools to uncover her hidden history today.