I identify the women in my life by their first names. My phone has contact information for Mary and Michelle and Susan and Jen.

It’s not always been this way. I remember aunts who wrote their names as "Mrs. John Smith." Letters were addressed to "Mrs. Sam Jones." I like to think that we are more progressive today, but a couple of organizations have me on their mailing lists as Mrs. Gerald S. Lenzen.

Some of this is rooted in the English tradition of feme covert. This common law principle, imported to the American colonies from England, stripped a woman of her civil existence upon marriage.

In Colonial America and up to the mid-1800s, a married woman was considered under the protection of her husband. Unless property was specifically given to her by her husband or father, she owned no real property.

Tracing women is a challenge for genealogists. In most American societies, females change their names at marriage, forever leaving their birth names behind. Because of feme covert, women often are not mentioned in legal papers. Usually, they are not heads of households; and, therefore, are rarely in census indexes. If their parents are not known, an attempt to extend their ancestry for another generation becomes time consuming and complicated.

In most cases, bits and pieces of evidence must be ferreted out and compiled into an indirect proof of parentage. We may not find a single document that firmly links grandma to her parents. Rather, we look for a whole lot of papers that can be lined up to show the linkage.

This usually means we have to trace all of the men who were in our ancestress's life. That includes her father, her brothers, her sons, the men who were witnesses to deeds, the minister who conducted her marriage, and any other man named in documents that were created around her.

A friend is searching for Catherine Kellar who married Mr. Conley. She looses track of Catherine prior to the 1880 census. The recent discovery of a brother’s 1906 obituary provides a clue. He had a sister Catherine Woolf. Guess what, Catherine Woolf is in the 1880 census in the same area that Catherine Conley had been living. While this is not proof that Catherine Woolf is Catherine Conley who was Catherine Kellar, it provides direction to the search.

The bottom line is that when we want to trace women, we often need to do a lot of extra research. There is an excellent article in the December 2004 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly called "The Wives of Jonathan Turner: Identification of Women in Pre-Twentieth-Century South Carolina" that shows how to do this.

If you are interested in other helpful articles, go to my Columns page.

© 2000–2011

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.