tracing a female branch?

daj · Post by **daj** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:30 pm

In producing my family tree, most of my knowledge have come from the SP website and I have a tree with 270+ people. My stumbling block are the females.

How do I find what happened after their birth? I do not know what their married name would be. I thought of searching the Deaths supplying her mothers maiden name, but you must supply a surname (i.e. her married name).

Similarly if I search all marriages for the female name I can get hundreds of results as I do not know where or when she would marry.

I have all these ends I would like to complete.

Any tips appreciated

thanks

mallog · Post by **mallog** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:52 pm

Do you mean tracing female siblings for example? Sometimes I look at possible marriages on IGI then look for them on the Census returns. If you are lucky you will find a relative staying or visiting or living nearby that narrows down the possiblities then you can check BMD certificates

daj · Post by **daj** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:57 pm

I usually have the siblings.

I interested in who the woman marries. A death certificate would hold this but I can't search for her death as I do not know her married name.

I guess I could try IGI as I seem to recall it allows you to add the parents names -- although I do not place much accuracy on IGI it may be a starting point

thanks

mallog · Post by **mallog** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 10:06 pm

daj wrote: A death certificate would hold this but I can't search for her death as I do not know her married name.

I think I'm right in saying in Scotland you don't need the married name to search for a death but as you say it can return a lot of matches

daj · Post by **daj** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 10:07 pm

mallog wrote:
I think I'm right in saying in Scotland you don't need the married name to search for a death but as you say it can return a lot of matches

indeed, not knowing the place or date of a marriage can return hundreds

rjpaton · Post by **rjpaton** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 11:05 pm

David

You can do an exact census search in Ancestry for just the first name (use appropriate wildcards) & date & place of birth (hopefully you know it). That then returns a list, whose surnames are candidates to check for marriages. But once again it can be too long a list to be practical sometimes. I am looking forward to the day when SP finishes indexing all the mothers surnames! That will make things a lot easier but they don't sem to be in a hurry

Robert

trish1 · Post by **trish1** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 12:17 am

I have found a number of women listed on the census under their maiden names - despite being married and with their husbands - so that is worth checking if using the census to find relationships.

Women are usually mentioned in wills with both names which can also be useful in finding married names. (I haven't checked any wills past 1900, so don't know if this continued in the 20th century)

Trish

karenmcc · Post by **karenmcc** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 1:16 am

Hi Daj,

I have had some success using this method.

Using IGI enter only mothers name on the parent search, and then put in the FIRST NAME ONLY of either her mother or father for the person you are searching for ( i usually try john, james, mary and jane/t too regardless of whether these were parents names as they are so common). Also put in the area they are likely to be living and a year range for when they could be having children. This would be a problem also for common surnames, but I'm quite lucky with having a few less common ones. ( i hope you can understand what I am trying to explain, if not let me know and i will try to clarify)

The IGI is an excellent starting point, don't be afraid of it. The extracted information on the IGI is correct. It's only the submitted info you have to be weary of.

Roberts suggestion for searching the census on Ancestry using first name and place and year of birth has also given me some good results. If you don't have an Ancestry subscription, a lot of libraries do.

Karen

rjpaton · Post by **rjpaton** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 6:54 am

Karen

I'm afraid I can't follow what you mean. IGI asks for you to add the full name of the father - or whatever - I can't follow your instructions

. Could you provide an example - say a daughter & her parents names - and then how you search for her marriage?

Thanks
Robert

Ann In the UK · Post by **Ann In the UK** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 7:01 am

Women in Scotland often reverted back to their maiden name after their husband's died (my 3x great grandmother did just that - in fact, she used both names on one census)

You could try winding forward a bit in the census to see if they show up later on using their maiden names - their birth year and place of birth should still remain the same and be a big clue that it's the right person. Then you may be able to work backwards again. If you get what I mean!