Description

By law and by custom, women’s individual identities have been subsumed by those of their husbands. For centuries women were not allowed to own real estate in their own name, sign a deed, devise a will, or enter into contracts, and even their citizenship and their position as head of household have been in doubt. Finding women in traditional genealogical record sources, therefore, presents the researcher with a unique challenge, for census records, wills, land records, pension records–the conventional sources of genealogical identification–all have to be viewed in a different perspective if we are to establish the genealogical identity of our female ancestors.