Join Me for 50 Records That Document Female Ancestors

I LOVE Legacy webinars and Family History Month is the prefect time to discuss female ancestors. Join me for 50 Records that Document Female Ancestors on Legacy Webinars this week!

“Women can’t be found in genealogical documents.” “They are difficult to research.” While these statements can be true, there are records out there that document their lives. We will explore 50 records to consider as you research female ancestors from the colonial period to the 20th century in the United States.

Register now for this webinar to see it live on Wednesday, October 9th. It's also free for a week after the live presentation. After that, you can view it and the handouts with a Legacy subscription. (Well worth it to have access to Legacy's 1,000 + webinars). 

You can view my other Legacy webinars on my page at https://familytreewebinars.com/genaphilibertortega

Join me on Saturday for Women in WWII

What are you doing on Saturday? Why not join me for a webinar hosted by the Southern California Genealogical Society?

I will be presenting on the topic of Women and WWII. The description for this webinar is:

Think your grandma was just a housewife? Historically war brought on new roles for women. Maybe she was a WAC; a WAVE; participated in the Women's Land Army or was a Gold Star Mother. We will look at women's activities during the War including those in the military and those who were left behind on the home front. We'll discuss women's occupations; volunteer groups and organizations. As we explore women's roles we will look at the documents that detail their activities and where they can be found.

I'm excited about this topic and hope you will consider joining me as we look at women and what their lives were like during the War and how you can research your female ancestor's life.

While this webinar is free, you must pre-register because seats are limited. See the SCGS website for more information. 

Women's Equality Day and Your Ancestor's Right to Vote

Suffragettes on way to Boston via Flickr the Commons

Today is Women's Equality Day which commemorates the 19th amendment and focuses on the continuing work for women's equality in other realms of life. You can read more about the history behind the day from the National Women's History Project.

Want to learn more about how suffrage affected your ancestor? One way to interest the non-genealogists in your family is to tell the story of how and when the women in the family got the right to vote.

Ratified in August 1920, the nineteenth amendment granted women full suffrage by declaring “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex…” 

What's important to remember is that some women had the right to vote in local or state elections prior to the 19th amendment. Other women, continued to be disenfranchised after 1920. For example, women who had lost their citizenship due to marrying a non-citizen were not allowed to vote. Women living in the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico didn't gain the right to vote until  1935 and while the Indian Citizenship Act (1924) gave citizenship to all Native Americans it wasn't until 1965 that the Voting Rights Act was passed.

To learn more about the history of female suffrage in the state you are researching,  refer to the multi-volume  History of Woman Suffrage edited by Susan B. Anthony, et al. Volume four includes information on suffrage history in each state, as well as Britain and Canada. These volumes are fully digitized and available at Internet Archive and can be found under the category  “Women—Political Rights.”

To find voting records consult websites like Ancestry.com, under their Census and Voter Lists page.  FamilySearch  has microfilmed voting records, to find them search on your ancestor’s place and then the category “voting registers.” To learn more about voting records for a state, search on the FamilySearch Research Wiki. 

In some cases, you may find a specialized database found on a library or archive website. For example, Alexandria Library  has the database entitled Voter Registrations in Alexandria, Virginia. African-Americans, 1902-1954 with over 2,000 names. 

Cyndi’s List has locality specific links for voting records on the page Voters, Poll Books, Electoral Records .

To learn more about women and their suffrage rights, consult the book The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women’s Genealogy by Christina Kassabian Schaeffer.

Join Me for a Webinar This Thursday

You are invited to attend our FREE online UGA Virtual Chapter Meeting

Speaker – Gena Philibert-Ortega

Topic – The Secret Lives of Women: Research Female Ancestors Using the Sources They Left Behind

Thursday, October 18, 2012, 7:00 pm MDT @ virtual.ugagenealogy.org

Women ancestors can be difficult to trace--but not impossible. How do you research female ancestors and how is that research different than searching for male ancestors? Sources discussed go beyond sparse government papers, and into libraries, archives, manuscript collections, and female specific resources.

Gena Philibert-Ortega holds Master’s degrees in Interdisciplinary Studies and Religion. She is the author of hundreds of articles published in genealogy newsletters and magazines. Her writings can be found on her blogs, Gena’s Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. Her newest book is From the Family Kitchen (F + W Media 2012). She is a board member for UGA and editor of UGA's Crossroads.

The UGA Virtual Chapter meets online on the third Thursday of each month except December. These meetings are free to the public. To attend the presentation, go to virtual.ugagenealogy.org and, on the date and at the time of the meeting, click on the UGA logo. Enter the presentation as a guest. Archived copies of our monthly meetings are available to UGA members only. UGA Membership is only $35.00 per year. To join UGA, visit our website at ugagenealogy.org. Look down the blue panel and select the option to "Join UGA!" Follow the prompts.

Join me for a FREE Webinar Where I Reveal all of my Genealogy Secrets

Well, not really.

But now that I have your attention, please join me on Wednesday, August 15th at 6:00pm PDT to talk about Women's Work. This webinar is part of the  Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree  Extension Series.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

As most of you know, one of my favorite topics is researching female ancestors. My webinar Women's Work will look at the types of work women have done. Now, before you say my ancestress was just a housewife, come learn more about where to find resources, some occupations that were common to women and much more. We will be looking at all kinds of "work" including volunteer work.

I promise you will hear information you have not heard before.

Thanks to the Southern California Genealogical Society for providing me this opportunity. I hope to see you there!

Register now by clicking here.

Was Your Female Ancestor a Physician?

Every week I write and edit the WorldVitalRecords newsletter.  This last week I wrote about using almanacs for your genealogy. (To read this article click here) I just love finding sources that aren't the everyday "genealogy" sources and see how they can help genealogists find their ancestors.

So I'm writing my article and going through one of the almanacs which includes a business directory and I see a list of physicians. I turn some pages and notice that all the physicians are women. Mind you this is a Boston Almanac/Business Directory from 1878.

So I do a double take and find that this section is indeed female physicians, all 1 1/4 pages of them. 

 

Now mind you this list of "physicians" includes midwives and phrenologists but this list also is one of women who are M.D.s  To put this in a historical perspective, this list of women doctors are practicing 29 years after the first woman in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell, earned a medical degree. But in that relatively short time, Boston has 84 women identified as physicians.

This says something to me that we need to watch our assumptions about our female ancestors. Yes, women have always been relegated to the home where they cook, clean and take care of others. Yes, women are disproportionately absent from official records. But don't count women out, they can be found but sometimes it takes looking in unexpected places.

This almanac and other Boston almanacs are available from Google Books have a great business directory section, I highly recommend them if you have Boston ancestors.

***Above screen shots from The Boston Almanac and Business Directory (1878) pages 364-365.  Available from Google Books.