Customer Reviews

A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Female Ancestors : Special Strategies for Uncovering Hard-To-Find Information About Your Female Lineage

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Despite the fact that half of everyone's ancestors are women, they traditionally have received short shrift from genealogists. Married women frequently appear on family group sheets as "Elizabeth Blank," teenage daughters are lost track of between censuses if their new husbands' names are unknown, and even the most dedicated family man was apt to leave everything in his will simply to "my wife." (Those of Acadian or Quaker descent are fortunate that religious records usually provide a wife?s maiden name.) Carmack is a well-known author and lecturer and one opens this book with high hopes that she will describe new techniques that will enable one to knock down some of those brick walls. Unfortunately, even the moderately experienced researcher is likely to be disappointed. While the first four chapters are filled with good advice on valuable resources, nearly all of them are equally applicable to researching both men and women: passenger lists, city directories, probate records, interviewing aging relatives, etc. Chapter Five is devoted to writing about women in a family history, and Chapter Six is a brief case study of one of the author's own female ancestors -- but again, the methods described would work just as well for a great-great-grandfather as for his wife. (What does one do to identify a wife who dies before the 1850 census, leaving a dirt-farmer husband unable to read or write, who remarries and leaves his worldly goods to his second wife? I have more than one like that!) Carmack is a specialist in social and ethnic history, which can be very useful in fleshing out one's family research -- but in that case, the title is a bit misleading. She provides full citations for all of her many examples, of course, as well as a 24-page *selected* bibliography -- which may be the most useful part of the book.

While the first few chapters of this book are moderately helpful, much of the book seemed to be devoted to "imagining" what life would be like for female ancestors. While this might prove to be an entertaining exercise, it is not consistent with good genealogical research.

I believe this book, like many others, fails to adequetly cover all aspect of & types of searches most people are trying to solve. Eventho the auther covered some of the very basic Of places a person may look, She failed to explain how & where or the tecniques that one would to trace & find a female ancester gone many years.It lacks a show of true knowelege & expertise. If i were grading this as a high school project I would grade it as a D for Content, C for effort & overall would have been returned as I for Incomplete.The dealer was very fast & more than met m expectatitions. Th book was as advertised & in excellent condition. Dealer gets Five Stars !Author gets One Star !! And an I for Incomplete works !!!

This book does a good job of covering the difficulty of researching a female ancestor. One is reminded of how centuries of prejudice and the treatment of women as 2nd class citizens, will impact one's research. For example, at one time if a female American citizen married a non-citizen, she lost her American citizenship. Thus to find information on her, one may need to look at citizenship applications. Well written and an easy read, with plenty of tips on how to get past the stone wall. Highly recommended.

I have this book, find it very helpful and amazingly easy to put into action. I would highly recommend it's use for a researcher looking for that "mystery" woman in the family.

Well-written, well-organized and enjoyable to read, this outstanding genealogical research tool provides an excellent in-depth, insightful, integrated approach to genealogical research, particularly focused on researching our female family members. It contains a good explanation of means of tracing women when their surnames have changed, and very extensive bibliographies that are exhaustively research sources on women's property rights, childbearing and women's health care.
It sets out a well-explained technique of developing, writing and preserving one's family story as an organized historical narrative, with all the information one has obtained, so that the information paints a family's portrait(s), gives meaning to facts, organizes the source materials logically, and helps to tell the family who they are, why they are the way they are, and where they came from so that the family's history is preserved. This aspect of the book provides a much needed explanation to "weekend" genealogists on how to handle and develop their research results to make sense of them and to preserve the meaning of them.

This is a thoroughly analyzed and helpful book. I have given copies of this book to several people as it responds to research needs at several levels: genealogy, women's rights and issues (property, health, probate/will), family history interests, research skills, even personal journaling and self-discovery through family discovery.
Sharon DeBartolo Carmack has an outstanding ability to teach, and I hope she will continue to expand on her collection of genealogy research books.

Unfortunately, author covers American genealogy only.. a similar book needed for European women.

This book is a must-have for genealogical research for finding and understanding a woman's role in the family role, such as mother, wife, sister, head of household. A very good addition to your library of family history.

This book gave me several more routes to check for my unknown female ancestors. I liked the listing of various search methods and the reasoning to reach a particular conclusion. It was very helpful, which will help me better analyze the information that I do have. The bibliography is wonderful, it covers a lot of different ethnic groups for those of us not researching European ancestors. This is a great resource.