Tri-Counties Genealogy & History by Joyce M. Tice TriCounty Women's Name Restoration Project Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

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Joyce's Search Tip - November 2008 Do You Know that you can search just the articles on the site by using the Articles button in the Partitioned search engine at the bottom of the Current What's New Page?

Today's woman identifies herself by her accomplishments, just as men have always done. Her identity is established and maintained on her educational diplomas and other documents marking her progress in the world. She is more likely to keep her own name and identity than in any previous time in our history. In earlier times a woman was identified only by her relationships. She had no legal identity in her minority as a ward of her father. In marriage she had no legal identity, because  married persons were considered one person in the law, under the name of the husband. She could not even sign a legal document without her husband signing with her and approving it. She lived her life in perpetual legal childhood, never achieving the status of adult unless her husband died. The legal term used for this was "femme covert". Thus you have the custom of identifying a woman under her husband's name entirely as Mrs. John Doe, thereby plunging the female partner in the pair into anonymity. It was the social equivalent of the veil and was intended as such. Women were to be shielded from the world and the loss of her name was one of the ways it was accomplished. She was known as a named individual only in the privacy of her own home and in her face to face relationships. Although she could not vote, she could be taxed, without political representation, on property she owned in her widowhood or if she remained single in adulthood.

Many women went to their graves pretty much nameless and when records were lost, her real  name went with them. Old tombstones identified women as example, "Sarah, wife of John Doe." Many family bibles list the birth of a woman under her married name, rather than her real name. This is not always the case, but is commonly seen. In some communities it was common to bury a woman by her real name, such as "Sarah Smith, wife of John Doe." When that respect was shown her, we are in luck in determining who she really was. However, it is not fail proof. My own ancestor, Anne, whose real name I do not know, is buried in Wellsburg beside here first husband as "Anne Miller, wife of King Cummins." She is identified by the name of her first husband and as wife of her second. No clue can be found about who she really was. In any case, the first mentioned pattern is by far more common and gives us little information about the woman herself. She never had a choice, as we do, to maintain her own identity and keep her own name.

The object of this month's special project is to honor our ancestral women by restoring their identities to them. Hopefully we can build a significant database of women by their own names and help other researcher who are still trying to find them. Follow the examples in the table below. If you have a large number of women to identify, the easiest thing for me is to have it submitted in an Excel spreadsheet. If you can't do that, just do your best and I'll put it together. If you are using a married alias as the submitter, please identify yourself by both your real and married surnames as in the examples below. We want to know who you are, too. This is to be your own DIRECT ancestors ONLY and the woman must be buried in a cemetery within the three counties represented on the site. Do not send more information than is included in the chart format below. I can only do this if you all send it in in the format below so I can process it efficiently. I tested the project on a few of my regular site guests in advance to try to anticipate some of the questions and exceptions that would arise. If they are any example, this will be massive. Many of us have 25 or more female ancestors buried in this three county area. It may be necessary for me to eventually break it into separate pages by township or cemetery. Please call the townships just by their name as presented below. Do not call Smithfield as Smithfield Twp. or Smithfield Township. The heading already says that. Same with the county name, use exactly as presented below WITH the state. We include that so that no one will confuse Tioga PA with Tioga NY. Be sure you know the difference between a village and a township - example, Alba is a village in the Township of Canton, Windfall is a viollage in the Township of Granville. If you are unclear about this, please read the article, "You Gotta Know the Territory,"  Dates are YEARS ONLY. Anything you send in that is formatted differently than the examples below, will take extra time for me to reformat. Before you submit your work, please proofread it FIRST and read again the instructions to make sure you have followed them. Making corrections will be difficult so do your best to make it right the first time. Thanks.

Give Grandma back her name and have fun doing it. Joyce M. Tice