The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Women overlooked in many family trees
This story was published April 30, 2000
With Mother's Day just two weeks away, let's turn our genealogical attentions to the women in our families.
Rebekah Manwaring, a Pullman High School senior, recently researched her female ancestors for a school project. She did a remarkable job of pulling together what her family already knew about its women, expanded on that knowledge through her own research and produced a notebook full of information and photographs that will be a legacy to her family.
What a worthy project for any genealogist.
Family history is full of joys and sorrows. For me, one of the sorrows lies in the obscurity and even anonymity of so many of my female ancestors.
As practiced for many centuries, genealogy has been an exercise in male dominance. I haven't seen a pedigree in which males didn't predominate.
Rarely do we find a male line ending with John, or William, or Robert, and no surname. It happens in patronymic lines where Swen's son is given a surname compounded from the father's given name, Swenson, and Tom's son is Thomson.
But for most of us, if we know a male ancestor's name at all, we know his surname.
Not so with women.
I am troubled by Rebecca, my second great-grandmother. Other than her given name, we know her only by the fact that she married James C. Day, my Grandpa Day's maternal grandfather. Yes, maternal. Charles C. Day's father, Theodore Barber Day, married Rachel Day, daughter of James and Rebecca. So far, Rebecca is the end of a line and she will be unless, and until, we discover her father.
There are so many end-of-the-line women in our genealogies, women whose surnames aren't known. Saddest of all are the women known only by their husbands' names.
Mrs. Thomas Lamson and Mrs. Thomas Loomis are two in my family tree. Mrs. Thomas Loomis is my 13th great-grandmother. Mrs. Thomas Lamson is my eighth great-grandmother.
Even when we know a woman's maiden name, often we know little about her, except what can be divined from her husband's record. They don't call it his-tory for nothing.
I commend Rebekah Manwaring for her interest in her women ancestors. Some call it umbilical genealogy. Others call it matrilineal genealogy. With Mother's Day approaching, I would urge you to conduct a little experiment.
Let's call it umbilical genealogy. Every one of us arrived in this world on the end of an umbilical cord, but when we do our genealogy, we put fathers - not mothers - in all the most prominent places. They go on the top lines on pedigree charts. This makes men seem more important than women.
For Mother's Day, let's give women the prominence they deserve. Let them be on top. Get a pedigree chart. List yourself in the customary place. Then, instead of listing your father at the top of the box for parents, put your mother there. Write dad's name at the bottom, where women's names usually go.
Here's how that would work. Tracing the men, my line goes like this, with birth years in parentheses: Terence Day (1938), Lyle Keith Day (1909), Charles C. Day (1867), and currently dead-ends with John Day (about 1790) in Virginia. In this classic, patrilineal organization, each generation buries the matrilineal line.
A matrilineal line is very different. Mine goes like this: Eva L. Willis (1916), Celestia Eva Pettit (1894), Eve Wilding (1870), Mary Elizabeth Layne (1832), Lucinda Bybee (1805), Jerusha Emmeline Atkinson (1782), and ends, in my records, with Nancy Taylor (about 1750) in Kentucky.
Unfortunately, none of the forms I've seen, and none of the computer programs, let us display genealogy with the woman on top.
Ironic, isn't it? Maternity is ever so much more certain than paternity, but pedigree charts are patrilineal, giving more prominence to men.