Unusual and Underused Records for Researching Female Ancestors: Episode 135

Join Lisa and her guests as she discusses unusual and underused records for researching your female ancestors. Plus: Dutch genealogy websites, genetic communities, and a few great genealogy accounts to follow on social media.



Ep. 135: March 2020





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In this episode:







Tree Talk (1:35)



Lisa shares Family Tree Podcast listener Holly Simpson Corley’s story about an unexpected discovery made in her own hometown. Thanks for sharing, Holly!



Want to share your story on the podcast? Connect with us on Facebook or email [email protected] with “Tree Talk” in the subject line.



Letter telling the story of Holly’s ancestor, Miss Elisabeth Simpson.







Feature Interview: Unusual Records for Finding Female Ancestors (7:10)



Courtney Henderson, Digital Editor at Family Tree Magazine, has some unusual places for us to search for our female ancestors from her Premium article, “14 Unusual Records for Finding Female Ancestors.”



Record Collections Mentioned



Eugenics Record Office Records



Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives: A list of collections and which institutions hold them.



Notices Repudiating Wives’ Debts



“For more than 300 years,” notes Hilary Sargent in an article for the Boston Globe, “newspapers ran advertisements from men publicly announcing their wives had left them, and that they would no longer ‘be responsible for her debts.’” As early as 1656, newspapers printed these notices, and the practice continued well into the 1980s.  Look for these notices in the classified ads section of newspapers, sometimes under the heading “Special Notices.”



Female Clubs, Organizations and Sisterhoods



Beginning in 2003, the YWCA donated over one million photographs, publication pages, and rolls of microfilm to the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College in Northhampton, Mass. Thanks to a grant from the Council on Library Information and Resources these records have been digitized and are available for researchers. For more information, you can visit the library’s website.




14 Unusual Records for Finding Female Ancestors...