Clues for finding elusive females in your family tree.

Half of everybody's ancestors were women, yet most of the older documents used for research mention men only. They did the sorts of things that might create a record, such as voting and being in the military. Women were the social support system, but any recognition they received came from within the family-few, if any made it into public records.

I have two favourite historical quotations concerning women. The first was written in 1684 by a Captain Wheeler of the Royal Navy. He'd been sent by the English government to discourage permanent settlement in Newfoundland. He reassured the authorities they had nothing to worry about, "Soe longe as there comes noe women they are not fixed." In other words, there was no need to worry about men taking up residence if their women were back home in Devonshire or Dorset.

The other quote comes from the cover of a book called The Hidden Half of the Family, showing a woman in a historical cleaning costume. A sign beside her reads: "24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. No wages. No strikes. No collective bargaining. No nonsense."

In the first case there were no women; in the second they are seen as anonymous toilers.

Record-taking in the past had a strong gender bias, making it hard to get a handle on females. Consider census records when the only person named was the head of the household. In well over 90 per cent of the cases, that name was male. When a woman was listed, she would usually be Mrs. Jones or Miss MacIntosh, whereas her male counterparts were Thomas LaPierre or Nicholas Wentzel. So we have "Mrs. Jones, widow." Since there may have been several Mr. Jones, the fact that one of them left a widow does not help us learn her given name, let alone her maiden name.

There were no early government records of births, so finding baptism records would seem the best way to learn the mother's name. But what happens when a family was Baptist and did not christen infants? Some ministers of other denominations wrote simply that they had baptised "a girl of Mr. MacLeod's," or "William, son of William Lennox," leaving us no wiser as to who Mrs. MacLeod and Mrs. Lennox were.

Many people in rural places were buried without a clergyman present. Before government death records or professional funeral directors, no written record may have been made.

A man and woman might have come here as a couple or with a child, and we have no local marriage record in which to find names. It was possible for a couple to immigrate here in 1818, raise a family, and for the wife and mother to die 40 years later and never appear in a written record! One such woman was among my maternal ancestors.

By law and by custom, women's identities were lost within those of their fathers or husbands. Legally, they were covert. Most record-taking was concerned with land ownership or warfare (poll tax, real estate ownership and assessment, land grants, census categories, probate; militia lists, etc.)

Genealogists and other historians must look closely at those areas where women interacted with the government and legal system. Sometimes the law, precedent and custom mandated the unequivocal identification of a woman; you are well advised to consider the legal status of females at any given time. Could they make a will? Enter into contractual agreements? Own real estate? Vote? Was the law the same in all four Atlantic colonial and provincial jurisdictions?

Also, think of later records that may be retrospective. For instance, a 1920 death record for an 85-year-old may name both parents; you'll discover the mother's name of a child born in the 1830s.

For more on the subject, I recommend The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women's Genealogy, by Christina Kassabian Schaefer (Genealogical Publishing, 2003).

Dr. Terrence M. Punch is the author of the recently released second volume of Erin's Sons: Irish Arrivals in Atlantic Canada 1761-1853 (Genealogical Publishing, 2009).