Methodology Monday with NGS Magazine on women and DNA

The April-June issue of NGS Magazine includes two introductory "gateway" articles (including further references) that can help us jump-start some potentially neglected aspects of our genealogy:

* Jane E. Wilcox on "Finding American Women's Voices through the Centuries." In research on five centuries of records on her surname family, "The records where I most often 'heard' their voices were court records, letters, journals, and newspapers."

* Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, on "Using Autosomal DNA for Genealogy." Unlike more familiar male-line Y-DNA and female-line MtDNA, autosomal DNA involves the other 22 chromosomes. Over the generations DNA from the two parents is mixed but some comparatively long segments are retained. To make the ancestral connection, both automated and hand analysis of matches and an accurate document-based family tree (preferably including collaterals) is needed. "The atDNA test offered today for genealogical purposes looks primarily at five hundred thousand or more individual locations or markers on the chromosomes. The value at each location of one person is compared to the same location of another person . . . . It takes work to determine who a common ancestor is."


Jane E. Wilcox, "Finding Women's Voices through the Centuries," NGS Magazine vol. 40 (April-June 2014):28-32.


Debbie Parker Wayne, "Using Autosomal DNA for Genealogy," NGS Magazine vol. 40 (April-June 2014):50-54.



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with NGS Magazine on women and DNA," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 16 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Women's mug books!

The current Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly's cover story, "'The Grandmothers' of Aurora" by Michael R. Fichtel, describes an obscure book he found in the Aurora [Kane County] Historical Society: Reminiscences Prepared From Written and Verbal Recitals of the Personal Experience of "The Grandmothers" of Aurora in Early Pioneer Life in Illinois. The book (which does not appear in WorldCat) appears to have been compiled as a fundraiser for a WCTU rally in 1892; it contains 48 biographical sketches of elderly Aurora women, all of which are reprinted in the magazine. (It's a keeper.)

A few months ago, working on behalf of a client, I ran into a similar publication (which does appear in WorldCat), Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve, edited by Mrs. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, apparently originally published in bi-monthly installments in the 1890s, under the auspices of the Women's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission. The inadequate indexing of the book almost drove me crazy but the content is a welcome (and historically beneficial) change from the overwhelmingly masculine and downright patriarchal viewpoints of the ordinary mug books produced in this period.

Have you seen any books like these in other areas?

Recapturing women's lives in northern Wisconsin

The National Genealogical Society's quarterly Magazine may live in the shadow of its scholarly cousin the Quarterly, but it's a distinguished publication in its own right -- distinguished enough to justify NGS membership in its own right IMHO. One of my favorite regular columns nestles right inside the back cover: "Writing Family History" by historian Harold E. Hinds Jr. of the University of Minnesota, Morris (who under no circumstances should be confused with yr blogger).

In the April-June issue, Hinds highlights Joan M. Jensen's 2006 book Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850-1925. Although closely focused in space, it displays many techniques for reconstructing women's lives from a time when they were not always well documented in obvious places. Hinds places it on the same shelf as the genealogical texts by Carmack (A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Female Ancestors) and Schaefer (The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women's Genealogy). I recommend the review and look forward to reading the book -- maybe there'll be more to blog about then.

Women doctors in Indiana

Have you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall at some point in the past? Then don't miss the current issue of the Indiana Magazine of History, which focuses on women's 20th-century struggle to become doctors. Alexandra Minna Stern introduces and frames Dr. Elsie F. Meyers' "Success! Memoirs of a Female Hoosier Physician," starting in the early 1940s in LaGrange County:

I had no science background and very little money. And I had never heard of a female doctor, much less seen one. ... I think that my father's believing in me was what gave me the strength to try.

Meyers, now a retired anesthesiologist, is a straight talker. Those who aren't themselves medical people, or who didn't grow up in a family with them, may choose not to read the memoir over breakfast. Those who feel the need to believe that every respected ancestor deserved respect may not enjoy it. Genealogists and historians will hang on every word.