Follow Friday: Finding Woman's Maiden Name

Finding the maiden name of your women ancestors can be challenging at times.  You look in the usual places such as a death certificate, obituary, or marriage index.  Maybe even the tombstone will list the maiden name.  
But sometimes that maiden name is just hard to find!  Especially the further back you go in time.

William Dollaride wrote a wonderful article about finding the maiden name for your women ancestors on the GenealogyBlog.  In the article, he has a pretty thorough list of places you might find reference to her maiden name. He broke it down into categories:  Birth Records, Marriage Records, Divorce Records, Death Records, Census Records, Cemeteries, Major Databases, Vital Records & Indexes, Bible Records, Probate Records, Church Records, Medical Records, and a long list under Miscellaneous.  Some examples include:

• Finding a brother-in-law or mother-in-law on a census
• Delayed birth records or Corrected birth records
• Announcement of marriage in newspaper
• Church marriage records
• Deed records
• Pension records

Check out his article here to see the complete list.  It's a keeper to have on hand while you are researching or preparing your next research plan!

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