Family Trees, Sex, and Challenging Patriarchy

What I learned while researching maternal lines for my family tree.

My mom’s mom, Evelyn Roll, whose mother was Alma Reeder, whose mother was Hannah Mariah Price, whose mother was Jane Lewis of Bedwelty, Wales (screenshot by author)

I believe in equal rights for women. I don’t think that should be a controversial opinion. But even as society is moving away from patriarchy, most genealogy research is still stuck in a male ancestor-dominated focus. I’m actively trying to change that by focusing more on my maternal lines. By rescuing the names and histories of my matriarchs, I can challenge any lingering unconscious patriarchal mindset that says that men are somehow more important than women.

Genealogists have long focused on the father’s lines or the maternal grandfather’s lines, and when I started my research, I was no exception. When I started researching my family tree, I was very interested in learning about the story of the Gaertners, my father’s family, and the Myers, my mother’s father’s line. Because of the bias built into the documents by patriarchy, these turned out to be the easiest parts of my tree to build.

The more I have learned about my family, the more my interest has shifted to the maternal lines. Each maternal line has required me to build my research skills and find new ways to find information, but there are still some “brick walls” on maternal lines stopping me from finding more ancestors.