From the Heart: Notable Women Ancestors
or How an Idea Changed My Life
©1999 Susanne "Sam" Behling (GFSSam@aol.com)
I certainly did not intend to add to my genealogy work, nor did I plan on turning my life upside down two and a half years ago when I created the Notable Women Ancestors web site (http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/), but that is indeed what happened. I was simply miffed that I could find no information on the Internet about my 10th great grandma, Anne Marbury Hutchinson - and decided to do something about it by creating a web page. Even though I've known about Anne for a long time since finding her in my tree some 25 years ago, I've always harbored a grudge against my history teachers for not having taught me about her when I was in school. (Were it not for genealogy, I might still be blithely unaware of her incredible life.) I certainly had heard of Roger Williams, who is given credit as the Founder of Rhode Island - though in reality, he only founded the Colony of Providence while it was Anne Hutchinson and her followers who founded Portsmouth Colony. Together the colonies became Rhode Island, so clearly Anne Hutchinson deserved equal billing (not to mention the fact that she, like Roger Williams, was banished from Boston for her visionary religious ideas).
I can also claim Mary Barrett Dyer as an ancestor, the woman who began as a follower of Anne Hutchinson and who ended her life hanged in Boston as a Quaker martyr. Again, nothing on the Internet about her was to be found. Two notable women in my tree, both of whom deserved much more recognition.
But wait, I thought, what about my own grandmother who homesteaded on the Great Divide in Colorado, living in a one-room "shack" in the early 1900's? Certainly coping with no electricity, no running water, no phones and no neighbors was notable. I wouldn't want to do it. My other grandmother survived the Depression as a divorced woman and had to move back in with her parents and her 3 small children. Would I trade places with her? No way. And my own mother, who joined the Marine Corps during World War II and worked as a control tower operator at a time when women in the military was scandalous, and who after the war, sailed off to Shanghai China to work for the United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Association. Okay, so neither grandmother or my mom were historically important - but notable? You bet! At least in my eyes.
Thus the word "notable" as I have come to use it does not necessarily mean "famous" but rather "interesting" or "courageous." There are lots and lots and lots of women who bucked the system, who did not fit the "norm" or stereotype of the day. There are thousands more who led seemingly "ordinary" lives, but who certainly deserve to be remembered as well. (I've had people tell me, "Gee, I don't have anyone notable - all my female ancestors ever did was have babies." Well, anyone who gave birth to a dozen or more children deserves sainthood, as far as I'm concerned, especially when at risk to her own life and in less than ideal conditions, like on a ship halfway across the ocean or on the trail migrating westward. With the use of good old social history and a little imagination, I envision a whopper of a biography about the trials and tribulations of birthing a dozen children!)
GFS Heather, my partner, descends from Polly (___) Hart Lane, a woman who escaped out the back window during an Indian massacre in Kentucky which resulted in the death of her entire family. She was adopted by the Hart family, later marrying one of them and marrying again to General Joseph Lane, 1st territorial governor of Oregon. Her life became the subject of a book, The Quiet Life of Mrs. General Lane by Victoria Case.
Barb Johnson, a friend of ours in Seattle, descends from Nancy Hart, a Revolutionary War heroine who managed to capture six Tories single-handedly at gunpoint in her own home and for whom Hart County, Georgia is named.
With these few biographies, "Notable Women Ancestors" became made its debut on the web. Today there are close to 200 biographies, submitted by actual descendants or relatives of these women, and there have been nearly 60,000 visitors to the site. And that was just the beginning.
It never dawned on me that what I was doing would be deemed "important" or that NWA would take on a life of its own. I was quite pleasantly surprised when Cyndi Howells first named NWA as "the most memorable site visited" one week in her mailing list, quickly followed by a very nice review in her "Lineage Links" column in the July, 1998 issue of Heritage Quest. When Sharon DeBartolo Carmack's book, A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Female Ancestors was first published, Cyndi met Sharon at a conference and arranged for me to write the book review for FGS. Last year when my newsletter, "Notable Women Ancestors: The Journal of Women's Genealogy & History" made its debut, Cyndi invited me to speak before her own genealogy group, the Tacoma Genealogy Society here in Washington. Earlier this year, Cyndi acted as a guest host on the "Talkspot" radio/Internet genealogy program and invited me on as a guest. (As you can tell, I owe Cyndi big time and she is referred to in this household as "Saint Cyndi.")
When the newsletter came out, Sharon Carmack quickly contacted me and expressed her interest (at which point she learned that I was the "Sam" who had written the review of her book - we had never met before and she thought I was "some guy"). Sharon, in turn, introduced me to Chris Schaefer, author of The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women's Genealogy - both women have since contributed articles to the newsletter and have become friends as well. One of them - Cyndi, Sharon or Chris - then led Myra Vanderpool Gormley my way and Myra wrote a very nice article about both the web site and newsletter in her syndicated column which appeared not only at Ancestry on the Internet, but in several newspapers nationwide.
[Editor's note: the address for the article is: http://www.ancestry.com/columns/myra/Shaking_Family_Tree05-06-99.htm]
Even two of my local papers here in Washington got into the act and have written articles about NWA. Family Chronicle magazine recommended it as one of their "Web Sites Worth Surfing" in the July, 1999 issue. And most recently, the Genealogy Forum right here on AOL honored NWA by naming it as the first recipient of their new "Best of the Internet" award.
The awards and publicity have been fun, but what has mattered most to me has been helping other genealogists find their female ancestors and to honor them by allowing their stories to be published, either on the web site or in the newsletter. Those who ask for the stories to be put on the web are quite often "html-challenged" and are thrilled when I create the web page for them. I've received dozens of thank you letters from folks who expressed immense pride at seeing their female ancestor included at NWA and quickly sent off the URL to their families to share. Many of the submitters (myself included) receive letters from teachers and students, grateful for the information about the Salem witches or Anne Hutchinson - quite often the subject of a book report or term paper.
The whole experience of working on NWA has also been an education, to say the least. Like many of you in the "over 40" crowd, the study of women in history was simply not covered in school. Before starting my genealogy research, I probably could not have named any 17th century women in America except maybe Pocahontas. Genealogy introduced me to many more, but of course only in my own tree. After starting NWA, I found myself racing to the library just to keep ahead of the game. People expected me to know who their "notable women ancestors" were and often I didn't.
It goes without saying that I have devoted a lot more time to working on uncovering my own female ancestors. Hester Burnet, my 7th great grandmother is no longer the daughter of Aaron Burnet that no one could find any trace of (because he was her brother), but the daughter of Thomas Burnet whose ancestry goes back to the Burnets of Leyes in Scotland. 5th gg Philathea Gould is no longer Jewish, as a cousin suggested, or a dead-end, but the daughter of Rev. Ebenezer Gould and Amy Brewster and a descendant of Roger Ludlow, 1st Assist. Governor of CT, whose ancestry goes back into European royalty. 3rd gg Rosanna Shippe is really Rosanna Shippee (two "e's), and while the RI Shippee Genealogy doesn't yet claim Rosanna, I can prove she's the sister of Sophronia Shippee who is mentioned in this genealogy by a letter written by her husband's sister who refers to both Rosanna and Sophronia and their father!
Finally, the people I have met along the way, those who have submitted their female ancestors' biographies and those who are interested in the genealogy of women and women's history, are among the most fascinating people I have ever met - as are the women who appear in these biographies. Some of my personal favorites have been:
Sally Nolan Baker - a registered nurse who worked in the mountain area of Eastern Kentucky early this century. Her patients had to be brought to the hospital by horseback, boat and sled. For her humanitarian work, Sally was voted "Queen of America" over 23 million other club women in the United States.
Elizabeth Simpson Haigh Bradshaw - After emigrating to America from Bolton, Lancashire, England, Elizabeth and her five children joined the Latter Day Saints on an even tougher migration - the perilous trek to Utah on the infamous "handcart train".
Maude ("Maudie") Mae West Davis - She performed in Vaudeville as a member of Dan Russell's "Matinee Girls." As a member of this entourage, she entertained everyone from common farm folks to prisoners and soldiers.
Mary Draper Ingles - Captured by Indians and taken into uncharted territory., Mary managed to escape and made her way back to Virginia. Because of what she had seen and accomplished on her journey, Mary was able to help the army chart this territory.
Susanna North Martin - Accused of witchcraft, she was one of the twenty women and men executed during the hysteria that gripped Salem, MA in 1692.
Mary Rippon - The first woman professor at the University of Colorado who hid her marriage and child in order to keep her job.
To all the contributors of the NWA web site and newsletter, thank you for the incredible journey! To everyone else, get out there and find those Notable Women Ancestors of yours!!!
For more information, please visit the web site - http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa
For information about the NWA newsletter, please visit http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/news.html
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