How can I find female surnames and break through my brick walls?

Jill 2021

How can I find female surnames and break through my brick walls? I have female first names, but not their birth surname.

For one instance I have: Elizabeth, 93CB-LG5, born about 1863, her marriage in Sep Quarter of 1884, her death in 1934.

Thanks.

SueaK

Thankyou Jill.

I have looked for a suitable answer for you and came up with a site that will help you with your question, FreeBMD provides a answer for you, please put in only the details of the husband's name and the quarter there is one marriage recorded for that period. please click on the page number and this will show all possible spouses.

We hope this will help you in your searching for future relatives as well.

There is no suitable Knowledge Article for us to show you at this present time.

SueaK

Thank you for your question, we are willing to help you resolve this but need a little bit more information, Who did Elizabeth marry, and where in England did they marry.

dontiknowyou

Hello Jill,

You correctly have entered just her given name in her Vitals box. I have added her married name and fully standardized details from the census records. Sometimes that is enough to throw up a Family Tree hint, if the rest of the family has been well worked. If not, other work you can do:

Finish all attachments of persons on all census records for the household. Often the mother in law will be in the household in later years, recorded with her married surname. That reveals the wife's maiden name. (There are more census records for her husband; I leave them to you.)

Standardize dates and places on the husband's profile, then search FS historical records for him. I did this for you and found a very probable marriage record, which I attached. UK marriage record are indexes and do not identify the couple but FS does list the surnames of women with marriage registrations in the same place and quarter of the year. On this record there is a choice of 4 surnames: Isaac, Routledge, Dodds, or Robinson. If all else fails, search on those four surnames in that town and build out the families involved; it will become apparent which family your Elizabeth is in.

Here is me finding the husband's marriage index record, the record that lists the surnames of possible spouses. I got to the records search page from the right sidebar of his profile, so he is "pre-loaded" and he appears at the top of the page.

Next, I did the same search for Elizabeth, trying in turn each of the 4 surnames from her husband's marriage index record. There are many Elizabeths, so for convenience I narrowed the marriage year range and made it exact. One was the winner:

Jill 2021

Sorry, I meant to say Elizabeth's marriage to a Willliam Francombe was in the September quarter of 1882, in Houghton le Spring, Durham, England! Sorry!

Jill 2021

Dear sue c,

I went on FreeBMD. I entered the correct dates (sorry about saying the wrong date before to both doiknowyou and sue c). With the other details I had on William Francombe, I found the correct marriage and discovered her maiden surname was Henderson. Thank you. I shall be able to apply this to other females in my Family Tree!

Jill

Paul W

If you know / believe the couple had children, the GRO index is the best way to discover the maiden name. After all, the name in the marriage record could well be that of the woman's first / previous husband. Register to use the website at https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp. Initially, I would enter (in your example) the surname Francombe and input Houghton le Spring as the registration district. Start with a +/- 2 year search of 1884, then go forward (changing the sex from male to female) until, hopefully, you find some results. I use this alongside FreeBMD, as:

(1) As suggested, this will provide hints as to the female's name (if she was single!)

(2) Will enable you to find nearby registration districts, in case there are no Houghton le Spring results produced. (In FreeBMD, you can search on events within the county, too - which, unfortunately, is not possible on the GRO website.)

Of course, if the surname is very common, things might not be so straightforward, but (from census records) you should also have the first names of (say) William's children, to enable you to narrow down your searches. (Say, by searching for a Frederick Francombe - or other name - of a child you know belonged to the couple concerned.)

Sounds a bit complicated (especially if you are relatively new to researching your family), but I can assure you this is a very good way of finding not only maiden names but names of the many children, from different family branches, who were born after one census, but died before the next.

C D McB

You have received a lot of valuable information and I would like to add the article from FamilySearch that describes great ways to maximize your searches and a link that details ways to find difficult and "lost" information. These two links provide some very useful information for searching hard to find information and records.

https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/when-i-am-searching-historical-records-what-are-the-best-practices-and-tips

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/finding-elusive-records/

Jill 2021

Fantastic! Thank you everyone for all your very helpful responses!

Jill