Identifying Maiden Names

One of the lamentable problems facing genealogists is the fact that some older sources in many European countries and the United States tend to omit the maiden names of spouses. Of course, depending on your ancestors' origin, this problem may not even exist. In Spanish speaking countries, it was the custom for the wife to retain her maiden name after marriage. Rather than repeat all of the possible methods of finding maiden names, I decided to list some websites that had information about the process. Here is the list:

• Maiden names in the United States, FamilySearch Research Wiki
• Top Ten Places to Find Maiden Names
• Finding the Maiden Names of Women in Your Family Tree
• Five Tips for Learning Women's Maiden Names
• Finding Female Ancestors
• Five Strategies For Finding Forgotten Females
• Locating a Woman's Maiden Name
• Places for Finding a Woman’s Maiden Name: A Checklist of 90 Sources
• Tracing Women Identifying Maiden Names (National Institute)

No, really. There weren't that many articles online. I was quite surprised. However, from digging through old family group records and looking at family trees online (about the same thing) you could think this was a much larger problem than it is in real life. That is not to say that the problem does not exist but the solution is usually doing research in greater breadth and depth. Some of the articles above list dozens of types of documents that can supply the missing maiden name.