[ SECRET POST #2321 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2321 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 100 secrets from Secret Submission Post #332.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Research is making me want to cry.

[inkdust]

It crossed my mind, but both for his character and for another part of the plot it's really important that it's a daughter :(

Keeping her maiden name hadn't even occurred to me...I suppose it might not have been unheard of, but the key is that she had children, and there's no way their birth records would be listed under her maiden name, unless she wasn't married. ...And I suppose she could have not been married, but I'm not sure how they filed records of illegitimate children back then...hmm.

Re: Research is making me want to cry.

[tyger66]

I mean, some married women keep their maiden name. I don't know about the 1800's, but I've known couples whose children had different last names; the sons had the father's last name, and the daughters had the mother's.

Probably a little too ~progressive~ though...

Re: Research is making me want to cry.

[tyger66]

Oh! And you talked about the census records earlier. Perhaps the main character could find a census record from shortly before the daughter got married! It would still have the name, and she could go forward from there.

Re: Research is making me want to cry.

[inkdust]

But it's the going forward that I'm not sure about. It's not hard to show that she survived, because my character knows when she's supposed to have died, and there's no death record. It's after that that things get tricky. Even with a census record, there's nothing to go forward with if her name changes after that.

Re: Research is making me want to cry.

[(Anonymous)]

What about newspapers? That's how I've tracked down various people in the late nineteenth century for my academic research. The internet has brought us the joy of full-text searches of thousands of papers. If the daughter had some public talent there's even more likelihood of there being information, photographs (perhaps where she looks like her mother) and the announcement of her engagement/the publication of her marriage banns.

She needn't even keep her maiden name to still be trackable through the press. Off the top of my head, I can think of female musicians, minor authors, and tons of mediums/spiritualists who are frequently referenced in the press by their married and maiden names for the benefit of readers. Also, once you get into the '80s and '90s journalists become quite taken with writing about the private lives and histories of people in even the peripheral public eye. I don't know if any of it helps with your particular set of tangles, but never forget how massive and thriving the periodical press is in the latter half of the nineteenth century. (I once managed to trace a woman because her sister mentioned her nick-name in passing in a short speech she made while dedicating a fountain to a local animal charity, which was recorded in tiny notes at the back of a provincial newspaper. Hurray for full-text searches)