I encourage readers to join in. Lisa has some terrific blogging prompts for each day of Women's History Month.
Meanwhile, because there are 5 Fridays in March, here are my 5 Blogging Prompts for Women's History Month. I will write my own stories each Friday (and participate in as many of Lisa's 31 Prompts as I can!) I hope you'll join in with your own:
1. Choose your favourite female ancestor and write a brief biography of her life. Add it as a short comment here or as a blog post on your own blog. Add a photo if you have one.
2. Make a list of your female ancestors beginning with your mother. Go back as far as you can. Now figure out how many children each female ancestor had. Did the females in your direct maternal line tend to have the same numbers of children each generation? Did they have more? Less? Were they prolific or are there few children born to each woman? Is there a pattern emerging?
3. Make a list of your direct line female ancestors starting with your mom. You will list your mother, her mother, her mother's mother and so on. Write about your mtDNA findings. If you haven't been tested yet, order an mtDNA kit! There are several companies offering DNA tests - Family Tree DNA, Ancestry DNA
, 23andMe.com
4. Do you have a female relative (direct ancestor or collateral lineage) who played an active role in women's issues? Perhaps one who was a Suffragette or was a pioneer in a male-dominated role or occupation? Perhaps she sailed to the New World to start a new life in the 1600s or was a refugee from a war-torn or religious-intolerant location. Tell her story in a blog post or comment here on this blog.
5. Choose one female ancestor and the historical context during her life. Pick one historical event that would have impacted on her life. Perhaps she lived through the Spanish influenza in the early 1900s or she was widowed during the Civil War, or lived through the Depression.
3 comments:
Check your notes, please. Men certainly do have mitocondrial DNA and can be tested. Although Y DNA is only passed from father to son, mtDNA is passed from mother to ALL children.
Thanks. I'm inspired! I don't think I have any suffragettes in my line (tho you never know), but maybe I have a pilot or two.
Hi Tim, thanks for your comment and correction. I know that males have mitochondrial DNA as each person gets approximately half their DNA from each parent.
But I mistakenly thought that a man could not order a mtDNA test but instead had to order an Autosomal test.
My goof! It appears a man can order either a Y-DNA or an mtDNA test
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