Matrilineal genealogy
Your mother’s mother’s mother, and every woman before her, recovered by name and by record, and told as the story of the women who made you.
Most family trees follow surnames, and surnames follow men. Every generation, a woman’s name disappears at the altar, and the records start calling her “wife of.” Push back far enough and she’s just a bracket.
The Kinswoman traces one line only: the mother’s. Finding maiden names is the work, not a side task. I know where married women appear in the records and where they vanish, in deeds and probate, church registers, census pages, and the obituaries of their children.
The Grave & Ledger Report
Every mother-daughter link is proven from original records, with full citations, following the Genealogical Proof Standard professional genealogists work by.
Where she lived, what she survived, and the history that shaped her life, written from the records.
A written argument for every link, conflicts between records resolved, and a log of every search, including the dead ends.
Census pages, birth and marriage records, obituaries and letters, numbered, transcribed, and tied to every claim.
Your mitochondrial DNA passes mother to child, unchanged. I interpret your results beside the documents, so the science and the history confirm each other.
Your line as a living web page: the women on one thread, their photographs, documents, and the houses they lived in, to share with family.
Where the line goes from here, which records to search, and what it would take to reach the next mother.
$200
About four hours. I review what you know, confirm the first generations, find where the records thin out, and tell you how far your line can likely go. Credited toward any report.
$1,000
The first four mothers in your line who have passed, starting with the most recent one no longer living. A research block aimed at about four generations, with the full Grave & Ledger report and your family page.
$2,250
A deeper search aimed at about six generations of mothers who have passed, with your mtDNA read beside the records, the full report, and your family page.
By quote
For lines that reach into colonial New England. Researched in phases, so you see finished work at every step.
Research is sold as blocks of time aimed at a goal. No honest genealogist can promise a number of generations: some lines go back three hundred years, and some stop at a burned courthouse. When a line ends, you’ll know why, and see everything I searched. My research begins with the first woman in your line who has passed; living mothers, grandmothers, and daughters are recorded from what you tell me, but not researched, to protect their privacy.
Optional
For women who want more than a report: ways to keep your mothers close, made from what the research found.
Always optional, and always kept separate from the research. Nothing here ever changes a proof.
A page for each woman: her name, her dates, her death date kept as a feast day, and a practice drawn from her actual life.
Your report delivered as a ceremony: every name in the line spoken aloud, oldest mother to you.
Blended for your family from plants of your mothers’ own places and eras.
Your bound report, your oil, a beeswax candle for the feast days, and your matriline chart on fine paper.
I.
A free call to hear what you’re hoping to find, and to see whether your line is one I can serve well.
II.
You tell me everything you know, mother by mother: names, dates, places, family stories, and how you know each one. You share photographs, documents, and any DNA results.
III.
I find where your line is strong and where it thins, you decide how far to go, and then I work through archives, registers, censuses, and graves, one mother at a time.
IV.
Your report, your family page, your document archive, and a call to walk through what I found.
Who is The Kinswoman?
I came to this work through my own line. I’ve traced fifteen women, mother to daughter, from my own kitchen back to 1630s Rhode Island. Among them are a woman whose husband accused her in a divorce to cover his own adultery, and a mill-town mother who buried five babies and raised one daughter. Each was nearly lost in the records. Each is now named.
I work from Ruby, a farmhouse George Sigel Dugan built in 1883 on seventeen acres of Missouri Ozarks land, farmed now for more than 140 years. Before I traced anyone else’s family, I traced the family who built my home. George and his wife, Samantha Jane, called Janie, both died in this house and are buried at Mission Home Cemetery, a mile and a half down the road. I found their death certificates, the newspaper notice of a young cousin who died here in 1893, and a hand-forged horseshoe in the red barn from the years their draft horses worked these fields.
Living in a house that holds another family’s lives taught me that every home keeps a story someone forgot to write down. I keep the garden and the cows, I’m an herbalist and a folk practitioner, and I believe the dead deserve both accuracy and care.
[Credentials and memberships, added as earned]
Write to me with what you know. Even a single name is enough to begin. When you’re ready, download the client questionnaire and gather what your family remembers.