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"Applying Lessons Learned" When Researching Female Ancestors

Image by rawpixel.com   Women in our family trees frequently get short shrift, don't they? With maiden names often undiscovered, they sometime languish, faded and unknown, next to their better-documented husbands on our family trees. Records don't often exist for them, distant descendants might not know their names, or they died without progeny to remember and carry their names forward. What if there was a resource that could help you discover more about those silent women to bring them out of the shadows? Such a resources exists in Telling Her Story: A Guide to Writing About Women of the Past by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack (Salt Lake City: Scattered Leaves Press, 2024). I used what I learned from this book to craft a series of blog posts on my great-great-great grandmother Mary Jane Sheridan. And I wrote about that process in the article: "Applying Lessons Learned," for the September 2025 issue of  Stirpes , the Journal of the Texas State Genealogical Society. Read it...
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GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Military Photo


GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Military - January 15th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey

 

My Dad, Joseph John Gilbride, Jr. (1937-2018), was incredibly proud of his time in the Air Force. He had not been successful in high school and decided to drop out after the 10th grade. He joined the military in August 1954, when he was just 17 years old. Eventually he earned his GED while in the military.

From 1955-1957 his specialty was AC&W Operator (aircraft control and warning squadrons), first with the 646th AC&W based at Highlands AFS, New Jersey; with the 913th AC&W, based at Pagwa Air Station in Ontario, Canada, and finally with the 662nd AC&W, based closer to his Ohio home, at Brookfield AFS.

The oldest son of his family, he desperately wanted to make his own way in the world, and joining the military was one way to break with his blue-collar neighborhood in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland's East Side. And it allowed him to see a bit of the world as well, which for a time, satisfied the romantic in him. He was the arms-crossed, confident 18-year-old in the photo above.

In the end, Dad moved between several branches of the military, including the Air Force Reserves and the Air National Guard and served nearly 10 years all together. Though it was not to be his career, it was an important part of his identity throughout his life.


NEXT UP: Newspaper Clipping

 


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