Searching for female ancestors?

Question:

Searching for female ancestors?

I have been doing genealogical research on my family and I have been able to trace male family members easily through US census records, but how can I find out what the female's maiden names are? Does anyone know a good website? Ancestry.com is fairly useless for this. Thanks!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Like the above, usually you can get maiden names on death certificates and birth certificates; however, often I may find the mother or father of the girl living in her home at some point if I follow the census records long enough.. Other good sources are newspapers from the area - amazing how much information they listed about people, visitors, history, etc.

I also use wills or cemetary records to help sometimes..

Be wary of info on the net though... have found more than one time that someone copied some lady's name from someone else and posted it all over the internet when I have documents to prove that wasn't her name at all... sometimes a marriage that they mistake for maiden name, sometimes I think they lost their mind... make sure you use information that is sourced - the lds site, www.familysearch.org is good for giving you hints, but go back and try to validate all they have - for example if they list Jane Smith as the wife from Iredell NC, then go to NC and try to find marriage record to your family member... Good luck.