User talk:Megalibrarygirl/Archives/2024/May

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finding the woman behind the married name in old news sources

Hi, I have an article from 1955 that gives the married names and addresses (e.g. Mrs. Richard Reynolds) of two women who were among the original organizers of the Mothers March on Polio. I understand it's good practice to try to find the unmarried names to cite as e.g. "Susan Smith (cited as Mrs. John Smith)." I've found one of the two women using the ancestry database. I don't know what the norms are for citing the source of the unmarried name. Do I cite that on top of the newspaper article that gives her name only as the husbands? I also wonder if there are other resources to try to for tracking down the name of the other woman whose identity is hidden behind her husband's name. HC7092 (talk) 13:35, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi! I just got over an illness and I'm sorry it took me so long to reply. My go-to expert on finding the full names of women in the past is SusunW. She is excellent at tracking down women's names. :) I tagged her and I hope she can help you, HC7092. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Sorry you have been under the weather Sue. Hope you are feeling better. HC7092 I typically search ancestry or FamilySearch (my preferred database which doesn't use a WP proxy and is free to use with registration) to find a potential maiden name and then look for a marriage announcement in Newspapers.com or Newspaperarchives.com to cite on WP. My academic training tells me that primary sources, particularly those that are made for government record-keeping are generally reliable, but many WP editors maintain a belief that any primary source is "bad". My personal preference for citing the name would be Mary (née Jones) Doe, and including both the source which calls her Mrs. John Doe and the source that shows she was Mary Jones, whether that be an ancestry/FamilySearch link or a newspaper clipping. If I were writing an article about her, I would likely never call her Mrs. John Doe, unless I could find absolutely no sources that use her given name, or under very unusual circumstances, like these Talk:Mrs. Ngo Ba Thanh#Copied from Ipigott's talk page in connection with title. Please let me know if I can help further. SusunW (talk) 17:37, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you - very helpful. HC7092 (talk) 17:57, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

You are very welcome. Happy to help. SusunW (talk) 18:02, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, too, SusunW! I'm definitely on the mend! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)