Female connection method: using a social network approach to genealogical research in the search for the mother of Margaret Champion

Abstract

The search for Margaret Champion's mother is accomplished using two approaches. The first employs the FAN (friends, associates, neighbors) method and direct evidence. Associates in eighteenth-century America (and elsewhere and in other eras) were predominantly male because it was overwhelmingly males who participated in transactions and organizations that indicated association. A brief consideration of some of the philosophical and sociological theories of feminism, however, shows the critical role of women in connecting families together over time and binding family units united in marriage. Often male FAN associations were dependent on female connections. Thus, the second approach combines the female connection method and direct evidence. In some cases, this method not only leads to solutions to practical genealogical problems but also explains the reasons families were networked.