Investigating Gender on the Frontier: 19th-Century Crooked Creek Cemetery

Abstract

This qualitative case study highlights the work of university students who participated in a service learning component of a sociological research methods course. Their complete documentation and analysis of all 477 gravestones in the abandoned Crooked Creek cemetery provide a cultural snapshot of life in the Western frontier in the 1800s. In contrast to existing literature on the analysis of gender indicators on gravestones, this study finds significant evidence that gender was related to social identity and that indicators of master status exist for both women and men. Furthermore, the significant role of women in the development of a pioneer village is represented in the epitaphs chosen by a woman's surviving family members. The findings attempt to dispel assumptions that the use of terms such as "wife" and "mother" on gravestones of the period exemplified the lower status of women in relation to men. Implications for genealogical research include rethinking the way researchers consider the role of wife and mother to write more historically situated narratives of family and community histories.

Family History: Fact versus Fiction

“…In addition to my father's versions-as is pointed out by so many authors working in the area of genealogy-I was also armed with my own memories of family stories told to me either by someone from the older generation who experienced things or repeated from their memory of stories told to them by their own ancestors (Hatton 2019;Knight 2017Knight , 2019Schroer and Hine 2017;Smith 2018). (Kretsedemas 2016(Kretsedemas , 2017 discusses these as socially constructed family narratives, which are inevitably affected both by how a family sees itself (or wishes to see itself) and by the narrative mythology of the times.…”