I'm quite proud of all the farmers, convicts, agricultural labourers, yeomen, etc. that I have in my tree. But more importantly, I feel for all the silent voices of women of whom you usually can't find anything about.

More often than not their names are usually "Mary unknown" or something like that. You know that they would have birthed maybe 10 or 13 live children (or more), and then ended up dying in childbirth with the last one ... with their husbands only to remarry so they could have someone to tend the children (and have more children).

And I think about the high infant mortality rate, how all the dear little babies died of the simplest things, and all the heartbreak that that entailed. Thank goodness for immunisation these days, I don't think we appreciate how lucky we are.

Below are a couple of interesting topics from websites (just a few of the multitude) on women through history in general.

Silent Voices - Women in the Middle Ages

Women in History