24 January 2013

A Will With No Gender

First: I know who this person is--their real name and their gender. The intent of this little problem is to see if there are any clues in this document that indicate the gender of the writer.  I realize that census and other records should be used to determine the identity of this person if this were an actual research problem. I do not need help on actually determining who this person is.

But, for the purposes of this exercise, only use the information contained in the typed transcript of this will from Payne County, Oklahoma, Will Book Volume 2, pp 183-185 (obtained digitally on FamilySearch 24 January 2013) and see if you notice any clues as to whether "E" is a woman or a man. 



Is "E" a man or a woman?


3 comments:

Emily Garber said...

The last paragraph includes male pronouns referring to E. E is a he.

Judy G. Russell, CG said...

Too easy! (At least for somebody who reads subscription language carefully...)

Bubba said...

After I read the whole thing--I realized it wasn't all that difficult.

It's interesting that this is the ONLY document on him that only uses his first initial. Every other record uses his first name.

It's also not too common to find wills that only use the initial. That was usually reserved for the census taker.