Tracing a family tree's matrilineal line on Mother's Day

Looking back at your family tree through your mother’s line — from daughter to mother to grandmother and beyond — is known as tracing your matrilineal line of descent. While many family histories emphasize paternal surnames and male ancestors, matrilineal heritage often runs quietly beneath the surface — woven into daily life, tradition, and memory. As my three children converge on their hometown of Woodbridge to spend some time with their mother, my post today captures the broad strokes of my own matrilineal descent as far back as I can trace it.

The starting point for all genealogy research begins with what you know, and I was lucky enough to know both my mother Ann and her mother Dorothy. But what I know of Dorothy’s mother Nellie is only the stories she told me. Nellie likely had only fragmented memories of her own mother, Flossie, who died when Nellie was just three years old. Flossie’s mother Sarah likewise died when Flossie was in her early teens. Moving back to Sarah’s mother, there are no known photographs, and this continues to be the case reaching back further. We have only layers of memory, traces of records, and some inherited stories passed down through the generations. But below is a brief outline of the women in my direct maternal line, as far back as I’ve been able to go. I’ll keep searching, out of a combination of love and curiosity. Each new name, date, or place adds dimension to a thread that otherwise risks fading into silence.

·      My mother, Ann Louise Hackett (1939–2006), was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1939, just before the start of World War II. In 1961 at age 22, she married Russell McCreven and together they had four children over the ensuing decade or so. After high school she had worked as a Dental Assistant, but in an era when it was frowned upon for women to work while pregnant, she left her job before her firstborn came along in 1963. As a young mother, Ann was also a craftswoman — by the 1970s, she co-owned a small West Haven shop where she specialized in handmade dolls based on a pattern that came from her grandmother Nellie. Continuing to balance family life with a career, she returned to the workforce fulltime once her store closed and her youngest child was off to kindergarten. She worked as a Dental Office Manager until retirement in 2002 at the same office she left as an expectant mother in the early-1960s. Her creativity and deep devotion to her husband Russ and their family defined her 67 years of life.

·      Ann’s mother Dorothy May Lounsbury (1916–2003) was born as World War I raged in Europe. Growing up in Bethany, she was known as Dot, and in 1935 she married Bernard Hackett at age 19 during the Great Depression. In 1942, she gave birth to daughter Ann at age 23 and later, son Bernard, Jr. in 1947 while the family lived in West Haven. Dot worked as a bookkeeper for Bessy Richards Clothing and lived through the sweeping changes of the 20th century — from world wars to the dawn of the digital age, learning to use a computer in the 1980s. She lost her mother Nellie when she was 44 years old, and her husband when she was only 57. Dorothy lived to age 87, her steady presence grounding our family across decades.

·      Dorothy’s mother Nellie Munn Downs (1890–1960) was born in 1890 in Waterbury, Connecticut. She was named for Dr. Munn, the physician who delivered her. Nellie’s mother had died when she was 3 years, 5 months old — shortly after her sister Faith was born, likely from complications of childbirth. Nellie was raised in Bethany by her father’s mother, Alta Downs, and was married at the young age of 16 to Elford Lounsbury. Between the ages of 19 to 28 years old, she gave birth to five daughters. While raising her family, Nellie worked as a sort of midwife — assisting as women gave birth at home and helping in the household after the newborn arrived. Nellie’s marriage ended around the time she was 48 — at a time when it was unusual for married couples to separate. Nellie died at age 69 in 1960. Although she lived at a time when the world was rapidly modernizing, her life had unfolded largely in an old-fashioned domestic sphere, defined by caregiving and quiet perseverance.

·      Nellie’s mother Florence Amelia Rathbun (1871–1894) was said to have been born at sea — named after the first port where her father’s ship landed in Italy. Known as Flossie, she was raised in the seaside village of Noank, Connecticut. After her father died when she was 8 and her mother died when she was 15, she went to live with her maternal uncle Frank Barnes, in Woodbury, where she likely met Jerome Downs, Jr. whom she married at age 19 (Frank was married to Jerome's mother Alta Downs's sister Lydia). She gave birth to their daughter Nellie shortly after, then two more children before dying a few days after childbirth at just age 23. Though her life was short, it was richly creative: she was an artist who signed her work "FAR," painting delicate floral motifs and landscapes, and she also played the piano beautifully according to family lore — adding color to the story of her brief but vivid life.

·      Flossie’s mother, Sarah Maria Barnes (1838–1886) was born in Woodbury, Connecticut in 1838, as the Civil War approached. As a young woman Sarah traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi on missionary work and in the years following the war she was involved in the founding of the Barnes Institute in Galveston, Texas, which provided education to newly freed Black Americans. Teaching literacy in the Reconstruction South was a radical act and while she was in either Vicksburg or Galveston she met a sea captain Warren Nathan Rathbun with whom she would continue her adventures, later traveling the world as a young married couple. According to ship's logs, she accompanied him on voyages from his hometown in Noank, Connecticut to as far away as the island of Malta. She had been married at age 32 and gave birth to her daughter Flossie when she was 33, with two more daughters following shortly after. After nine years of marriage Warren died when Sarah was just 41 years old, and she seems to have followed him to the grave soon after, dying at age 48 while her two surviving daughters were teenagers. Documents related to Sarah’s life and her work continue to surface in archives that become digitized, helping her descendants to learn more about her life, not only as a wife, mother and teacher but as a participant in one of the most hopeful chapters of American history.

·      Sarah’s mother Charity S. Morris (1804–1892) was born in 1804, just as the young American republic began to stabilize after revolution and conflict. She married Elizur Barnes at 23 and gave birth to Sarah at age 33. She endured the deaths of both her husband and two daughters in her early 30s, and she lived another half-century as a widow, dying at age 87. Charity's adult life coincided with vast changes in society and women's roles, though her own story, like that of many women of her time, is recorded only in fragments. She is buried in the Old North Cemetery in Woodbury.

·      Charity’s mother, Althea (sometimes spelled Allythea) Mitchell (c.1784–1811) is the earliest woman I can name in my matrilineal line, and I know very little about her. She was born around 1784 and she married John Morris in Woodbury, Connecticut at about age 19, in 1803. She gave birth to at least three daughters, including Charity, before dying at just age 27. Records show that she was buried in the old South Cemetery in Woodbury, but all traces of her gravestone have vanished from the graveyard in the area where it once stood. Her short life may have been filled with domestic duty and childbirth, like so many women of her generation, and her death in 1811 marked the end of a life almost entirely lost to history. And yet, she began a matrilineal line that continues to thrive today. Could she have even imagined all that would come?

I became a mother myself at age 28, and as I reflect on this long line of women who came before me, I’m sending warm wishes to everyone this Mother’s Day. Here in Woodbridge, the weather has cleared and it’s shaping up to be a beautiful spring day — well suited for remembering the mothers who are here, as well as those who are gone.