Carved in a big granite marker in the 19th century North Hills cemetery is the name of an apparently important man, along with his dates of arrival and departure.

On a small stone to its right is a one-word inscription: "wife."

"There was little or no recognition for many of these women, the people who bore the children, cleaned the house and kept the place going," said Joanna Moyar, education coordinator at the Westmoreland Historical Society headquarters.

"Has that changed?" asked Rosalind Ashmun, an official with Mount Pleasant Daughters of the American Revolution.

A dozen women laughed around the table last week at the Greensburg meeting, gathered to hear a talk titled "Hiding Behind Their Skirts: Finding Women's Records."

Marshall genealogist Elissa Scalise Powell spent two hours detailing how to ferret out facts on the distaff sides of families: People whose fathers, brothers or uncles spoke for them until they married, changed their surnames and disappeared behind their husband's identity.

For a genealogist tracing a family line into the past, that means the woman does not appear on voter records before 1920. She may show up on national census forms within the household of a male relative, as unmarried, abandoned or widowed women seldom lived on their own. They often left little behind in way of deeds and wills -- often not even a one-word tombstone.

A determined genealogist will look to everything from funeral Mass cards to quilts for evidence of family members or relationships, Mrs. Powell said. The society pages of old newspapers, witnesses' and neighbors' names on maps and deeds, and the passage of particular names down generations of children are other sources.

The Internet search engine is a powerful tool, Mrs. Powell said, and she demonstrated on an overhead screen how to track down Civil War diaries, newspaper archives and cemetery records, then compare all the information on a spreadsheet.

Maybe best of all were the detective stories the women shared around the table. An Irwin woman told of an 1880 family Bible bought in a box full of books at a Mount Pleasant auction. She tracked the family name to North Huntingdon and delighted the descendants when she handed over their long-lost family history.

Monessen library was lauded for its helpful newspaper library files, and a West Newton newcomer to family histories was shown how to narrow down her search for a Civil War pension record.

At the meeting's end, Miriam Houk Cunningham, a Greensburg woman with roots in Trafford and Wilkinsburg, discovered relations in common with Kristin and Barb Beistel, a mother-daughter genealogy team from Irwin and Donegal. They copied one another's notes on Beistel and Houk tombstones in North Versailles. One recalled a glass blower named Houk at a Jeannette glass house, while others touched on suicide weapons, runaway grandfathers and a tintype photo collection in Youngwood.

"It's addicting. It's fascinating," said Kristin Beistel, whose first genealogical inquiries were more science than history.

"I started out trying to track down death records, to see if the cancer my father died from was hereditary. His father disappeared before he was born, but I tracked his records to Florida. ... And sure enough, he died of the same cause. I know now to take some preventive steps."

"And she found a new hobby at the same time," her mother added. "Every day she comes home with another discovery, something exciting to add to her big boxes of papers."