Developing Theory for Matriarchs

Perhaps the statement should read -

"If she and her 2nd husband move to a new country, accompanied by children from both families, she becomes a PRIMARY MATRIARCH of HER children born of both husbands in the new country, regardless of her status in the country of her birth."

I'm not understanding so much the use value of the primary and secondary matriarch definitions. For me they become confusing as labels because they're a contradiction in terms aren't they? A matriarch is primary by definition. If she's secondary then she's not a matriarch.

If she has living descendants in that country and she gave birth to them there then she's the matriarch. If this occurs in two countries does it make sense to write this into her suffix label, when we don't do that for the men?
If so, then , to my mind, the more logical label would include the country -to indicate matriarch SA and Matriarch Zimbabwe.

Am I missing something big here .

No - the other country was a question raised by Daan - but I think that a woman who was born in the country and marries a SV/PROG does become the Matriarch of his family in that country - even though she wasn't the first to arrive in the country. Because she was not the Primary Matriarch in the county then she gets the secondary label to acknowledge the significance of her standing in the family of her husband.

I think that if she moves to a new country then the same principle rules. I will add an image to the project which will just explain what Daan is saying. I don't think that it is necessary to add the label other than in the notes for people who left SA.

http://www.geni.com/photo/view?album_type=project&photo_id=6000...

Oh okay, so it's distinguishing between first female of that surname line, from first female of that DNA line in the country?

I hadn't thought about it that way. Do we want to do that? Show both, I mean? Have we considered making it one or the other?

Especially as some of the women -Dutch and French settlers who did before 1800 -don't even carry the surname of their children.

*died

I think it needs defining!

Sharon do you mean the "teken" for died?
* or + = born
† = died You get that here on our SA PC's by holding in alt and type 134.
Ekke

No sorry, Judi - I was writing on my tablet and the predictive text produced 'did' instead of 'died' - so I was indicating a spelling error in my previous [post.

In this case it seems we are sitting on the distinction between matriarchy and matrilinearity. Hmmm that's a puzzle, but a fascinating one. Thinking more....

Are there Afrikaans words to distinguish between the two?

Matrilocality (cultures where the men move to live with the wife' s clan)
- vs virilocality (the females move into the male's clan on marriage )

are going to affect how we see this idea of Matriarchy (and amongst the southern African black tribes, both are practiced!) so we probably need to spend careful time making sure we'e all talking about the same thing.

Although it may look like something inapplicable to the "white' tribes of Southern Africa - it's actually what underpins the Married Name debate. ie In the exchange of daughters between a father and his new son-in-law, whose surname she takes is key to whose household (lineage) she is seen to belong. Cultures that applied married surnames to women are also implying that the safety and upkeep of that woman is now given over to her husband's household (virilocal). Cultures in which daughters keep their father's surnames after they marry can be seen as matrilocal, in that there remains the assumption that her father will maintain an interest in her safety and upkeep.

So some of our definition task if we are putting forward a notion of Primary as well as Secondary Matriarch will be to think through:

Secondary Matriarch: first female of that surname line in the country = fits best with virilocal/patrilocal naming (British profiles since as early as c 1200 and all SA profiles that die after 1800)
and in practice means the woman who marries the first male of that surname in the country (or SV PROG).
and
Primary Matriarch: first female of that DNA line in the country =fits best with matrilocal naming (European profiles until 1800 in SA) and in practice means the woman who carries the oldest DNA of that line in the country (it will actually be the oldest Mitochondrial DNA because a mother passes that on to all her kids; altho only her daughters pass it onto all of theirs).

The Question following that is whether "Primary" and 'Secondary' define this well enough to avoid confusion.

Hmm I seem to be having a conversation with myself here :-(
Still thinking it through out loud, I'm afraid - so maybe not sounding so sensible, or just stating the obvious from everyone else's pov.

Am I correct in thinking that the Primary & Secondary Matriarch, as we've defined it so far comes down to the Mother of the SV (if she birthed him in this country) vs the wife of the SV (if she birthed his children in this country)?

Thanks Sharon for adding a lot about a subject, I am only vaguely aware of and meant to ask you about a comment in another discussion about "female famil trees, absence of buite- egtelike profiles etc. That was meant however for a rainy day for an article in Genesis.
Apart from all the discussion and motivation above, I felt that there are certain women who arrived in a new country as head of a family and get no credit for that at all - contrary to what apply for our super males i.e. Stamvaders. (This subject forms part of a series in Genesis that will be published soon)
Being busy defining Stamvaders for SWA I came across examples from my matric schoolmates like:
Ouma Wiese, divorced from her husband prior to arriving in SWA, has 2 sons who are titled as stamvader, but Ouma Wiese wil soon be forgotten. She is in fact a Primary Matriarch! and would be that if she was male.

Sally Alberts first husband died in Angola, leaving her with 3 sons. She remarried Botha and had 4 more sons. Arriving in SWA, the Alberts sons will potentially become stamvaders but Sally as the the most senior member of the Alberts family, will also soon be forgotten. She also deserves the title as primary matriarch, which she will not get under the present system.
From the above it is clear that the concept of matriarch under a "male family tree base" needs to be expanded.
Every good thing had a start somewhere - maybe this will be another good thing!!

I think as far as the titling is corncerned, we will have to make a difference, because the concepts differs.
I had in mind something simple like:
SM = Secondary Matriarch = Sekondêre Matriarg/Moeder
PM = Primary Matriarch = Primêre Matriarg/Moeder and then of course
PM1,………PMn and
SM1, ……. SMn

As far as ""If she and her 2nd husband move to a new country, accompanied by children from both families, she becomes a PRIMARY MATRIARCH of HER children born of both husbands in the new country, regardless of her status in the country of her birth."
is corcerned we must also make provision for

the situation where she arrived as a divorcee/widow with accompanying children, she never marries again/is to old to bear more children and thus never has "children born of both husbands in the new country" but only
"accompanying children born of both husbands in the old country".
In the latter case she also still BECOME PRIMARY MATRIARCH in her new country. In this way you treat her exact the same as you would her if she was a male.

Okay, so the mother of the SV is the Primary matriarch if she lives in the new country with the SV? ie Even if she doesn't give birth to him here. Yes, makes sense

But what happens to the mother of the SV's wife, in the same circumstances (ie if she also moves here with her children?)

Dodging your 2 questions, I am describing the situation where the head of the family Ouma Wiese(divorced) came to SA with 2 sons. They could potentialy be/or are SV1 and SV2. She is just PM and she did not marry again, prior or subsequent to arrival and was anyway too old to bear children.
The decision rules will have to be argued what happens to a much younger lady widow Merry in exactly the same situation as Ouma Wiese who decides to marry SV1.
According to the theory developed so far:
Ouma Wiese is PM for the Wiese family and descendants.
Widow Merry is PM for the Merry sons and their descendants.
Widow Merry also fulfills the role of SM for the SV1 Wiese, but…
since we currently work with a male driven tree, Ouma Wiese has precedence and Widow Merry can only have a SM for her Wiese offspring.
Per definition Widow does not lose her PM role with the Merrys.

I think we’re creating double the no of SMs as SVs because we’re not pinpointing what factor makes an SV.

Is it 1)oldest DNA or 2) oldest of the Clan Surname in the country?

In a patrilinearity both are located in the same male person. So we never have to decide which we are actually using as the defining factor to label the Patriarch/ Stam Vader/ Male Progenitor.

The problem is that the 2 factors are located in two different females in a patrilineal surname tree.

I suggest that this conversation about the husband’s mother being the ‘matriarch’, demonstrates to us that we are, in fact, preferencing the DNA factor over the clan surname factor, with the SV,
and so, logically, that’s how we should define the Matriarch/Stam Moeder/ Female Progenitor: - as the oldest Female Progenitor, and NOT as the Stam Vader’s wife.

Cross-posted - but I think I'm saying back to your example, Daan, that the reason it is so ingewikkeld is that you're defining the role of oldest mother in terms of her relationships with the men she marries; and 'mother' and 'wife' are not the same thing.

Sorry - have been preoccupied with mybe loved Hugh for a few hours!

Will re-read but essentially I think we are over-cooking here - the essential thing is that there are two types of matriarchs in the tree - those that arrived as first women, either married with children, or married in the country and had children children, she being the senior mother of that that family, arriving in the country having been born outside the country. The second is the first or senior woman to have children in a family bloodline who was not a settler or immigrant - someone who was born in the country and married an immigrant or first man in the bloodline - she would be the matriarch of that line. As things stand the secondary Matriarchs are not given a status, I believe that they should be.

A woman would not get Secondary Matriarch status if there was already a Matriarch - only if she married a brand spanking new SV - a man whose mother did not accompany him. I can see that if a man arrived with his mother, a widow or divorcee or even unmarried, although he would be SV his wife would not be awarded Matriarch status because of his mother's presence.

We can only define women as was/is the custom or was the custom at the time; we can't change their status in line with modern day thinking or adopt the "rules" of other nationalities within a country - there just cannot be a blanket "one size fits all solution". Hypothetical scenarios are all good and interesting but they do cloud the issue.

Each SV has an SM unless his mother accompanied him to the country. We are not creating more - they are there, we just haven't given them that status before.

Sharon says - we should define the Matriarch/Stam Moeder/ Female Progenitor: - as the oldest Female Progenitor, and NOT as the Stam Vader’s wife.

This suggests that a woman born in the country marries a man who is a SV (he has no mother or father living in the country and was born outside the country), who is in her own right the matriarch of the family/blood line resulting from that marriage doesn't acquire that status because she has a mother in the country - that her mother is the SM of her son-in-law's children?

As I see it, the problem you're posing with Ouma Wiese is 'what if the oldest mother to come to the country and the oldest father to come to a country, are not, in fact of the same generation?' (ie they are mother and son, not husband & wife)

and I think I'm saying - if you want Ouma Wiese to be an SM then you have to think of it in terms only of (vertical line) blood ancestors not (horizontal line) spouses : The oldest man and women of a DNA family to arrive in the country are always the SM and SV - even if they're not spouses.

So, in that scenario the SVs wife would only be an SM if she was the oldest female of her own DNA family line to arrive in the country. If her mother came with her, then her mother would be the SM, not her.

crossposted with everything you wrote june; hang on: re-reading. this answer was to daan.

"This suggests that a woman born in the country marries a man who is a SV (he has no mother or father living in the country and was born outside the country), who is in her own right the matriarch of the family/blood line resulting from that marriage doesn't acquire that status because she has a mother in the country - that her mother is the SM of her son-in-law's children?"

Her mother is the SM of her own grandchildren (the son-in-law is not a pertinent category.)