Thanks!
Men once went into such territories with prostitutes following. Those prostitutes are in family trees. Has that turned up in your research?
If I may butt in here: How in heaven's name could one possibly determine if relatives three or four generations ago were prostitutes? I doubt that that sort of information was gathered, e.g., by census takers, or mentioned on Death Certificates, so how could later generations ever determine that? (Unless a woman was a notorious hooker with high-profile arrests.)
Regards,
Trouble with the law? I thought that might turn up.
My broader point would be that family trees follow surnames that, for any number of reasons, might not translate to genetic inheritance.
If she was plying her trade in a Scots parish (or even an unpaid amateur), the parish records will show where she was "read out of meeting" for fornication. It happened to Robert Burns, and he wrote a poem about it.
Even in the South, such things occurred. I wrote a paper for a historical monthly on the church records of an Alabama Baptist church, and they read folks out of meeting for not only sexual misbehavior, but for drinking to excess, quarreling, and (in the case of my great-uncle) holding a dancing party at his house. He was not only read out of meeting, but it was solemnly recorded in the church records that he was "henceforth to be held as a heathen and a publican." My dad remarked, well, at least he wasn't held as a REpublican . . . .