While doing genealogy I ran into the term “daughtered out” and realized that term defined what happened to the Neals who descend from Kenneth and Ruby Neal.
This was especially important in passing along a family surname or inheritable property. If your father had only daughters, his line was daughtered out. Or if your father had only sisters, or brothers who all failed to produce male children, those daughters would lose their original surname when they got married.
Kenneth and Ruby Neal had two sons and three daughters who grew to adulthood and produced children. Both Dad (Warren) and Uncle Bill had two daughters and no sons.
Both brothers served as pilots during World War II, returned to find farms to buy (three miles apart in NW Madison County, Iowa, south of Dexter), and never talked about the war. (Dad was an advanced instructor until near the end of the war, but Uncle Bill flew thirteen missions “over the Hump.”)
Most of the pictures we girls are in are with more “Neal cousins,” (with last names of Wells, Shepherd, and Beaman). I’m the oldest. Judy was born before her dad could get back from India and the Red Cross hadn’t reached him to let him know he had a baby girl. Jane and Gloria will turn 80 next July.
We Neal girls were used to being mixed up with each other. Gloria even went by her middle name (Jean), which made it more confusing.
When I was working on Meadowlark Songs, I couldn’t find anything about a family being “sonned out”–ending a motherline with only a son, like ours is. Guess it’s not a big deal inheritance-wise anymore.