Curiosity Who was Catherine Hoak Noel? Why does this topic make me shake my head thinking I don't know what to write? Genealogy is all about curiosity. In fact, every discovery that has been made was because I was curious. One could say that curiosity is the foundation of genealogy! In fact, without curiosity there wouldn't be any discoveries nor that next odd and curious discovery that keeps a person digging! Today, I am curious about my maternal third great grandmother, Catherine Hoak Noel. She is one of those ancestors that seems to be a blip on the screen, pretty much invisible. Really though, she is a typical woman of the early nineteenth century. In nineteenth century American society, a woman’s role was predominately that of cook, wife, mother, and homemaker in a rural setting. Families were large. Women were relied upon to provide children who then supplied manual labor on the farm helping to maintain the family income and welfare. Women during that time enjo