When Egil Johansson began his work in the parishes of northern Sweden, women's history, in common with the history of literacy, was in its infancy. Demographers did not ask questions of their sources specifically about gender relations. In the succeeding quarter century women's historians have begun to ask key questions about processes such as changing patterns of family formation, women's place in the building of educational institutions, and women's role in public and private life, using existing sources in innovative, sometimes critical, ways. This paper reports on a pilot study that focuses on the education of women in northern Sweden in the late 19th century in relation to their patterns of family formation, drawing from the Demographic Database computerized records, routinely generated education records, and local archives. This combination of sources, it argues, can enable links to be made between gender systems, their maintenance (or disruption) and demographic change. But those links require a wider interdisciplinary approach if theories of fertility decline are to be developed.