Genealogy is fun, but it isn’t always easy. Some genealogists work on a particular problem for years but just cannot crack the case. This situation is what is known as a “brick wall” in the world of genealogy.
But all is not lost! Most so-called brick walls can be scaled, and even demolished. All you need is the right knowledge and experience.
Read on for five exciting methods for surmounting difficult roadblocks in genealogy research.
1. Before giving up on that seemingly impossible genealogy brick wall, take a step back and set the problem aside for a while. Sometimes if we work too hard but in an effective way it clouds our judgment and leads to demoralization. So don’t be afraid to stop and regroup.
2. Next, review your notes. Often we are able to see an old problem more clearly if we go over everything we have found on a problem after a long break. Also, read everything that might have been written by other researchers on this particular problem. If you’ve already done that, do it again. It’s very possible something you read months or years ago will reveal some new critical insight the next time around.
3. After that, do a new search for articles or books that might have been published on the family in question since the last time you worked on the project. Search JSTOR for academic and historical society journal articles. Check the internet for forum posts you might have overlooked, or new websites that might include digitized records available for searching that weren’t there before. Don’t forget to search genealogy journal databases at AmericanAncestors and NewYorkFamilyHistory. Don’t forget about PERSI, a searchable index of genealogy journal articles maintained by the Allen County Genealogical Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana–one of the largest genealogy libraries in the United States.
Once you have completed this thorough re-evaluation of your own work and the work of others, you are ready to go back to primary source documents to try to crack the case.
4. The next research technique is a very simple one. Search for an ancestor’s name among the millions of digitized books and periodicals in Google Books and Google News. This technique will sometimes bring surprising results. Google Books does not just include secondary sources such as old published county history books, but also primary ones, such as digitized newspapers from nineteenth-century Germany. You never know what you might find, so it always pays to check.
5. Another effective research technique is to look beyond typical genealogy sources. One method that can help is to search for papers and letters held in academic libraries. Search online academic library catalogs for not only the name or surname of your ancestor, but also for any individual or business in the same county or region. Items such as correspondence and old merchant ledgers might provide the best evidence of an ancestor’s family origins.
6. After taking as much as time as you can to look for additional sources that you might have previously overlooked, another often successful brick wall tactic is to start to look beyond just the particular ancestor you are tracing, even in records you have already examined. This technique is known as the FAN method, for friends, associates, and neighbors. In the past, people usually lived among a network of such people, not just relatives. By tracing friends, associates, and neighbors of a mysterious ancestor it is often possible to determine where your ancestor had lived previously. This phenomenon applies not just to immigrants from faraway lands, but also internal migrations. It always pays to think broadly when attempting to scale a brick wall, in fact sometimes the best way to topple a brick wall is to just walk around it.
There is one more effective tactic when attacking a genealogy brick wall, and that is DNA. But with so many advances in DNA technology in the past few years, that is a subject best suited for another time. In the meantime, if you follow the recommendations above you are likely to improve your chances at solving some of the most difficult genealogy brick wall
If you need help with genealogy brick walls and want to hire a genealogist, please contact us today to get started on your free consultation.
