What to do When You Hit a Brick Wall

Do you have a “brick wall” in your family tree? You’ve been able to trace most of your family lines pretty far back in time, but there is that one line that you just can’t figure out. You have an empty spot on your family tree. You are just itching to fill it in, but you have searched for that ancestor in so many places, you don’t know where else to look.

When you hit a genealogy brick wall, don’t panic! Instead, think logically: you must gather together all the information you have and make a specific plan to move forward. Read on for five steps to accomplish this:

Step 1: Confirm that this person actually is your ancestor

There is nothing worse than spending years researching the ancestors of great-great grandpa Bob, only to discover that you made a mistake in your research and great-great grandpa Bob actually is not your ancestor. All those years researching his ancestors was spent researching someone else’s family, and you have to start over again. It happens!

Before you start trying to break through your brick wall, check every generation from you to the brick wall generation. Where did you get the information from? Do you have original sources to back everything up, or is it all just copied from someone else’s Ancestry tree? Look at the sources. Is the information there consistent with what you have written down in your database? Make sure everything you have is accurate before moving forward.

Step 2: List all the sources you have for the individual

Now that you have confirmed that the farthest generation in this line really is your ancestor, you can start analyzing everything you have on that person. Gather together all the sources you have found: census records, marriage records, land, probate, birth, cemetery, etc. Make a list of all the sources you have, in order of when they were created. Write down all the information they contain about your ancestor, his parents, his spouses and descendants. If you have a handwritten record, type up a transcription of it. Pull all the information out of all of the sources.

Step 3: Create a timeline for the family

Next, create a timeline. A timeline can be a bulleted list or a report in paragraph format. Write out each event in the person’s life: birth, marriage, death and burial, where they lived, when they migrated to different locations, when they fought in the military–any major events in their lives that is recorded on the sources you have gathered.

This is different from listing all your sources in chronological order because each source can have information about several different events. Death certificates can have information about birth and death, as well as who a person married. Census records can tell you where they lived that year, where and when they were born, and what year they were married. They sometimes state how many children they had and where their parents were born. Make sure you pull out information from all the sources you have, not just the ones that are specific to that event.

Step 4: Map out where the family lived

This can be useful for any family, but especially for those that moved around a lot. Look at your timeline to see where they lived and when. Then pinpoint each of those locations on a map. Did they live on the border of a county? Perhaps they left some records in the next county over. Do you only have one record for a specific location? Perhaps you need to do a more in depth search of that location.

To avoid confusion, always write out your locations like this: [city], [county], [state], [country]. Many states, counties and towns have similar names, such as “Lancaster, New York” and “Lancaster, Pennsylvania,” or Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa, a town located about 160 miles from Des Moines County in Iowa. Ohiowa, a town in Fillmore County, Nebraska, may be mistaken for “Ohio or Iowa”. Nearby sits a small settlement (which no longer exists) called Maryland, located in Kosciusko County, Indiana.

Google Maps can help:

Google Maps excels at pinpointing locations, but many historical places and small towns are not stored in the Google Maps database. For locations in the United States, you can use the Geographic Names Information System to determine where a place was located. You can plug the coordinates into Google Maps to add it to your map.

If you have an address, pinpoint exactly where it is located. City directories from the time period often describe the streets, so that you can determine which streets have been renamed and what their present-day names are. If you have a description of a specific plat of land, pinpoint exactly where it is on the map.

Step 5: Create a Research Plan

Now that you have gathered and organized all the information you have about your ancestor and his family, it’s time to figure out what you don’t know. Are there birth, marriage or death dates missing? Do you know where your ancestor was living each year of his life? Have you found all of the children and siblings in census records every ten years?

Next, identify what sources are likely to contain the needed information. If you are a beginner, you may find it helpful to consult the FamilySearch Wiki, Ancestry’s Red Book, or another book about how to do research in your ancestor’s specific location and time period. Different locations and time periods have different sources available. You will need to make a list of sources specific to the location and time period your ancestor lived in.

One you have a list of sources to search for, you can get to work! You may not find your family right away, but the more records there are to search, the greater the chance one of them will have more information on your ancestor.

Still Stuck?

Still having trouble with your genealogy brick wall? I can help! Post any questions about your brick wall in the comments below or email me at research@thehandwrittenpast.com.

To see my example of a “dead-end report” and research plan for a brick wall in my own family tree, click here.