Well, you have worked a year or more on your family history and now you think you are at a complete loss and can’t proceed any further.  You have hit that famous ‘Brick Wall” in genealogy.  That brick wall could be in reference to one individual or a whole branch for which you have no documented information.  However, by attempt the following five ideas; you could very possibly have a major breakthrough in that ‘wall’.

    First thing is to organize what information you have even if you have done that all along.  Many times just going over names, dates, locations, stories and photos again while you categorize them into notebooks or on a family tree database will turn on a light bulb of a connection or a tie-in to another relative you haven’t considered earlier.

    Second, consider researching siblings within that difficult branch.  Your great grandfather may have had a rather common given name like John, but his brother could have had an unusual given name, like Rufus.  Also the siblings could have been more accomplished or noteworthy, so possibly easier to locate.  In addition, by checking great grandfather’s cousins if known and his in-laws could provide additional clues.

    Third, make sure there is accurate information on the individual and that it comes from as many diverse sources as possible.  For example, you believe an ancestor was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  Did each census record you locate confirm that?  On their death certificate and obituary was the same birth location written?   Were any children born in the same location or a place nearby? 

If the ancestor’s parents immigrated to the United States, where did they first settle?  Was it close to where you thought your ancestor was born?  Located that parent’s naturalization papers, it will list any children and where they were born.  Obtain a copy of the ancestor’s social security application (form SS-5), if they lived after 1936, and compare the birth place.  By verifying just one item like a birth place might lead you on the correct ancestral path.

    Fourth, one of the biggest stumbling blocks can be the various spellings for surnames and given names.  Especially the further back in time you research the less likely an ancestor was literate, so the spelling of a name would have been based on how a clerk thought the name should have been written. However, even our ancestors chose to spell and / or pronounce their name differently over the years. 

Using the Soundex for surnames can be very helpful.  The Soundex is an index of sound codes for names, first used in the 1930s.  The index groups a name with similar sounds.   Each code is a series of a letter then three numbers with the letter representing the beginning letter of the surname (example: K620).  The three numbers stand for the consonants in the name, never the vowels or ‘H‘, and ‘W‘.  

Most databases will allow you to mark if you want the Soundex used when looking for a surname.  Also play around with the spelling of a name, could there have been two ‘f’s’ in the spelling, or was the ending ‘sen’ instead of ‘son’?

    Fifth idea, be flexible in your date search.  Sometimes you have the idea that your grandmother was born in May 1898 and you only looked for records with that month and year.  Keep in mind, as your grandmother got a little older she could have easily given a different birth month and year, especially on census records. 

If her parents had married in February 1898, she might not want it known as the first child, she was born only 3 months later.  Not just the ladies, men have changed their ages also, especially on marriage applications, making themselves younger or older.  So always move that scale of a birth year several years either way when researching an ancestor.  Plus the birth month could have been altered for legitimacy purposes, so also adjust the search of months.

A couple of books that I have found helpful are Through the Brick Wall by Kate Wendleton and Pitfalls in Genealogical Research by Milton Rubincam.