Thursday, November 10, 2022, the Family History Hunters met in the Benham Room. The topic of conversation centered around the subject of Genealogical brick walls. The program started with a fifteen-minute podcast presented by Katie Corwin of Ancestry.com. She gave several suggestions regarding a researcher’s brick wall and how it can be broken through. I myself found the podcast very interesting and discovered two suggestions that I believe can assist me with my own brick wall problem.
The first idea I will mention is creating a timeline for your problem ancestor. I have created timelines before with various problems and found them to be very helpful. I start out with the ancestor’s birth and death date. I fill in with census records that the person should have been enumerated in (including state census records). Because business directories are available in my area of research, I write in all the addresses where they could be found along with the notation of “h” for home address or “b’ for business. I also include their listed occupation and compare it to listed occupation in the census records. I then list the year each of the children were born along with the month. Finally, I write about historical happenings that would have impacted their lives like the Civil War or other conflicts. If there was a pandemic, hurricane, major snow event (from newspapers) I would indicate that as well. Putting all the pieces of a person’s life together to see what I have. It is in this way I can see what I am missing and what I have yet to look for. Author Judy Jacobson wrote a book about this subject, titled: “History for genealogists: using chronological timelines to find and understand your ancestors” which can be reviewed at the archives.
The second suggested idea that can be very helpful, is what noted genealogists Elizabeth Shown Mills calls the “FAN” Club. FAN is the acronym for Family, Associates and Neighbors. Who were your ancestor’s neighbors? Who did your forebearers go to church with? Your ancestors needed to work to live and pay their bills, who did they work for and with? I have seen my ancestors work for the same companies or related companies. I have found four ancestors who were married by the same minister at various times. All these tidbits help to fill in the gaps of your ancestor’s life and get you closer to breaking down the brick wall. Try to break out of the mold of just researching your one ancestral line and look through the lives of siblings and the members of their spouse’s family. There might very well be a wonderful clue to any of the problems that you are having with that stubborn wall!
Sometimes we create our own wall by not clearing out our brains, taking things step by step and going into other possibilities. Currently I am researching a person that I am having my challenges with. It’s one of those scenarios where the ancestor (a woman) is not where she should be, but it is clearly her. She is with her husband on a census when he is deceased already. Why is he being enumerated when he is dead? Why is she living in another state? What has caused an older woman to move to another state instead of being with her daughter as she previously has been? Why, why, why? I think why can"t our ancestors just do what we want them to do? Why do they find joy in hiding?
To hopefully solve my problem, I will state my goal, do a timeline, and delve into her life a little more and hopefully come up with the answers.
Here is a link to the bullet points that were made in Katie Cowan’s presentation:
https://www.handleyregional.org/fhh-brick-wall
And here is the link to the presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m2PwS6ZcSI
Watch and read and you too can find the answers you are looking for. Good Hunting!