Brick Walls describe the situation where you have hit the limits of your paper trail and maybe even your family stories.
You don’t know who the parents of Franklin are, or maybe you know their names and a bit about them, but you can’t go any further back.
Brick walls are hard to break down. Sometimes you need a ladder or to find a gate.
Unfortunately, some ancestors seemed to avoid the census taker and the tax man. Some may vanish from one census to the next. Did they die of disease? Did they move somewhere I am not looking? Ten years between censuses in the U.S. is a long time. Just think of all the things you have done in the last ten years and how many places you have lived?
There have been ten year periods in my life that I lived in nearly ten different places.
The best ways to overcome brick walls is to look at collateral lines, research aunts, uncles, and cousins, maybe you can find what you are looking for by finding a long lost cousin who has the family Bible or who stumbled on the right piece of information to pick up the trail.
For some people, a surname DNA study may be helpful. A surname DNA study tests the Y chromosome, men only, and looks for matches. If you do not have a living male in that line, you can’t do that.
A mitochondrial DNA study is for the female side. Brothers and sisters will have the same mitochondrial DNA line as their mother.
This is a great topic! I’ve hit a Brick Wall myself in genealogical research (research of a totally casual and amateur nature, which may have been part of the problem). I recently made an account at Ancestry.com, but, other than locating my grandparents in various records, I haven’t been able to do anything at all with it, and I certainly haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know. I am specifically interested in tracing my mother’s family tree, because the information I have about where in the world they came from is vague. I have been told that my mom’s family is Slavic, but we have an old family letter written in Polish, and some beautiful old Russian (?) paper money which is also a familial artifact. This isn’t necessarily inconsistent, but it is intriguing, and I would like to know more. Perhaps, by paying attention to your tips and facts here, I will!
Thanks!
Melanie Atherton Allen
http://www.athertonsmagicvapour.com/category/blogging-a-to-z/
I did not know there was such a thing as a brick wall in studying ancestry. But look… you’re background picture is of a brick wall!
I was lucky to stumble upon a serious genealogist whose great-great uncles had married some of my great-great aunts. Talk about convoluted genealogy! But I discovered people from my past I’d never heard of.
It may not be an official or technical genealogical term, but every genealogist talks about their brick walls. 😉
I know how that goes, one of my 5th great grandfathers is also my 4th great grandfather because I am descended from both his oldest and youngest son. My maternal grandparents were cousins through their mothers, creating this connection. It does reduce the number of people to research once you hit the branch and work back.
First you have to find the ancestor that came to America and work back from there. Family stories and a letter will be of help once you find the connection.