We welcome any query on Who When Where. If you have previously posted it on another forum (including the old WDYTYA forum), please state this in your opening post - this will save people redoing the research which has been done before: they can look at it and possibly go further with it.

How to stop head-banging?

A space for genealogy-related conversations.
Norfolk Nan
Posts: 506
Joined: 16 Jun 2020, 11:54
Location: A Londoner lost in Norfolk

How to stop head-banging?

Post by Norfolk Nan »

I'd really like to hear how you, the well experienced researchers, decide when to stop banging your head against a brickwall and acknowledge that either there is no evidence to find because it never existed or that it is lost (amounts to the same thing I suppose).

I've got two different trees that have hit the same brickwall - a person who appears on (pre-civil registration) marriage without a clue where he came from or who his parents are. In both cases there are circumstantial links to other people who could be family BUT there are no proofs. I'm talking about labouring men in rural areas without baptisms, settlement certificates, wills etc. and who don't live long enough to hit the census trail. I've followed up marriage witnesses, constructed the family trees for the families who might be related, looked through newspapers and quarter sessions, all without any luck. I know from experience that not every family baptises every child and some never baptise at all and very few records of the 18c provided identifying details. I find myself wondering if I'm looking for something that did exist but is lost, or for something still hiding in plain sight and I'm just not seeing it, or there's nothing to find anyway. How would I ever know?

Has anyone managed to make a breakthrough in similar circumstances and if so, how? I'd like to hear of tales of hope... :lol:
Mick Loney
Posts: 371
Joined: 15 Jun 2020, 07:27

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by Mick Loney »

One of my brickwalls involved my grandmother’s father, who I knew from her marriage certificate was Robert Charles Howard, from East London. I followed him back 2 or 3 censuses then he suddenly disappeared. The solution was to ask a forum, there is always someone who tries something different. In this case, in the last sighting of Robert, he was with his parents and two siblings, then nothing! It was solved by looking for the three of them without a surname, and lo and behold they found a Banks family that matched names and ages of children, and who just happened to have a lodger called Charles Howard. I can’t recall if mother actually married Charles, but from then on family used the surname Howard.

In another example, I couldn’t find who the correct George Moore was. Eventually I stumbled across an Ancestry tree that had a copy of death certicate attached to their tree. Looking at the certificate, I recognised the details shown for the informant matched that of my greatgrandmother. Problem solved.

You never know when a brickwall will tumble, so just keep revisiting them, eventually a solution will present itself.

Just remember, every branch eventually ends at a brickwall, so the further back you go, the more brickwalls you’ll find. I use Family Historian, and by attaching an image of a brickwall to each of mine, I can see at a glance who they are. Every now and then I list those with the image, and give them another check.
Thunder
Posts: 436
Joined: 14 Jun 2020, 01:43

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by Thunder »

I had two brick walls to cope with (Henry Horatio Herbert Green and Julia Beman Green), apart from the 1881 census I had no information (I had no idea my great-grandfather had been married before) and then I was down at the Gloucestershire Archives on their father's side of the family and found a will from their grandmother giving them money in her will. I am still looking for more information on Julia, but Green is not a good name to research!. As more records are indexed hopefully information may come to light so revisiting the line every so often can help. One area where it almost certainly won't help is a marriage up at Elgin in north-east Scotland where the local records were kept in the Sheriff's Office until it was burnt down by a mob!.
meekhcs
Posts: 468
Joined: 02 Jun 2020, 18:19
Location: Lincolnshire, but Hampshire born and bred!

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by meekhcs »

This is one of the reasons so many people take DNA tests, but I realise it is not for everyone.

I had someone contact me a couple of weeks ago with a miniscule match to me, and the surname involved was Smith!! With much scrutinising of DNA matches etc we couldn't make our lines match, even though shared matches with other people pointed to there being a connection.

Over the weekend we found a baptism, but the Father was wrong. Quick email to the record office and their transcription also showed the wrong Father, but after kindly inspecting the original records it was discovered that the Father was actually the person we were looking for. Added him to the tree and everything fell into place.

Although it is soul destroying at times, always re visit your brickwalls, and if possible consult original records! Our record was wrongly transcribed on 2 websites as well as at the Record Office.
Sally
Norfolk Nan
Posts: 506
Joined: 16 Jun 2020, 11:54
Location: A Londoner lost in Norfolk

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by Norfolk Nan »

That's interesting, what made you think the father's name might be wrong? Was it very off?
Mick Loney
Posts: 371
Joined: 15 Jun 2020, 07:27

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by Mick Loney »

Meekhcs,
DNA can throw up more problems than it solves :) I have a very close match on Ancestry, who also matches with some of my known cousins, so we know where on my tree the match should be. However, we’ve concluded it must be some non-paternal event, as nothing matches whatsoever, and we both have quite substntial trees. We haven’t given up just yet :D
pinefamily
Posts: 64
Joined: 26 Jun 2020, 20:16

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by pinefamily »

I echo what everyone else has said. You do need to look at your brickwalls every so often. Sometimes fresh eyes will see something different, or see a different perspective.
Similarly with posting your brickwalls on a forum such as this, fresh eyes of fellow family historians can often be the difference in finding that elusive clue.
I had a longstanding brickwall of a 3x great grandmother who was a widow when she married my 3x great grandfather. I had previously looked through the images of the parish where their younger children were baptized, and one of the church officials had the same last name as the middle name of one of the children. I assumed (erroneously as it turned out) that that is where the name came from.
A friend on another forum pointed out that perhaps that name was the maiden name of the widow. A bit of digging, and a whole lot of comparitive research, proved that it was. A whole new line opened up.
On the topic of missing records, a lot of my ancestors are from Devon. Devon wills were mostly destroyed in 1942, which leaves that valuable resource unavailable.
User avatar
Guy
Posts: 135
Joined: 01 Jun 2020, 19:14
Location: Wakefield
Contact:

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by Guy »

The first suggestion I have is to change your defeatist attitude to a positive attitude.
What do I mean by that change the way you are thinking (“stop banging your head against a brickwall”).

There are no such things as brickwalls in family history, what you view as brickwalls I view as locked doors.

A locked door has a key, that key be out of you grasp or may have been lost but a lock can always be unlocked.
So much for the sermon how would I proceed, first look at what I know about the person and work forward from the earliest mention I have of them to the nearest to the present day.
Is there any mention of parents or siblings, what area are they from, what occupations do they work in. In other words try to expand what is known about the person from their earliest appearance. Does DNA point to possible siblings or distant relations?
In the case of labouring men look around the area they worked in to where hiring fairs may have been held, this may expand your area of interest, think also someone might walk 20 or 30 miles to reach a hiring fair. If the farm steward travelled a similar distance then a labourer could easily find himself 70 miles or more from his place of birth.
You mention you have constructed family trees for the families who might be related, have you carried them forwards to see if there are any links, mentions of aunts, cousins, grandparents in the newer generations, families often reconnect later?
I assume you have also been checking manorial records looking not only for your target but also for his possible family relations.
Cheers
Guy
As we have gained from the past, we owe the future a debt, which we pay by sharing today.
meekhcs
Posts: 468
Joined: 02 Jun 2020, 18:19
Location: Lincolnshire, but Hampshire born and bred!

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by meekhcs »

Norfolk Nan wrote
That's interesting, what made you think the father's name might be wrong? Was it very off?[/quote

The Father's name was transcribed as Joseph. It was the only baptism with that Father at that time and was not a name we reecognised from the village. We were looking for baptisms with tyhe Father's name George. Although this baptism was 5 years after the rest of the "George" baptisms we thought it was worth checking at source.

Mick Loney wrote
Meekhcs,
DNA can throw up more problems than it solves
Of course it can, and some you don't want to find!
Sally
Norfolk Nan
Posts: 506
Joined: 16 Jun 2020, 11:54
Location: A Londoner lost in Norfolk

Re: How to stop head-banging?

Post by Norfolk Nan »

Meekhcs, how miniscule was the DNA match and which generation did you make the connection?

Totally agree with everyone that it's important to revisit 'brickwalls' or 'locked doors' - Guy, that's a much nicer way of thinking about the problem. If you could see the many and varied plans for research and diagrams of facts (think police incident room!) that I've drawn up for either of my 'locked doors' you'd see that I agree with you wholeheartedly about looking at generations back and forth, going sideways and off-road and any manner of things. However, I've yet to tackle manorial records and any advice about those would be useful. What I have is a baptism in one place, a marriage in another and a lot of coincidences and nothing that actually proves or disproves a connection. This is c1770-1810 so before the very useful civil registration system so not really surprising.

Having grown trees for both potential families I'm quite attached to all of them - is that just me? They all could be my chap's family - one his birth family and the other distant relations - second cousins is my nearest guess. I've pushed back at least three generations and forward by two so far. The only 'connection' is the repetition of common names. I expect it will all become clear one day... :lol:
Post Reply