Every genealogist has faced this at one time or another. It is the proverbial brick wall. This happens when you have been tracing a family line, it is going along fairly well, and then WHAM! Suddenly you cannot go any further. It seems like you just cannot find any more information. No matter how you look at it, brick walls can be very frustrating. Here are some ideas to get through them.

First, stop and take a look at what you are doing. You should have a list for every person you are searching. This list should have the following items on it: birth record, baptismal or naming record, confirmation or bar/bat mitzvah record, high school records, college records, newspaper articles, marriage records, birth records for children, death records, wills, estate records, probate records, any other court records, immigration records, census records, military records, and (if applicable) social security records. You should have each one either checked off, meaning you have the information and it is documented well, or not checked, meaning you need to research more.

Start breaking down the brick wall by reviewing everything you have and look for the holes. If there is research that is lacking documentation, go find that information again, and document when and where you received the information from. You should include enough information so that if someone who did not know you wanted to check your research, they could find that record. Then, look at your "holes." These holes are actually the bricks in your wall. Need to locate parents? Try the census, marriage records, birth records, social security records, and church records. Children up until very recently usually lived near their parents. Search the census for that surname in or around that location. See if you can locate the child with the same name as your ancestor. Did they have siblings? Good, then look for those names as well. You may find the entire family. Another place to look is newspapers. Was there a marriage ban listed? Look in the society pages or gossip pages; are there any marriage notices or birth notices? Also search for obituaries. These can list an entire genealogy in one newspaper article! Keep in mind that the most difficult people to research are women. If you do not know a married woman's maiden name it can be impossible to trace her backward, the reverse is also true. Not knowing a woman's married name can be very frustrating, as many times they moved away from their home town.

Now you have covered the basics and you are still stuck. What do you do? First of all, be sure you have the right person and that you have not combined records of 2 people who were close in age that happened to live in the same location at the same time. This happens a lot more than you would realize, especially with common surnames. Look for the people around your ancestors. Your elusive ancestor may not be so elusive after all. For example, a search for a death record took years and still no result. The location of death was certain, it was New York City. I knew his name, the name of his wife and her maiden name, and the names of all of his children. Yet I could not locate that death certificate. Then I remembered something, check the spelling! This particular first name is commonly misspelled. Partially because when written in cursive Barnett can look a lot like Bennett, depending on how a person forms their letters. I know that, so I tried both names and still came up empty. The surname is a common one and not usually misspelled. Then I tried looking for his record with an open mind. I knew he died in 1945. I searched the ItalianGen website at http://www.italiangen.org. Using just the first letter of his first name, and his full surname, choosing a sounds like option, and only looking in the years 1944-1946 (if he died early late in 1944 or 1945 he could have been put in with the following years records) I searched for his death record. I found it! He was not Bennett, he was not Barnett… he was Barney! Nobody believed me – the family said he never went by that name. It was him. I ordered the certificate, the name was correct, so was his address and wife's name and occupation. I also found out through other research that he was known as Barney to the people in the landshaftmen society (a society of people from the same town) that he belonged to. Death certificates in particular are notorious for errors. People are filling them out when they are usually upset and grieving. They do not always remember the correct information. So look at the spelling and think is Rebecca actually Becky or Betsy? Elizabeth could be Beth, Betty, Liz, Lissie, Lizzy, or Betsy too. Joseph may have been Giseppe, Joe, Joey, Jose, or Pepe. Always look at alternate spellings – the letters "I" and "e" are frequently mixed-up and old handwriting is difficult to read. Jesse in the 1700's could have been Jefse or Jeffe. They used an elongated double f or single f to represent a double s sound. So after you check the spelling what then?

Find everyone associated with your ancestor. Who did they know? Get the names of the neighbors, and any and all witnesses to documents. Who did they do business with? Did they own land? Did they sell it? To whom did it go? What church did they attend? By carefully looking at all of the evidence you can get through that wall. Men in particular are easier to trace then women. If a man is lucky, there is a woman in his life. This woman had a family. If they were married, was there a dowry? What about land. Where did he get it from? Was it bought, inherited, stolen (squatter), or granted? You need to answer all of these questions before you give up. Check every record you can think of, no matter how ridiculous it seems. The answer is there, you need to look for it.

Remember, most of our ancestors did leave records. They worked, married, had children, went to church, served on juries, sued and were sued, had legal difficulties, enlisted in the military, and died. Be sure to check every record you can think of.

Check old newspapers too (there are a lot of them online these days). They contain more information than you could imagine… reports of people ending up in bankruptcy court, records of property buying and selling, stories of arguments and fights sometimes. A good example of that is when US President Alexander Hamilton was killed by the Vice President in a duel. Many newspapers carried this story. International incidents have been started over wandering livestock. It did not take much to get your name in the paper.

What about DNA? Have you thought about having a surname study done? There are huge advances in this field everyday. It is getting less expensive to test and the tests are more complete. Why not look into this? It is an especially good idea if you have a rare surname. Chances are most of the people with that surname originated from the same general location. There may be cousins that you have not yet found. Another reason to do a DNA study is if you have Jewish roots. They can test the Y-chromosome for Cohanim, Ashkenazic, Sephardic and Levite ancestry. This can also help determine if these stories of Native American descent are true.

Last (but not least), go back to the old photos and letters that you may have. Talk with the older members if your family and ask them about your "brick wall." They may have the answer – it wasn't that they didn't want you to know… it's just that you never asked the question! You might be amazed at the amount of information you get from them. Be sure to write it all down.

One important thing to note: if your ancestor traveled west during the westward expansion period of the US and tended to travel from place to place, there is a good chance that they are going to be difficult to find. There were those individuals that were wandering souls. They needed to be on the outskirts of civilization, always exploring the uncharted or just charted territory. Hopefully they wrote letters home to family in more civilized parts and maybe these letters still exist. It may be the only way to document someone like this. Another way to look for people like this is that sometimes they ended up as a pony express carrier or other rural route carrier. See if any US Post Office records exist or check the town's local histories. You ancestor may be mentioned in them.

Brick walls can be frustrating. However, most of the time there is a way around that wall. All it takes is revisiting your information and looking at it in a different and fresh way. Try to think outside the box and maybe you'll find that your answer is right under your nose. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to take a break from the brick wall, and research another ancestor, then come back to your brick wall. Time away from a problem will force you to review your material and take a fresh look at it. For more information on breaking through brick walls, go to http://www.familychronicle.com.