Stuck on an ancestor? What to try at a brick wall

Go back to what you already have

Gather every record you have for the person and read each one again, slowly, line by line. Look at the whole page, not only the entry: the witnesses on a deed, the neighbors on the census page, the informant on a death certificate, the minister on a marriage return. Note things you skipped the first time, such as a middle initial or a place of birth.

Then write a timeline, one line per event, with the date, the place and the record that tells you so. Gaps jump out at once. You may see that a man was taxed in one county the year after he supposedly moved, or that two children were born only five months apart, which suggests two different families mixed together. Our research plan tool turns your ancestor's birth and death years into a list of the censuses, draft cards and other records to look for, so you can see which ones you have not yet searched.

Check the ages across censuses with our census age calculator, which turns each age into a range of birth years. If the birth years drift by many years, you may have two different people, or an ancestor who was vague about age.

Spelling, nicknames and Soundex

Census takers and clerks wrote what they heard, and many of our ancestors could not check the spelling. Search for every version you can imagine, including spellings that keep only the sound: Shoemaker, Schumacher and Shoomaker may be one family. Try first names in their nickname forms too, such as Polly for Mary, Patsy for Martha or Peggy for Margaret.

Soundex was built for exactly this problem. It is a code made of the surname's first letter and three numbers, based on how the name sounds, so Smith and Smyth share one code. The federal government used it to index several censuses. Our Soundex calculator gives you the code, and many search sites let you search by sound as well as spelling. Remember that the first letter can be wrong too: a name heard as Ellis may be written Allis.

Study the neighbors and the family

People rarely moved alone. They traveled with brothers, in-laws, church members and old neighbors, and settled near them. Researchers call this group the FAN club, for friends, associates and neighbors. Make a list of the families on the census pages around your ancestor, the witnesses to his deeds and the bondsmen on his marriage. Then trace those people backward. If several of them came from the same county in another state, your ancestor probably did too.

Do the same for brothers and sisters. A sibling may have left a will, a pension file or an obituary that names the parents or the home town, even when your direct ancestor left nothing. Records of a sibling who stayed behind can lead you to the family's earlier home.

Fill the years between censuses

The census comes once every ten years, but other records were made every year. Tax lists named taxpayers year after year and can show when a young man first appeared on his own, when a man died or moved away, and when a widow took over. In Virginia, for example, personal property tax lists survive for each county from 1782, and a woman who was head of household was taxed by name.

Newspapers report what records leave out: visits from relatives, deaths in another state, a family leaving for the West. City directories, church membership rolls and court minutes also track a family between the census years.

Check the map and the courthouse

Counties were created, divided and renamed constantly. Your ancestor may never have moved, while the county line moved around him, so records from one farm can sit in two or three courthouses. The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries from the Newberry Library shows every change to every county, with dates, so you can see which county held your ancestor's land in any given year.

Find out whether the courthouse lost its records. Fires, floods and war destroyed the early records of many counties; in Virginia alone, numerous counties and cities, mostly in the east, lost much of their early records, many during the Civil War. When that happened, look for substitutes: state copies of tax lists, deeds re-recorded after the fire, state court and legislative records, church registers, and records in neighboring counties where your family also did business.

Last, think about migration routes. Families followed roads, rivers and canals, and later the railroads. Knowing the usual path from one region to another tells you which counties to search along the way.