Brick Wall Busters 2026 Need to jump-start your research? This hour-long presentation is geared towards advanced beginning or intermediate genealogists. Our focus will be on problems in the United States between roughly 1700 and 1900. Brick wall ideas will be pulled from consultations with clients and personal research experience. Approaches will be practical and down-to-earth. Handout included. Presentation made by Michael John Neill. Michael has forty years of research experience in families throughout the United States. Presentation is based on his personal experience and consultations he has made to clients on research trips and via virtual consultations. Presentation and handout available now for immediate download–for $26. Download link sent immediately after purchase.
Don’t assume that just because the names are “close” that they have to be a match. I was looking for information on a William Bell who married a Martha Sargent in Iowa. Turns out there was another William Bell in the same part of Iowa who married a Lorinda Sargent. Totally two separate couples from two separate families. How many William Bells can marry a Sargent and live a few counties away from each other? Apparently two. Two distinct ones.Remember that sometimes there is a relationship and sometimes there is not. Always look for additional information to confirm that you really have the same couple and not another couple with the same or similar names. In this case, both marriages were in the 1870s and the 1880 census […]
The pension index card for Illinois Civil War veteran Charles Schrader indicated an application number but no certificate number. This usually means that the application was denied. This is what happened in Schrader’s case–he received no pension. Don’t neglect denied pension applications. They can contain just as much information as approved pensions and the denial does not mean the applicant did not serve. It simply means he was not qualified for a pension under the laws in effect at the time of the application. Schrader’s application indicated that he applied in 1866. This was shortly after the war when fewer applications were approved. Had he lived until the 1890s, he probably would have received a pension as the laws had relaxed by that point in time. Neither he […]
Need to jump-start your research? This hour-long presentation is geared towards advanced beginning or intermediate genealogists. Our focus will be on problems in the United States between roughly 1700 and 1900. Brick wall ideas will be pulled from consultations with clients and personal research experience. Approaches will be practical and down-to-earth. Handout included. Presentation made by Michael John Neill. Michael has forty years of research experience in families throughout the United States. Presentation is based on his personal experience and consultations he has made to clients on research trips and via virtual consultations. Presentation and handout available now for immediate download–for $26. Download link sent immediately after purchase.
Some documents clearly state who was the informant. Many though do not provide this information. When considering the accuracy of information on any document, consider the probable informant and how likely they were to know the information being provided. And…remember that some documents actually have more than one informant and information may pass through several people before it actually gets in the record you are using.
One of my ancestral families and all their children and their children’s spouses are buried in the same rural cemetery. The only exception is their daughter who died in her teens and is buried in a separate cemetery. The parents died in the 1880s and the other children died between 1895 and 1920. The daughter died in the 1860s before the cemetery where the others are buried was established. Never assume just because it looks like all of a family is buried in one cemetery that that they all are buried in one cemetery. There could be another child or sibling permanently lurking nearby.
Sometimes the best pictures don’t always show the faces of the people in them. They tell a story without really letting us know what the individuals actually looked like. And sometimes the documents that provide the biggest piece of genealogical information don’t always make any blunt, in-your-face, direct statements. A man purchases property in his own name in 1821, suggesting he was born by at least 1800. A man sells property in Massachusetts in 1780 and buried in the metes and bounds legal description is a reference to his mother (without stating her relationship), along with her new married name. An estate inventory in Illinois references income from a mortgage in Kentucky and researching that mortgage leads to major discoveries on the family. Never overlook a reference because […]
Really getting into these things takes some time, but here are some general things to remember when you are “stuck:”
It’s not a test: I can have a cheat sheet. It doesn’t matter if the name is common or not, there can easily be two of the same men in the same location with the same or very similar name. Take John Herbert. There were two of them in Hancock County, Illinois. One lived in Nauvoo and one lived near Warsaw initially and then moved closer to Hamilton, Illinois. The second one is the one I am interested in–he’s the one who was married in Fike, Bavaria, in 1851 to Anna Elisabeth Trautvetter and later married after her death. While working on him and using FamilySearch’s full text search to locate materials in Hancock County, Illinois, records, I have to make certain I have the right John Herbert. […]
Many websites allow for the use of wildcards when performing searches. These tools search for a variety of alternate spellings with one search term. Typically an asterisk provides the broadest sort of wildcard search. In this case, a word that has any number of letters in place of the * symbol will be returned. Neil* returns Neil, Neill, Neily, Neilly, Neilsen, Neilson, etc. G*ldenst*n returns Goldenstein, Goldenstien, Guldenstein, Guldenstien, but not Goldstein. H*le returns Hale, Hole, Hostle, etc. It never hurts to review a list of alternate spellings to make certain that wildcard searches will return references to all those spellings. Normally I use “tr*t*tter in order to search for variations on Trautvetter. It catches most of them and also does not return references to the last name […]
In locations that have birth certificates and birth registers, it is necessary to look at both. Determine what the “chain of creation” was. Usually the certificates were the “original document” and information in the register contains a transcription of what was on the original certificate. There’s always the possibility that the register contains a transcription error. But there’s also the possibility that the register’s entry is easier to read than the certificate or contains an additional comment made by the clerk and is not on the certificate. It’s important to read both and to know how they were created.
Confused with your DNA results at AncestryDNA? Michael takes a commonsense, down-to-earth approach to genealogical DNA match analysis. Emphasis in this presentation is on developing skills, not on relying on automatic processes that are often misunderstood. Presentation discusses Michael’s pooling technique that he applies to his genealogical tree and his DNA matches. Discussion will include: the importance of reviewing currently known genealogical information, understanding centimorgans and predicted relationships, working from the known to the unknown with matches, avoiding rushing into brickwall work, reaching out to matches, tree-less matches, clustering matches, tracking progress, documenting reasoning and analysis, avoiding duplicating work. Then we’ll talk about setting new goals and problem-solving. Presentation length is approximately 90 minutes. Handout included. This session is geared towards beginning and intermediate genealogists. Michael brings genealogical […]
A relative (we’ll call them “A”) may be reticent about certain aspects of their family history and not at all responsive to gentle or not-so-gentle attempts to ask certain questions. Other relatives may refuse to answer the same questions or indicate that they “know nothing.” After A dies, others in the family may be willing to offer up details. A short time after a relative of mine passed, others in the family willingly shared stories about the family history I had never heard before–ever. It may be worth your time to revisit family members after another family member has passed. Wait a respectful amount of time to do it, but sometimes the informational floodgates open after one member of the family dies.
I came up with the phrase “migration streams” to replace “migration chains” a while back for two reasons. One, I felt it better conveyed what’s going on with these migrations and two, which was actually the real reason and the impetus, I wanted to get away from references to enslaved individuals when my immigrant ancestors were not in that category. I felt that in the context of group migration over time and among and between networks of individuals, using the word “chain” seemed too fixed and mad the process seem more static than it was. And, at least to me, “stream” suggested flow which I liked. In reality, these streams tend to leave people along the way (not just due to death, but because some decide not to […]
If your ancestor was a farmer, was he a farm owner, a tenant farmer, or farm laborer? The differences are significant and knowing which helps indicate how mobile your ancestor likely was, what types of records he left behind, etc. Farming isn’t the only occupation where these distinctions are important? Did your ancestor work in a blacksmith shop, or own his own shop? Again, the difference is important. Sometimes all we have are vague ideas of what our ancestor did–but sometimes we do have more. Use that information to your advantage.
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