Ancestry Magazine

Some ancestors are easy. You thumb through a census and find them at the right address with the right people. You find their obituaries in the newspapers you intuitively know they should be in. You easily obtain copies of marriage licenses, school records, or naturalization papers from the most likely sources.

Then there are the troublesome ancestors—the ones who seem harmless until you start to look for them. Then you notice that their names keep changing, they have birthday discrepancies, and you can never quite locate them in the most basic sources—even when you know for a fact that’s where they should be.

What do you do? Consult the experts. That’s what we did with the following ten tough research problems and difficult ancestors.

African American
Misconceptions
• There are no records on African Americans
• Slaves had the same last name as slave owners

Challenges
• Identifying a former slave owner • Finding an ancestor in the 1870 census
• Basing research on evidence—not assumptions

Expert
Tony Burroughs, genealogist, lecturer, and author of Black Roots: A Beginners Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree (Fireside, 2001)

Burroughs’s Advice
You have to do research that’s based on evidence and build a strong foundation before moving on. You have to look for the slave and then you have to believe him. Most research ers naively assume that if their name is Jones, they’re looking for a slave owner named Jones. But it’s a matter of finding records where the former slave tells you the name of his former owner, for example, in slave narratives. Always look for direct evidence, like Freedman’s Bank Records—a question in the early signature records was “Who was your master or mistress.”

Tips
First thing, pick up Black Roots. Getting a good foundation will take you a long way. Don’t start your research with the Internet—it’s one of the biggest mistakes people make, and you can get extremely frustrated. Instead, start by making a list of all living relatives and prioritize the list by age. Interview each of these relatives three times—you’ll get more information each time.

Standout features of African American research
When anybody researches genealogy, they need to put their ancestors into historical context. In African American research, that historical context is a context of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. It affected their ancestors and it will affect their research. One of the first problems I ran into when I went into a library and grabbed local history books that dealt with the county where my ancestors were from, was that blacks and slaves weren’t included in the books.

“Grandpa Went West”
Misconception
An ancestor who moved west was running from the law

Challenges
• “Grandpa went west” doesn’t offer a tangible starting point
• The West is too huge
• Spelling aberrances and name changes are common

Expert
Myra Vanderpool Gormley, cg, genealogist and former Los Angeles Times syndicated columnist

Gormley’s Advice
Try to find out why an ancestor moved west. A lot of times it was because of the stories. People [who had been out West] would return to the Midwest where the people were living in soggy bottoms. [The westerner] would tell them all about the golden state of California. It was a healthier place, an easier living, and there was the pull of adventure. Also, look at history and see what else might have attracted an ancestor to go west. Was it the gold rush in Colorado, California, or Alaska ? There were also minor rushes in Oregon and silver booms in Montana and Nevada. Were there marital difficulties? The West is a huge area, but with indexed census records, it’s now a lot less challenging. If your ancestor had a common name, he or she may have gone by a nickname. Land records tend to be some of the best records, but also look in the Salt Lake newspapers—wagon trains would travel through Salt Lake, and the newspaper people there would talk to the people [on board].

Tips
Put everything you know onto a family group sheet and look at where everyone in the family was born. Sometimes you’ll find that a child was born in Ohio, another one in Indiana, another one in Missouri, and finally one in Oregon —this gives you a really good pattern to follow. Also use World Connect or OneWorldTree to see if someone else has researched those families.

Standout features of western research
Sometimes there’s a military service link—quite a few of the men who served in the army also went out West and their [military service] might have spurred it. After the Civil War, the army needed to build forts and the railroads wanted settlers to migrate west. To make it all safe, the U.S. Army provided protection.

Women
Misconception
All women took their husband’s name at marriage

Challenges
• Name changes and finding an ancestor’s maiden name
• Laws that treated husband and wife as one person
• Social conventions that expected women to live their lives outside the public eye

Expert
Elizabeth Shown Mills, cg, fasg, fngs, fuga, genealogist, lecturer, and author of Isle of Canes (Ancestry, 2004)

Mills’s Advice
American naming patterns are rooted in British custom—including the British practice by which women, at marriage, automatically assumed the surname of the husband. (There’s a flip side to this problem—new American researchers are so accustomed to female name-changes at marriage that they are often thrown off base when working with families from European countries where women retained their birth names throughout their lives.) Also, until relatively modern times, husband and wife were legally one person, and that person was the husband. As we move into the late 1800s and early 1900s and find more women involved in legal and com mercial activities, we also find many of them using just initials. [To get through these problems], focus on the woman’s associates. Find every record created by every known family member, every neighbor, every in-law, and everyone else known to have come into contact with the family. Consider lawsuits. Their case labels typically name males, but buried within the details of those lawsuits we can find gems of information on female family members. Realize that church records did name women, even when legal records did not. Diaries kept by neighbors and ministers and male schoolteach ers gossiped about females in the community. Journals kept by doctors report medical care, childbirths, and deaths.

Tips
Successful research is all about context. It’s not “looking up names in indexes.” Breaking stalemates usually requires us to spend considerably more time studying ancestral associates than the direct ancestors themselves.

Standout features of searching for female ancestors
Female research is the same as male research. To find females, we have to focus on their males—husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, and in-laws. I’ll never forget how shocked I was the first time I discovered this in the records. My husband was under contract with the Corps of Engineers to write a bicentennial history of the Corps’ work in the Mississippi Valley, and I was his research assistant for the book. Poring through administrative records from the 1890s, I found a letter from the District Engineer’s office cataloged as “District Engineer to John Brown, job application.” But John Brown had not applied for a job—his sister had applied for a job as typist, and the office had decided not to hire her. But the office did not write her to say so. If I had started with a family tradition that my great-grandmother had tried to get a job with the Corps of Engineers and they would not hire her, I would not have been able to verify that tradition by searching Corps indexes for her. I would have had to identify her male family members and search for them.

Common Surnames
Misconception
A common surname is always difficult

Challenges
• Too many possibilities
• Keeping track of the common-named family when a family member relocates

Expert
Henry Hoff, cg, fasg, author, editor, and genealogist

Hoff’s Advice
Although a surname is common, it may not be a problem. Consider that each family may have kept to a single town. Some families with very common last names went in for very elaborate first names, and you can always hope that the (family’s) marriages are to people with unusual names. Some authors have specialized in particular surnames, so certain common surnames are good because someone else has already worked extensively on them, like Harris or Wilson in New England. Also, realize that a name that appears common in one locale may not be common in another.

Tips
Look for elaborate first names or unusual occupations—other things that can make up for a common surname.

Standout features of working with a common surname
A common surname isn’t always the trouble you think it may be. And don’t forget the flipside—a unique surname may not be the blessing you think it is.

Old, Handwritten Documents
Misconception
Transcriptions are accurate

Challenges
• Unfamiliar terms and abbreviations
• Faded ink and smudged handwriting
• Illegible letters, words, and numbers

Expert
Kip Sperry, cg, ag, fasg, fngs, fuga, Professor of Family History, Brigham Young University, Associate Director, BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy, and editor of BYU Family Historian

Sperry’s Advice
Practice reading old documents—begin with nineteenth-century records and move back to colonial records. Read handwriting guidebooks or training videos. Note that some people may transcribe a document with a modern name or term. Also, if someone is not familiar with the 1752 calendar change, they may write dates incorrectly.

Tips
Practice and study. Compare letters and words on the same page, and with other pages. Be aware of spelling variations, terms, and abbreviations, and use a magnifying glass to read old records.

Standout features of research involving handwri tten records
Handwritten records take some work—handwriting styles were different in the colonial period compared to today’s handwriting. Original records, and microfilm copies of original records, are always more difficult to read than printed books and typescripts.

Holocaust
Misconception
All records related to Jews in the Holocaust were destroyed

Challenges
• Collateral lines who would have lived and who could have told you about your family history no longer exist
• Trouble finding names and other information about members of your family who were Holocaust victims
• Difficult to find living people who knew Holocaust victims

Expert
Gary Mokotoff, author, lecturer, and teacher of Jewish-American genealogy, and the first person to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS)

Mokotoff’s Advice
Jews typically don’t trace ancestry, they document families. In the case of Holocaust victims, there are no descendants (rare exceptions are Holocaust survivors). While virtually everything Jewish was destroyed, genealogy research involves government records rather than just religious records. You have vital records—birth and death records of central and eastern European countries (although there are some exceptions). Resources are available, even about Holocaust victims.

Tips
Keep digging. Find survivors and interview them, get them to tell you about family. Events tend to get documented. Events during World War II were documented. After World War II, with people displaced throughout Europe among relief organizations, people started documenting and creating lists. Because Israel wanted to demonstrate that 6 million Jews were murdered, in 1965 it sent a worldwide request to fill out Pages of Testimony—people testified that other people were murdered. It’s almost like a family group sheet. To date, there are almost 3 million Pages of Testimony.

Standout feature of Holocaust research
Every Jewish family whose ancestors came from central and eastern Europe was impacted in some way. Prior to getting involved in genealogy, I thought the Holocaust was something that happened to other Jews—my family was safely in the United States. The minute I started tracing my ancestry—their descendants and spouses—I learned otherwise.

Southern
Misconceptions
• All southerners were slave owners
• A search for southern slave ancestry should begin with plantation records

Challenges
• Population and settlement patterns tended away from cities
• Fewer record-keeping institutions
• Not uncommon to learn that a record was destroyed

Expert
Elizabeth Shown Mills, cg, fasg, fngs, fuga, genealogist, lecturer, and author of Isle of Canes (Ancestry, 2004)

Mills’s Advice
Settlement of the Southeast was radically different from that of the Northeast. New England society centered upon towns; most southeastern settlers rejected town life and spread out onto farms, usually of much larger size and much greater distance from the seat of government. This thinly dispersed population, settling considerably beyond the eye of local government officials, meant that far fewer records were created (southern settlers were happy with that concept). Plus, the words “burned courthouse” are almost synonymous with southern research. Of course all areas have suffered from fires, floods, and vermin, but the South has had a far greater problem due to the Civil War and the region’s climate—heat and humidity are definitely not conducive to the preservation of paper. Study research methodology—strategies for linking bits and pieces of information—to come up with solutions. Learn how to interpret the records you find, to catch the quirks and nuances that lie beyond the obvious. Find and use every shred of everything that exists on an area—we rarely solve a southern problem by using just what’s available through the Family History Library, online indexes, and search engines.

Tips
You cannot put together a puzzle unless you have all the pieces. In some cultures, you can rely on church and vital records to provide birth, marriage, and death data. Not so in the Anglo South. To link generations, you not only have to use those deeds and court records, but also all those “esoteric things” such as estray books, mark-and-brand registers, and road minutes that often aren’t available on microfilm and rarely have indexes. When you don’t find nice wills that say “to my daughter Elizabeth and her husband Gary B. Mills, I leave the land I bought two miles from Cleveland Crossing in 1939,” you’ll have to plat metes and bounds from those deeds and tax records to create three-dimensional puzzle pieces to fit your ancestor’s land into a parental homestead.

Standout feature of southern research
The challenge. And the creativity you have to develop to bridge the gaps in records. Creativity means using records in a more complex manner, spending more time with each record, probing more deeply the nuances of each word, and evaluating more carefully the reliability and weight of each piece of evidence. It means more study of context—the family at large, the community, and all the economic, legal, military, political, religious, and social factors that affected ancestral lives. I have ancestors in every state east of the Mississippi River and several to the west of it. I can truthfully say that the challenge of researching my southern families has been nothing like my work elsewhere. But the rewards are worth every bit of the labor.

Adoption
Misconception
You can’t find the names of the birth parents of an adopted ancestor

Challenges
• Accessing records
• Sensitive nature of the information contained in the records
• Contacting birth families, adoptees, or the descendants of either

Expert
Sandy Mochal Thalmann, adoptee and social worker with thirty years of experience in adoption-focused genealogical research, and owner of Authentic Origins

Thalmann’s Advice
Stay informed about the laws pertaining to closed records in the locale [being researched]. One of the greatest challenges associated with adoption research is getting access to the records. Although some states have open records after a certain point in time—for example, records over one hundred years old are open in Minnesota —just mentioning the word “adoption” can cause the record-keeper to shut down. In many cases, no research is even attempted because it is assumed that it will be futile. This is just not true—especially with older adoptions. There is a great deal of information that can be learned about the original identity of the adopted ancestor. Remember, however, that once access to the records is obtained, it is sometimes necessary to prepare [descendants] to help them understand the archaic terminology and judgmental language that is used in some of the older documents.

Tips
Don’t start an inquiry with “I am researching an adoption”—it tends to close that avenue of research. And try not to be discouraged when doors that should be open keep getting shut.

Standout features of adoption research
For me, as an adoptee, putting the pieces back together after a family has been separated by adoption is especially gratifying. Adoption changes history—a child who would have grown up in one family is made part of another family. There are always lingering questions about “Why?” and “Who do I look like?” and “What is my medical history?” that can be answered by doing adoption research. Even if there is no happy reunion or if the parties are deceased, just knowing the birth history is so important. For me, it validated that the events happened just as they were supposed to happen and I am where I was always meant to be. For all those touched by adoption, even generations later, knowledge can be a powerful healer.

Burned or Destroyed Records
Misconception
It’s impossible to overcome a courthouse fire

Challenges
• Documenting individuals who lived in the region with the burned records
• Locating existing records that weren’t part of the fire

Expert
Michael John Neill, genealo gist, lecturer, math instructor, and a Board member of the Federation of Genealogical Societies

Neill’s Advice
Determine first if there were other records, other facilities, or other agencies that may have been housed separately from a facility that burned. Also realize that some documents may have been recorded again after the fire—even decades afterwards. State or federal records should be accessed. Consider private records (church, title company, funeral home) that may be extant. It is also extremely important to network with other knowledgeable researchers in the area.

Tips
Expand your research sphere. Consider records of any level that your ancestor may have left behind and be certain that you have searched all post-fire records, even ones that may seem of no importance. Also consider searching for your ancestor’s neighbors, associates, and extended kin. Records on one of these individuals may help you in researching your own ancestor—one of these individuals may have settled in an area without burned records.

Standout feature of researching around burned records
You ha ve to learn to think outside the realm of typical records.

Divorce
Misconception
Divorce is a twentieth-century invention

Challenges
• Family historians don’t have much experience with searches involving divorce
• Divorce isn’t the most obvious conclusion for a missing spouse
• Early divorce records in the United States aren’t dependable

Expert
Johni Cerny, genealogist, author, and contributor to the PBS series African American Lives

Cerny’s Advice
Divorce isn’t always an obvious conclusion to draw. Say you’re working on an average research project and all of a sudden you see the husband isn’t there. Your first instinct is probably that he died. We understand divorce as it has presented itself in our lifetime, but it’s not always our first line of thought when we’re tracing ancestors. Divorce took place as early as the seventeenth century in Puritan New England. Generally, men filed for divorce and there were only a few grounds on which they could apply. Divorce records in the United States from those early days leave a lot to be desired—unless someone went to court and told a judge and the court clerk kept impeccable minutes. In Virginia and Massachusetts, divorce was a legislative act until it drifted down to the counties. In the nineteenth century, there are divorce records on the state level. Towards the middle of 1950s and 1960s, they moved to county and state. If you’re looking for a divorce prior to 1850—the point at which you get everyone in a family by name [in census records]—you have to do the really tough research, searching court records. And court records are not always indexed thoroughly.

Tips
With electronic search engines, it’s a good idea now to search by first names in the case of a broken home. It’s time consuming, but it’s not impossible. Generally, a person who leave s the family leaves the area, so finding out where he or she went can be a very difficult task. Sometimes men changed their names. Sometimes women would marry another man and change the children’s surname—sometimes the woman would do this whether [she and the new man] were married or not. Researchers tend not to think out of the box, but people did the same things back then that they do now.

Standout feature of working with a divorced ancestor
You stumble upon divorce—even if you think that the family doesn’t look the same, divorce isn’t always the first consideration.