What is your most common research block?

[lupaglupa]

Every research project is different and each comes with its own challenges. But over time every researcher gets a feel for the places where they are going to hit a wall. Some of those walls come up over and over in different projects. When I'm lucky, I figure out a way to get over those sticking points. Or, I get help from someone who has had the same problem and found a solution.

I'm hoping if we share our own problem areas that maybe we can help each other! So CWT friends, where do you frequently hit a wall in your research?

 

[Cato3rd]

Every research project is different and each comes with its own challenges. But over time every researcher gets a feel for the places where they are going to hit a wall. Some of those walls come up over and over in different projects. When I'm lucky, I figure out a way to get over those sticking points. Or, I get help from someone who has had the same problem and found a solution.

I'm hoping if we share our own problem areas that maybe we can help each other! So CWT friends, where do you frequently hit a wall in your research?

The most common research block is just bad 1800s record keeping. I can trace back all of my ancestors since Jamestown and Plimoth plantation if they stayed on the east coast. But once they started venturing out west to the newly opened up Michigan territory, their records fall off the face of the earth. I know the ancestors from the east coast who fought in the ACW but only know from family stories those who served in Michigan and Indiana units

 

[lupaglupa]

The most common research block is just bad 1800s record keeping. I can trace back all of my ancestors since Jamestown and Plimoth plantation if they stayed on the east coast. But once they started venturing out west to the newly opened up Michigan territory, their records fall off the face of the earth. I know the ancestors from the east coast who fought in the ACW but only know from family stories those who served in Michigan and Indiana units

I definitely have specific areas where the records are awful. South Carolina is like a black hole. They seem to have kept no records at all and every line that I have that goes up into SC dies a quick death there.

I do find the area guides done by Family Search are really helpful in telling me what to expect for records in every state.

 

[A. Roy]

Not sure whether this qualifies as a block exactly, but one difficulty I have has to do with finding the small nugget I'm looking for within the very large corpus of CW-era letters and diaries. A bunch of times, I've mentioned here my primary project, i.e., writing the history of the Raleigh fortifications. I find very few mentions of these earthworks, so it takes a lot of time combing through primary sources to find something directly relevant. However, there is a positive side to this difficulty: I do get to expose myself to a lot of home front context and ambience, which are in their way important to the project.
ARB

 

[lupaglupa]

Not sure whether this qualifies as a block exactly, but one difficulty I have has to do with finding the small nugget I'm looking for within the very large corpus of CW-era letters and diaries. A bunch of times, I've mentioned here my primary project, i.e., writing the history of the Raleigh fortifications. I find very few mentions of these earthworks, so it takes a lot of time combing through primary sources to find something directly relevant. However, there is a positive side to this difficulty: I do get to expose myself to a lot of home front context and ambience, which are in their way important to the project.
ARB

I think that's a frequent frustration! I do really well with keyword searches most of the time. Until the word I want is a general term. So, for instance, finding newspaper articles on family who have a less common name is really productive for me. But one of my family names is Winter. You can imagine how many hits I get that have absolutely nothing to do with my family!

 

[nc native]

The most common roadblock to my ancestry research is the lack of written records prior to 1900 for most individuals except census data, marriage and military records. Many of my ancestors were illiterate and didn't leave anything in writing stating that they even existed therefore the research block exists for most of them unless they happened to get a mention in a newspaper article when something tragic happened to them or they committed some nefarious deed.

 

[John Winn]

I have several that I come across repeatedly. The most common is probably women who just disappear from the record, likely having married and leaving no record. Another is unrecorded deaths and burials. Often people - i.e. men and married women or children - just disappear from the record too. It's frustrating not to find out what happened to someone, especially if they left records otherwise.

Another record problem is missing census data. I've frequently been able to find people on one or two censuses but not any others from their lifetimes. Often there are several missing in the middle of their lives. This is frustrating because I can't know where they lived for some twenty or thirty years (but might know they definitely moved). I can see how a farmer in a very rural area might not get recorded but, say, an attorney who held public offices ?

 

[SJU]

The repeated use of the same common names through every generation.

 

[Tom Elmore]

A curious phenomenon are changes in the spelling of an individual's surname. Most often the spelling appears to have been done phonetically, but it's still odd to find three or more variant spellings within the same set of records, or blood brothers who spell their surnames with slight differences, or even to encounter descendants whose surnames differ somewhat from the common form used by their ancestors.

 

[BCS1973]

A curious phenomenon are changes in the spelling of an individual's surname. Most often the spelling appears to have been done phonetically, but it's still odd to find three or more variant spellings within the same set of records, or blood brothers who spell their surnames with slight differences, or even to encounter descendants whose surnames differ somewhat from the common form used by their ancestors.

In the vein of SJU's comment, sometimes I feel like the Irish only had 6 names for men and of the 10 names they used for women, 5 of them were Mary. As for surnames switching, there is a family plot in our family and the same surname is spelled multiple ways in the cemetery records. I don't think literacy hit that branch of the family until the late 1800's/ My surname, while common phonetically, got switched to to a less common spelling by 1900's which proceeded from one common ancestor...until some other folks came over from Ireland and decided to use that spelling.

 

[farrargirl]

For me, it is the difference between the 1840 Census and the 1850 one. Especially if you are searching for the name of say, your ggggrandmother. Mine apparently died between those years, but I have no idea who she was….

 

[lupaglupa]

The most common roadblock to my ancestry research is the lack of written records prior to 1900 for most individuals except census data, marriage and military records. Many of my ancestors were illiterate and didn't leave anything in writing stating that they even existed therefore the research block exists for most of them unless they happened to get a mention in a newspaper article when something tragic happened to them or they committed some nefarious deed.

Same for me. Rich ancestors are much easier to track than poor ones, unless the poor ones were criminals.

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

Same for me. Rich ancestors are much easier to track than poor ones, unless the poor ones were criminals.

And not necessarily criminal in a sense understood today. An important link in our family tree was revealed when we found court records regarding a successful suit whereby the Puritan branch was able to take away the inheritance of one of their sisters (my direct ancestor) because she married a Roman Catholic. Evidently there were laws that Catholics could not inherit property in early Virginia. That was one way to keep them poor I suppose!

 

[lupaglupa]

I have several that I come across repeatedly. The most common is probably women who just disappear from the record, likely having married and leaving no record. Another is unrecorded deaths and burials. Often people - i.e. men and married women or children - just disappear from the record too. It's frustrating not to find out what happened to someone, especially if they left records otherwise.

Another record problem is missing census data. I've frequently been able to find people on one or two censuses but not any others from their lifetimes. Often there are several missing in the middle of their lives. This is frustrating because I can't know where they lived for some twenty or thirty years (but might know they definitely moved). I can see how a farmer in a very rural area might not get recorded but, say, an attorney who held public offices ?

I got around the problem of disappearing daughters using newspapers. A lot of my husbands family lived in upstate New York and I could track the daughters who married between censuses by looking for them in the columns that covered local communities. For instance, I'd see "Mrs James Smith visited her parents, Mr and Mrs Tom Jones, last weekend." It took a lot of digging but I was able to find a lot of missing daughters that way.

Census records are tough. A lot of times it's a transcription error rather than a missing record. I've had to find people with really broad searches in the past. For instance, every man named Henry who was born in Connecticut and lived in Buffalo in 1910. A broad search gives you lots of hits but it can be the only way to find someone. Often I scan the long list of results and can see the mistake - a family listed as Janes instead of Jones. There are some misspellings that Ancestry quickly picks up and others they are completely blind to.

 

[lupaglupa]

The repeated use of the same common names through every generation.

Oh yeah, this is really tough. @Gary Morgan aren't you the one who says your family only uses the same two first names over and over again?

 

[lupaglupa]

blood brothers who spell their surnames with slight differences, or even to encounter descendants whose surnames differ somewhat from the common form used by their ancestors.

This one trips me up - when one branch decides to make Smitts into Smith or something similar. I understand why people did it, especially for long and hard-to-spell names. But it definitely complicates research.

My maiden name is an unusual variation of a common name. We had an extended family reunion some years back and discovered that the western branch of the family, while keeping the odd spelling, had changed the pronunciation! So two-thirds of the people at the reunion said our family name one way and the other third in a different way.

 

[lupaglupa]

And not necessarily criminal in a sense understood today. An important link in our family tree was revealed when we found court records regarding a successful suit whereby the Puritan branch was able to take away the inheritance of one of their sisters (my direct ancestor) because she married a Roman Catholic. Evidently there were laws that Catholics could not inherit property in early Virginia. That was one way to keep them poor I suppose!

Any time the family has enough money to leave a will I rejoice. That not only has children listed but also gives married names (sometimes).

 

[A. Roy]

Another record problem is missing census data. I've frequently been able to find people on one or two censuses but not any others from their lifetimes. Often there are several missing in the middle of their lives. This is frustrating because I can't know where they lived for some twenty or thirty years (but might know they definitely moved). I can see how a farmer in a very rural area might not get recorded but, say, an attorney who held public offices ?

This reminds me that I have found the missing 1890 census records to be a roadblock -- I understand they were destroyed in a fire, at least most of them. A number of the people I'm trying to research are freedpersons, who were not named in censuses before 1870. Many formerly enslaved can be found in 1870 and 1880, but then you have a 20-year jump to 1900 -- and a lot could happen to these folks during that time period.
AR

 

[DBF]

Two areas of frustration for me when I research women are tracing maiden names to married names and then if there are children many times if a child died as an infant they used the name for the next son or daughter which makes it challenging. The next problem is I always try to confirm any tidbit of information with a 2nd source to verify the validity of the claim and sometimes there is a slight discrepancy in the sources with a date or name and I'm never sure what to use - go to a third - maybe get a third answer. When I hit a wall, it's time to take my puppy for a walk. It always works to clear the head.

 

[Stryker65]

Every research project is different and each comes with its own challenges. But over time every researcher gets a feel for the places where they are going to hit a wall. Some of those walls come up over and over in different projects. When I'm lucky, I figure out a way to get over those sticking points. Or, I get help from someone who has had the same problem and found a solution.

I'm hoping if we share our own problem areas that maybe we can help each other! So CWT friends, where do you frequently hit a wall in your research?

My work deals mostly with orders of battle, and my least favorite occurrence is when the return of the army does not also include the organization. In this way, only two concrete organizations of the 1863-5 Trans-Mississippi army exist: for 9/31/64 and 12/31/64, and they are so similar I suspect the 12/31/64 was copied from the 9/31/64.

In researching people, my most common problem is of course, the common names, like John Smith or John Jones or James Clark, etc.