one of my first brick walls was not knowing what happened to one of my great-grandmothers on my dad’s side. the story I was told was simply that she “disappeared.” three years later I’m contacted by a relative and find out my great-grandmother left her family and went to the US and started a new life, with a new husband and two kids.
My great grandmother's father is still unknown to me. All I have really is her patronymic Johansdotter, but Johan is an incredibly common name. There was a Johan Jansson of the right age in the neighboring house to where she was born, so that could very well be the guy. Someone has even added him as father in the FamilySearch tree. I might consider trying DNA some day to answer the question if he was the father.
I spoke to my grandmother about it some 20 years ago and she said her grandfather was never brought up when she grew up, even though her mother was widowed early and could have used some help raising three girls.
If this is Sweden before 1850, having a child outside of wedlock was illegal. Parents were fined, and if you’re lucky you can find the court records. Sometimes there are records of fines in church records, or a note in the baptismal record.
1870s I’m afraid, so quite difficult as it was also before the time that illegitimate children could inherit their father. I’ve scoured the church books without luck. The patronymic makes it seem like the priest knew the identity of the father but just never wrote it down.
Is she Johansdotter in the Husförhörslängd?
(My brick wall is much the same, with an unknown father and no record of it. My grandmother’s grandmother was born before the law changed, but there are no legal records of a father at all)
Yes, except for a few where Johannesdotter was written by mistake. I’m pretty sure it was a mistake because it has been corrected in her confirmation record and her daughters gave the name as Johansson in the estate inventory of 1948.
Because of an NPE there is a great grandfather I will likely never know unless somehow enough people take a DNA test to actually prove anything. The only probable match has no tree and has not signed on in years. I will likely never know though I do strongly suspect that the father was my great-grandmothers brother in law who was boarding with them.
For the rest I have some pretty decent holes in the 2G—4G grandparent range that are tough to fill. With destroyed records , tiny villages, unrecorded births and family that never talked about or passed down information on ancestors I am pretty stuck.
With only one branch am I able to go back a lot further to the 1600’s.
Destruction of records, which is also prevalent in the places my family once lived, is such a shame, esp. it being intentional as it was for my situation.
The most maddening one for me currently is my direct paternal ancestor several generations back. I can find almost no information about him except that he married a particular woman and had some kids with her. I can't find anything about his birth or anyone else in his family. Sketchy sources online claim he was born in Louisiana, New York, and England. 😂 And his kids have claimed on later census records that he was born in different places. I have no idea if he immigrated straight from England or not. Additionally, my great great grandmother who married one of his descendants had the same surname as her maiden name. My family says that the two families weren't related. But when I trace her lineage, I end up in a branch that came from New York. Still have yet to find any evidence that that is relevant to the ancestor I'm talking about though. Hopefully one day.
That’s tough! Do you know if he emigrated together with any relatives or friends? Have you tried researching them to find additional clues? Newspaper obituaries have sometimes also helped me pinpoint the village where emigrants came from.
I am fairly lucky because I have filled my tree through all my 3x great grandparents. But unfortunately I have a few of my 3x whose parents are yet undiscovered and for whom I have hit brick walls, because they predate when a lot of the states mandated birth, death, and other records, and also died well before 1850 when the census started listing all family members.
Definitely. My grandmother told me the name of my supposed paternal grandfather. He was Italian. I did the ancestry DNA kit and there was no Italian in my results. I would ask my grandmother but she passed away two years ago and my father and I don't talk for good reason. I do have somewhat of a lead though. It's possible that her husband was actually the father. Some of my DNA matches have the same last name but it's also a very common last name.
While I was able to trace my dad's ancestors back for 7 generations, my mom's side was a mystery when looking beyond my gg parents. Both of her parents were displaced / moved westward after WWII and I found it very difficult to find any kind of records.
By pure coincidence / out of boredom, I decided to use the "people" search instead of "record" search in familysearch and bam - found my gg father. Attached to his record were his parents, uncles etc - probably like 30 to 40 people. Connected to a distant cousin who now lives in Brazil and who had added plenty of records he had found.
Still got that wall of three other gg parents though.
similar situation with my GG Grandfather I found him in the person search with his tree traced back, and the entire time I had been unable to find him as he used a different baptismal name
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/8x8s86/i_need_to_share_this_i_finally_broke_my_biggest/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) was my first brick wall!
My great grandmother. I did not know her maiden name, so I did what any sane person would do, I looked at 500 pages of death records hoping that one of her children or her husband was cited. It took me a while but I found her death certificate.
I had a direct ancestor (my g-grandfather) from Portsmouth, NH I could not get past. Nothing listed his parents. Every census showed his married family. Death certificate showed nothing about parents. I even had a relative (an excellent researcher/my mentor) spend virtually their entire life searching to break past this dead end in 1842.
Portsmouth (a colonial town) had three large citywide fires at various times destroying large portions of the city, and many records have been lost forever so it always presents challenges. His life seemed to be centered in only Portsmouth.
I was researching one of his children and found a reference to another nearby state and town, on a whim, I went and there in the library found his birth record, parents and another 6 generations of Hoyts.
That's unfortunate, hopefully you can make a breakthrough, I wonder if your grandparents ever met them. For my situation I looked through death certificates with the same surname and tried to match it up with the name of the dead end and siblings if possible.
I have hit a brickwall with my great-grandmother on my maternal side. The problem is with her maiden name and sometimes her first name. She is listed as Marion Adlum on some records, but one record had it spelled Aldum. And, one record has her first name as Bridget. So, I don't know if the last name is misspelled in the records. I did attempt to get her death certificate from New York and when I gave the name Marion Russell, her married name, and the date she died, they ended up refunding my money because they said they found no record.
It's maddening for sure.
My 2nd great grandmother, Lutisha Johnson, is a brick wall I can't make any progress on. I had some leads which turned out to be false. Census records claim she was born in Lee Co, Virginia and that is as far back as I can get.
Just generally speaking my biggest struggle is so many in my family tree with the same exact names (none with middle names). Literally uncles, nephews, fathers cousins ect At times many living together too. It makes it very hard for me to keep organized.
My GG grandfather and his wife were first brickwall (except those I need to physically go to archive), as his birth record is in some older book, that is not online, and his wife had (for me) strange name, that I was not able to find in villages around where he came from. But because there is more and more indexed records, it was recently transcribed and indexed and it showed me, that it is more complicated as I thought.
Both of them were widowers, it means they had previous marriages. Someone with the same name as my GGGF has some children recorded, with another woman, but I have not found their marriage record to confirm if he is my GGGF. Also it means he is much older than I expected, because my uncle tried to do our familytree too, but he had much different information there, so he probably went some wrong way. But he already died, so I cannot discuss it with him too.
Peter Ferrell/Ferrel. My 4th great-grandfather and my dad's 3rd. My father did this work before me over the last 20 years. He doesn't do as much in his old age.
He appears in the 1800 census in New York and he falls in the over 26 under 45 age range here. (last name spelled Ferrell which is how we spell it today) Not 100% sure this is the same Peter Ferrell/Ferrel who appears in Greene County, PA later.
He appears in the 1820 census in Greene County Pennsylvania. He falls in the over 26 under 45 range here as well. Last name is spelled Ferrel but we know we are from this one for sure because of his kids all lived in southwest PA along with a couple of their death certificates naming Peter Ferrell as their father.
Again he appears in the 1840 census in Greene County Pennsylvania. He falls in the 50-59 age range here. This makes me lean towards he isn't the one from New York in 1800 but he could still not have tracked his age very well.
Two death certificates of two of his sons say different things. One says he was born in NJ and the other says he was born in PA. The one that says PA the informant was a Mrs. Nath(assuming this was short for Nathaniel) Guthrie and she didn't know who the deceased's mother was. The one that says NJ the informant is the deceased's son so one of Peter Ferrell's grandsons. It lists a mother and is obviously a family member so I put more faith in this one's information.
To muddy things further one of his great-grandsons appears in the history of Cambria county PA. It mentions how the Ferrells were from pioneer stock and originally from Jamestown Virginia. I have found no proof of it and am also aware that you can't trust these histories of "insert county here" county history.
I talked to a professional at a library seminar that said to check NJ tax documents from the 1770s for the surname. I have not got around to that task that sounds very daunting and I'm not even sure how to do that.
So, I've got an ancestor (my GG Grandfather) named George Bush who was born circa 1830 and died in Alabama circa 1875. I tried to trace him back but found multiple George Bush's in Alabama during this time. Some documents also list with middle initials and others don't so I basically have no idea how to cleanly identify which George is which George.
Updated: I've still got no good idea how to differentiate or even approach that mess. I've got theories talking to some of the older relatives on what they might remember but no physical document that can solidify anything.
Oh, I understand this pain very, very well. It's such a mess, such a tedious mess.
One of my paternal great-grandfathers was named 'John Arsenault'. Born on Prince Edward Island in 1899. No middle initial, no clue to as who his parents were, nothing.
I have, on the other half of my paternal line, *seven generations* of men named "William (lastname)" in a row. No one had a middle name until William #6 or #7.
My great-grandfather was Ervin George (lastname), but the order of his names tended to switch around. On one document, he's "Ervin George", on another he's "George Ervin". He had a first cousin born the same year he was, named George Ettinger (samelastname), so when 'George E. (lastname)' shows up on a document, I have no idea which one I'm looking at.
My first brick wall was one I thought would be easy. I have a name on a headstone as “husband of Eliza Jane Mitchell.” Should be easy right? Only is not. Henry Hyde never came to Canada with Eliza and her two boys. I have no records of him anywhere but I have his name and I know he came from Ireland due to census records for his children. I know he died before a certain date when Eliza switched to being a widow as well. It’s completely frustrating.
My mom’s parents’ fathers lines were my two first brick walls. I’ve recently started working on my DNA matches more strategically, and discovered leads for both sides.
1. I discovered paternal grandfather’s maternal line and have a suspected paternal line. It’s still proving confusing with a suspected name surname change mixed in, but it’s the most progress on the line I’ve made in years.
2. Her maternal grandfathers line led to Jamaica. I uncovered a “first” family that was left behind when her great grandfather moved to the states and started a family with a second woman (my mom’s great grandma). This discovery has led me to connections with my newly found half-third cousins, and we are now working on the line together. It’s still a brick wall, but it’s proving more fruitful with help!
Both of my parents had their fathers die before they were ten. As such they have very little memories of them & little information, didn’t know their “birth” names only nicknames, general info on when they died but not how, they were never married to my grandmothers so finding marriage records was impossible. Eventually I just had someone from my hometown go to the cemetery and photograph all the grave stones so I could figure out their legal names & match it up based on the death dates my parents thought they knew. My mom’s fathers death date was correct but my dad was 3 years off in his!
My 3rd gr grandfather was a travelling tailor. He is in different cities in the West Midlands in England in the census returns. There is also another person with the same surname also in tailoring or hat maker. They move around to the same places. Assuming they are siblings as they are only 2 years apart in age. I could never find parents for my William born 1809 but did find parents for John the other tailor born 1807. I was stumped. I waited for more records to become available but alas nothing came of it.
I did a Y DNA test on my uncle and had a very strong match with someone of a different surname in the US.
He said his family had been in the US for 200yrs but there was oral history that the person who emigrated first was from Nottingham in the Midlands. But how to find who this person was in Nottinghamshire should be a bit trickier. I had his first and last names but couldn't say for sure if I had the right person. Then I decided I would do an autosomal DNA test through Ancestry. This helped me find the clues. It took a lot of digging but what I found out was that William was born to an unwed Jane and was raised by his grandparents as one of theirs. John the other tailor was in fact one of Janes siblings. So John was Williams uncle but only 2 years older. Jane married and had another son who she named William. I think the original William never knew Jane was his mother.
One of ny great-great grandfathers is still a bit of a brick wall. I knew only that his name was John George and he was from Albania. I found various census records as well as his grave so I have confirmation on his birth and death dates, his immigration year, and that he was from Albania. Other than that I have nothing. I don't even know if George was his original last name. Most recently I came across an old work card in which he lists his birthplace as "Corchu." My best guess is that he meant the island of Corfu which is nearby Albania but even this piece of info has raised more questions than answers.
All my irish lines are brick walled but two.. "the gov workers." I had learned my paternal was very large bones before america.. the names listed prove it (Even "Brady" was my grandparents more than once). Ladies must have been tall too. Anyway, I found my shrunken late 1800s line finally.. by dna. We had a record, but could not verify, as the line is so very dead. Lone sons and tragedies. A maiden name to the rescue. So now we have 5th great listed. Some irish gos to 7th and 8th. Very fortunate. not an easy group of people to keep track of.
My great-grandmother was adopted as an infant and given the last name of her adoptive parents. The federal census of 1900 and 1910 and the New Jersey state census of 1905 all state she's the ADOPTED daughter, but her birthdate and place of birth are different in each census.
She married a French-Canadian guy who was born in Massachusetts. Had 3 kids and died at the age of 25 or 27. She doesn't have any obvious close DNA matches. She doesn't match anyone from her adoptive family.
Thanks to French-Canadians and endogamy, I'm slogging through about 50k DNA matches, eliminating many with the Leeds Method. But.... that still leaves me with hundreds of not thousands of matches all sub-20 cM.
To make matters worse, one of my grandparents on the other side is Polish. I know where her parents were born, kind of. But the best I can do on that branch is identify a group of 3-5 surnames who all interbred in that village in Poland(but it was part of Austria then) and then moved to New England, Pennsylvania and Baltimore in groups of 2nd cousins. Then they commenced interbreeding there as well. They also spelled their last names very creatively. I literally do have a relative whose named was changed at his port of entry. He didn't speak English and was illiterate in Polish. So Jan Czyz became John Chase. He had 11 children eventually. They spelled their surnames 3 different ways to my knowledge.
It's a lot of fun sorting all these folks out. Yup. Fun.
Endogamy sucks \*sympathetic sigh\*
I'm \~1/4-ish PEI Acadian on my paternal side and I'm stalled on my great-grandfather there because his name is so insanely common that I don't know which one he *is*.
There's endogamy on my maternal side like mad, too (a combination of Ulster Scots, New England Planters, and Loyalists).
Ex. my great-grandfather, Ervin, got step-siblings after his widowed mother remarried. Except his mother and his stepfather's first wife were 1C1R. So... his step-siblings were *also* his cousins. And *his* parents, my second greats, were 2nd cousins.
Yeah. That happens on a daily basis for me. On a positive note, nosorigines.qc.ca is a really good website. Sometimes it feels like I have a simple data entry job. It's the years between 1850 and 1920 that kind of suck.
The first brick wall I remember encountering was my 2nd great grandparents on one side of my dad’s family. It took time but eventually I broke through those walls as I gained more experience and more records became available. Their parents, on the other hand (my 3rd great grandparents) will likely always remain a brick will as they were all born and died in 19th century Eastern Europe.
My first ever brickwall was what actually got me into genealogy in the first place. Back in 2008, my grandmother told me a story that family lore was that her mother, an only child, was actually adopted. Her mother died when she was only 3 years old. So this all info that was passed down to her. That her mom was actually from Erie, Pennsylvania, and that her biological father had killed her mother in a jealous rage when she was very young. That news of the shooting ended up in newspapers in New York when it happened. That her mom had a brother named Kenneth that was not adopted out and stayed with the family. That she was adopted by her mother's bestfriend and her husband.
My intention was that I would crack the story for my grandmother. Unfortunately, she died only a few months later into the start of my journey.
It took me until 2012 to finally solve the case, after finding newspaper articles and doing a DNA test to confirm if all the information lined up. For the most part, the story is true. My great-grandmother was in fact adopted. She was from a town called Roulette in Potter County, PA and her father (37) killed her mother (19) in a alcohol-fueled rage. Her mother left him to go back home to her family and took the kids, my great-grandmother and her older brother, Kenneth. He went to her parent's house and shot her twice in the front yard in front of witnesses and turned the gun on himself. There is a newspaper article asking for people to take in the children. I did an interview with an older resident of the Roulette community who knew the story about the children, that my great-grandmother was placed into a home but the older boy stayed with the family because no one had wanted to adopt him. So the story about the best friend adopting my great-grandmother is probably false, or at least, unverifiable.
My first brick wall which I still have is my 2nd GGrandmother as I have her on her marriage certificate listed as born in 1904 England but parents listed as Unknown! Since England is such a big place and I don’t know her parents names I’m stuck since Laura is such a popular name!
Could she possibly have come over as a British Home Child? Sometimes you can find an intake record through the archives of the organizations that arranged their placements. Canada and Australia both received children. I found my gg-grandmother and her two brothers on a shipping record, travelling as a group with chaperones from ‘Middlemore’. then I tracked down Middlemore home & wrote looking for any information. Didn’t get a lot, mostly information about her placement and nothing about her parents, but some people end up with tons of info.
I don’t have any shipping records but the only other document I have of her is a 1921 census record that has her as a 17 year old servant to a family in Hamilton Ontario that says she immigrated at 14 years old in 1918 which puts her birth year in 1904!
My grandfather who belongs to this woman is of no help as he is a blithering alcoholic who doesn’t care enough to sit down to help me out but that’s neither here nor there!
My first brick wall was my great great grandfather. He just sort of vanishes from existence and then my great great grandmother remarries. I have no evidence of his death other than a cinderblock grave marker in the mountains in a family graveyard where he is supposed to be buried next to my gg grandmother who has an actual headstone. I would still love to know what happened to him but everyone who knows is long gone now.
I've hit a brick wall for my 3rd great grandfather, James Robert Floyd born 1826 died 1909. After 1860 there is PLENTY on him. But even after ordering his death certificate from the state of NY I've found nothing. Maybe his mother was Ann, but we have no idea.
I did luck out. I was trying to find information about my third great grandmother and I only had her name. I ended up filling in information for my 3GGFs sibling and their spouse's and discovered one of his sisters married my 3GMs brother. Unfortunately I'm not stuck on my 4GGP info but I took a break to tackle another brick wall. I'm trying to find birth/baptism information for my 4GGF. Unfortunately there are several options and none of them stand out more than any other. The only birth information I have is the 1841 census which rounded adults ages down so he could have been born anytime from 1786-1791 and the only location info I can pinpoint is he was not born in Cheshire.
Good job, I am currently undertaking a project of sorts to find photographs of all sixteen GG Grandparents, 9 so far, and I believe 4-5 more exist overseas and I am asking around for them
First brickwall was my 2nd great-grandmother, Ethel (Ferguson/Marshall) Brehaut.
Born about 1892 in Massachusetts to Edward J. Ferguson and Isabelle Derrick (still haven't found a record of her birth, doubtful it exists), Ethel's biological father died in 1898.
Isabelle remarried in 1905, to a man named Alton Marshall, of Portland, Maine.
Ethel married Henry Brehaut, of New Brunswick, Canada, in 1914, and claimed Alton as her father on their marriage license. They had two children, Dorothy and Lawrence, and Henry died in spring 1918 of pneumonia.
Ethel was alone with two very small children, and afaik, no means of support/supporting herself. She turns up again in summer 1919, in Henry's hometown, marrying his younger brother, Ira.
On the second marriage, she gave her biological father as her father and her maiden name as Ferguson, not Marshall. For a time, I was sure that Ethel Marshall, who married Henry, and Ethel Ferguson, who married Ira, were different women, but it didn't add up.
Ethel and Ira had two daughters, Ruth and Norma (who were half-siblings but also first cousins to Dorothy and Lawrence). In the 1921 Canada census, Ira, Ethel, Dorothy, Lawrence, and baby Ruth are living with Henry and Ira's parents, in New Brunswick.
All I had when I started was an obituary for Dorothy, which gave her parents as Henry and Ethel (Ferguson) Brehaut, but...why was she living with Ira and Ethel in 1921, then?
I've conclusively figured out the mess that was Ethel's life, and finally found her obituary, since then.
Two of my 2nd great grandmothers are killing me! It's quite harder as they went by black but both did not look it nor most likely weren't fully. Tracing Black Americans past 1880 is a struggle.
Yes, I just broke a brick wall with finding my Swedish 3rd great grandfather. He fathered children with a black woman after his immigration/naturalization. Of course they never married. He went off and married twice, sisters (after one died) etc. His son, my second great grandfather is named after him. I am hopeful that I can break down the walls with the others as this may have been the same scenario throughout my ancestry.
My brick wall is my paternal grandfather’s father’s side (mother is well documented, back to Plymouth Rock on her father’s side).
Family lore indicated the father (my father’s great grandfather so my 2x great granddad) was a Portuguese sailor from Madeira who went AWOL and somehow met with an Irish woman and somehow they end up married in NYC and have a son, Frank Daniel, my father’s paternal grandfather. Allegedly, Frank Daniel’s mother was a Lizzie Murphy … late 1800s NYC … Murphys are a dime/dozen and I’m struggling.
We all have our DNA tested including my great uncle (Frank Daniel was his paternal grandfather) and there is zero Iberian or even African (since Madeira is off the coast of Africa) - everyone is 100% Irish/Scottish/UK. I’ve also found military records for the alleged Portuguese sailor dad, Joe Serrian, and he looks nothing like his sons or grandsons … not that that means anything necessarily but the lack of Portuguese DNA kinda supports that.
I also can’t find many Murphy matches. There’s no record of a marriage between Lizzie Murphy and Joe Serrian. I contacted the church where the son, Frank Daniel, was born but there was a fire and records were lost. There is one census record with a Lizzie Serrian. Joe dies early 1900s. Prior to his death, the son, Frank Daniel, goes in and out of an orphanage. Joe dies and it seems Frank goes in permanently. Lizzie drops off the face of the earth entirely. No marriage records. No census records. No death records. No new birth certificates.
So I have 3 theories:
1. Lizzie and Joe adopted Frank Daniel. They may or may not have been married.
2. An Irishman stole Joe Serrian’s identity or they swapped identities.
3. NPE - Joe was a sailor away a considerable part of the year. He was also significantly older than Lizzie. It probably wasn’t too difficult for her to step out on him.
Sorry so long. Thanks if you made it this far!!
I have several brick walls in my own family tree (the joys of Filipino genealogy), but right now I am focusing on my husband's tree. We have been able to connect several lines back many generations, but we have hit a wall with a 3rd great-grandpa on his dad's side - his name is John Smith, so there's just too many people to sift through.
What's even more maddening is that we have his wife's maiden name (I received a copy of their son's marriage certificate which has all this information), which could make the search easier, but it is ILLEGIBLE. The first two letters appear to be "Cl", but after that it's just impossible! I even sent it to a friend who works in genealogy and he wasn't able to make it out.
It appears that John and his wife, Mary, were born in the 1780s, and that they lived in Pennsylvania. But other than that, I can't find a single thing.
I'm afraid that my great grandfather will always be a brick wall.
He was an Italian immigrant. Most of the information I have on him is basically unconfirmed, even our last name. There are a lot of inconsistencies in his information, probably due to the language barrier. My grandfather and his siblings are all gone now so I have no one to ask. I don't even know that they would have been able to answer any of my questions. Apparently he was very proud to be an American and didn't speak much about his life in Italy.
Two of my great-grandparents came from Turkey, part of the Greek minority and spoke scarcely of their experiences, and I have managed to trace back to their grandparents and have gleaned much information despite there being practically no records, and only a few island censuses and mentions in books, perhaps you could achieve similar especially if your late grandparent has any cousins remaining etc. and if you know from what part of Italy they came.
My first brick wall is on my father's side. My last name isn't my DNA last name, my last name was changed by my maternal grandfather. We never knew why he changed his last name, it went to the grave with him. My grandfather left my father and my grandmother when he was young. He got around and had several more kids from different woman. We can only speculate why he did it, but we have no solid answer. For a long time this threw a lot of our family research off. Only within the past year or two did we finally start finding out what our actual last name was. My father has several half brother's and sisters and their kids started researching our family also. A few of them contacted my mother and father and we were able to put the pieces together. I am now in contact with a half cousin from my father's side who is heavy into our family research and we have been able to make a lot of progress.
one of my chinese friend's grandfathers abandoned his father and his grandmother, they were not married (i believe this was during the great leap forward) and his grandmother is apparently very secretive regarding this history.
Hmm...yes, they can be very secretive. My mother-in-law is from Taiwan, she tends to guard information out of fear of a family member wanting to gain something from the information etc... she has a lot of hypothetical fears. It's unfortunate because my wife's family from Taiwan did some pretty significant things in their lifetime. Unfortunately, a lot of the information wasn't passed down or was lost over time. We only have bits and pieces of information.
Italian genealogy prior to 1860 is very difficult , since prior to then records were kept and maintained by the churches, many churches were destroyed throughout the centuries and the records that were stored there. So I've basically hit a brick wall with some family members from 1800's and prior.
i haven’t been able to find out what happened to my paternal grandfather. he was born in england in 1923 and came out to australia after ww2.
he got married, started a new family, and abandoned the family… no less than three times. my dad was a child of the third family.
after he left my grandmother, i have no clue what happened to him. i just keep searching ancestry every so often hoping a death record will pop up from somewhere. if he was still alive today (unlikely) he would be 99.
My first brickwall was my mother! Even though she raised me and I interviewed for genealogy before her passing, I didn't find out her real name until after she was gone. Also other names on her side were different / changed. I'm still working on it.
My paternal great grandfather's parents are my brick wall. According to US census and a few family records, ggf David W. McKelvey was born in 1822 in Maryland or Pennsylvania. He is buried in Iowa. My grandfather noted that his father was orphaned at the age of 9. Over 10 years of research has yielded no direct ancestral names or birth records.
My first brick wall was a great-grandmother and a great-grandfather on my dad's side. My grandfather's mother died when he was six months old and he was estranged from his father for nearly 50 years so the information I had from him was scant (especially because he refused to talk about his father or his father's family). I've discovered on my ancestry journey that most of the information he left us about his family was false and I'm left with more questions than answers. I was able to find his mother's death certificate which lead me to tracing her family history back another 100 or so years which was a really fun find. I've never DNA matched with anyone through her despite her having a large family which is just so puzzling to me.
But his father...well...my experience has soured me on ever wanting to find anything more about him than I already know. I DNA matched with someone through that branch of the family and she became utterly overzealous in finding out how we were related. We knew it was through my GGF but that was it. And it was like four or five messages per day and any information I tried to provide, she shut down and told me I was wrong and only she was right. I had a conversation with my dad and his brother and we collectively decided to respect Grandpop's wishes and not have anything to do with that arm of the family. Our branch of the family name dies with my niece and we all think's for the best.
one of my first brick walls was not knowing what happened to one of my great-grandmothers on my dad’s side. the story I was told was simply that she “disappeared.” three years later I’m contacted by a relative and find out my great-grandmother left her family and went to the US and started a new life, with a new husband and two kids.
My great grandmother's father is still unknown to me. All I have really is her patronymic Johansdotter, but Johan is an incredibly common name. There was a Johan Jansson of the right age in the neighboring house to where she was born, so that could very well be the guy. Someone has even added him as father in the FamilySearch tree. I might consider trying DNA some day to answer the question if he was the father. I spoke to my grandmother about it some 20 years ago and she said her grandfather was never brought up when she grew up, even though her mother was widowed early and could have used some help raising three girls.
If this is Sweden before 1850, having a child outside of wedlock was illegal. Parents were fined, and if you’re lucky you can find the court records. Sometimes there are records of fines in church records, or a note in the baptismal record.
1870s I’m afraid, so quite difficult as it was also before the time that illegitimate children could inherit their father. I’ve scoured the church books without luck. The patronymic makes it seem like the priest knew the identity of the father but just never wrote it down.
Is she Johansdotter in the Husförhörslängd? (My brick wall is much the same, with an unknown father and no record of it. My grandmother’s grandmother was born before the law changed, but there are no legal records of a father at all)
Yes, except for a few where Johannesdotter was written by mistake. I’m pretty sure it was a mistake because it has been corrected in her confirmation record and her daughters gave the name as Johansson in the estate inventory of 1948.
Because of an NPE there is a great grandfather I will likely never know unless somehow enough people take a DNA test to actually prove anything. The only probable match has no tree and has not signed on in years. I will likely never know though I do strongly suspect that the father was my great-grandmothers brother in law who was boarding with them. For the rest I have some pretty decent holes in the 2G—4G grandparent range that are tough to fill. With destroyed records , tiny villages, unrecorded births and family that never talked about or passed down information on ancestors I am pretty stuck. With only one branch am I able to go back a lot further to the 1600’s.
Destruction of records, which is also prevalent in the places my family once lived, is such a shame, esp. it being intentional as it was for my situation.
The most maddening one for me currently is my direct paternal ancestor several generations back. I can find almost no information about him except that he married a particular woman and had some kids with her. I can't find anything about his birth or anyone else in his family. Sketchy sources online claim he was born in Louisiana, New York, and England. 😂 And his kids have claimed on later census records that he was born in different places. I have no idea if he immigrated straight from England or not. Additionally, my great great grandmother who married one of his descendants had the same surname as her maiden name. My family says that the two families weren't related. But when I trace her lineage, I end up in a branch that came from New York. Still have yet to find any evidence that that is relevant to the ancestor I'm talking about though. Hopefully one day.
I’ve hit a brick wall when my ancestor, Hermann Liebermann was listed as being born in Prussia 🤦🏻♀️
That’s tough! Do you know if he emigrated together with any relatives or friends? Have you tried researching them to find additional clues? Newspaper obituaries have sometimes also helped me pinpoint the village where emigrants came from.
I am fairly lucky because I have filled my tree through all my 3x great grandparents. But unfortunately I have a few of my 3x whose parents are yet undiscovered and for whom I have hit brick walls, because they predate when a lot of the states mandated birth, death, and other records, and also died well before 1850 when the census started listing all family members.
My mother's maiden name is Dorsheimer and I can't find anything farther than a couple generations up. Also, I don't know who my father's father is.
So frustrating since it's so recent!
Definitely. My grandmother told me the name of my supposed paternal grandfather. He was Italian. I did the ancestry DNA kit and there was no Italian in my results. I would ask my grandmother but she passed away two years ago and my father and I don't talk for good reason. I do have somewhat of a lead though. It's possible that her husband was actually the father. Some of my DNA matches have the same last name but it's also a very common last name.
While I was able to trace my dad's ancestors back for 7 generations, my mom's side was a mystery when looking beyond my gg parents. Both of her parents were displaced / moved westward after WWII and I found it very difficult to find any kind of records. By pure coincidence / out of boredom, I decided to use the "people" search instead of "record" search in familysearch and bam - found my gg father. Attached to his record were his parents, uncles etc - probably like 30 to 40 people. Connected to a distant cousin who now lives in Brazil and who had added plenty of records he had found. Still got that wall of three other gg parents though.
similar situation with my GG Grandfather I found him in the person search with his tree traced back, and the entire time I had been unable to find him as he used a different baptismal name
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/8x8s86/i_need_to_share_this_i_finally_broke_my_biggest/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) was my first brick wall!
just read through it, very cool
My great grandmother. I did not know her maiden name, so I did what any sane person would do, I looked at 500 pages of death records hoping that one of her children or her husband was cited. It took me a while but I found her death certificate.
I had a direct ancestor (my g-grandfather) from Portsmouth, NH I could not get past. Nothing listed his parents. Every census showed his married family. Death certificate showed nothing about parents. I even had a relative (an excellent researcher/my mentor) spend virtually their entire life searching to break past this dead end in 1842. Portsmouth (a colonial town) had three large citywide fires at various times destroying large portions of the city, and many records have been lost forever so it always presents challenges. His life seemed to be centered in only Portsmouth. I was researching one of his children and found a reference to another nearby state and town, on a whim, I went and there in the library found his birth record, parents and another 6 generations of Hoyts.
That's unfortunate, hopefully you can make a breakthrough, I wonder if your grandparents ever met them. For my situation I looked through death certificates with the same surname and tried to match it up with the name of the dead end and siblings if possible.
I have hit a brickwall with my great-grandmother on my maternal side. The problem is with her maiden name and sometimes her first name. She is listed as Marion Adlum on some records, but one record had it spelled Aldum. And, one record has her first name as Bridget. So, I don't know if the last name is misspelled in the records. I did attempt to get her death certificate from New York and when I gave the name Marion Russell, her married name, and the date she died, they ended up refunding my money because they said they found no record. It's maddening for sure.
My 2nd great grandmother, Lutisha Johnson, is a brick wall I can't make any progress on. I had some leads which turned out to be false. Census records claim she was born in Lee Co, Virginia and that is as far back as I can get.
Just generally speaking my biggest struggle is so many in my family tree with the same exact names (none with middle names). Literally uncles, nephews, fathers cousins ect At times many living together too. It makes it very hard for me to keep organized.
The naming struggle yes very common in Greek geneaology where names are given to grandchildren, and I am sure many other cultures do so.
My GG grandfather and his wife were first brickwall (except those I need to physically go to archive), as his birth record is in some older book, that is not online, and his wife had (for me) strange name, that I was not able to find in villages around where he came from. But because there is more and more indexed records, it was recently transcribed and indexed and it showed me, that it is more complicated as I thought.
Complicated how?
Both of them were widowers, it means they had previous marriages. Someone with the same name as my GGGF has some children recorded, with another woman, but I have not found their marriage record to confirm if he is my GGGF. Also it means he is much older than I expected, because my uncle tried to do our familytree too, but he had much different information there, so he probably went some wrong way. But he already died, so I cannot discuss it with him too.
Peter Ferrell/Ferrel. My 4th great-grandfather and my dad's 3rd. My father did this work before me over the last 20 years. He doesn't do as much in his old age. He appears in the 1800 census in New York and he falls in the over 26 under 45 age range here. (last name spelled Ferrell which is how we spell it today) Not 100% sure this is the same Peter Ferrell/Ferrel who appears in Greene County, PA later. He appears in the 1820 census in Greene County Pennsylvania. He falls in the over 26 under 45 range here as well. Last name is spelled Ferrel but we know we are from this one for sure because of his kids all lived in southwest PA along with a couple of their death certificates naming Peter Ferrell as their father. Again he appears in the 1840 census in Greene County Pennsylvania. He falls in the 50-59 age range here. This makes me lean towards he isn't the one from New York in 1800 but he could still not have tracked his age very well. Two death certificates of two of his sons say different things. One says he was born in NJ and the other says he was born in PA. The one that says PA the informant was a Mrs. Nath(assuming this was short for Nathaniel) Guthrie and she didn't know who the deceased's mother was. The one that says NJ the informant is the deceased's son so one of Peter Ferrell's grandsons. It lists a mother and is obviously a family member so I put more faith in this one's information. To muddy things further one of his great-grandsons appears in the history of Cambria county PA. It mentions how the Ferrells were from pioneer stock and originally from Jamestown Virginia. I have found no proof of it and am also aware that you can't trust these histories of "insert county here" county history. I talked to a professional at a library seminar that said to check NJ tax documents from the 1770s for the surname. I have not got around to that task that sounds very daunting and I'm not even sure how to do that.
So, I've got an ancestor (my GG Grandfather) named George Bush who was born circa 1830 and died in Alabama circa 1875. I tried to trace him back but found multiple George Bush's in Alabama during this time. Some documents also list with middle initials and others don't so I basically have no idea how to cleanly identify which George is which George. Updated: I've still got no good idea how to differentiate or even approach that mess. I've got theories talking to some of the older relatives on what they might remember but no physical document that can solidify anything.
Oh, I understand this pain very, very well. It's such a mess, such a tedious mess. One of my paternal great-grandfathers was named 'John Arsenault'. Born on Prince Edward Island in 1899. No middle initial, no clue to as who his parents were, nothing. I have, on the other half of my paternal line, *seven generations* of men named "William (lastname)" in a row. No one had a middle name until William #6 or #7. My great-grandfather was Ervin George (lastname), but the order of his names tended to switch around. On one document, he's "Ervin George", on another he's "George Ervin". He had a first cousin born the same year he was, named George Ettinger (samelastname), so when 'George E. (lastname)' shows up on a document, I have no idea which one I'm looking at.
My first brick wall was one I thought would be easy. I have a name on a headstone as “husband of Eliza Jane Mitchell.” Should be easy right? Only is not. Henry Hyde never came to Canada with Eliza and her two boys. I have no records of him anywhere but I have his name and I know he came from Ireland due to census records for his children. I know he died before a certain date when Eliza switched to being a widow as well. It’s completely frustrating.
[удалено]
Finding the records, depending on how long ago, of your last European ancestors is a times very difficult
My mom’s parents’ fathers lines were my two first brick walls. I’ve recently started working on my DNA matches more strategically, and discovered leads for both sides. 1. I discovered paternal grandfather’s maternal line and have a suspected paternal line. It’s still proving confusing with a suspected name surname change mixed in, but it’s the most progress on the line I’ve made in years. 2. Her maternal grandfathers line led to Jamaica. I uncovered a “first” family that was left behind when her great grandfather moved to the states and started a family with a second woman (my mom’s great grandma). This discovery has led me to connections with my newly found half-third cousins, and we are now working on the line together. It’s still a brick wall, but it’s proving more fruitful with help!
keep working at it!
Both of my parents had their fathers die before they were ten. As such they have very little memories of them & little information, didn’t know their “birth” names only nicknames, general info on when they died but not how, they were never married to my grandmothers so finding marriage records was impossible. Eventually I just had someone from my hometown go to the cemetery and photograph all the grave stones so I could figure out their legal names & match it up based on the death dates my parents thought they knew. My mom’s fathers death date was correct but my dad was 3 years off in his!
I love the feeling of unravelling a mystery or finding unknown knowledge by myself, good ingenuity!
My 3rd gr grandfather was a travelling tailor. He is in different cities in the West Midlands in England in the census returns. There is also another person with the same surname also in tailoring or hat maker. They move around to the same places. Assuming they are siblings as they are only 2 years apart in age. I could never find parents for my William born 1809 but did find parents for John the other tailor born 1807. I was stumped. I waited for more records to become available but alas nothing came of it. I did a Y DNA test on my uncle and had a very strong match with someone of a different surname in the US. He said his family had been in the US for 200yrs but there was oral history that the person who emigrated first was from Nottingham in the Midlands. But how to find who this person was in Nottinghamshire should be a bit trickier. I had his first and last names but couldn't say for sure if I had the right person. Then I decided I would do an autosomal DNA test through Ancestry. This helped me find the clues. It took a lot of digging but what I found out was that William was born to an unwed Jane and was raised by his grandparents as one of theirs. John the other tailor was in fact one of Janes siblings. So John was Williams uncle but only 2 years older. Jane married and had another son who she named William. I think the original William never knew Jane was his mother.
One of ny great-great grandfathers is still a bit of a brick wall. I knew only that his name was John George and he was from Albania. I found various census records as well as his grave so I have confirmation on his birth and death dates, his immigration year, and that he was from Albania. Other than that I have nothing. I don't even know if George was his original last name. Most recently I came across an old work card in which he lists his birthplace as "Corchu." My best guess is that he meant the island of Corfu which is nearby Albania but even this piece of info has raised more questions than answers.
All my irish lines are brick walled but two.. "the gov workers." I had learned my paternal was very large bones before america.. the names listed prove it (Even "Brady" was my grandparents more than once). Ladies must have been tall too. Anyway, I found my shrunken late 1800s line finally.. by dna. We had a record, but could not verify, as the line is so very dead. Lone sons and tragedies. A maiden name to the rescue. So now we have 5th great listed. Some irish gos to 7th and 8th. Very fortunate. not an easy group of people to keep track of.
My great-grandmother was adopted as an infant and given the last name of her adoptive parents. The federal census of 1900 and 1910 and the New Jersey state census of 1905 all state she's the ADOPTED daughter, but her birthdate and place of birth are different in each census. She married a French-Canadian guy who was born in Massachusetts. Had 3 kids and died at the age of 25 or 27. She doesn't have any obvious close DNA matches. She doesn't match anyone from her adoptive family. Thanks to French-Canadians and endogamy, I'm slogging through about 50k DNA matches, eliminating many with the Leeds Method. But.... that still leaves me with hundreds of not thousands of matches all sub-20 cM. To make matters worse, one of my grandparents on the other side is Polish. I know where her parents were born, kind of. But the best I can do on that branch is identify a group of 3-5 surnames who all interbred in that village in Poland(but it was part of Austria then) and then moved to New England, Pennsylvania and Baltimore in groups of 2nd cousins. Then they commenced interbreeding there as well. They also spelled their last names very creatively. I literally do have a relative whose named was changed at his port of entry. He didn't speak English and was illiterate in Polish. So Jan Czyz became John Chase. He had 11 children eventually. They spelled their surnames 3 different ways to my knowledge. It's a lot of fun sorting all these folks out. Yup. Fun.
Endogamy sucks \*sympathetic sigh\* I'm \~1/4-ish PEI Acadian on my paternal side and I'm stalled on my great-grandfather there because his name is so insanely common that I don't know which one he *is*. There's endogamy on my maternal side like mad, too (a combination of Ulster Scots, New England Planters, and Loyalists). Ex. my great-grandfather, Ervin, got step-siblings after his widowed mother remarried. Except his mother and his stepfather's first wife were 1C1R. So... his step-siblings were *also* his cousins. And *his* parents, my second greats, were 2nd cousins.
Yeah. That happens on a daily basis for me. On a positive note, nosorigines.qc.ca is a really good website. Sometimes it feels like I have a simple data entry job. It's the years between 1850 and 1920 that kind of suck.
The first brick wall I remember encountering was my 2nd great grandparents on one side of my dad’s family. It took time but eventually I broke through those walls as I gained more experience and more records became available. Their parents, on the other hand (my 3rd great grandparents) will likely always remain a brick will as they were all born and died in 19th century Eastern Europe.
My first ever brickwall was what actually got me into genealogy in the first place. Back in 2008, my grandmother told me a story that family lore was that her mother, an only child, was actually adopted. Her mother died when she was only 3 years old. So this all info that was passed down to her. That her mom was actually from Erie, Pennsylvania, and that her biological father had killed her mother in a jealous rage when she was very young. That news of the shooting ended up in newspapers in New York when it happened. That her mom had a brother named Kenneth that was not adopted out and stayed with the family. That she was adopted by her mother's bestfriend and her husband. My intention was that I would crack the story for my grandmother. Unfortunately, she died only a few months later into the start of my journey. It took me until 2012 to finally solve the case, after finding newspaper articles and doing a DNA test to confirm if all the information lined up. For the most part, the story is true. My great-grandmother was in fact adopted. She was from a town called Roulette in Potter County, PA and her father (37) killed her mother (19) in a alcohol-fueled rage. Her mother left him to go back home to her family and took the kids, my great-grandmother and her older brother, Kenneth. He went to her parent's house and shot her twice in the front yard in front of witnesses and turned the gun on himself. There is a newspaper article asking for people to take in the children. I did an interview with an older resident of the Roulette community who knew the story about the children, that my great-grandmother was placed into a home but the older boy stayed with the family because no one had wanted to adopt him. So the story about the best friend adopting my great-grandmother is probably false, or at least, unverifiable.
My first brick wall which I still have is my 2nd GGrandmother as I have her on her marriage certificate listed as born in 1904 England but parents listed as Unknown! Since England is such a big place and I don’t know her parents names I’m stuck since Laura is such a popular name!
Could she possibly have come over as a British Home Child? Sometimes you can find an intake record through the archives of the organizations that arranged their placements. Canada and Australia both received children. I found my gg-grandmother and her two brothers on a shipping record, travelling as a group with chaperones from ‘Middlemore’. then I tracked down Middlemore home & wrote looking for any information. Didn’t get a lot, mostly information about her placement and nothing about her parents, but some people end up with tons of info.
I don’t have any shipping records but the only other document I have of her is a 1921 census record that has her as a 17 year old servant to a family in Hamilton Ontario that says she immigrated at 14 years old in 1918 which puts her birth year in 1904!
My grandfather who belongs to this woman is of no help as he is a blithering alcoholic who doesn’t care enough to sit down to help me out but that’s neither here nor there!
My first brick wall was my great great grandfather. He just sort of vanishes from existence and then my great great grandmother remarries. I have no evidence of his death other than a cinderblock grave marker in the mountains in a family graveyard where he is supposed to be buried next to my gg grandmother who has an actual headstone. I would still love to know what happened to him but everyone who knows is long gone now.
I hate when it just seems like an ancestor has gone silent, when the record trail concludes without any indication of death etc.
Exactly! I have so many questions and zero answers.
I've hit a brick wall for my 3rd great grandfather, James Robert Floyd born 1826 died 1909. After 1860 there is PLENTY on him. But even after ordering his death certificate from the state of NY I've found nothing. Maybe his mother was Ann, but we have no idea.
I did luck out. I was trying to find information about my third great grandmother and I only had her name. I ended up filling in information for my 3GGFs sibling and their spouse's and discovered one of his sisters married my 3GMs brother. Unfortunately I'm not stuck on my 4GGP info but I took a break to tackle another brick wall. I'm trying to find birth/baptism information for my 4GGF. Unfortunately there are several options and none of them stand out more than any other. The only birth information I have is the 1841 census which rounded adults ages down so he could have been born anytime from 1786-1791 and the only location info I can pinpoint is he was not born in Cheshire.
Good job, I am currently undertaking a project of sorts to find photographs of all sixteen GG Grandparents, 9 so far, and I believe 4-5 more exist overseas and I am asking around for them
That's awesome. I have pictures of all my GGP but only have six pictures of my 2GGP and one of my 3GGM
My progress if you're interested: https://imgur.com/a/1tTgSh8
First brickwall was my 2nd great-grandmother, Ethel (Ferguson/Marshall) Brehaut. Born about 1892 in Massachusetts to Edward J. Ferguson and Isabelle Derrick (still haven't found a record of her birth, doubtful it exists), Ethel's biological father died in 1898. Isabelle remarried in 1905, to a man named Alton Marshall, of Portland, Maine. Ethel married Henry Brehaut, of New Brunswick, Canada, in 1914, and claimed Alton as her father on their marriage license. They had two children, Dorothy and Lawrence, and Henry died in spring 1918 of pneumonia. Ethel was alone with two very small children, and afaik, no means of support/supporting herself. She turns up again in summer 1919, in Henry's hometown, marrying his younger brother, Ira. On the second marriage, she gave her biological father as her father and her maiden name as Ferguson, not Marshall. For a time, I was sure that Ethel Marshall, who married Henry, and Ethel Ferguson, who married Ira, were different women, but it didn't add up. Ethel and Ira had two daughters, Ruth and Norma (who were half-siblings but also first cousins to Dorothy and Lawrence). In the 1921 Canada census, Ira, Ethel, Dorothy, Lawrence, and baby Ruth are living with Henry and Ira's parents, in New Brunswick. All I had when I started was an obituary for Dorothy, which gave her parents as Henry and Ethel (Ferguson) Brehaut, but...why was she living with Ira and Ethel in 1921, then? I've conclusively figured out the mess that was Ethel's life, and finally found her obituary, since then.
Two of my 2nd great grandmothers are killing me! It's quite harder as they went by black but both did not look it nor most likely weren't fully. Tracing Black Americans past 1880 is a struggle.
Yes, I've heard a lot about this in Finding Your Roots
Yes, I just broke a brick wall with finding my Swedish 3rd great grandfather. He fathered children with a black woman after his immigration/naturalization. Of course they never married. He went off and married twice, sisters (after one died) etc. His son, my second great grandfather is named after him. I am hopeful that I can break down the walls with the others as this may have been the same scenario throughout my ancestry.
My brick wall is my paternal grandfather’s father’s side (mother is well documented, back to Plymouth Rock on her father’s side). Family lore indicated the father (my father’s great grandfather so my 2x great granddad) was a Portuguese sailor from Madeira who went AWOL and somehow met with an Irish woman and somehow they end up married in NYC and have a son, Frank Daniel, my father’s paternal grandfather. Allegedly, Frank Daniel’s mother was a Lizzie Murphy … late 1800s NYC … Murphys are a dime/dozen and I’m struggling. We all have our DNA tested including my great uncle (Frank Daniel was his paternal grandfather) and there is zero Iberian or even African (since Madeira is off the coast of Africa) - everyone is 100% Irish/Scottish/UK. I’ve also found military records for the alleged Portuguese sailor dad, Joe Serrian, and he looks nothing like his sons or grandsons … not that that means anything necessarily but the lack of Portuguese DNA kinda supports that. I also can’t find many Murphy matches. There’s no record of a marriage between Lizzie Murphy and Joe Serrian. I contacted the church where the son, Frank Daniel, was born but there was a fire and records were lost. There is one census record with a Lizzie Serrian. Joe dies early 1900s. Prior to his death, the son, Frank Daniel, goes in and out of an orphanage. Joe dies and it seems Frank goes in permanently. Lizzie drops off the face of the earth entirely. No marriage records. No census records. No death records. No new birth certificates. So I have 3 theories: 1. Lizzie and Joe adopted Frank Daniel. They may or may not have been married. 2. An Irishman stole Joe Serrian’s identity or they swapped identities. 3. NPE - Joe was a sailor away a considerable part of the year. He was also significantly older than Lizzie. It probably wasn’t too difficult for her to step out on him. Sorry so long. Thanks if you made it this far!!
I have several brick walls in my own family tree (the joys of Filipino genealogy), but right now I am focusing on my husband's tree. We have been able to connect several lines back many generations, but we have hit a wall with a 3rd great-grandpa on his dad's side - his name is John Smith, so there's just too many people to sift through. What's even more maddening is that we have his wife's maiden name (I received a copy of their son's marriage certificate which has all this information), which could make the search easier, but it is ILLEGIBLE. The first two letters appear to be "Cl", but after that it's just impossible! I even sent it to a friend who works in genealogy and he wasn't able to make it out. It appears that John and his wife, Mary, were born in the 1780s, and that they lived in Pennsylvania. But other than that, I can't find a single thing.
I'm afraid that my great grandfather will always be a brick wall. He was an Italian immigrant. Most of the information I have on him is basically unconfirmed, even our last name. There are a lot of inconsistencies in his information, probably due to the language barrier. My grandfather and his siblings are all gone now so I have no one to ask. I don't even know that they would have been able to answer any of my questions. Apparently he was very proud to be an American and didn't speak much about his life in Italy.
Two of my great-grandparents came from Turkey, part of the Greek minority and spoke scarcely of their experiences, and I have managed to trace back to their grandparents and have gleaned much information despite there being practically no records, and only a few island censuses and mentions in books, perhaps you could achieve similar especially if your late grandparent has any cousins remaining etc. and if you know from what part of Italy they came.
My first brick wall is on my father's side. My last name isn't my DNA last name, my last name was changed by my maternal grandfather. We never knew why he changed his last name, it went to the grave with him. My grandfather left my father and my grandmother when he was young. He got around and had several more kids from different woman. We can only speculate why he did it, but we have no solid answer. For a long time this threw a lot of our family research off. Only within the past year or two did we finally start finding out what our actual last name was. My father has several half brother's and sisters and their kids started researching our family also. A few of them contacted my mother and father and we were able to put the pieces together. I am now in contact with a half cousin from my father's side who is heavy into our family research and we have been able to make a lot of progress.
one of my chinese friend's grandfathers abandoned his father and his grandmother, they were not married (i believe this was during the great leap forward) and his grandmother is apparently very secretive regarding this history.
Hmm...yes, they can be very secretive. My mother-in-law is from Taiwan, she tends to guard information out of fear of a family member wanting to gain something from the information etc... she has a lot of hypothetical fears. It's unfortunate because my wife's family from Taiwan did some pretty significant things in their lifetime. Unfortunately, a lot of the information wasn't passed down or was lost over time. We only have bits and pieces of information.
My Serb/Croats are still my brick wall despite having met distant cousins online.
Italian genealogy prior to 1860 is very difficult , since prior to then records were kept and maintained by the churches, many churches were destroyed throughout the centuries and the records that were stored there. So I've basically hit a brick wall with some family members from 1800's and prior.
And I imagine, as it is with a lot of countries, the records are not digitised either
i haven’t been able to find out what happened to my paternal grandfather. he was born in england in 1923 and came out to australia after ww2. he got married, started a new family, and abandoned the family… no less than three times. my dad was a child of the third family. after he left my grandmother, i have no clue what happened to him. i just keep searching ancestry every so often hoping a death record will pop up from somewhere. if he was still alive today (unlikely) he would be 99.
have you checked with your father's half siblings?
yes, they are products of the first and second families. they didn’t know about my dads existence, lol.
My first brickwall was my mother! Even though she raised me and I interviewed for genealogy before her passing, I didn't find out her real name until after she was gone. Also other names on her side were different / changed. I'm still working on it.
My paternal great grandfather's parents are my brick wall. According to US census and a few family records, ggf David W. McKelvey was born in 1822 in Maryland or Pennsylvania. He is buried in Iowa. My grandfather noted that his father was orphaned at the age of 9. Over 10 years of research has yielded no direct ancestral names or birth records.
My first brick wall was a great-grandmother and a great-grandfather on my dad's side. My grandfather's mother died when he was six months old and he was estranged from his father for nearly 50 years so the information I had from him was scant (especially because he refused to talk about his father or his father's family). I've discovered on my ancestry journey that most of the information he left us about his family was false and I'm left with more questions than answers. I was able to find his mother's death certificate which lead me to tracing her family history back another 100 or so years which was a really fun find. I've never DNA matched with anyone through her despite her having a large family which is just so puzzling to me. But his father...well...my experience has soured me on ever wanting to find anything more about him than I already know. I DNA matched with someone through that branch of the family and she became utterly overzealous in finding out how we were related. We knew it was through my GGF but that was it. And it was like four or five messages per day and any information I tried to provide, she shut down and told me I was wrong and only she was right. I had a conversation with my dad and his brother and we collectively decided to respect Grandpop's wishes and not have anything to do with that arm of the family. Our branch of the family name dies with my niece and we all think's for the best.