Researching Your Family History – Basic
Almost anyone who traces their family tree, no matter how experienced they are, will eventually hit a brick wall – an ancestor who doesn’t seem to have been born and refuses to die, or one whose arrival into Australia cannot be located – affectionately known as a ‘swimming’ ancestor! Here I explain why these brick walls occur and give some clues on where to go to overcome them.
Back To Basics
It’s never too early or too late – to go back to basics and focus on the principle of family history research. The UK Web site, GENUKI (www.genuki.org.uk/gs) has a good online beginner’s guide that is worth having a look at, whether you are just starting out or have been at it for a while, but have hit a brick wall and need some inspiration. Let’s go over some of those basic principles to keep in mind when doing family research and see how they can help with your brick walls.
Firstly, we can become so familiar with the family we are tracing that we can’t see the wood for the trees. We know so much about our ancestors and spend so much time thinking about them that the blinkers go on and you assume certain facts. A brick wall in your research can occur simply because you are too close to the problem and don’t see an obvious answer. The grandparents you knew and loved when you were little were very respectable and went to church every Sunday, so they couldn’t possibly have forgotten to get married, could they? You’ve searched for years for their marriage, but it just isn’t there. Maybe one of them was already married to someone else, and so was prevented from legally taking another partner. Yet you’ve always ignored the man with the same name as your grandfather who you’ve found in the indexes getting married a few years earlier than your grandfather supposedly married your grandmother, because it can’t be him, can it? These are the sort of obstacles we put in our own way that make our brick walls even more difficult to climb.
Always analyse the documents you have obtained along the way – dig out those certificates of births, deaths and marriages and look at them again. You may well have become so familiar with them that you may have overlooked a small fact that could make all the difference in solving a research problem. Or you may know some further facts about the family that suddenly put the information on a certificate into a new light for you. Perhaps you missed that the witness to your great-grandparents’ marriage had the same surname as the bride. That could be the link establishing which Mary Jones you are looking for, because the witness to the marriage, Ezekiel Jones, may have been her brother. If finding the birth of a Mary Jones has been your brick wall in the past, now knowing that you are looking for a Mary Jones who had a brother Ezekiel Jones can make all the difference when looking through countless birth indexes.
It is also important not to ‘skimp’ on documentation. One of them main brick walls Australian researchers encounter is the difficulty they have in pinpointing the exact place their ancestors came from overseas. Without that vital piece of information, research can often come to a grinding halt. The main sources for finding the place of origin are the relevant birth, death and marriage certificates on which that immigrant ancestor’s details appear. The birth registration of every one of Charles Schmidt’s children was an opportunity for him to state his exact place of origin. You might already know he came from Germany, but without a more precise village or town name, it will be impossible to continue your research – especially with a name like Schmidt! On the birth certificates of 12 out of his 13 children, his native place may be stated as just ‘Germany’. But perhaps on the thirteenth certificate, for whatever reason, an exact birthplace is stated, providing you with a way forward with your research. Unless you’ve made the effort to obtain every one of those children’s birth certificates, you may never be able to take your research any further, as looking for a Schmidt in Germany is like looking for a proverbial needle in a haystack.
For details of what information is available on birth, death and marriage certificates in Australia and current costs for obtaining copies of certificates, visit Cora Num’s gateway Web site at www.coraweb.com.au.
The answer to your research problem may also be just waiting to be discovered in resources held by other family members. It could be that an entry in a family bible that has been handed down through the generations will confirm you have found the right baptism for your ancestor in Hertfordshire or that an apprenticeship indenture verifies the occupation of your ancestor. It is important not to overlook the fact that family documents, photographs and important memorabilia may still exist and could have been handed down through branches of the family other than your own. As part of solving your brick wall problem, you should consider moving forward in time and trying to research some of the indirect lines of your family (the brothers and sisters of your great-grandparents and their descendants, for example) down to living generations of the family who may just have in their attic the one document that could solve your research problems.
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