What is your biggest brick wall in your genealogy research?

Question

Mine is the parentage of my ggg grandmother. Five years!

Your frustrations sound all too familiar. The best thing I have learned is that someone else's work is merely a starting point. Now that Ancestry has given people the ability to make corrections/comments over the last few years, it has helped tremendously. I add notes to their images constantly, and you can sign up to be a volunteer to scrutinize/correct other people's notes.

If I come across a record for my ggg grandfather "Charles Santaus" or "Charles Santo" I make sure to write in there: "His real name is Charles St. Onge and he was born in Gouverneur, NY, in May 1838." It took me years to figure out Santaus was St. Onge (a French priest did it for me and then things fell into place rapidly).

My other big brick wall is my paternal g-grandmother. She was found on a doorstep in Campagnana di Roma as an infant with no note. Her son wrote to Italy for all records of births/baptisms in the area and nothing matched an infant b. Dec 1895. She was given to a family and raised. I gave up.

Answer 1

Although I have gone back more than 100 generations, before the time of Christ on 2 thin lines, on both my Mom's side and my Dad's side, I can go back only 3 generations (in both cases, it is their mom's mom). For my Dad's surname and my Mom's, I can go back only 5 generations (that is still before the Revolutionary War).
Again, on both my Mom's side and my Dad's side, although I can go back only 5 generations for the surname, in both cases, the wife of the man 5 gens. ago leaves a trail going back to the 1400s (Dad's side) or before Christ (Mom's side).
To have the names and infor for thousands of direct ancestors and to be stuck at 4 or 6 generations is so frustrating! I have tried everything I can, short of going to some of the ancestral sites in person.

Answer 2

Place of origin for my Polish Ancestors, since I need a town name to be able to find out their parents. Unfortunately they homesteaded in the Dakotas in the 1870s - very little bureaucracy to leave a trail. And more than a few prairie fires.

Place of death for my N. Irish ggg grandfather in Michigan or Minnesota in the 1890s, and burial - more frustrating since I found his second wife's death but no burial for her, and it looks like my gg are in the plots purchased by my ggg. Complicated by the fact his children were scattered across 2 states (at least) in 1900, and that the 2 youngest daughters just disappeared.

Beyond that my brickwalls can only be tumbled in foreign archives. So perhaps learning latin, czech, and how to read old German script will be the ultimate wall breaker, along with the money to travel.

Answer 3

Mine would be my great grandmother's parents, I know that they lived most of there lives in Collins and Washington, St.Clair County,Missouri, but have been unable to locate them in any of St.Clair Co or surrounding county cemeteries plus St.Clair Missouri had no record of there deaths so at this point they will probably never be found as my great grandmother never said or wrote down where they died and where they are buried, so I'm stuck which drives me mad because I know so little about them there Names Were
Peter Lee Penn
Born:14 Mar 1849 Missouri
Died: 1 Aug 1914 ?

Precious Ann Harrison
born: 19 Dec 1856 Pike Co,Illinois
died: 21 Feb 1933 ?

Thats my big brick wall all the others I'm slowly picking away at but the above one has me so frustrated I could scream.

Answer 4

I have hit more than one. I haven't been at it very long, but thought I had a good head start with the family history book that wound up in my possesion. Until I found there were more than one with same name in the same county. According to my book the man came from England, John Benjamin Phillips married to Lela Winston. The discrepancy came when more family trees posted had same exact names, dates, places descended from him, but the others show he was born in Virginia and was married to a totally different woman. So I started searching the archives in Indiana where all agreed he raised his children and was buried. I show a different county then theirs. When looking at the list of census for the state of Indiana for John Phillips, I discovered there were 9 for that period of time. All approximately the same age. And of course in 1830 and 1840 they did not list all the names of household members, only the head of household. I can see now it may take me several years by some of the answers here.
Another one was William Eiler, my g grandfather. I did finally find a census giving the names of his parents. Another stumbling block, the names: J R Eiler and Helen Marie Smidt. Too many common names. J could be a number of names. Like looking for John and Jane Smith. The challenge is on!
Another is Freidrich Schroeder. I thought, ok shouldn't be too hard to find what passenger ship he came on. Wrong again! The number of Freidrich Schroeder's listed on some of the same passenger ships is like looking for yet another John Smith.
What I had set out to do was fill in the missing pages and go back to the native countries that these ancestors came from. I see now it's going to take a very long time.

Answer 5

my paternal gggrandfathers parentage, 1 year so far with him.
my maternal ggggrandmothers name, i know her husbands but apparently her name is lost, all that is written is that she was a german jewess, been working on her for a long long time. my paternal ggrandmother, she has a very strange family name, not common at all and absolutely no info on her or her family. also my great grandmother who died last year, i dont know anything about her lineage, wish i would have asked more questions now. genealogy is funny that way, on some lines i can go back for centuries but on others its just like a brick wall.

Answer 6

My great-grandfather's birth parents. We have all kinds of info on his adoptive parents families and even have a name and photos of his brother/half brother, but not one bit of information on his/their parents. It's very frustrating because even though he died in 1953, I can't help but think there is someone still living that knows the story of his adoption/being taken in by this other family, especially since we've found so much info on them. He was born and raised in Tennessee and moved to Texas in 1897, but went back to Tennessee after marrying and had children and lived there for a while, but we have not been able to connect with any of the Tennessee kinfolk at all. In fact, it's almost as if they just disappeared after a certain point. I'm still digging, but it's plenty frustrating.

Answer 7

Getting beyond my 6th great-grandfather, Thomas Coston, who was born in England's Shropshire County in 1662. The site www.familysearch.org has Costons listed as far back as the 10th century in the same area of England, but it is finding the right links that lead up to this particular Thomas (there are soooooo many Thomases and Williams listed that it is not even funny!!).
Who is your ggg grandmother?? Maybe I could find her parents. :) My email is on my profile.

Answer 8

Currently in 1913 Great Grandmother Travelled from her home in South Wales and to via Hancock County, Michigan to visit a Mrs Walters with her she took her Second eldest son and her youngest son, travailing via Liverpool in England and Boston in the USA, But I cannot for the life in me find out why?.

Answer 9

Trying to find my paternal biological grandfather. We never knew him and know nothing about him. Trying to find him has been like finding a needle in a very large haystack. If he is still living, even, we estimate him to be between 90-100. Chances of him still being alive at that age are slim.

Answer 10

Mine is the parentage of my great great grandfather, Elias Rawn. I know that he was born in 1825 in Pennsylvania and eventually ended up in Delware County, ohio where he married my great great grandmother at the age of 40. He was my great great grandmothers second marriage and the union produced one child, my great grandfather. From censuses that i have on him, he was a shoemaker in one census and a fishmonger in the other. I know his date of death, but it was before death certificates as we know them were kept. I have no idea where he was buried. His wife was buried next to her first husband. Those first forty years of his life are really a mystery and i have found nothing to indicate that he was in the civil War, which is REALLY suprising. It also gets harder due to the fact that the earlier U.S. censuses have only heads of household and not names of children. One more thing that complicates things is that there was another individual named Elias Rahn, also born in Pennsylvania in the same year as mine. His life is pretty well documented though.

The name Rawn was originally spelled Rahn. I have a family from Pennsylvania that I believe that he may been from due to the migration patterns of the sons as well as the change of spelling from Rahn to Rawn, but nothing solid yet. I have been searching for this mans parents for well over a decade, but will keep chipping away at it. Good luck to you in your search. Keep plugging! You'll get there eventually. Perseverence really does pay off in this hobby!

Answer 11

My family has only been in America for about 100 years. I hit the wall when I try to find info about people before they came to America.