There are so many aspects to solving dead-ends in your genealogy search. Often I wonder if I am searching for a piece of information that has never been documented or any documents with the information no longer exist, however, this doesn’t stop me from waking up in the middle of the night, thinking, “Oh, maybe I should check…?”
This page will be completely dedicated to helping researchers think of new ways of searching to help solve that one mystery or find that elusive ancestors name.
Method 1: Writing Narrative. This little tidbit I discovered accidentally while trying to start writing some simple narratives about my ancestors. The first thing I learned was this was no small feat, since writing narratives can be difficult and time-consuming. Many times narratives writers, once the facts find their way into sentence form, their eyes will be open to gaps, missing information, and search possibilities.
Method 2: Connect with cousins. One particular mystery, that had plagued me for years, involved my great-grandfather Charles Lee from Switzerland Co., Indiana. I had heard that he disappeared after his third child was born. I imagined him walking into to the woods and never being seen again. However, on a whim, I decided to throw the question out there to some of my distant Lee cousins who were also on Facebook. Low and behold, some people came back with a few stories, stories that turned out to be far different from him going to work one day and never coming back home. (The real story was that he had told his wife he was leaving her and he up and moved to Colorado. She took her 3 children – the youngest just a baby and followed him to Colorado, hoping to get him back. She apparently lived in a soddy house for many months before admitting defeat and going back home. She later married Charles cousin, John.) Cousins can be a valuable resource. Not everyone will contact you back, but the ones that do can provide you with gold. Cousins can be found on surname websites, GenWeb County links, DNA cousins, Ancestry.com, familysearch.org, Facebook Groups, and other social media sites.
Method 3: Search horizontally. This has helped me solve mysteries over and over again. The idea is to research known relatives and associations. Investigate your ancestor’s siblings and their spouses and children. I can’t tell you how many times the research gave a clue on a marriage document or in a census record that I wouldn’t have considered looking twice at. Generally, elderly parents live with their one of their children when they get older in the 1800s and early 1900s. When you research all of your ancestors siblings, you might just find your next generation back ancestor in a census. You may suddenly find mothers with a different last name than you expected because they remarried. Perhaps this is why you couldn’t find their burial or gravestone! The siblings may have included their parents names on their marriage certificates, also helpful getting to that next generation back.
Wishing you productive searching!
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