How would I go about trying to find someone when there isn't much to go on? [closed]

Question

My Grandma's Grandma (my 2nd great grandma) family was very secretive and there's a story that was told between her sister and my 2nd great-grandmother that convinced her to never return home and no ones in my family knows what the story was. My hypothesis is that whatever that story was has something to do with the fact that there isn't much to go on. What strategies would I use?

For my 2nd Great-grandmother I know that her name was Annie Marie Brown b. Abt. 1879 in Ontario  and d. Abt. 1949 in Melfort, Sask. She m. John Alexander McMillan. She had three children Norma (1912 - 1994), Wilma (1914-2015), John (Doug) (1915 - 2015). She was also a nurse (my grandmother told me most of this and the dates was from a census record. Her fathers name was David Brown thats all I know for him. Her mothers name. was possibly Ethel Hewer, this was taken from a census form on Ancestry.com, thats all I know on her. Annie's sibling's were Fred Brown, thats all I know about him; her sisters name was Olive Brown that's all I know about her and she's the one that told her the story; the last sibling was John (Jack) Brown. This is all I know; the info on Annie's siblings were from my grandma.

Answer 1

Secretive or not, the woman must be in some census records.  Those have clues as to age, birthplace, spouse, children, and more.  If you can’t find hers, look for birth and death records for her children which often list mother’s maiden name.  Is there a marriage record?  Sometimes you have to collect all the records that are possibilities, then make a timeline and/or a map to see what fits.  Brown is a really common name so you may end up at a brick wall, but you will probably know at least a little bit more than you do right now.

Comments

Thank you

Answer 2

Erin, you've already approached this topic in two other posts today and did receive an answer

How do you add someone to your tree if you don't know their b. date or d. date. - WikiTree G2G

How do you add someone to your tree if you don't know their b. date or d. date. - WikiTree G2G

Comments

You miss understood me. My first question was meant to be how do you add someone to the website because I don’t have any dates to add to the person and the Wikitree isn’t letting me add them without dates. I accidentally posted it twice because the first time it didn’t work. But obviously it did work oops.

As for my second Question  I meant there’s some information on them like there names and a few information facts. There’s census records and such that I can find but I don’t know if they’re correct or not because I don’t have information to go off of. Which is why I was asking for strategies to go off of. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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If you have even some basic information, such as guesses for dates based on her child/ren - and places she was known to live - we could help you better.

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Erin, it's not an inconvenience, but a matter of Privacy, theirs, since they don't want to discuss some topic with you, according to what you have said in your post.  Think of this way, if there was something YOU had or did and you did NOT want to discuss it, would you welcome pressure to reveal it?  

 Many of us when we create profiles do so from records issued by city, county, state and federal records. Some have found books or magazine articles which are a history of a region and which mention one or more of their relatives. Others find obituaries and marriage notices and divorce notices in newspapers. Others tap into tax rolls and military rosters and social security application forms. 

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I just edited the post and gave what I know about them.