52 Ancestors Week 14: Brick Wall

Question

Ready for Week 14 of the 52 Ancestors challenge?

Please share with us a profile of an ancestor or relative who matches the week's theme. This week's sharing prompt:

Brick Wall

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Brick wall is a phrase that strikes fear in the heart of many a genealogist. Who is a brick wall ancestor for you? Who is one that you broke through a brick wall to find? How did you do it? You could also interpret this more literally, like with a family photo of a brick house or an ancestor who was a bricklayer.

 

Share below!

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Comments

Hi;

First, thank you! Our Lemuel died in 1819 and we have proof of this so this is the wrong Lemuel. Lots of people add this misinformation all over the place. I appreciate that you responded.

Tamber

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Have you tried profile woodworth-381 on here. It shows William as father and Sarah Blackmer as mother if they have their info correct

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I know I commented before on this but I came to a realization the other day. My great-grandmother, Anna Matthis was born in 1888. She and her father would have been in the 1890 U.S. Census but the census burned up!! Argh!  

Terri Clawson -1056

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Yes, that is what we suspect but we have no documented proof connecting our Lemuel with William and Sarah. The other possibility is that Lemuel, son of William and Sarah had a son named Lemuel who may have been the father of our Lemuel. When we look at dates Lemuel would have been 51 when our documented relative was born - time to have had children and then grandchildren.

Thank you for helping. Tamber

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My brick wall is as follows: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Julie-37

My grandfather was the result of an affair and his real father's name was never mentioned. Is there any possible way or technique to try work around such a dilemma? All of this took place in Port-Louis, Mauritius and my family are of French, Creole and British decent.

His mother's name was "Louise Cécile Laure Geffroy" born 20 SEP 1920 • Grande Riviere, Mauritius (my great grandmother) and her first marriage was to "Joseph Louis Julie" born 10 AUG 1910 • Mauritius. She then married common law to a "Cassam Sulliman" and finally her last marriage was to a "Joseph Charles Philippe Ducasse."She passed away 18 MAY 2012 • Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa.

She had an affair with an unknown man while married to "Joseph Louis Julie" around 1938 and as a result "Joseph Maurice Julie," my grandfather, was born. He was registered as "Julie" and "Joseph Louis Julie" was added as his father on his birth certificate but this is not true. How do I find out who this secret lover is, who my real great grandfather is?

We know that the man which "Louise Cécile Laure Geffroy" eloped with while married to "Joseph Louis Julie" might very well be of Creole decent but how on earth do we find out and where do we begin?

Maybe somebody here finds interest and will be willing to assist. Any advice is welcomed!

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I think that your best bet might be dna. When I took my DNA test I found that I have many matches in both my mother and father's side. I have many cousins now!  You might find family from your biological side and be able to figure out who he was through them and their research.

Terri

Clawson-1056

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Thanks very much for your reply! I have taken the advice and I will be ordering a DNA test. Could you maybe update me on what to buy? I have no clue how DNA works and which test to get? Are there different types or is it a standard test? Appreciate your assistance and advice!

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I have to assume that you are make because of your first name, if you are nit, forgive me. I

Ancestry.com and 123and me (and others) offer inexpensive autosomal DNA tests and then show your DNA matches. I've found cousins on vanity my mother's and my Father's sides after I bought an ancestry.com autosomal kit.

Another kit that's available through the same companies is a Ydna kit. This would show relatives in your make line because you got your Y gene from your father. I think this would be a good way to go for you.

I am not a DNA expert so if anyone out there wants to correct me, I would appreciate the help.

Good luck with this!

Terri

Clawson -1056

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Filling in some gaps in my 52 ancestor challenge

I have three brick walls on my watch list that I am researching. 

John Glenn

Ellen Langridge

Unknown Simmons

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One of my brick walls is Gueatt_2 he just disappears. I do have a supposed father who I do share dna with but I don’t have any records on him. One day I hope to figure it out.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gueautt-2

Answer 1

I have three big brick walls right now.  George Western (Canada) and Dora Jones (Michigan) are the first two. I have nothing more than their names and their purported places of birth. The names have two or three sources, the places of birth only have one, the Social Security application of one of their sons. The third is Herman(n) Steinke for whom I have a date of birth but can find no source beyond US-based census records and a death certificate that doesn't list his parents. They are my great-great-grandparents and the only three keeping me from having a full set (32) of great-great-great-grands.

Answer 2

I always hit a brick wall when I am doing research on ancestors that came from Ireland. My great great grandmother Jane Walker McCullough https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Walker-25653# is a perfect example of this. I know a number of things about her. She died of yellow fever in 1869 while she was visiting her sister in New Orleans, and she was only 39 at the time.  Even a distant cousin has tried to do research in Galway where she was born, and she has not had any luck—no parents and nothing.  

Comments

I have the same problem. My biological father had a bunch of Irish ancestors, and I've never gotten more than a generation back. I found his grandmother's male grandparents (not female), and if I hadn't already known her mother's name, I would not have gotten that far.

The only exception I have is one branch of my real dad's side, because they were land owners - but I can't find the families of most of their wives. And his other ancestors from Ireland are in the same boat.

I hope we both have better luck as more records are sorted and cataloged (and hopefully digitized).

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Thanks K. Cathey, maybe we'll have the Luck of the Irish in the future.

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I think somebody accidentally flagged K Cathey's comment thinking that a flag is a "like."  Please remove the flag. It is for inappropriate comments. Thanks!

Answer 3

I wish I had only one brick wall, The toughest is the origins of Catherine Mathers. She was probably born in Scotland about 1852. She married Joseph Stuart Pozzi 18 July 1878 in Sandymount, Dublin, Ireland in Sandymount Presbyterian church. The marriage was announced in a Dublin newspaper naming her father as David. Catherine's sister Mary Ann married another David Mathers in 1874 and went to live in Dundee, Scotland. Her mother was identified as Maria Ruth Boothe, but when their father died, his was married to Eliza. 

DNA testing affirms some relation to Mary Ann and her husband David, but who was Catherine's mother?

Comments

Breakthrough! T Walker found evidence that Catherine's mother was [[Mathers-329|Maria Ruth Boothe]], and added paternal grandparents and great grandparents as well. I'm off and running again, and quite delighted with it all. I'm finding lots on the Mathers, not so much on the Boothes.

Joy!

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Good for you!

Terri

Clawson -1056

Answer 4

I've talked about this brick wall many times before and I'll probably talk about it many MORE times until I figure out what her story is. I am of course talking about my 2x great-grandmother, Domenica Gullo. Here's what I know about this lady:

1. She was born in San Pietro a Maida, Italy in the 1870s.

2. She married Antonio Tommaso Tedesco some time before 1900. 

3. She had several children: Caterina, Maria and Tommaso.

My great-aunt has never really told me much about her. I've seen pictures of her grave thanks to cousins living in San Pietro. The only thing I don't have is info on her parents. My great-aunt doesn't remember and my cousins in Italy aren't sure.

However, there is a silver lining. I do have a DNA match who came to America from Italy and has connections with the Gullo family. I am thinking she could help along with an e-mail to the commune office of course.

Not sure what else I can do. But, she is the closest brick wall I have. I have others like "Smith" and this lady, Sarah Currey.  That one is a really annoying brick wall. I've seen the last name spelled several different ways. It might not even be her maiden name. That is another puzzle I have. I might try digging into her past again. We'll see. She has just been really annoying. At least with Domenica I have some ideas. Sarah? Not so much.

Some trees on Ancestry have parents for her. It tends to be a bit dubious as there aren't many sources. If any. At this point, I think I am more confident that I'll break the Domenica Gullo wall than I will Sarah Currey only because of how much more info I have to go on for Domenica. I just hope the commune office can give me the info I need. 

Answer 5

James Robertson, my most elusive ancestor

https://genealogybyjanelle.blogspot.com/2019/04/brick-wall-james-robertson.html

Comments

I had to check this out as my brick wall is also a robertson/robinson.  In reading your blog post, I want to point out you neglect to give an area where this person might have lived.

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His son was born in Caputh Parish Perthshire, which I mentioned though perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Other than that I don't know where he might have lived.

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Good. My fault, my eyes were looking for a place name and Caputh Parish Perthshire didn't register as such. Is that in Scotland?

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Yup, Perhaps I'll edit to make sure that it's clear that it's in Scotland :)

Answer 6

Not an ancestor in my direct line (I have too many brick walls there), but I was trying to find the parents of a cousin x-times removed.  I'd found what I thought was the right father, then ruled him out because his wife when he died was not the mother of my girl.  After doing a LOT more looking and comparing and using a process of elimination, I ruled him back in.  Because I found my girl's mother had died, and daddy married again.  It all just fell into place.

Likewise breaking brick walls for other people is such a buzz.  One of the profiles I added sources to last month had been (presumably) given up on by others.  But, as my mother used to say, I'm more stubborn that the most stubborn of mules, and I just kept at it until I went "I've GOT HIM!" to my empty room.  (I tend to do that a lot lately.)

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14 out of 14!  Go me.  :)

Comments

I do that too (exclamations to an empty room). Glad I'm not the only one.

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Success.

Answer 7

I just smashed a brick wall on the profile of Simon Burgers: I found his father, mother  and a lot of siblings. But the church baptism records only go  back till 1672 and his father is born before that. So no going further back on that branche of the tree, I fear.

Comments

Analysis of the entire early church book can help to try and build a picture of who all the 'Burgers' were that lived in the area at the time.  Births, marriages and deaths pulled together will allow you to 'reconstruct' the different family groups and if you are lucky, Simon's father can only have belonged to one family and not another, based on family names, birth dates, etc.  Depends on how extensive the Burger clan was.

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I know that method and have used it to smash this wall. There is an extra difficulty:  the family name vanishes and I'm only left with the patronym Peeters.  And there were lots of people with that patronym...

Answer 8

My great grandfather, Johnson Radford Drake, was killed in 1950 at the age of 86 by a wall falling on him.  He was innocently watching the construction of a large garage.  A wall of the construction collapsed and killed him.

I must admit it was a concrete instead of a brick wall ... but thought it kind of unusual for such an older man to leave this earth in such an manner.

Comments

Need to add that my great grandfather is also my 'brick wall" ... in the context of the subject for the week.  His ancestors have been the most difficult for me to research.  I have often humorously said he must have been in the Federal Witness Protection Program, because he seemed to have no ancestors.

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Oh, my. How tragic for your family!

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Clever reply to the brick wall question - kudos.

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What a way to die!

Terri

Answer 9

Mahala (SMITH) Perry (1818 New York -1856 Michigan)

The only person among my 2xgreat grandparents I have NO idea who her parents might be. Born and married in New York state before birth or marriage records were recorded.  She was already married by the time of the 1850 United States Census when all the names in the household began to be listed.  She died in Michigan before death records were kept there.  No clues as to siblings who might have records.  There are several Smith families in Madison County, New York who might be hers, but I'm not even positive that's where her family lived.  So far no results looking at friends and neighbors who lived near them after the family moved to Michigan in 1848. 

I was excited at finding a sister-in-law who was also a Smith and hoping they might be sisters, but that path dead ended too. :(   

I periodically come back to her as I learn new things about family history with hopes this wall will come tumbling down eventually.:)

Comments

I think I can give you a couple of suggestions for finding someone that relatively close.  1st go on ancestry.com or family search.org etc and plug in the names through family trees, etc. .   And also if you haven't had dna tested do that and for ancestry if someone has taken a test you can match up and see who is on their  tree or in dna circles.  Of course remember to make sure what/who  you find is really the person you are looking for.

Answer 10

My brick wall is Annie McKannar born in Ireland and died in Baltimore, MD.https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-376252.  I do not know her maiden name. I find her in the Baltimore City Directories that we’re published annually in the 1880's and the census but the Great Fire of Baltimore destroyed most other records. I am pretty sure they came to Baltimore to work on the railroad but the directories show them after the recession and a lot of Irish were laid off. I know they were not able to read or write so I suspect that the spelling of the last name was buggured up and was probably McKenna. That is as far as I’ve gotten other than visit her church and find out that all the records were moved and lost. 

Comments

Using Newspapers.com, I find Annie McConnor mentioned in connection with a Baltimore Methodist Church in the 1870s. In the 1880s she is in high school. There is a Captain McConnor of Queenstown, MD whose boat is called Annie J. Gale (1893.) I don't know if this is your Annie or a relative, or neither, but good luck.

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That's a great comment but it is not her. The McKannar's were staunch Catholics. I do know that she had a very small grocery. Here is the summary I wrote about a year ago.

Katherine most likely came to Baltimore aboard one of the famine ships from Ireland during the late 1840's or early 1850's. She shows up in the 1880 census which gave me her birth year. We also know her oldest son was born in 1854 in Maryland. Starting in 1880, she is listed in the Woods Baltimore City Directory every year as a grocer until she stops showing up in 1899. That is how her death is estimated.

Per family memories, they attended St Ignatius Catholic Church in Baltimore. I have been to the church and they have looked into their records but have not found anything. I was notified that these records are probably located at St Mary's Seminary on Roland Ave in Baltimore and they are all in Latin.

Answer 11

My brickwall is my great great grandmother Mary Matilda. I have made some possible progress on her, but none that I can say I am positive about. Her last name could have been Robertson or Robinson or even Roberson.  Though her husband is also a brick wall for me, my cousins and I have been concentrating mostly on finding her roots. She is an mtdna ancestor of mine, K2b1a1a, but so far, that has turned up little. Still we keep plugging away. 

Answer 12

The current brick wall ancestor (and there are many) I'm working on is my 3rd-great-grandfather, Charles Henry Decker.  He was a Tioga County, PA miner and eventually a farmer, was of Welsh ancestry (unknown if through both parents or only one), and married Ada L. Dibble in Pennsylvania around 1871.  Their daughter, Nellie, was my great-great-grandmother.  I know little of the Decker family as Nellie died in childbirth when my great-grandmother was a toddler, and she was adopted by a cousin of her father's.  My most recent breakthrough concerning Charles's ancestry was being able to move him back a decade in the census-he was living in Troy, Bradford County, Pennsylvania as a laborer on the farm of D. R. Manning.  His wife, Ada, was also working as a servant in Troy at that time, which is the logical explanation for when and how they met.  Charles's whereabouts prior to 1870 are currently unknown.

Comments

Decker is a German surname, not Welsh, so it seems likely that his Welsh ancestry is either through his mother or a grandparent, if that helps.

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That's my current theory, too.  There are quite a few Decker families in the Tioga area (there's even a Decker Owen I was trying to investigate, the name Owen being a favorite in my great-great-grandmother's family).  It doesn't help that the censuses can't seem to agree on where he was born, though the majority of them indicate Pennsylvania.

Answer 13

My most persistent brick walls: Samuel Coomes, born circa 1807, most likely in Maryland (age 43 in the 1850 census, which says he was born in Virginia; age 52 in the 1860 census, which says he was born in Maryland; obituary says he was formerly of Baltimore, but also includes the note "Baltimore and Troy papers copy" which makes me wonder if he was resident in New York at some point). He died of smallpox in 1862 (there was an epidemic in Washington, DC, that year.) Coomes (also recorded as Combs, Coombs, etc) is a fairly distinctive Maryland surname, and he's almost certainly a descendant of Richard Coomes, transported to Maryland in 1676; DNA has not been significantly helpful, here, it mostly indicates that Samuel Coomes likely has an ancestor who married an Edelen, or that some of Samuel Coomes' ancestors' descendants married Edelens (Edelen is on my maternal side, and my parents have shared matches whose most common ancestral surname is Edelen).

Samuel Coomes' son Samuel W. Coomes married Mary Ann Craig, who was born circa 1834, most probably in Alexandria, Virginia; the only vague clue I have to her ancestry is the obituary of my great-great-grandmother, Mary Jane Coomes Handy, who died in Washington in 1899; the Alexandria Gazette ran a death notice, which said she was "well known in this city" and called her "a near relative of Mrs Sibby Padgett" (Sibby Graham Padgett was the wife of a sailmaker named John Padgett, and is most notable as the seamstress of the Marshall House Flag).

Answer 14

My most persistent brick wall comes when I attempt to work on my husband's paternal great-great grandfather,John Shawles. There are many stories surrounding his beginnings but no proof, to my knowledge, has ever been found. His birth place, his parents, and the actual spelling of his name are elusive.

Recently though, I have received new information by taking over profiles from a distant cousin who was a WikiTreer and recently deceased. Unfortunately for me most of the new information is in French which I do not speak or read. But through the kindness of my "adopted cousin" Nicole Duchesne together we may be able to break down this wall. (Thank you, Nicole!)

Answer 15

My closest brick wall is my great great grandfather John Wilson.
He was apparently born about 1849 in Lincolnshire, England but there are many candidates because the name is so common and I have been unable to find more about him.
He moved to the Hoo peninsula in Kent to work as a Brick maker in the Brick Works that had established there to supply the needs of the expanding metropolis of London and that is where he married. Then the family moved to Edmonton, Middlesex which also had a lot of Brick Works. So apart from being one of my brick wall he also contributed to a lot of brick walls.

Comments

One of the great things about this challenge is it makes you revisit people in your tree that you may have set aside for future research. All I knew about my John Wilson was his marriage in 1872 and records from the 1881 and 1891 census but I had been unable to find him after that time. I knew his wife probably died in 1897 but he and most of his children just disappeared after then.
I decided to update John's profile to improve the style and check if there was anything else I could add.
Using the GRO index I found three additional potential children of John and his wife who had not appeared in censuses so I decided to research each of them to see what I could find. As anticipated two of those died as infants but after some digging I found the other child in the 1911 census living with John and John's new wife (24 years his junior) and two more children and using that information I was able to find them in the 1901 census.
Although I haven't found more about John's ancestors it has helped me to fill in more details about his later life.

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I love the pun 

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Thanks Ray for the interesting answer, and you are certainly right about these challenges making one revisit people in our trees. I have been going through two boxes I had from my husband’s family; I had put them on the back burner.

Answer 16

My current biggest brick wall is William Livinston (or Livingstone), born in Ireland, most likely County Antrim, probably around 1800.  He would be my G3-grandfather on my maternal line.  I know from marriage records that a William Livingston(e) was father of two of my g2-grandmothers, Jane and Eliza.

I believe they were sisters and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to back this up.  However even going to the graveyard where both are buried and much searching of records and reaching out to those with likely-looking Livinston(e) trees on Family Search and Ancestry has yet to yield any useful results.  I live in hope that one day I'll make the breakthrough and find the proof about William, and ideally also his wife, my G3-grandmother.

Answer 17

I chose one of my brick wall ancestors to write about this week, my 4 x great grandfather John Smith, who is a brick wall because of his very common name and the fact he moved between parishes in Devon, England. 

Here is my blog post this week: 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 14 - Brick Wall - John Smith

Answer 18

I have worked on many brick walls, but, one of the walls that I broke by accident was this one. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Urquhart-689

I have worked hard on my Urquhart line and having the name Donald in there made it easier. I have spent a lot of time and money on Scotland's People tracking most of the Urquhart's in Inverness, Moray and Nairn shires. 

I thought that I had tracked this Donald to Nairnshire and hit a wall there with another Donald.  That is why there are unconnected Urquhart's in my watch list. Since I uploaded my gedcom, I found a death in Inverness for the first spouse of Donald Urquhart in the above profile. I knew by my research that both Nairn and Inverness were closely connected and was studying the Urquhart families in Inverness. This meant reading almost every Urquhart BMD in Inverness for the period in question, from Scotlands People. I made an access database of these documents with important information from the documents for easy searching. I then also drew up a chart of the families on a big piece of cardboard so I could look at them in one place. I was re reading some deaths and as everybody who has researched on Scotland's People will know, there is always a page of births, marriages and deaths. 

So while I was trying to work out a word on sheet of deaths in Inverness and scanning the same page for the word to see if it was written clearer I noticed another death. This death is on the profile above. This death meant that Donald had to be born a couple of years earlier than the Donald I had tracked and born in Nairnshire, for him to have an earlier spouse. So, this meant that he belonged to the earlier birth for a Donald found in Inverness. So , that is how I broke a brick wall by accident. It also meant that I connected closer to a close DNA match referred to on the above profile.

Answer 19

Mary Goff Benham, I have mentioned her before and I have been working on trying to identify her parents.  I did get what I think is a pretty good clue recently that she and her sister married brothers (Benham) on the same day in Vermont but so far no luck.  I have more brickwalls but she is the one I have been working on actively.

Answer 20

My very frustrating brick wall is my 2GGfather, Nicholas Edwards of Isle of Wight County, Va.  I don't mind brick walls as much if they are farther back in the generations, but this one is particularly frustrating to me, because it's fairly recent, and it's right here in America, where I SHOULD be able to find him.

He was born between 1809 and 1814, based on census records.  Either Isle of Wight County or Southampton, Ca. Va. I know the names of all his kids, and their spouses and their kids, but I can find nothing on any siblings or parents for him.  There were a bazillion Edwards families in IoW at the time, but none seem to connect.  He did swap some land (inherited by his wife) with a Joshua Edwards, but I have not been able to connect Joshua and Nick.  I've been to the actual IoW courthouse numerous times to look for records, and I have even looked through the guardianship books, in hopes of learning something.  But no.

Fortunately, with the advent of YDNA, we DO have some good matches, a couple with a genetic distance of 2, and several with matches of 3 and 5.  All of them are in either NC, SC, Tenn or Arkansas. We are all working together, and I have the family trees of each one of those matches.  So now I'm trying to find the nexus.  Problem is, they all have a brick wall, too.  Some of them go farther back than my NIck, but nothing to make the link.  So I'll keep looking and see if I can slog through all these trees to find my NIck's dad.

Comments

Probably a stupid question but do you have this link? http://vagenweb.org/isleofwight/

or this one: 

Isle of Wight County (Virginia) Historical Society

sorry about the bigger print, it's what copy and paste does. 

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Just about every town here in Virginia has a genealogical something in the library or at a "society". Unfortunately none of my ancestors are from here (so far).

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sorry about the bigger print, it's what copy and paste does. 

commented by T Counce

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You can fix that by highlighting what you just pasted and then clicking the remove formatting button.  :)

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Thank you...I didn't know how and I didn't know what that was for :)

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I experiment with new things.   One day curiosity will kill this cat.

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OH, I hope not 

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Yes, thank you.  I do.  They have a lot of info on their site, and most of it has been done by very interested locals.  Until the 70’s, IoW County was very insular, and many of the folks there were descendants of the same old families.  Many related in multiple ways.  But with the “globalization” of everything, that has changed.  I’m not sure that much new stuff has been added to their site in quite a while.  But I am a member of their organization, and I make a “pilgrimage” to IoW several times a year to dig around even more.  So far, no discovery of names, but I did locate a “Century Farm” in the country that has been in the family of Nick’s inlaws for at least 100 years.  I’m going out there soon to talk to the current owners and see if I can learn anything.