by Juliana Szucs
Write It Up
I’ve been writing about family history for more than twenty-five years, and I can tell you one thing: nothing opens your eyes like writing about your research. I will not embarrass myself by telling you how many times this practice has shot a big old hole in a working research theory. Yet, just as often, it has opened new doors.
Use a notebook or your computer as a sounding board as you try to sort out what is holding you back. As ideas develop, try not to abandon the exercise completely. Instead, make notes as you think of things. Write all your thoughts—wild and not-so-wild—and then, when you’re done, set out to prove or disprove any theories you came up with while writing. You may discover that the real problem isn’t a lack of records, but an assumption you’ve been carrying unchallenged for years.
Study the History
I know I say this all the time, but it’s tried and true: learn the history of the area where your ancestors lived. Find out when it was settled and by whom. Note prominent early settlers and the groups that moved into the area at various times.
Pay attention to economic patterns, transportation routes, land availability, religious institutions, and political changes. If your ancestor disappears from records for a decade, history may explain why. War, migration booms, boundary changes, epidemics, and religious or ethnic persecution all leave genealogical fingerprints if we know where to look.
It’s been said that newspapers are the diary of a community. Turn to them for insights into what was happening in the areas where your research is stumbling. Instead of searching for names, read the stories. Were there biases in the area that may have impacted your ancestors? You may find clues in local events, like a factory closing, or weather events like a prolonged drought or catastrophic hurricane. Sometimes we just don’t know what we’re looking for until we start browsing.
Individual membership in the National Genealogical Society (NGS) comes with free access to NewspaperArchive. (Just log in and access is available from the Learning Center dropdown menu or the link above.) If no newspaper exists for your ancestor’s community, search for a town, township, county name, or the name of a nearby larger city. You may find your ancestor’s community mentioned in papers based in other areas.
Look for Commonalities in Census Records
Browsing your ancestor’s neighborhood in the census can reveal trends you’ll never notice by focusing on a single household. Check for people in the area with a birthplace that matches an ancestor’s birthplace elsewhere in your research.
In later censuses, look at immigration dates for people who share your ancestor’s ethnicity. Do multiple families arrive within a narrow window of time? Do surnames repeat across households, or are you finding surnames that match those of legal witnesses or religious sponsors? These patterns may point to chain migration, shared origins, or extended kinship networks that don’t show up neatly in pedigrees.
Religious Communities
Religious communities are often communities within communities, especially for immigrants and minority groups. Churches, synagogues, and other faith institutions served as social anchors, record keepers, and support systems.
Catholic research, in particular, has taught me this lesson repeatedly. Parish and diocesan boundaries don’t always align with civil ones, and families often traveled farther than expected to attend a church that matched their language or tradition. In some cases, the opposite is true; an absence of churches for an ancestor’s faith may have led them to a similar congregation from another sect or a different religion entirely.
Baptismal sponsors, marriage witnesses, and burial locations can reveal relationships that civil records never document. If your ancestor seems to vanish from the civil record, ask yourself whether you’ve truly exhausted the religious ones.
Flex Your Research Muscles
Sometimes when I’m stumped, I’ll move on to an unrelated case. Don’t have one? Pick a different random family in the area and research the heck out of them—extra credit if they’re in your ancestor’s FAN club (Friends, Associates, Neighbors).
Even someone unrelated at all might help. Grab an obituary or census record with some solid information and see how far you can get. If you’re working in the same area as your problematic ancestor, you may discover record sets, repositories, or research techniques that then apply directly to your own case. At the very least, you’ll stay sharp and avoid burnout.
Education
Sometimes breaking out of a rut requires new information. When we can’t find what we may be missing in records, we often need to learn something new. A new methodology, a record type we’ve avoided, or historical context we’ve overlooked may open doors to unexpected avenues of research.
The good news is that genealogical education is easier to find than ever. Webinars, conferences, study groups, institutes, and society programs offer targeted learning for every experience level.
At NGS, it’s literally what we do: education and preservation—and we’re here to help. Take time to browser through our website. You’ll discover great publications including NGS Magazine, The National Genealogical Society Quarterly, and the Upfront blog. NGS also has published many excellent books on specific research topics as well as guidebooks for research across America. Other NGS educational opportunities include workshops and online courses that allow you to work at your own pace.
If that’s not enough online learning for you, ConferenceKeeper can keep you abreast of many more learning opportunities in the genealogy community, both virtual and in-person.
And, of course, the NGS Family History Conference provides opportunities for you to learn from the best in the fields as you network with other genealogists who are traveling the same research paths you are. Registration is open for this year’s event in Fort Wayne, home to the world-class genealogy collections and access available at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library.
When research stalls, investing in yourself as a genealogist may be the most productive research step you take all year.
