Research Update

I’ve been working this week on my family line. I’ve been hitting a few of the brick walls to see if anymore information is available using a couple of resources. I usually first use Ancestry’s “My Ancestry” family tree section, since I can browse right to the individual I want to use. All of their information is already entered on the site, so their site automatically browses for any new documents. I usually check those out and “attach” them if they are correct. After that, I usually search for any documents that may match that person. This way I can look through all of the documents that may match, but aren’t that close. A lot of the time I’ll find a document with a misspelling or date error.

If that doesn’t help much, I’ll usually visit the USGenWeb site to find the county website to see if they have any other information, or even another researcher looking for that surname. For locations outside oft the US, I usually check out the WorldGenWeb sites, but these are usually pretty difficult since most are in their native language. Google Translate can only help so much.

My last resort is usually message boards or mailing lists. Sometimes I find that just emailing a few people with a question on the family line can bring out a huge gold mine of information. This is what happened with my Van Parijs line.

When I’m stuck, sometimes I’ll just do a Google search on some key words and run across something. This happened just last night when I just searched for “Schwabendorf,” which is a German location in my maternal line.  Even though the search was missing the surname surname associated with this location, “MUHM,” I found a page called “Muhm” that had information that may be tied to my family line. So, give it a shot, who knows what you’ll find.

What do you do when researching brick walls?