Getting through the brick wall. Any tips?

[OnionPatch]

I'm still very new to this (as you can see from some of my posts here. :blush:) So I'd like to ask for some advice from you seasoned genealogists, please.

I've found so much info on Ancestry.com via the census records but most of you probably know that once you get back to the early 1800's the census records are much less useful. So what do you do when you can't find the parents of an ancestor who lived in the late 1700's/early 1800's, especially a woman if you don't know her maiden name? Are marriage licenses a good place to look? Did they usually list the parents of the bride? I'd like to request some from various courthouses but don't want to waste my money if there is no new info in them. What other sorts of records do you look for once you've exhausted the census records? I've searched through tons of the old county histories for the areas and found some really good stuff, but I've finally exhausted them as well. Apparently, my mystery ancestors weren't prominent citizens, and so weren't mentioned.

So, tips for the newbie, anyone? They will be appreciated.

[fudge stripe cookays]

1. What was the name of the guy she married?

The one you're looking for the maiden name for, I mean.

I've had VERY good luck with published family histories for the name you DO know. For instance, a man named John Hughes. See what types of published family histories are out there for various Hughes families. Then check to see if any of them were in the area where your family settled. They will often times provide the bride's name and the children...sometimes birth and death dates or marriage dates.

I'm not sure what your best bet would be for a SoCal resource, but I know Sacramento has a lot at the state library, and a couple of folks on here have recommended Sutro up in SF. You need to find a decent library that has a genealogy section. They usually have a fair number of both of these types of volumes. I'm trying to remember what they had in L.A. I visited downtown branch in 2007, but cannot remember if they had a decent genealogy section, since i spent most of my time retrieving obits from the periodical area.

If you have any questions, just PM. I started hardcore about 3 years ago after dabbling since about 1999. I'm now 1000 pages into a book about my Smiths that is my life's work. Let me know if you need any advice.

:hi: fsc

[OnionPatch]

4. I did finally find one name by searching on the husband.

He appeared in a few little local histories I found online. Apparently, he started a sawmill and was big with the church. Finally the wife's maiden name appeared in brackets. Hurrah! Now to find her father......

Thanks for the offer of help. I'll be glad to take you up on it. Would a library in California have much useful information on a family in Pennsylvania? I'm the only one in my direct line who ventured further west than Ohio.

Very cool about your book. Smith must be a hard name to research, it being so common. I thought Wilson was bad. I'm trying to find a Wilson, but there are just so many.

I jumped into genealogy just this past holiday season, sort of by accident, but I'm hooked now! I'm having a blast with this. I hope I don't get too hardcore. My husband is already starting to look at my piles of notes and files with some concern. ;)

[CBHagman]

2. When in doubt, get some documentation.

Yes, you can be disappointed if the marriage license/obituary/city directory listing/death certificate arrives with no new data for you -- or, worse yet, errors, as I've experienced -- but you're better off accumulating available documents than not.

And there's more than one way to come up with a maiden name. I found out my great-great-grandmother's through the obituary of her youngest child.

As for what was contained in marriage licenses, it varied. Remember that the age of the bride might have played a role (that is, the father would have to give consent and sign the document) and that some marriages were recorded on ledgers without a lot of extra information about the couple and their respective parents.

Here are some ideas to consider:

-- obituaries
-- city directories
-- marriage licenses
-- wills
-- birth certificates of offspring
-- church records
-- family Bibles
-- online genealogy message boards for surnames, ethnic groups, towns and regions


Good luck! :hi:

[OnionPatch]

5. I think I will send for some records.

I do know where the people in question lived and died. I'm starting to get back into the 1700s, though, and the info is getting more scarce, it seems. But thanks for all those great ideas. I'm going to try all of them.

[CBHagman]

7. Yes, that's a challenge.

Obviously the further back you go, the fewer official rules there were for keeping records. Still, I hope you get some results.

Newspaper accounts might prove useful, and of course there's always the technique of searching for more information about anyone connected to your ancestors -- neighbors, employers, offspring, etc.

On edit: If you haven't turned to a state or local genealogy society yet, consider doing so. They can be a great resource, and even if they do their work with volunteers, they can sometimes prove more responsive than, say, church or city hall officials.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Apart from censuses, there are registers of wills in many states

also church records, cemeteries (there are quite a few local genealogy sites with transcriptions of gravestones from cemeteries in a given area, which can be quite useful), marriage registers (which in some states go back to the colonial era), and so on. Note that if you have any Southern ancestors, this may all become exponentially harder (the Union Army burning courthouses in a lot of places makes Southern genealogy a good deal more difficult); also, if any of your ancestors lived on the old frontier in the early part of the 19th century (Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Alabama, etc) records are going to be sparser than in the original 13 states.

[OnionPatch]

6. They're mostly from Pennsylvania and Ohio.

This line I'm currently researching, anyway. And they lived on the frontier of Ohio and western Pennsylvania in the 1700's, so it is starting to get hard to find records. At least for this particular branch I'm stuck on. Many of my other lines seemed to tie into existing family trees, I suppose because they're Puritans and Quakers with lots of descendants. But this side of the family just got off the ship and disappeared into the forest, it seems! Funny, the old cemetery list is the only place I can find them. That and the old censuses that list only the head of household and age ranges. So I have possibilities and theories, but nothing concrete.

[fudge stripe cookays]

8. This place was really helpful.

I needed a bunch of obituaries for the area around Tiffin, Ohio last year, and found them in my search for resources. They might have some good PA or OH stuff:

http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/resources/display.asp?id=401&subj=resources