Genealogy Research – Researching Ancestors

Much of ancestry research is spent going “back” or “up” in a family tree, looking for more and more distant ancestors.  In addition to the problems with finding and interpreting census records and other information, there are some particular problems that one often has to deal with.

The 1850 “Wall” – the available census records from 1850 through 1940 (the most recent available – by law census records are not released until 72 years after they were collected) – are similar in structure, although the questions vary from census to census.  However, prior to 1850 the format was quite different.  There was only a single line for each household, with the name of the primary person recorded.  All members of the household were recorded as a series of tick marks by age-range and gender (i.e. males under 5, males 5-10, etc.).  So the husband, wife, children, and any others in the house such as a mother-in-law were just a bunch of tick marks.  The age ranges also varied from time to time.  This makes it very difficult to trace family members.

The missing 1890 census – the results from the 1890 census were lost in a fire in 1921 (the story is actually quite a bit more complex than that, but the fact remains that they are no longer available).  Since census data is one of the main sources of ancestry information, it’s bad enough to have to make ten-year leaps to trace an ancestor.  But a twenty-year leap is much too far as it’s nearly a full generation.  The only “saving grace” is that since it is only a little over 100 years ago there are enough other records that one can often manage to make that leap by bridging with the other available records.

Maiden names – One of the difficulties in ancestor research is finding out the maiden name of a married woman.  You may know that your great-great-grandparents were John and Sarah Jones, and you may know what state they were born in, but what was Sarah’s maiden name.  If they were each 22 years old in the 1880 census, where can you find them in the 1870 census?  John can be found by looking for a 12-year old John Jones, but it’s much more difficult to locate a 12-year old Sara [unknown].  Unless you have some other source of data, such as a marriage certificate, it’s very difficult.  One resource you may have is that some census records list the state that the person and their parents were born in, so you need to be sure that any potential individual you find has the same characteristics.

Family trees – it’s tempting to rely on family trees that have been built by others – saving all the difficult research of repeating what someone else has done.  However, one should still always check out the work, to see if you can replicate their research results.  People are often taking short cuts and just adding any likely information to their tree.  As a result these trees may contain inconsistent results (a parent who died before their children were born, multiple spouses due to two individuals with the same or similar names getting combined, etc.).  Always check your sources.