Maybe your family tree is stuck because you're trying to "build" it. If you haven't had this genealogy revelation, it might just change the way you research.
Let's talk about your genealogy knowledge. It's the foundation for building your family tree, right? Records aren't helpful if you don't know what they mean or how to use the information, after all. Before I can explain what to do instead of "building" a family tree, you've got to make sure you know what it takes to continue doing genealogy (knowledge, it takes knowledge, but let's be specific).
Core Genealogy Skills for When You Hit a (Genealogy) Brick Wall
There are two types of genealogy knowledge you must have to solve a difficult problem and keep growing your family tree.
- Knowledge related to your specific brick wall.
That means you must know the details of your brick wall. Often you need to break the problem into sub-problems which require even more specialized knowledge.
This is the purpose of step 1 and our caveated step 6 in our Brick Wall Solution Roadmap. (These steps are defining and refining your brick wall definition, i.e. knowing the details of your problem).
(You can request a free copy of the Roadmap and its educational email series, here.)
The other type of genealogy knowledge is more general.
- You need to know how to do genealogy well.
Here at The Occasional Genealogist, we like to call this "great genealogy." This also has aspects that are specific to your brick wall but mostly means doing great genealogy in a general sense.
The Brick Wall Solution Roadmap is a map to doing great genealogy for busting a brick wall. If you were researching a person or topic for the first time, not after getting stuck, you'd do the same actions but not necessarily in the same order as the Roadmap describes. It's called a "Roadmap" for a reason. Steps 2 through 5 are the general steps you always take, if your goal is doing great genealogy, when researching a brick wall. Skipping these steps results in less than great genealogy.
The entire Roadmap is my explanation of the genealogy research process. Step 1 is included in the generic version and in my version because you must gather enough specific knowledge about your specific problem to make progress. The other portions are the tried-and-true actions that keep you organized and progressing no matter how complicated your brick wall is and no matter how long it takes to bust the brick wall.
I didn't just decide you need to do these actions. These are concepts developed over generations of genealogists researching and getting stuck and then solving their problem. It doesn't matter that you use a computer. The core concepts are the same--you just don't have to write everything down by hand.
When you skip the key steps from the Roadmap, you unnecessarily fumble around with the same brick wall for years. I created The Brick Wall Solution Roadmap so you'd know the most basic steps for great genealogy. You've got the basic knowledge for any brick wall. You can do this!
There's something else you may need to consider when you're facing a brick wall and this is where we start to get to "building" versus... something else.
Take a Step from Behind a Brick Wall
There's some good news about genealogy you might not realize. You don't need to start by doing great genealogy to find success. In fact, you must practice to progressively improve. The goal is great genealogy. The most important thing is to work towards improving.
If you only try to do less-than-mediocre genealogy, you'll only be successful with simple problems. Whenever you encounter something harder, you'll become frustrated. That's no fun.
Here's something you need to realize... There are some problems that appear to be brick walls at first. When you start following the research process and aim for great genealogy, you may find you can simply step around the brick wall. Sometimes it is that simple.
With your beginner-level skills, you encountered a brick wall. When you made an effort to improve your skills, you discovered it only looked like a wall, it was really just a turn in the road.
(If you've ever seen the 1986 movie Labyrinth, directed by Jim Henson, there's a scene as Sarah begins to enter the Labyrinth where she is facing a brick wall and doesn't know what to do. It turns out to be an illusion. It's two brick walls with a path between them. Once you make an effort to look, it isn't a wall, it's an entrance. I'm not sure there's a more perfect visual analogy for a genealogy brick wall!)
Not all brick walls are solved so simply, but you always want to do a quick mental survey of your genealogy skills to make sure your brick wall isn't just an illusion (solved by simply looking at it in a different way).
So let me recap the points I want you to realize before we get to the "instead" you might want to try.
- You need to know what specific brick wall you are trying to bust.
- You need specific genealogy knowledge related to your specific brick wall.
- You need general genealogy knowledge which progressively improves.
- What appears to be a brick wall isn't always one. Especially when returning to a "brick wall" double check your improved skills haven't revealed it's an illusion.
Sorry, Your Genealogy Brick Wall is Really Hard!
The bad news with genealogy is, you have zero control over whether you encounter easy or hard problems in your research. Some people have a family tree full of tough problems, others have ones that are easy for generations. Most contain a mix of easy and hard genealogy problems. Eventually everyone's tree becomes harder to research.
Most genealogists encounter their first few brick walls because the problem is harder than their skill level. I've found the answer to several 20-year brick walls (other people's) in five minutes because they simply made no effort to learn something new. Twenty years they were stuck! If I solved them in five minutes, it means the knowledge needed was so simple it was at the tip of my fingertips (I knew what records could help and where to find them online--and they were searchable!).
In these cases, the brick wall holder made no effort to learn what kind of record could solve their problem or where to find the type of record. Their brick walls were really illusions. They did stop their research progress but they weren't a wall that had to be climbed, broken down, or took miles to go around. It was more like a pile of bricks you could go around.
If you're reading this, you are unlikely to have created a brick wall out of a situation that simple. My point is, "brick wall" doesn't automatically indicate a universal difficulty level. It is a brick wall that stopped YOU on the path you were following to build your family tree. Improving your genealogy skills should always be a part of how you try to solve the problem. It could be your general skills or it could be skills specific to the problem.
There's another reason you need to try and do great genealogy in general.
This is The Occasional Genealogist. We specialize in helping genealogist short on time. But "shortcuts" can be misapplied to genealogy and result in "cheats." That's because, unlike most projects we encounter in life, genealogy is never really done and builds on itself forever. Making a mistake now can impact future genealogy significantly.
Having a good foundation is so important just as in any "building" project (whether that's construction or cooking or even painting).Once again, you won't do great genealogy as soon as you start. Doing your best is the best you can do. If that's what you try to do, you'll improve as you do more genealogy. Genealogy is far more forgiving than construction or cooking where a bad foundation can be destruction and starting over.
Step 2 of The Brick Wall Solution Roadmap is the key to finding and fixing any problems you've caused in your research in the past. Step 2 is reviewing your past work on the specific project you are focusing on (focus is a large part of this because you want to review everything related to that problem--but not everything you've ever done).
Consistently reviewing your works addresses problems you caused because of a lack of knowledge or experience and also problems because you simply hadn't found information you have now uncovered.
And there is why "building" your family tree might be what is tripping you up.
Genealogy is more like a quest than a building project. You can't just gather all the needed supplies and build your family tree like you would a house. You will come across your "supplies" as you go and you have limited control over what you find and when you find it. Once again, every genealogist just has to do their best with what they have.
You may have thought you were building your family tree but you're really questing for the truth about your family history (sounds so much more exciting, right?).
Let's recap what you need to put together to think about your research in the right way.
- You need to know what specific brick wall you are trying to bust. (where is this part of the quest taking you?)
- You need specific genealogy knowledge related to your specific brick wall. (what tools do you know you'll need to get started? fighting a water monster is not the same as a fire-breathing dragon and working on a French 19th century problem isn't the same as a 20th century U.S. problem)
- You need general genealogy knowledge which progressively improves. (I don't advise questing if you can't survive in the woods for a night or two, not everyone has those skills, just as not everyone knows what a research log, plan, notes, or report is)
- What appears to be a brick wall isn't always one. Especially when returning to a "brick wall" double check your improved skills haven't revealed it's an illusion. (do you give up on the quest as soon as you see a brick wall or are you willing to investigate, first?)
- You won't have all the knowledge (tools) and skills you'll need from the start. You want to build them through experience and learning. (did you ever play Legend of Zelda? that place was covered in wise-people you had to learn from or you couldn't progress--if only genealogy was as easy; one or more wise-people everywhere you went, find a sword in a bush or under a barrel!)
- You are meant to find what you need as you go. But you also need to know how your needs change (that's reviewing in genealogy, I don't have a good quest analogy, you review others failures to learn not to look at Medusa or listen to the Sirens when you discover that's a part of the quest you can't skip; genealogists also learn from others' experiences but they didn't usually end up dead because of it).
So to wrap this up, you don't have what you need at the start. You'll need to look for it along the way, both through research and education. When talking about resources, genealogy is more like a video game quest where you can hold an infinite amount of supplies and weapons. Don't try and limit yourself to a reasonable amount of resources because no non-genealogist would consider the amount of information we hold on to reasonable. That means you'll need to be organized and also refresh your memory (refresh with reviewing--it's an important step in genealogy).
Genealogy is not like a real-life quest or a video game, really, it's somewhere in between. It won't be neat and tidy like a fictional story but it's not a matter of life or death. You can stop and even start over, although there's no need to start over. Just review and tidy up what you did before you knew the best way to slay the dragon was with a tickle to the belly instead of slashing with a sword.
If you've made it to the end of this post, you've got what it takes for genealogy questing. You've got to keep learning and collecting what you find, even if you're not sure you'll need it. You can't expect things to continue to work or progress the way they did at the start. Part of what keeps us coming back to genealogy is the challenge, it's a puzzle to solve, not just a story to uncover. It's a lot easier to pay someone to uncover the story for you if you don't like the challenge. You can do this!
Try this post about the genealogy research process as well as learning about The Brick Wall Solution Roadmap.
