Before you can do anything else to bust a brick wall, there are two things you must have, information and knowledge. This sounds really simple and it shoukd be. But people rush ahead and get stuck for years because they don't START with these absolute basics.
Genealogy knowledge is 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. But you don't need all the knoweldge, you need the right knowledge. Otherwise, you spend all your time learning and never actually do genealogy. Start with the right information about your brick wall and you can target the knowledge needed to bust it.
Core Genealogy Skills for When You Hit a (Genealogy) Brick Wall
There are two types of genealogy knowledge (or information and knowledge) you must have to solve a difficult problem and keep growing your family tree.
- Information about your exact brick wall.
That means you must know the details of your brick wall. Often you need to break the problem into sub-problems as you work. Whether this is "knowledge" or "information" depends on how you look at it. But what's vital is to define the exact problem you are trying to solve instead of throwing spaghetting at the wall and hoping something sticks. We never talk about "cooking" our family tree so just forget something as hit or miss as spaghetti-tossing.
Defining your brick wall, or learning the needed details, are so important to busting a difficult brick wall it is the first step of our Brick Wall Solution Roadmap and has been an entire lesson in some of our online courses. It seems so simple but doing a bad job can be the difference in years of work.
This post isn't going into how to define your brick wall. That's covered in the Roadmap and its email education series. It is the purpose of step 1 and the caveated step 6. Step 1 is defining and step 6 gives you the option to refine your brick wall definition. Remember, this information/knowledge can also be identifying a sub-problem (i.e. redefining your problem) so you can research to gain more specific information you'll need before moving forward.
(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.
The information that is your problem definition is one aspect but knowing what enough information or what kind of information is part of the "knowing how to do genealogy well."
Here at The Occasional Genealogist, we like to call doing genealogy well, "great genealogy." Doing great genealogy means you seek the knowledge needed for your specific brick wall but also you have great foundational skills. One of those foundational skills, or a set of skills, is the genealogy research process.
The entire Brick Wall Solution Roadmap is my explanation of the genealogy research process. Step 1 (defining or analyzing your problem) is included in the generic research process and in my version because you must gather enough specific knowledge about your specific problem to make progress. The other portions of the process and Roadmap 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.
The Brick Wall Solution Roadmap is a map to doing great genealogy for busting a brick wall as opposed to starting a new problem. The generic research process is for genealogy research in general and therefore isn't quite as specific. If you were researching a person or topic for the first time, you'd do the same actions but not necessarily in the same order as the Roadmap describes.
When you skip the key steps from the Roadmap or research process (or misunderstand the research process), 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. With the Roadmap, you've got the basic knowledge for any brick wall. You can do this!
In addition to foundational genealogy knowledge, there are some other knowledge aspects you need.
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.
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.
Here's how this may happen...
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.
- 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, I had it at my fingertips (that means 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.
Why Do "Great Genealogy?"
There's another reason you need to try and do great genealogy in general.
At The Occasional Genealogist, we specialize in helping genealogists 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. But genealogy is far more forgiving than construction or cooking where a bad foundation can be destructive and requires 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.
You can't start out genealogy as a great genealogist. Everyone has to gather information and build their skills. Yes, some people start with related skills but there are so many specifics to genealogy, you can only hone them by doing genealogy. You can read this post to learn a mindset shift that might help you embrace the fact you can't just "build" a family tree. Everyone starts as a beginner and has to work with what they have, both skills and information. Over time you will naturally be able to improve what you've done if you work towards doing great genealogy.
Try this post about the genealogy research process as well as learning about The Brick Wall Solution Roadmap.
My book, Essential Skills for the Occasional Genealogist goes in-depth on the skills that help you work towards that great process that allows you to research with whatever skills you have today, but progress and improve both your skills and past research. Learn more about it, here.
