Some Tips for Overcoming Brick Walls in Genealogy Research
With some examples from Guysborough County, NS
By Peggy Feltmate
I was helping a friend with some approaches to “brick walls” in her research and some of these ideas could be useful to you as well!
First of all, spelling of surnames was NOT writ in stone. So Dieckhoff can be Dickoff or Deckiff or Dycoff. I found one of my Feltmate people spelled by the new minister as Phelpmate! Remember this when checking alphabetical lists of surnames. Check every possible spelling –and a few impossible ones, too.
First names? Christian often became Christopher, Valentine became Walter, Mary became Molly or Polly, Elizabeth became Betsy or Betty, Harmon became Herman and vice versa.
Don’t dismiss a record because the date looks to be too recent. For example a death date of 1874 may seem to be NOT what you are looking for at all, but if the person was 79 when they died, then they must have been born in 1795. And that significantly narrows the number of people that the deceased could have been born to.
Sometimes you can go at your problem in a roundabout way, through the siblings. For example if you seek confirmation of the parents of your ancestor, check all of his or her siblings. A death record of a sibling may give the father’s name, and then if you can prove that your person is indeed a sister or brother, then you have “circumstantial evidence” if not absolute primary-source proof of the father.
Sometimes witnesses to events provide vital clues, especially in marriage records. Witnesses could very likely be a sister, brother or parent. Baptisms too. (Death records not so much help)
Who did the siblings marry? Check into their marriages. For example Sarah Dort married Christian Sneider, her brother Valentine Jr married Eve Sneider, her brother Peter married Susannah Sneider. Research them. Were they all of the same Sneider family? If two of the marriages took place on the same date, it could have been a double wedding ceremony because they were siblings. I am surprised by the number of times “two brothers married two sisters” has come up on my own family tree. Look at the census returns and land records. Were they marrying “the girl next door”? Again, who witnessed each of the marriages? Same people? Check the original church record, sometimes the minister makes a valuable remark that does not make its way into the index or transcription.
Check the local township book. In Guysborough County I know of the Manchester book (NSARM, “Twshp of Manchester and Town and Township of Guysborough in Co of Sydney , births marriages and deaths from 1782 – 1860, returns of the lands as Located To the Different Corps 1784, 1785, 1790”, microfilm, filed as “Places, Manchester Township and Guysborough Township” at the time I looked at it) which gave me the marriage and birth of Valentine Dort and his son Christian; I also know of the Stormont Township Book which gave me the names and birthdates of Loyalist Frederick Feltmate’s children; and there is also the Wilmot book (Wilmot being an early name for Canso). Check the Guysborough County GenWeb Project site (freepages.rootsweb.com/~guys/genealogy/index.html) for these transcriptions, and you can also see the Wilmot (Canso) township records transcription here on this site too.
Land records are another source of genealogical info that are often overlooked. For example I found a deed where my John F Feltmate deeded land to one Joseph Uloth who it turns out was his grandson. Another deed that laid out relationships clearly was the one from the Guysborough Land Records Office under Guys Co Deeds, Vol H, p 600, Feb 10, 1830, between “Thomas Cutler of Township Guys. Esq and Elizabeth his wife and Christian Dort of South Side Chedabucto Bay, yeoman, that Thomas Cutler for 25 pounds will sell Christian Dort 150 acres at Half Way Cove and being the westerly half of a tract sold to Valentine Dort the father of Christian Dort, deed date Feb 20, 1806… and bound on west by lands late in the occupation of Dan’l Williams now deceased and in east by lands now in the occupation of John Dort the brother of said Christian Dort and on north by Half Way Cove containing 150 acres and being the same the said Christian Dort doth now and for several years last past hath resided upon. ” So here in one deed we know that Thomas Cutler’s wife’s name was Elizabeth, that Daniel Williams died sometime before Feb 10, 1830, and that Valentine Dort was the father of both Christian Dort and John Dort, and that Christian Dort had lived at this location for “several years”.
And if you are in the Guysborough Records Office don’t forget that they also have wills and estate papers and court judgements there too. All beautifully indexed. I believe the office is reachable by email and by phone. Also the Guysborough Historical Society has a Facebook page. It is always worth checking on whether anyone has done work on a particular family, so that you can “piggyback” your own research. Did your Jamieson ancestor marry an O’Neil? Well, has anyone done any work on the O’Neils? If so, what did They find out? And did they deposit their findings at the GHS Courthouse Museum? (And if you have findings, have YOU deposited your information at the GHS for other people to access?)
Diaries and memoirs and of course news clippings are useful. Check out The Families of TorBay website in their Misc. section for a good number of these that might just provide the clue you need.
Might someone have applied to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) in the USA or to the United Empire Loyalists Association in Canada for membership? If so, they would have submitted research confirming their direct link back to the ancestor in question. Perhaps you can piggy-back onto that research. This was the case with my Duncan forebears as there was a whole branch who fought on the American side whereas my Duncan brother came up to Shelburne County NS and married into the Loyalist Perry family. The DAR research opened the door to the rest of the Duncan family and provided the jumping off point for finding the earlier generations. (Fortunately a kind researcher deposited these Duncan findings in a Shelburne County repository, for me to find!)
I noticed that sometimes the middle name of one of my people changed, and discovered that locally a Peter George Smith (I made that up) appeared in a record like an obituary as Peter Ira Smith. Turns out this is due to the local naming practice of putting in the father’s name so you know which Peter Smith they are talking about. So Peter was the son of Ira. Another quirk is that that a lot of Guysborough County people seemed to go by their middle name. One reason was that some of the RC priests felt strongly that a saint’s name should go first. So if you brought your child to be baptized as Herman Joseph, the priest might insist on the name being Joseph Herman. And forever after the family called the child by his (apparently) second name Herman. That being said, I have found plenty of Protestants in the old Guysborough Co records that used their second names. I spent a long time looking for information on Jerusha Feltmate only to eventually discover that she was the Annie Feltmate I kept running into. If I had paid closer attention I would have seen that her baptismal record named her Jerusha Ann and I should have been open to looking for her under BOTH those forenames. It does complicate research at times. Do be flexible and broaden your horizons when you are looking for a particular person.
Best of luck in your searching!
Peggy