Ideas for Dealing with an Impasse in Research

After participating in Randy Seaver's most recent Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in which we were invited to write about our most frustrating research challenge, I decided to edit, update, and publish this post based on one I wrote a number of years ago.  (Reminders are good, right?) 

When I come upon an impasse in a family history search I often fall back and consider possibilities.  I prefer to call it an impasse — just a little hitch in progress until I figure out the next steps, the next places to search for a solution.  These are my suggestions for next steps when dealing with an impasse.  

First, I consider all the records I have — civil (census, birth, marriage, death, court records, etc.), parish, undocumented family records, and any others — and ask myself these questions.

• Have I carefully reviewed every document for every scrap of information and recorded it?
• Have I missed anything in those documents and, if so, what?  How will it help me?
  
• Did I misunderstand or misread some record or some information given to me?
• Was the record from a different time period with words I don't understand?  If so, I find the definitions so I do understand, and if I still don't, I ask for help.
  
• Was any of the information I received transcribed from another document/record and, if so, how many times had it been transcribed from the original (knowing that every transcription allows for further misinformation to be passed along)?  Can I find the original?
  
• Which information that I've received might be inaccurate?  Undocumented family records and word-of-mouth information are high on this list in one line of my family.

 
Next I consider the possibilities.

• If there was a fee to register the birth/marriage/death to create a civil document, might the event have been registered later than it actually happened?  Might it have been given an inaccurate date so it falls within the registration deadline?  I can imagine this could happen if the registrants didn't have money to pay the fee at the time of the event.
• If an ancestor had to go to a courthouse to record an event, how far did they live from the courthouse?  Would it have been a challenge for them to get there to record the event?
  
• If a child was born out of wedlock, might that have prevented the baby from being baptized/christened?  If so, there may not be a parish record for the event.
• If a child was born out of wedlock, was his surname listed as the mother's maiden name, or the father's surname?  I should check both surnames, especially if the first search doesn't reveal a record.
  
• If the child was born out of wedlock, did the child's birth require civil registration? 
  
• If the parents moved (or the county boundaries moved) between the time of their marriage and the birth of any of their children, which locations would need to be checked? 
• If the problem is a marriage and I'm unable to find a marriage record, might there at least be marriage banns amongst the parish records or a note in a gossipy local newspaper? 
• If it's a death record I'm unable to find, have I searched records in all possible death locations?
  
• What other records, both formal and informal, might help me discover information for an event in an ancestor's life?

Most important:  I need to make notes as I review the documents and records I have.  I can't rely on my memory.  I note

• the probable date of an event
• the records I have and important information in them
• any connections I see between records such as locations, possible relationships, events near the same dates, etc.
• the next records to search
• the next place to search
  
• that wisp of an idea that fluttered through my mind, no matter how improbable, unlikely, or impossible it seemed
  

A list like this and notes like these almost become a to-do list and will be similar to a research log in advance of the research.

I'm sure you, dear readers, have plenty of other suggestions for next steps when dealing with an impasse and I hope you'll share them!

—Nancy.

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