Brick Walls Come in all Sizes -- How big is yours?

 I have always been in disagreement with the common family history and genealogy analogy to brick walls. Often, the term is applied to research situations that have appeared to reach a dead end. However, in real life, a brick wall is easily scaled or, even from a practical standpoint, can be knocked down quite easily using the proper equipment. But rather to continue to denigrate the use of the term "brick walls" in the genealogical context. I think it would be helpful to examine the real-life end-of-line situations that are common to every single effort to extend a pedigree. 

First of all, a short mention of the time-wasting efforts to extend a pedigree back to Adam or some royal ancestor. See my posts for "Are you related to royalty?" and "Back to Back to Adam" You might also want to review my post called "The end of an ancestral line: A Significant Genealogical Challenge"

The most common example of a brick wall involves a fixation with finding only birth, marriage, and death (BMD) records and relying almost exclusively on census records. This issue is particularly evident from the content of the sources cited on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The goal of extending a pedigree back to the early 1800s can usually be accomplished using records that fall into these two categories. It is also apparent from examining hundreds, if not thousands, of entries in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree that most of the research done by users ends when a person is identified using these records. Unfortunately, reliance on BMD and census records ends in the early 1800s, and any further research relies on less easily obtained record sets. 

The next category of brick walls is also extremely common. This category refers to an unrealistic fixation on the identity of a particular ancestor. The genealogist or family historian focuses an extraordinarily large amount of attention to one person rather than extending their research to a community of people. This is usually called FAN or Cluster Research. In the vast majority of cases, this ancestor is an immigrant from one area of the world to another. See "Immigration: The Greatest Genealogical Challenge (three parts)" Over the years, I have probably written hundreds of articles about the difficulty of determining the origin of an immigrant. See "How does an indentured servant, redemptioner, or enslaved ancestor affect your research?"

The next brick wall category is also extremely common on the FamilySearch.org website. I use the FamilySearch website as an example because it is a huge mixture of readily accessed individual family trees, whereas trying to use a website such as Ancestry.com for the same purpose would be impossible. This common brick wall is difficult to visualize because the line seems to extend forever past the actual end. My challenge to anyone willing to spend the time has been vindicated over and over again. I simply tell people that if I look at their part of the FamilySearch Family Tree, I can easily determine or find a person whose ancestry goes back generations, including royalty, when there are not adequate sources provided to establish the actual relationship. This issue is not just limited to people with extensive pedigrees such as those with Utah pioneer ancestry. It is also sad that these genealogical researchers may spend an extraordinary amount of time doing descendancy research from ancestors they are not really related to. 

Even though the analogy breaks down at this point, the next brick wall involves reality. Historical records documenting individuals begin to disappear in the 1600s and may completely disappear by the mid-1500s. In short, the ability to extend a line past 1600 is tremendously more difficult than any more recent time period. When attempts are made to do this, it is common for the lines to rely solely upon same name, same person conclusions. This is often the most common leap into the fantasy of royal or noble ancestry. I certainly do not want to denigrate the efforts of extremely cautious and talented researchers to extend their family lines into actual connections with royalty or nobility, but I find so few of these are accurate on the FamilySearch Family Tree as to make them extraordinary. 

The last, but probably not really the last, category of brick walls is just due to inertia, a lack of interest and effort to extend a pedigree line. 

Take heed: involving yourself in genealogical research is an educational challenge. No matter how much you already know, almost every newly discovered ancestor becomes his or her own need to broaden your educational background. Get busy and keep learning.