My First Real Brick Wall

Here it is. It had come. I knew it would happen. I knew I would get to one. There is no surprise.

There is no comfort in knowing that.

I am at the point in my climb up my family tree where further progress is proving quite difficult…and I am not far up my tree at all. You may recall I grew up and spent most of my young life overseas, away from grandparents and their - and my - non-family relatives. When they all died - my parents, their siblings, and all four of my grandparents are dead - none of them had left any documentation to go on, so my search has been slow, laborious, and often frustrating.

As you have read if you have read my previous blog posts - and I hope you have...or will! - I have learned (and validated) things about my grandparents that differed significantly from what I thought I knew growing up. I learned that, contrary to my young knowledge, many of them were actually born here in the USA. In fact, not only were they born here in the United States, there is a long history of native-USA-born relatives in my tree. There is also a Canadian connection through my maternal grandmother, Nine Lillian Thompson, about which I knew nothing. I had been taught that she was a Scot!

But as I get to my second great-grandparent level, I have encountered a problem I knew existed, knew I would encounter, and hoped I would be able to resolve without too much difficulty.

Because I have no records and have many relatives with the same or similar names, differentiating among them is becoming difficult. Add to that the fact that enumerators of both United States and England census reports tend to spell one major branch of my tree, my maternal grandmother's BATTY side, as either BATTY or BATTEY. 

Not having any documentation from anyone about their past, I have been unable in some cases to validate that this person's or that person's record or document is, in fact, a relative. I wrote last time that I found a record of a relative whose name was illegible either because it had been erased, damaged by water, or for some other reason. 

As you know, I use the online resources of Ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker, and Family Search because I do not have the resources to visit the locations and review the source documents in person, but in this one case, I doubt it would make any difference. My online sources provide high-quality reproductions; the original document would not magically have my ancestor's name appear.

So when I get to a point in my search that has many "Batty" or "Burke" names living in the same general area at the same general time, it is difficult to determine which, IF ANY, of those names is a relative. 

That is where I am now.

To make matters worse, I have validated relatives with James, John, Samuel, William, and Edward names galore, as I am sure many other Christian-based families have. In fact, I am currently evaluating one branch I found with all those names used as sons, fathers, grandsons, and grandfathers...and I have not found a connection to a known relative in my own tree. I am sure there is one, I am sure I will find it, but this brick wall is, indeed, very sturdy.

Keep in mind that is with relatively close ancestors; I really do not loo relish getting into the 5th or 6th great-grandparent level. They will all live in areas of England, Ireland, and Scotland that are very far removed from where I am now. 

My tree is growing, the branches expanding, and the leaves increasing in numbers. Not having records, documents, or oral histories has proven to make this process much more difficult than I really anticipated.

I have not even started on my maternal grandmother's Thompson Canadian side. I have no documents on her, either, and her line seems to hail from Quebec, with lots of records in French, so won't that be a fun journey! 

But that is for later...

My family tree - and why and how I do this

This is the kick-off entry to my new Wilkinson Family-related blog. I want to give you, my reader, some background and an sense of where I hope to take this.

First, me. I am neither a professional nor a trained genealogist. Like many others, I am interested in my own family's history. As I age, where I "came from" becomes more important and because my parents and grandparents left no written records of their own past - no family Holy Books, for example - I am left to my own devices on how to discover my past.

I come from two immigrant families, Burke/Thompson (my maternal line) and Wilkinson/Batty (my paternal line). From early childhood, I believed all four of my grandparents emigrated to the USA during the early part of the 20th Century, a time when millions of Europeans came here to settle and work. My grandparents came from England, Scotland, and Ireland and like many others, settled in Hillsborough County in southern New Hampshire in basically the Wilton-Peterborough-Lyndeborough town area to work in various mills and factories there.

My purpose is to describe what I have done so far and explain the steps, stops, stumbles, and roadblocks I, like every other person, have and will experience on my trek up my family tree. I have learned interesting facts that support and conflict with what I "knew" about them as I grew up. I will share those in later posts. I hope to inspire other beginner-level genealogists and anyone wanting to learn a bit more about their own history. I hope to trace my journey in some detail but there will have to be some parts left out. I will not clearly identify my children or grandchildren and will do what I can to protect the identity of any living person. That should be easy enough to do because most genealogy sites do not provide identifying details about any living person for obvious security reasons. Going back, however, I will be specific as to names, places, and details I learn. I am open to hearing from more experienced genealogists of all levels, professional or not. If you have tips, recommendations, corrections or other input on my posts, the Comment section is available for your use. I will read each one.

These details become critically important to validate anything one learns. After a 30-year career as a federal investigator, I know "facts" must be verified before they assume any credibility. As online access to genealogy records becomes more widespread, more people create family trees and begin populating them. Some are private and hidden. Some, like mine, are public and visible. The problem comes when a public, visible tree gets populated with inaccurate, unverified information and links. That inaccurate information then possibly gets shared with other family trees, thus spreading erroneous genealogical information. I have experienced that and hope to minimize my own sharing by validating what I can to the best of my ability and within the limits of my resources.

Climbing ones family tree is time-consuming and can be expensive. Depending on all sorts of external factors, the expense and time can be quite burdensome. I am retired and on fixed income, so I am not able to do what I really want to do: travel to Ireland and England to search records and places in person. My expenses come from paying for membership in genealogical record repositories and, from time to time, sending off for copies of documents the details of which are not included in online records I find.

For me, this exercise has become quite addictive. After having done this for a couple of years, I have a much better, though far from clear, picture of my grandparents. As I mentioned, my own ancestors left no records of their immigration and lives and I have precious few photographs. Following the clues to their journey has been frustrating, slow, and always exciting. In my own way, I hope to leave a trail for my own offspring to follow as they age. Hopefully, the trail of breadcrumbs I leave will stay in place and available for many years.