05 February 2025
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Have you hit a brick wall in your family history research? Does it fill you with despair and frustration? Expert genealogist Chris Paton suggests that sometimes, going back to basics, and looking again at BMDs, can help you smash through the problem
Have you hit a brick wall in your family history research? Does it fill you with despair and frustration? If so, professional researcher Chris Paton is here to help, describing how brick walls can be as much of an opportunity as they can a hindrance...
What is a genealogy brickwall?
A genealogical brick wall is simply a research problem that has yet to be overcome, for brick walls in fact lie at the very heart of the stories that we are trying to uncover. Genealogy and family history research is about problem solving, and the thrill of the hunt in so doing.
Why have you got a brickwall?
It might well be that your brick wall issue is a genuine blockage with little hope of bypassing it - the records needed to resolve it may not have survived, for example.
However, more often than not it might also be the case that the tricky situation causing the obstacle on your tree has nothing to do with the records at all, and absolutely everything to do with you!
A top genealogy brickwall-smashing tip from Chris Paton: explore errors & omissions
Take birth, marriage and death records in England and Wales, for example.
The conventional wisdom for researching these tells us that civil registration in the two countries commenced in July 1837, and that from this point it should be possible to locate such events initially from the published General Register Office (GRO) indexes, from which we can then order up certificates.
So, if this is the case, why might it be that an event can suddenly not be found in the indexes?
Why can't you find someone in the birth, marriage and death indexes?
There could well be a few reasons.
Are you aware that the GRO indexes, for example, were actually created as a secondary part of the registration process?
Initially the records were compiled by local registrars across the two countries, and then copies conveyed by superintendent registrars every three months to the centralised GRO. When copies were made, inevitably sometimes errors were introduced, and some items were overlooked.
What's the solution, when you can't find someone in the General Register Office BMD indexes?
To overcome this issue, it is well worth trying to find the same record from the original superintendent registrar's office, rather than the GRO.
A useful starting point is to visit the UKBMD website at www.ukbmd.org.uk/local_bmd, where you can identify if local indexes have been created for a particular area and made available online.
If so, records can then be duly ordered.
Sometimes you will need to try completely different record collections that will provide similar evidence for the details you seek.
While coverage for death registration was almost complete, even from the early days of civil registration - with a death certificate formally required before any burial could take place - it is estimated that about 5% of births may never have been registered prior to 1875.
In such a case, you may need to turn to locally generated records instead. (For instance burials, memorial inscriptions, newspaper notices etc).
How to find further advice for working on your genealogy brickwalls
Read back issues of Family Tree, which are packed with family history trouble-shooting advice. Chris Paton's article on brickwalls, for instance was published in the June 2024 issue of Family Tree (available as a digital read for £5.99). If you've not already tried it, do take a free trial to Family Tree Plus, where you can browse our digitised back issues for the past five plus years! Sign up for you free trial here.
Brickwalls aren't ever going to go away - and will remain part of the genealogy landscape forever! That said, that doesn't mean that some of them aren't solvable, and that we shouldn't keep persevering.
We are delighted to be running a series of presentations by family historian Mike Gould as part of the Family Tree Brickwalls, Skills & Solutions Club programme.
Attend our 'How to solve brickwalls' webinars with Mike Gould
Find details of the first of the three parts here - we'd love you to join us for this online event on Thursday 20th February at 1pm.
- Webinar 1 (20th February, 1-2pm): “How to solve brickwalls in the 1800s
- Webinar 2 (13th March, 1-2pm): “How to solve brickwalls before 1800”
- Webinar 3 (24th April, 1-2pm): “How to solve brickwalls after 1900”
The two subsequent online learning sessions will take place in March and April 2025 and will cover pre-1800 and the 1900s respectively. Any queries, please email [email protected]
Blog post last updated 21 January 2025.
