6 Steps for Breaking Down Genealogy Brick Walls

When you’ve hit a “brick wall” in your genealogy research, you may give up after feeling there’s nothing left to try.

But scaling a brick wall often isn’t something you can do in a single bound. Instead, you climb carefully up the side, working your arms and legs upward brick by brick.

A structured research plan gives you a lift. With a methodical checklist, you can find sources you may have overlooked. Or perhaps you’ll correct mistakes in logic—or realize you were researching the wrong person entirely.

What follows is a simple, six-step plan for overcoming genealogy brick walls. For each, I’ve also provided a handful of resources. Most of them are free to use, and we’ve indicated a dollar sign ($) next to those that are fee-based.

You’ll also find links to Family Tree‘s guidance on various subjects, plus some wall-busting advice from the magazine’s 25-plus-year history. You can see how I applied these steps to my own brick wall in the case study below.

Brick Wall-Busting Step 1: Search Broadly

Start with sources that are most likely to yield helpful results with the least amount of effort. These “lowest-hanging fruit” form the basis of your research to follow.

Online family trees

Though they contain errors, online family trees help you take advantage of the work that other genealogists have already done. Think of them as footholds in your brick wall—they’re helpful suggestions, but you still have to do the heavy work of verifying them yourself.

• Ancestry.com Public Member Trees ($), like most other subscription sites, are free to build but require a paid membership to view. The site, in one collection, pulls together all trees created by other users whose settings allow public access. Read our search guide here.
• The FamilySearch Family Tree has contributors around the world. Any registered user can edit any profile, meaning you can correct errors in profiles as you find them. We consider how to use the Family Tree as a source here.
• Findmypast trees ($), like the site as a whole, specializes in the British Isles.
• MyHeritage Family Trees ($) also has users from around the world, including many who have Jewish ancestry.

Online genealogy records

Each genealogy website allows you to search narrowly among its collections. But for now, cast a wide net by searching for your ancestor across whole sites (or, in Google’s case, across the whole internet).

• Ancestry.com ($) has historical records spanning the globe and powerful (yet easy-to-use) search tools.
• FamilySearch is free and has many local records you won’t find anywhere else online; read how to search them here. The site also has many records that haven’t yet been indexed—we’ll discuss those more later.
• Findmypast ($) has strong collections for the British Isles and significant collections for Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
• MyHeritage ($) is especially strong for international records, automatic record-matching, and European research. Find search tips from MyHeritage employees themselves here.
• Google, though not a genealogy site per se, opens your search to potentially untapped resources. Try different searches: an unusual name, or a name combined with another term (the person’s town, occupation, etc.)

Brick Wall-Busting Step 2: Learn about Records

Different kinds of records were created in different times and places. “A ‘brick wall’ is often a case of not knowing about all the genealogical records for the time and place your ancestor lived,” former Family Tree Magazine Editor Diane Haddad wrote for the Family Tree Magazine blog in 2014. “More types of historical records exist than most of us realize.”

Find out what documents were created in your ancestor’s community: what they are, what they contain, and why they were created. This will require you to study the time and place your ancestor lived. Social history provides information both on record-keeping and the broader cultural, economic, political and ideological contexts.

How-to guides

Expert-written articles and publications (both offline and online) can provide an outline for research in your ancestor’s era and place of residence.

• The FamilySearch Research Wiki has more than 150,000 articles on how to research your family tree in many countries. Each includes links to external websites and other relevant articles. We have a tutorial here.
• Family Tree Magazine ($) is more than just a print or digital magazine. A Premium membership to the website includes access to over 3,500 articles and guides on hundreds of genealogy topics.

AI chatbots

AI tools such as ChatGPT gather information from various sources and put it all together in a narrative response. Their suggestions for records and resources can be helpful, but you should always verify the information they provide you.

• Google Gemini takes a simple web search a step further.
• Microsoft Copilot integrates closely with Microsoft apps such as Word and Excel.
• OpenAI’s ChatGPT is, by far, the most popular AI chatbot.

Brick Wall-Busting Step 3: Target Specific Sources

Once you’ve identified resources relevant to your search, follow up by narrowing your search to those specific collections.

Records

The megawebsites have so many records that your general searches quickly become unruly. Instead, use a site’s tools for searching an individual collection—often, with a specially designed search form.

• Ancestry.com ($) allows you to search for individual collections via the Card Catalog. Narrow your search by filtering by place, decade and/or record type, then entering your terms. You can also view all collections from a place by going to <www.ancestry.com/search> and clicking the interactive map under Explore by Location. Read our tutorial here.
• FamilySearch’s main Records page has sections for “Find a Collection” and “Search by Place,” where you can whittle down by title or location. The Browse All Collections page is also available directly here. Note that the FamilySearch Catalog operates differently than those at Ancestry.com and MyHeritage, as it also includes physical materials.
• Findmypast ($) has users enter a keyword from an All Record Sets page, where they can also filter by place or time period.
• MyHeritage ($) also provides a Collection Catalog where you can either search for a collection by name or refine by record type, location, or century.

Newspapers

These famously include obituaries, but also articles about births, marriages, news and everyday insights into residents’ lives. Focus on newspapers from your ancestors’ hometown; the site Newspaper Finder can get you started.

• GenealogyBank ($), a standalone service, has 326 million obituaries as part of its collection that is claimed to be 95% exclusive. We share search tips here.
• NewspaperArchive ($) has titles as early as 1607 and is now part of the Storied family.
• Newspapers.com has more than a billion newspaper pages and easy compatibility with sister site Ancestry.com. I wrote a guide to that site, specifically, here.
• OldNews ($) is a spinoff of MyHeritage, with publications from across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. Find our tutorial here.
• SmallTownPapers ($) lets you search more than 250 US newspapers (many of them, as you’d expect, from small towns) dating back to 1846.

Books

Publishers created local or county histories (even back to earliest settlement), and individual researchers may have published their pedigrees in book form.

• The FamilySearch Digital Library includes more than 500,000 genealogy books, family histories, maps and yearbooks from FamilySearch’s massive collection.
• The Genealogical Publishing Company ($), a veteran creator of family history resources, includes nearly 800 books in its eBook Library.
• Google Books lets you search the full text of more than 40 million books and magazines.
• The HathiTrust Digital Library has more than 19 million digitized items from partner academic and research libraries, including many published family and local histories.
• The Internet Archive includes items from a wide variety of institutions: the Allen County Public Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture, to name a few.
• MyHeritage ($) has digitized (and made searchable) many local histories and city directories.

Brick Wall-Busting Step 4: Check Unindexed and Offline Sources

Not everything is online—and fewer items have been indexed. Though not searchable by name or keyword, offline and unindexed resources still may hold the answer to your thorniest genealogy questions. To find them, you’ll need to invest more time than you do with those that are already online.

Records

• FamilySearch offers two ways to access sources that are not indexed by name. From the Catalog, find entries for sources that are both online and those that exist only in physical form. Another portal, Full-Text Search uses AI to make some of those documents accessible keyword-searchable; find our tutorial here.
• The FamilySearch Research Wiki has articles on specific states and counties. They often include links to local courthouses and historical societies, which likely have their own cache of online records as well as records that have not been digitized.

Newspapers

• Chronicling America has digitized titles, plus a directory of newspapers published in the United States since 1690—those digitized at Chronicling America and other sites, as well as those that remain offline. The directory notes libraries that have each newspaper; check the library’s website to see if you can borrow microfilm copies.

Books

• WorldCat lists 405 million books from libraries worldwide, plus cemetery records, military records, family Bibles and much more. Each entry indicates which institutions have that item—look for one near you or accessible via interlibrary loan. We have a tutorial here.

Brick Wall-Busting Step 5: Evaluate the Evidence

You’ve collected documents—hopefully, many of them new. Your next step is analyzing them.

“You probably know more now about the case, and genealogy research in general, than you did when you first reviewed these sources,” wrote Lisa Louise Cooke, columnist and founder of Genealogy Gems, in a 2014 issue of Family Tree. “Chances are good that you’ll spot something that now has meaning, but didn’t resonate with you before.”

Questions to ask

Review everything you’ve found and ask yourself questions like the following:

• Is this from an original source, or is it a derivative?
• Who provided the details in the document?
• Have you mined each record for all of its information? Do any of those facts point to more documents?
• What does the document not say? Can you “read between the lines”?
• Does the evidence agree with other sources? If not, create a timeline and compare the records side by side.
• Could there be two people or more people who have the same name? You may find that your work or a profile in an online family tree mistakenly combines information on two different people.
• What else might your ancestor have done that generated records? Consider things like occupation, membership in societies or fraternal orders, or land transactions. Putting yourself in your ancestor’s shoes and studying the lives of people like them can help.

AI chatbots

Try prompts like the following. You might want to include more details:

• “Transcribe and translate the attached handwritten document from German to English.”
• “Here’s a summary of what I know about my immigrant ancestor Bernard Clark who came from Ireland in the 1840s. What sources should I check to find out where he was born in Ireland?”
• “The attached documents pertain to my ancestor John Smith. Please summarize these records and create a timeline of events in his life.”
• “Using the attached family group sheet and source documents, draft a biographical sketch of my ancestor Mary Jones. Please add historical context, such as local events, occupations and migration routes.”

Brick Wall-Busting Step 6: Repeat (if Necessary)

This plan isn’t foolproof; you may have run out of “handholds and footholds” as you tried to climb that brick wall.

But the good news is you can always start again, maybe approaching your problem from a new angle. Consult another record, tap another resource—you’ll be on the other side before you know it.

Case Study: Civil War Soldiers

My great-grandmother had three half-brothers: Jonathan, Charles J. and Henry J. Hall. They’re recorded as ages 14, 20 and 22 in the 1860 census of Cuba, New York—prime age to serve in the Civil War. But I don’t know if they did. Where can I find records of their possible military service?

1. Search broadly

The big genealogy websites return census records for the Hall brothers. A veteran’s schedule taken in 1890 (which includes Union soldiers and their widows, plus some Confederates) lists Jonathan and Henry and some details of their service:

• Jonathan Hall (discharged 1865): resident of Michigan, who served as a private in Company G, 111th Pennsylvania Infantry
• Henry J. Hall (enlisted 1861, discharged 1865): resident of Cuba, N.Y., who served in Company K, 1st Pennsylvania Infantry

That one source found in a broad search revealed an outline of each man’s service. Details on the units were key; they both served in Pennsylvania regiments, not in New York’s as I would have expected.

2. Learn about the records

The FamilySearch Wiki’s entry on the Civil War includes a link to a Civil War Soldiers index on FamilySearch. A search for Charles J. Hall doesn’t turn up anything. But a Charles Hall (no middle initial) served in the same unit as Henry; as it turned out, he was “mine.”

I turned to an AI chatbot to get advice on where to look next. I used the following prompt: “Where can I find service and pension files for soldiers who served in the Union Army from Pennsylvania during the Civil War? What information do those records provide?”

ChatGPT’s reply noted that you can order service records and pension files from the National Archives, and that Fold3 has digitized some of them. The Pennsylvania State Archives also have important records, including muster rolls and regimental histories.

The chatbot also said that “Pension files are often the richest genealogical source for Union veterans,” as they may provide the names of the soldier’s spouse and children as well as his birth, marriage, death and residence information.

3. Target specific sources

From another FamilySearch Wiki article, I learned of the five-volume History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–1865. The Pennsylvania State Archives created an index, available through its website.

The books themselves are also online as part of a searchable collection at Ancestry.com. Searches of that specific collection turned up enlistment records for Henry and Charles, who each joined Company K of the 13th Pennsylvania Reserve (or the 42nd Regiment) in 1861.

A pension index on the site suggests that Henry and Jonathan (but not Charles) have pension application files. The index includes the soldier’s unit—this was key, as there were pension files for more than 200 Henry Halls!

4. Check unindexed and offline sources

Fold3 has digitized indexes of Civil War service and pension files for Pennsylvania soldiers, but not the original files themselves. You can order them online for a fee from the National Archives.

Henry J. Hall served in two units, so he has two service files. I ordered his and his brother Jonathan’s service and pension files from the National Archives. In them, I found details on military service and statements from family and friends vouching that their disabilities did not result from “vicious habits.” Both types of files include physical descriptions.

Charles Hall’s service file shows he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry in 1861 at age 21. Sadly, he was killed at the Battle of Antietam the next year. I’m unlikely to find a pension application for him; he apparently left no widow or children, so he didn’t have a dependent who would have wanted a pension.

5. Evaluate the evidence

How accurate is the information I have likely to be? Civil War service files are generally highly reliable, since they were created during the war. But pension files, created long after the war, are more likely to contain inaccuracies about the war’s events.

Related Reads

A version of this article appeared in the September/October 2026 issue of Family Tree Magazine.