The Genealogical Proof Standard in Practice
How professional genealogists decide when a conclusion is proven, and how to apply the five elements of the GPS to your own brick walls.
Brick Walls
Strategies for ancestors who seem to have left no trail.
Using DNA Matches to Break Through Brick Walls
A practical workflow for turning a list of DNA matches into a documented ancestor: clustering, shared cM analysis and targeted testing.
The FAN Club: Solving Problems Through Friends, Associates and Neighbors
When your ancestor's own records run out, the people around them can still lead the way. A step-by-step guide to cluster research.
When the Courthouse Burned: Researching in Burned Counties
Fires, floods and wars destroyed records in hundreds of counties. These are the substitutes and alternate copies that still survive.
Finding a Woman's Maiden Name: 15 Places to Look
Women's maiden names are among the hardest facts to find in American records. These are the record types most likely to reveal one, and how to use them.
Deed Platting: Mapping Your Ancestor's Land from the Deed
How to turn a metes-and-bounds deed description into a map, fit neighbors' tracts together, and use the result to separate men of the same name and find the land today.
Where Did My Ancestor Go? Finding Someone Who Vanishes Between Records
Your ancestor is in the 1880 census and missing from 1900. Before you assume the worst, work through the most common reasons people disappear from records, and where to find them again.
Is This the Same Person? Telling Apart People with the Same Name
Two John Millers in one county is the classic genealogy trap, and the source of countless wrong trees. How to tell same-name people apart, and how to prove which records belong to whom.
Orphans, Guardianships and the Orphan Trains
Children who lost a parent often left a trail of court, orphanage and placement records. How to find guardianships, apprenticeships, orphanage records and orphan train placements.
Poorhouses, Asylums, Prisons and Hospitals: Institutional Records
Ancestors who spent time in a poorhouse, asylum, prison, hospital or soldiers' home left records most researchers never look for. Where to find them, and the privacy rules that govern them.
Twentieth-Century Brick Walls: Finding People Born 1900–1950
Recent ancestors can be surprisingly hard to find, because privacy rules close many records. The sources that are open, and how to use them for grandparents and great-grandparents.
Find the records
Websites and archives for this topic are in our Resource Directory under Methodology, Directories & Tools.
Other topics
Getting Started 21Census Records 16Birth, Marriage & Death Records 15Church Records 12Cemeteries & Burials 2Newspapers & Obituaries 3Land & Property Records 7Wills, Probate & Court Records 13Tax Records 3Military Records 5Immigration & Naturalization 12DNA & Genetic Genealogy 9Libraries & Archives 8Research in the Old Country 10African American Research 2Research Methods & Evidence 31Brick Walls 11Organizing Your Research 7Online Sites & Family Trees 11