It’s been said that setting goals turns the invisible into the visible.
With a brick wall ancestor, it often seems like one is chasing a ghost, hoping one day for identity to materialize. The pursuit can last years – decades, even.
This is the story of how setting a concrete goal enabled me – nearly one year after I had set my goal – to finally busted one of the biggest brick walls in my family tree!
After proving (with primary sources) the correct parents for the immigrants Hendrick and Peter Enloes, it was time to investigate who they were and from where they came.
Every genealogist has at least one encounter with an ubiquitous myth in their family tree. When fiction takes over hard fact, it can be surprising how readily the fabled details populate scores of pedigrees.
One such example of this involves Hendrick Enloes, an early (17th-century) settler of Baltimore County, Maryland.
Hendrick is believed to have initially immigrated to Nieuw-Amstel (now New Castle, Delaware) from Amsterdam together with his brother, Pieter Enloes in 1657. These two brothers are the progenitors of the Enloes/Enloe families of colonial Delaware and Maryland.
I recently discovered an invaluable resource for researching Irish ancestors. I’m six months late to this party, but figured it was worthwhile to write about in case others have yet to come across this information goldmine.
I have been in the process of writing my first ancestor profile all week. I’m a first-time mama to a very busy toddler and a freelance journalist, so time to compose comes in bite-sized chunks of a few sleepy minutes here and there.
But it was a discovery of a newspaper article containing some bit of scandal that has really caused the delay. Because such a find, of course, always leads to more research.
What can you do when the records that surely would contain a wealth of information about your ancestors no longer exist?
My 4th great-grandfather, Charles Bender, has long been one of the more elusive members of my family tree.
One of the big reasons why is that the church he joined as an adult is defunct and its records seemingly lost.
It’s always wise to periodically conduct a Google search on your ancestors. With more and more records, old books and other potential sources of information being digitized each day, you never know when you might find something new.
axehandles 