GETTING AROUND "BRICK WALLS"

Getting stuck on a line of research is very frustrating. Eventually we all hit dead ends, but do not give up right away because in many cases you can readjust your research process, finding new clues to get you around that brick wall. Below are a few ideas to give your research that little extra push it might need. Help keep this list growing. Share your ideas and solutions by emailing Creative History your success stories. • If you have the time, step away from your research for awhile. Sometimes the best solutions is to give your mind a rest, then revisit your material later with a fresh brain and set of eyes. • As you research you will be asking new questions as you answer previous ones. Revisit some of your research notes, photocopies, and books for clues to some of your new questions, you might be surprised at what you find. • Try to look back at your sources regularly to keep your research process active. You might suddenly see a piece of information in a different context which will inspire a new line of research. • Take a closer look at the footnotes in some of your secondary sources. Did you miss a comment that could redirect your line of questioning? • If you feel stuck, start writing. Don’t worry about how it reads just start getting ideas out of your head. Even if it is just an outline, writing about your subject can show where your research needs more work. It can also bring you a sense of clarity about your topic so you know you are going down the right path, or need to readjust your thinking. • Think about how you can approach the problem from a different angle. If you are researching a family, examine all the siblings instead of just your direct ancestor. Documents about a sibling might present those elusive details you were looking for about the parents. • Not everything in print is trustworthy. If you are using compiled or abstracted sources from a book, article, or website, do yourself a favor and look for the original items. Everyone makes mistakes and transcribed sources can be full of them. You also might find a bit of useful information that the person abstracting the source overlooked because they found it useless. • Are you using only one document to support a fact? Try finding additional sources to see if those bring forward any new information. • Are you looking for information under just one surname? Last names are notorious for being misspelled in documents. Look for all the possible spelling variations on a person’s name. Names were often spelled phonetically (how it sounds) which can produce interesting variations. Different spellings might have occurred by accident, or purposefully to adapt into a new culture. Keep in mind that transcribing difficult handwriting can easily result in misspellings. Think of how someone might mistakes reading the name. Do you know the person’s first and middle name? Someone with the given names of Charles Joseph, might go by either name in official documents. • Know the history of the county in which you are researching. Over time counties borders change and new counties developed from the splitting of older, larger ones. You might actually need to visit a neighboring county courthouse to find the information you are looking for. For example: If you are searching for 1790 land records in what is currently Roanoke County, Virginia, you need to know that Roanoke County was formed in 1838 from part of Botetourt County. If you do not find the records in Roanoke County, then you might be successful searching the Botetourt County land records. • Look for maps of the town in which you are searching. Sometimes using visual references will spark a new way of thinking about a problem. Seeing on a mpa where employees lived in relations to their workplace could give you new ideas about how to think about the town’s transportation. • Sometime photographs can re-ignite your inspiration. Finding photographs of a building at different time periods can give you an idea of how the structure changed over the decades, or what different businesses occupied the space. New information always inspires new questions. • Create a timeline to see where you are missing information, then try to fill in the gaps.