How did you get around the dead end in your genealogy?

Question:I am trying to research my family and I came upon my great great grandmother's name in a handmade birth listing in an old family bible. It was great because it had her arrival date to America and name of the ship. I looked it up but she was not there. Now I am stuck. The writer of the book got it from her mother who has already passed.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am trying to research my family and I came upon my great great grandmother's name in a handmade birth listing in an old family bible. It was great because it had her arrival date to America and name of the ship. I looked it up but she was not there. Now I am stuck. The writer of the book got it from her mother who has already passed.

What works for my *dead end* is not going to work for your dead end, except to suggest keeping an open mind to alternate sources. For example.. thousands of person immigrated long before Ellis Island or Castle Garden.. not to mention that many immigrants went through other entry points. When you say "looked it up", where did you look? Ancestry has the NY passenger lists. That won't apply to somone who came through New Orleans, nor will it work for someone in the 1860's. You MAY have the only surviving record (via the Bible), meaning the ship name could be accurate but no passenger list survives. Or, it could be in an archives overseas, who has made no effort to transcribe it, or put it online.
When possible, it is important to try and confirm facts from others. Sometimes that is NOT possible. Assuming your goal is to find her parents, it remains that you have the same options as you might for other ancestors, which might come to church records of her birth in another country, someone else's research, etc. It is unfortunate that you can't see the Bible entry, however it seems that the birth entry will be distinct from the arrival entry, since the events are likely to be years apart. Were the entries BOTH made at about the time that they happened? No way to be sure.
Many many family histories locate the family overseas, without ever having the benefit of confirming them on a passenger list. Analyze it as best you can, and if you cannot 'prove' the arrival entry, move on to work the other details of her life, depending on what is out there. As I often repeat.. it is not all online.

have you tried Rootsweb.com or ellisisland.com. also, many names where changed due to americanization of the name. look for the variations of the name. like my family's name is Enman. and some of the relatives spelled it Innman of Inman. most counties or townships still have the vital stats on record. oh yes, the Mormons keep great records. look under the LDS website. hope this helped a little.

Depends on the name and where she came from. Go back to the immigration records and do a soundex search, the name may have been miss spelt. If you are using something like ancestry.com then make sure to look at a copy of the original and not just the transcript.

What country did she come from and when if the UK then civil registration started July 1st 1837. If not then try familysearch.org.

Good luck and good hunting

the 1900 census andafter that it tells you where they came from . how long they were in this country and if they were nationized. if they were you can go to the nationalation records and get a copy of it.

Let's face it, there will always be a dead end in the genealogy; otherwise, you would have billions of names, etc.
Try ad different approach; that is, see if you can solve it by going through parallel relatives (other relatives 5 generations ago).
Check all these sites:
The biggest expense will be TIME; I have spent hundreds of hours and have so much left to compile.
Remember, no matter where you obtain the information, there are mistakes (yes, I include "official" documents, such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates, whatever). My maternal grandmother's tombstone doesn't even have her name correct!
Anyhew, as to searching, try these:
Free sites: there are several to choose from. Start with:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/...

http://www.censusrecords.net/?o_xid=2739...

http://www.usgenweb.com/

http://www.census.gov/

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://www.ukgenweb.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/...

http://www.cyndislist.com/

Assuming they emigrated from Europe, start with Ellis Island and the Battery Conservancy sites:
http://www.ellisisland.org
http://www.castlegarden.org
For those with native American ancestry, try:
http://www.tribalpages.com/

For a fee, try a DNA test:
When you really want to know where your ancestors came from, try such sites as: www.familytreedna.com, dnatribes.com, dnaancestryproject.com, and, of course, the National Geographics Genotype program, https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/geno...
For Jewish ancestry, try:
www.israelgenealogy.com
Have a look at these sites these are South African ones,
http://genealogy.about.com/od/south_afri...
http://www.rupert.net/~lkool/page2.html....
http://www.jewishgen.org/safrica/website...
http://southafricanfamilyhistory.wordpre...

Meaning of names:
http://www.winslowtree.com/surname-meani...

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/f...

Finding live people:
Two good places I use are www.zabasearch.com and www.peoplefinder.com

Don't forget, use your local library. Ours (a small one, yet) has www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com, as well as periodicals, books and guidance from an experienced genealogist.

Keep good notes on where you find what: sources are very important.

Good luck!

if she came through Ellis island - go here
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/...

it's the BEST way to search the ellis island database. you can use the date of her arrival & ship name & add in other variables such as ethnicity, first & last name - soundex or just a few letters, even just the first letter, it also allows you to seach by date of birth, marital status & port of departure.

chances are your gg-grandmother is there, but her name was horribly misspelled. it happens more often than you'd think.

if she came through before 1913, though, she probably went through castle garden, so go here http://castlegarden.org/, type in the name & year of arrival & search, it will allow you to refine your search, by place of origin & ship. unfortunately castle garden gives less information that ellis island & less variables to search.

good luck.

~~~ morgannia

I was at a dead end for some time; then began "peeking" around in message boards and came across a site that enable me to trace my ancestry back to slavery.

Genealogical forums at http://www.rootsweb or any of the pay sites can be very useful for posting a query.

So far I've been contacted by several 4th, 5th and 6th cousins who were working the same lines.

In other words, I suggest networking. Joining your local genealogical society is just a real-world extension of it, and well worth the energy.

Happy hunting!

I have not gotten around the dead ends in my genealogy. They are still dead ends. That is WHY they are dead ends -- because I have not gotten around them.