Brick Walls in genealogy exist when documentation eventually leads to . . . no more documentation.  And documents are the basis of good genealogy research.  Family stories often serve as a replacement to documents.  And in our Internet age it is not unusual for previously unknown, or untranslated, documents to become available.  It’s always a good thing when documents reinforce – and often prove – the oral family history events and activities.

But even when documents are not available, it’s often the family stories that can lead to the eventual documents.  One example.  My maternal great grandfather was, as the story was told to me, a merchant who lived in the south (Alabama) around the turn-of-the-century (1900).  My maternal great grandmother was said to have been born in Philadelphia but her 1893 marriage license shows she was born in Russia. To make a long story short, their marriage license established the truth that he lived in Alabama, and it provided the name of my great grandmother’s father, Henry, and their address 319 Catherine Street, Philadelphia.  Her home address confirmed hitherto unknown Philadelphia relatives.  Another document shows my great grandmother’s name as Millie which confirms family oral history that my aunt Millicent was named after her grandmother. Now we have an entire new branch of relatives.  So . . . still a brick wall YES

I can find no record of her parents past 1908: No burial in the Philadelphia area; no census data for 1910 or 1920; no death certificates.

Yet I haven’t given up hope that some day their grave sites will be found . . . or some other record revealing what happened to them.  UPDATE: June 2016

Brick Wall Update: I’ve Discovered Sophie Garfinkel’s Parents Names and Graves!  

My breakthrough came when Ancestry advertised the availability of probate records and I found Mollie Garfinkel’s probate document.  The probate filing listed Mollie’s children, which included Sophie Goldenberg, nee Garfinkel, who was married to Charles Goldenberg.  The proof was Mollie’s other children, especially the girls, who married into surnames I had in my family tree.

My next step was comparing all the names to the 1910 US Census which listed Matilda married to Eli, not Millie married to Henry, as was on my great-grandmother Sophie’s marriage license.  Leslie, my ‘assumed cousin’ (we assume we’ll eventually find a family connection), had cemetery records for Mollie and Elijah’s graves.  As an aside, Leslie had these ‘unknown’ Garfinkel grave records in her files for 10 years. Keeping them although never knowing if they were relevant. Years ago, I also kept an ‘unrelated’ ship manifest that eventually years later proved to be my relatives. Lightning can strike twice!

The answer to my brick wall question relating to what happened to Henry and Millie is that they never left Philadelphia and are buried there as Elijah and Mollie in side-by-side graves.  

I started searching for this information in 1993 after I retired.  It’s been a long convoluted journey. Documents have the given names Henry, Eli, Elijah and Matilda, Mollie, and Millie.

I couldn’t have ‘connected the dots’ without Leslie’s help; we have been corresponding since 2005 trying to resolve our family connection.  The story is not complete as we continue seeking documents connecting Sophie to Leslie’s Garfinkel relatives and the family connection between Sophie and Jacob. 

Today’s brick wall may be tomorrow’s breakthrough.   And as a final thought . . . I wish, as so many of us have, that we had long, long conversations about the old days. So I encourage everyone to ask your parents, grand parents, and great grand parents about their lives.  And I encourage you to share the stories . . . . it may break down a brick wall some day!