Two Techniques to Break Down Brick Walls

Everyone wants to know how they can break down their genealogical brick walls. Who doesn't? No matter where you are in your research, you have brick walls. The more ancestors you know about, the more brick walls you have! Say you want to know who the parents of a great-grandparent is. How can you possibly track them down if you don't know where to start? Here, I'll provide a couple of examples of how to do track them down. In one example, I'll show where some of the information was sitting right in front of me but I didn't know it. It was only after a bit of luck with a marriage record being digitized that I learned the truth. In the other example, I'll show the steps I took to eventually find the truth.

Iowa Birth Certificates 1921-1942

Family Search updated their collection of Iowa birth certificates for the years 1921-1942. When I saw that, I definitely had to see what I could find. I found a large number of Menke birth certificates but since they are more distantly related to me, I'll skip posting them here, relying only on my closer relations. First up is my father's first cousin, Bernard Hellrung. His mother was my great-grandfather, Thomas Doran's daughter.

 

DNA Testing and Distant Cousins

The story about my great-grandmother, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Dunzinger Panther is that she was born in 1854 in New York City and after the death of her parents when she was two years old, her grandparents brought her to live with family in Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa. I found her in the 1855 New York State Census as one of two children of Andrew and Fanny Dunzinger along with her sister Mary A. Dunzinger. It says she was born in 1854.

She's found in the 1870 US Federal Census living as a servant in Burlington in the Charles and Walburga Wagner household. I found her in the 1905 Iowa State Census where it states that she had been in Iowa for all except two years of her life.

Andrew Dunzinger is found prior to immigration to America, in Wemding, Bavaria, as is the Wagner family. So logic follows that this would mean that the family she was brought to live with would have been the Wagners.