When Was Amy (Nichols) Ledford Born?

Last week, I briefly discussed documentation for John Ledford’s date of death. The conflicts between the information presented in various records pertaining to John’s death were fairly easy to resolve. His wife’s date of birth presents a much stickier situation.

John Ledford’s Date of Death

Today is the 120th anniversary of the death of my great-great-great grandfather, John Ledford.

John Ledford
Mar 1 1822
Apr 1 1894¹

Given the date on his tombstone, y’all probably think I’ve gone ’round the bend, but no, I haven’t. (Not yet, anyway.)

Four Brick Wall Breakers

Oh, the dreaded brick wall ancestor, the bane of every genealogist’s life! We all have them, those ancestors who refuse to cooperate and instead prefer to lurk just out of reach of our inquisitive minds. Luckily for us (not so much for the lurking ancestors), there are plenty of tricks to help researchers break down those brick walls. Here are four useful techniques:

Priority Surnames

I recently bought several back issues of the NGS NewsMagazine from a fellow researcher, and have been diligently combing through them for research and record tips. I’ve run across some really good finds, too, but the topic of today’s post comes from the article “Charting Your Priorities” by Susan Zacharias (January/February/March 2007, pp. 54 – 56). In short, Zacharias offers a method of prioritizing research by listing end-of-lines (that is, the earliest known generation in every direct line) in various fonts according to their place on the pedigree chart. Your largest font size (Zacharias recommends 18 point) would correspond to your most recent (chronologically) dead end, with each step down in fonts corresponding to one generation further back in time.