Finding Brick Walls

 

I am a member of several genealogy groups, one large society and a smaller, more intimate one where participation is encouraged. Our meeting will be soon but the topic of our get together has been emailed to us already. We're going to be discussing brick walls and any ways that we've tried to get around them.

I've been going family history research for decades and have run into my fair share of snags in that time but once I've found a way around them, it's hard to retain the details of what I was seeking and how I found it in the end. I do have some current conundrums that I'd like to solve though so maybe I can mention those.

Many of my family lines ended up in London, a place from which it is very difficult to figure out a person's or family's origins. Although I did trace my Argent family back to Halstead, Essex but how I figured that out has been lost along the way. I do have a clear recollection of finding where the Arments hailed from. Yes, the two families were joined by matrimony in 1840 when James Arment married Ellen Argent. James gave his father's name as Thomas Arment, a carman. This occupation was to become more dubious when Thomas and his son Thomas were brought before the courts. The criminal records for the elder Thomas supplied a lot of detail about him and recorded that he came from Suffolk. That was how I found were the Arments had come from.

Then there were the brick walls in Canada and the US. Most of them hinge around the Matheson family. I'd really like to find something to confirm my great grandmother's birth to Catherine Matheson and Samuel Tripp but the only information I have comes from their daughter's marriage certificate which places her birth in Bobcaygeon, Ontario before 1869. I have been looking for a birth record for a long, long time. Confirmation of Catherine's death would also help and might even provide a clue as to who was the mother of Samuel Tripp's second daughter. Was the mother Catherine or his second wife, Mary?

Another brick wall for this family involved Alexander Matheson, the man who left home then looked for his family for 40 years. When he died in 1920 in South Dakota various people were mentioned in his obituary. I'd like to be able to identify and track these people in order to determine if and how they were related to Alexander. Just who were Mrs. J. Ruhe of Sioux Falls, S.D. and Mrs. R.L. Eagen of La Crosse, Wis who were named in his obituary? Mrs. Eagen has proven to be particularly elusive as I've tried tracking her through newspapers and directories but have had no luck so far. Looks like I do have a few brick walls to bring up at the meeting.