Hugh Sargent, of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire and his descendants in England, Aaron Sargent, Somerville, Mass. (1895)–obtained digitally on Archive.org (http://www.archive.org) on 3 December 2012
Your “brick wall” may be someone else’s as well, just from the opposite side. The compiler of this 1895 Sargent genealogy only knew the name of one of Clark Sargent’s children. Unfortunately, I (for a long time) only knew the name of my ancestor, Ira Sargent–no sibling information was known.
Of course, Ira turned out to be 1128–that son that the compiler was unable to locate. The Sargent genealogy only traced male lines so there wouldn’t have been much to say about Ira anyway as he had three daughters.
There are several reasons Clark was a brick wall for all parties concerned:
- Clark died young.
- His wife died young, but after Clark.
- His wife’s second husband raised the children and they used his last name in several records.
- The family settled where they had no near relatives, making communication of information with other family members difficult and reducing the children’s knowledge of their heritage.
2 Responses
This reminds me of a recent brick wall I didn’t even know I had, but discovered (and smashed) through DNA.
I had always thought my grandmother Anna Pakula, only had an older brother. But this summer I got an estimated 2nd cousin DNA match through My Heritage.
After several emails back and forth, we discovered that my match was the great great grand daughter of my great grand mother … turns out Anna Pakula had a much younger sister that my side of the family never knew about, and I now have 40 more cousins!
One never knows what discoveries DNA will lead to. I suspect I have a few ancestors who have a sibling or two who fell through the genealogy cracks for one reason or another.