Week 14: Brick-walls #52Ancestors

For those of you reading this who are not into genealogy, a “brick-wall” is that person in your family tree who you’ve researched until the cows come home, but still cannot find and document their roots. You can’t find when they were born. You can’t where they were born. You can’t find who their parents were. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. 

 Everyone has brick-walls in their family trees. Many times, it’s where that person lived so long ago that the normal go-to records do not exist. I’ve got tons of those folks in my tree. However, I do have one ancestor where I really should find records on her, but have been hitting the brick-wall time and time again.

Anna Marie (nee Miller) Glacy was my great-grandmother (wife of Joseph from last week’s post). She was likely born in New York in 1849 of maybe German parents (maybe Frank and Annie). She died in 1887 at 37 of “asthenia exhaustion” with “pulmonary phthisis”; essentially, fatigue, weakness and asthenia caused by tuberculosis. Her death certificate provided her age and her parent’s names, but it doesn’t show who provided that information so I do not know how accurate it is.[1]

I have birth certificates for a couple of her ten children and in two she is identified as Anna “Müller.” Miller or Müller? Close enough not to fuss over and perhaps a clue as to the accuracy of her German parentage. 

I haven’t yet been able to find her marriage certificate, even though it should be in several databases. A cousin says they were married in 1867 but my grandmother thought they were married in 1868. Either way, I still can’t find a thing. I have found where two of her sisters-in-law were married a couple of years earlier at Most Holy Redeemer Church in Manhattan, but Annie and Joseph were alleged to have been married in Brooklyn.[2]

My grandmother claimed that her mother-in-law’s last name was actually “Lottrell.” My grandmother was largely inaccurate when it came to retelling her husband’s family lore. Quite literally, none of the stories she told my dad and aunt about that side of the family have turned out to be true. That’s not too surprising since my grandmother didn’t seem to have much contact with the Glacy side of the family after her husband died in 1927 (when my dad was 5 and my aunt was 1).

However, since I had come up blank on searching for Miller/Muller I thought I’d give “Lottrell” a try. It turns out that the Glacy family did live next to a George and Mary Latrell in Brooklyn in 1880.[3] And, both George and Mary were born in Germany. Further, George and Mary were the baptismal sponsors for one of Joseph and Anna’s children in 1882.[4] That makes me think, maybe grandma wasn’t all that wrong. Maybe they ARE related. So, down, down, down I go – deep into the records. Nothing. Maybe they were just good friends and neighbors and by the time Anna and Joseph needed sponsors for their ninth child, they’d run out of family members and asked a neighbor? That’s my guess for now.

So, what do I do now? Well, for starters, I never give up! Here’s some good advice I have learned over the years when dealing with a brick-wall (the genealogy kind or others):

·     Re-examine EVERYTHING.

·     Search ALL available sources, not just typical birth, marriage, death records.

·     Keep a good research log.

·     Plan, plan, plan,

·     Keep flexible.

And, I’ll say it again, NEVER GIVE UP! 

[1]New York, New York City Department of Health, Certificate of Death no. 594288, Annie Glacy, 1887; Municipal Archives, New York City.

[2]Most Holy Redeemer Parish (New York, NY), Parish Register, p. 118, Mossner-Glasgen marriage (1865); image, Findmypast, "New York Roman Catholic Parish Marriages," (http://www.findmypast.com : accessed 6 Dec 2018).

[3]1880 U.S. census, Kings County, New York, population schedule, Brooklyn, enumeration district (ED) 249, p. 149 (stamped), p. 17 (penned), dwelling 112, family 151, Joseph Glacy; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 8 April 2019); citing National Archives microfilm publication T9, roll 856).  

[4]St Nicholas Parish, Manhattan, New York, unpaginated , Maria Anna Glaese, 8 Aug 1882; digital image, "New York Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms," Findmypast (https://www.findmypast.com: accessed 4 February 2019). 

Anna Marie (Miller/Muller) Glacy [picture courtesy of my cousin Kathleen].