How to find the motivation to carry on?

[Biggles50]

It totally depends upon where you are and where you are searching.

Only a few Countries have accessible Genealogy Records anywhere near as detailed as the UK hence it can be very variable.

UK records can be pretty good going back to 1800, beyond that can be spasmodic in the results depending upon which County you are in within England and Wales.  Ireland before 1860 can be very, very difficult if not impossible and Scotland, well Scotland does there own thing.

Now if you have not taken a DNA test, do so now as Ancestry is having a half price sale on until the latter part of the month.

If you want to know more about DNA then do ask.

[mckha489]

Or just give your own families a rest for a while and join in working on other’s queries on here.  I have found I have learned a lot that has proved useful to my own families. 
You might come back to yours reinvigorated.

[sparrett]

I agree it can be a frustrating business. Sometimes just one decent breakthrough will set things in motion. I hope this happens for you soon.

There is no doubt some families are more difficult than others to research.

The hard ones are often very quiet living people with common surnames and simple given names they repeat through generations and many family branches.

They never step outside the law, go bankrupt or leave a will or probate application in their name.
They are never sick or poor enough to be in an asylum or institution and are often out or at sea on census night.

They marry their deceased wife's sister and in the end are buried without headstone in cemetery unknown 

Sue

[Nick_Ips]

How do others keep motivated to carry on? And is there anything else I can do to break this stalemate?

From the start, about 25 years ago, I figured it would be easier to go back in time and further up the tree at some point in the future when more records were available online.

So I've done what I can with the information easily available in the here and now, and each time I've got to a brick wall I've gone off to look at expanding a different branch of my tree.

My motivation is in finding new connections and the social/geographic aspects which keeps me interested, then every now and again a new dataset comes available online (the Suffolk PRs is the latest for me) which might give some answers to move up another generation or two.

Occasionally (all too rarely) researching one of the branches gives a clue for one of the main lines - for example an elderly relative staying on census night, or a surname unexpectedly being used as a given name for a child.

So if you are stuck, spend some time going back over records you've already found seeing if there are things you've missed.  Account for all people in a census household, find the full names of children where you only have initials.  Also, check any unidentified witnesses of marriages (although in my experience these seem more likely to be friends rather than family).

Keep digging, something will turn up.

[Norfolk Nan]

I began researching back in the 1980s so I've hit many patches like you.  At first I wanted to grow a tree, heading straight back into the past and was not really interested in side shoots.  That's a mistake. 

Once past the Victorian period it gets harder to find the evidence and I've often considered boxing everything up and putting it in the garage.  But I like the research and find creating projects within family branches provides valuable insights by putting the family into a social context and revealing their own relationships.  This year I created a WW2 timeline for my London family - both my paternal grandparents came from large families and I hadn't quite appreciated how close they were.  I found bomb maps and tragedies, army records and war work for example - by the end I had a very different view of those many individuals who had been simply extra names on my tree.  Placing people against the backdrop of what was going on is fascinating and really helps explain so much. 

[rosie17]

I think we all have the same problem we get so far back and can't go any further as mentioned if a ancestor has died before 1851 census and no burial record can be found its Very frustrating . Don't give up just put it to one side then go back every so often and check Again and don't follow hints on Ancestry without checking 

Rosie 

[coombs]

I always was told when I started genealogy that genealogy gets harder the further back you go and they are usually right. Some lines can be traced back further than others, if they had money and left wills or had land.

I have a female ancestor who may or may not have wed her husband, they lived in London/Middlesex. She supposedly married in about 1811, her last child was born before civil reg began, she said "not born in county" (Middlesex) in 1841 census and died in Feb 1851, just 6 weeks before the 1851 census. Yet her husband has been traced, and he died in 1831 and was from Dorset originally. She is an example of someone who I think will be impossible to find her birth surname and parents. I guess one day autosomal DNA testing may be my only hope.

[ThrelfallYorky]

Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY

[Comberton]

https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/Ancestry-Accounts-after-Cancellation