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Records you may not even know exist

In helping others with their genealogy, I constantly hear about the so-called "brick wall." This popular subject is consistently discussed in blogs, magazine articles and forums. Of course, I have to concede that some people left very few historical records, but the concept of a brick wall is basically a fallacy. In the vast majority of cases, the issue is not a lack of records, but a lack of the awareness that the records even exist. Some people truly believe that they have search "every record." However, there is usually no basis for this belief. I find very, very few researchers that are not surprised when I suggest other places they might look. One puzzling, but common response is a total lack of interest in searching different types of records.
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Comment by Katie Heitert Wilkinson on September 6, 2009 at 11:55am: James: I injoyed reading your blog posting. It made me realized how many kinds of documents I simply havent' investigated. Many of us at the site will benefit from your advice. I do have one quetion, though. Do I have a legitimate wall here: my maternal grandfather was left in the vestibule of the New York Foundling Hospital in 1982. I made that momentous discovery after persuing some intesting clues. But the "records" that Closed Records Office in Manhattan sent me consisted of copies of several badly micro fisched pages. In fact, they looked as if they had come from some sort of log or notebook. The entried consisted of sentences fragements indicating where the baby had been left and when. A phrase suggested that his mother had visited the Foundling several times earlier. The record states: "offered help --- she refused --- said she was married." That's all I have --- other than the names of the family in Missouri who fostered my grandfather. In the corner of one of the pages someone wrote "Dernier, Joseph (leg)." I'm unsure whether this indicates that the staff believed the baby's birth name was legitimate. There are so many scenarios that could be possible: Dernier could have been the mother's family name; it could have been the birth father's surname; or it could be a fabrication of an embarrassed young woman. I've searched New York marriage records, death records, ships' passenger lists within a specific time frame. I've even spoken to the folks in the Foundling Closed Records Office -- to no avail. Can you give me any advice? If so, I be in your debt.
\Katie

Records you may not even know exist

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