Endpoints, or dead ends in my ancestry

When a particular source of information is exhausted, one must seek another source or means to acquire information, should one exist. There are many difficulties associated with connecting families and people across the boundaies of sources, particularly when there is lack of duplicate information needed to make the link, or missing information of one kind or another. It is easier when one source specifically or implicitly references another, but this simply means that someone else has done the work for you.

Dead ends thus come of varying degrees of severity. In an ancestral genealogy, the first "dead end" one reaches is when one has exhausted all family sources and records, and must turn to religious or civil records, for example. Among the most difficult "dead ends" are:

• when one reaches a language barrier, which can often happen around the same time for we Americans who are descended from immigrants whose native language we no longer speak. To solve this, one might need to learn a language or employ a translator or professional genealogist.
• when records are lost, missing, or deficient. Sometimes these "dead ends" can be worked around, by various ingenious methods. Some examples:
  • I have Mravinec ancestors from Perudina #5, Slovenia, a generation earlier than a potential cousin's Mravinec ancestor whose record is unlocatable. Because my line is complete, I will try to work down from my family to see if I can meet up the other "missing" family. This may or may not succeed. If a surname is sufficiently rare, one can sometimes make an educated guess about the missing information by going to another part of the family which has no known connection.
  • Another example is my ancestor Louise "de Saképe," whose last name was misspelled and should have been "de Sacquespée." Searching for the former on the internet never turned up the latter.
  • Many Acadian records were destroyed. Research in all the areas Acadians were known to have been dispersed may turn up people whose destination is unknown.
• when one has a Native American ancestry, which ultimately reaches a hard "dead end" when one goes back to prehistoric times (1400s, 1500s, 1600s, or 1700s, depending upon the location). I would assume a similar situation exists in Australia with aboriginal ancestry.

Often, researching one's ancestry reaches various dead ends, of varying kinds and degrees of severity. If they are long enough ago, these dead ends are shared by several people (distant cousins) working on their family tree. Thus I present here various dead ends and all the information I have been able to gather. I hope that by collaboration among interested parties, we can make some progress on these dead ends.

In my French-Canadian ancestry

• English
  • Daniel Smith, who married Marie Stiber, died at Grand-Rivière September 26, 1832, at the age of 73. We suspect that he was born in England and that the family (he and his sons) were sailors, due to the nomadic patterns of the family.
  • Suzanne Botfait or Botfair, daughter of Richard or Gilbert and Anne Bonne, from Gloucester, England. For French-Canadian genealogists, this a combination of language and geographical barriers, and possibly an issue of record accesibility or availability.
• German
  • Philippe-Henri Stiber, son of Sébastien and Catherine Fresse or Prene, born about 1760 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, married to Marie-Felicit&eeacute; Huret dit Rochefort, in October 1784 in Rivière-Ouelle.
• Portuguese
• Native American
  • Anne Skawennetsi McGregor-Grégory, daughter of Pierre and Marie-Joseph, born 11 XI 1764, and married 1^st to Louis Beauvais 18 VIII 1777, and 2^nd to Claude Nicolas Guillaume de Lorimier in 27 II 1801, recorded in the registers of the mission of St. François-Xavier, Sault-St. Louis (Kahnawake).
  • Christine or Marie Aubois or Dubois, wife of Jean Roy dit LaLiberté, born circa 1660 - 1680, who in one instance in a census is listed as Native American, and whose parentage has not been determined.
  • The Micmac wife of Pierre LeJeune, and mother of Edm&eeacute;e LeJeune, apparently recorded only in the Jesuit relations. This is probably a hard "dead end," since Pierre's birth is estimated as 1595, at which time Acadia reaches prehistory. (The first colony here is 1604.)

• Répertoires des naissances, baptemes, marriages, décèv;s, et s&eeacute;pultures de Kahnawake de 1735 à 1899, par Pierre (Osahetakenrat) Bernard. 3 vols.
• Stephen A. White, Dictionnaire Généalogique des Familles Acadiennes, 1999.
• Virginia Easley DeMarce, Mercenary troops from Anhalt-Zerbst, Germany, who served with the British forces during the American Revolution, 1984. 2 vols.
• Patrice Gallant, Les Régistres de la Gaspésie, 1752-1850, 1996.
• U.S. Census, 1900, 1910, and 1920.

In my Eastern European ancestry

• Hungarian
  • Sophia Mokos, born May 10, 1860, who married John Vlossak about 1880.
• Czech
• Slovak
  • Mathias Vlossak, who married Maria Lacsnik, daughter of George Lacsnik, on March 18, 1776, in Bobrov, Slovakia.
  • Elizabeth Glomba, born in 1778, who married their son John Vlossak on April 16, 1816, in Bobrov, Slovakia.
  These are not truly dead ends, but are dead ends for me because of the language barrier and lack of knowledge on how to obtain more information on Slovak genealogy.

• Research of Zamrsk archive by Duncan Gardiner, certified genealogist.
• Cousin John Vlossak (living).