This is the second post in a short series giving suggestions on how to find more information about an ancestor and/or family when you have run out of ideas and resources.

Some ancestors are definitely more difficult to trace for reasons ranging from no land ownership to frequent moves or to having settled in a burned county.

However, the idea that an ancestor left no paper trail whatsoever is unlikely unless it was an infant who died very young before birth records were kept or a person who didn’t want to be found and lived under aliases.

So, what in kinds of records might these elusive ancestors appear?

If they lived in the 1800s or later, my first resource to check would be city directories. My great grandparents came from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before Ellis Island opened and never bought any property. They often moved, as they were renters, and aside from the censuses (where their surname was spelled several ways with the initial K of Kucharik being mis-indexed as an R), it wasn’t likely I was going to find them in many records.

However, back in the early 20th century, city directories were prolific and those listed it them had no ability to opt out. My family appears in multiple years, each time with a new address, which is even better than the decennial official census record.

A second excellent resource is church records. If your ancestor lived in a city, you’ll need to determine the neighborhood to locate the nearest church. Be aware that many Catholic and some Protestant churches were ethnically oriented. That means that the local Catholic church that had a majority Irish population is probably not the parish of your Italian or Slavic family, who would have traveled further away to attend church with their own ethnic groups. I have found early church minutes dating back into the early 1800s for ancestral families. If you are lucky enough to have Quaker or Moravian ancestors, those records exist for the 1700s.

Might your ancestor have had to go to court? Court records are another type of record that no one could “opt out” of! My great grandfather was an alcoholic who was cited for public drunkenness and appeared in court to be fined. There might have been a civil dispute between neighbors or perhaps your ancestor appeared in court as a witness.

Finding court records is made easier by the fact that newspapers reported all the local news. Newspapers would not only publish stories about witnesses in court, but also shard the news that friends and relatives from out of town were visiting, old Mr. Smith was ailing and the Jones family was arrested for moonshining.

Lastly, check to see if any local tax records are accessible. The South, in particular, was diligent about taxing males just for living and for not only owning land, but for owning a pig, sheep, horse, wheeled carriages, producing crops and for owning enslaved people.

It might require extra effort and a thinking cap, but it is unlikely that you can’t find some kind of records for your ancestors. Good luck in your search!