Ever wonder how you got stuck with such a difficult family tree to climb? You can barely get your research off the ground, let alone reach the highest branches. Meanwhile, it seems other genealogists are tracing their roots back to the Middle Ages!

Don’t worry: All family historians get research block sooner or later. And you don’t have to be biologically blessed to break through it. Take a hint from these 30 winners of our Brick-Wall Busters Contest. They came up with creative solutions to some of the most common genealogical conundrums—and their methods are remarkably easy to employ. Give your research a boost by adopting these habits of highly successful family historians.

1. Don’t miss the mark.

I had no record of my grandfather’s birthplace in Poland. One day I was cleaning out my mother’s dresser drawer and going through her stamp collection, when I came across an envelope with a canceled stamp from Poland. It was from a relative of my grandfather, with whom he’d corresponded in the early 1900s. The town in Poland, Brzozow, was clearly printed on the postmark—much easier for me to decipher than Polish script.

Deb Vevea, Robbinsdale, Minn.

2. Map it out.

The US Geological Survey’s highly detailed topographical maps cover small areas and label creeks, family cemeteries, tiny rural churches and more. They’re available in many libraries, or you can view and order them online at . Many libraries also have a comprehensive index to the names on these maps, the Omni Gazetteer of the United States of America. In it, I found a list of 41 Jordan cemeteries across the country.

Rene Jordan, Knoxville, Tenn.

3. Get on target.

Copy and enlarge a map with your town of interest in the center. Using the distance scale, draw concentric circles at regular intervals, such as 10 miles, from that town—you’ll end up with what looks like a target. Then make an alphabetized list of town names appearing within each pair of rings. When you’re working with records, you can refer to your list and determine if a strange-sounding location might be in proximity to your area of interest. For example, it was only after doing this exercise for Tolpuddle, Dorset, England, that I realized Dewlish (about which I’d received e-mails) was actually just down the road.

Jacki Keck, Williston, ND

4. Reach out to other researchers.

I believe in leaving my name, surnames I’m researching and contact information (e-mail address, mailing address and phone number) every place I can think of. I left my genealogy card on a laundry bulletin board in the small town where my great-grandmother lived, and got four phone calls with information about her.

Jana Jordan Shaw, Burleson, Texas

5. Start a letter-writing campaign.

I was getting nowhere on my search for my mother’s father’s family. I found Mom’s old address book and started searching for family members. I put together an introductory newsletter with contact information, an explanation of what I was doing and a request for help. I was amazed at the replies—e-mails, letters, photos, family information and names of more relatives to send the newsletter to. Now I do a newsletter about four times a year, and still get new information and meet new relatives. It’s been a wonderful experience that’s helped fill in a lot of my blanks.

Liz Weiers, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada

6. Publish your pedigree.

I’ve been researching my husband’s Welsh lines, and have been successful using the Internet, the National Library of Wales and a local Welsh archive. On trips, we’ve found ancestral homes, churches and gravestones. But I definitely hit a brick wall on a couple of lines.

A distant cousin in England signed us up for a genealogical journal that focuses on my husband’s family’s region of Wales. In the first issue, I found helpful hints but nothing too substantial, so I decided to write an article about our family. Within three weeks of its publication, I received letters from readers related to us. Not only did they provide me with ideas for new resources, they also sent pedigree charts and stories about my husband’s ancestors.

Michelle Price, Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo.

7. Hit the big town.

Go to the city! For example, if your family was in the Midwest during the 1800s and you can’t find them, look in Chicago. Many of our ancestors were drawn to cities. They may have gone to search for work, be near relatives or the train station, or simply to sightsee.

I searched for years for my husband’s great-grandmother Margaret Culton. She was supposed to have been born in Michigan in 1860, but I could find no records for any Cultons there. I looked in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois, too. A year or two ago, I went back to the 1880 Illinois census—now with its every-name index—and there she was, living with her father and mother. They had been visiting her sister’s family in Chicago—from their home in California. Cities are magnets for people, then and now.

Bonnie B. Ruff, Belfair, Wash.

8. Put first names first.

When name searches on Web sites such as HeritageQuest Online (available through subscribing libraries) and Ancestry.com don’t yield results—even though you’ve tried every spelling you can think of—try typing just a first name, plus a place and/or time period. I did this on HeritageQuest Online and found the mistranscribed and misspelled names of two ancestors who had eluded me for a long time.

Donna Carnall, Cherryvale, Kan.

9. Read all about it in newsletters.

Look for newsletters of schools, universities, synagogues, churches and communities—you may find birth, marriage, Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah announcements, obituaries, donor lists, oral histories and photographs. Alumni lists in school newsletters often contain graduation years and maiden names. To find online newsletters with your surnames, use an Internet search engine such as Google . The advanced search can help narrow your results by location. If you don’t come up with an online newsletter, get the names of local organizations and publications from your search, and visit a nearby library or archive—it may hold documents from churches, clubs, schools and business associations in the area.

Teresa Milner, New York, NY

10. Locate material witnesses.

A witness’s signature can be important to your research. On my great-great-grandmother’s Confederate States of America widow’s pension application, her oldest, as-yet-unidentified daughter appears as a witness. With that name, I launched an Internet and phone-directory search for the area. I found two different families who knew they were kin but didn’t know how. Then I took the witness’s surname to the library where these families lived and read every genealogical society newsletter on file. In one newsletter, a researcher from Colorado referred to the married surname of my pension-application witness. I wrote her, and a few months later, she sent Bible pages that listed all my great-great-grandparents’ children, except my great-grandfather—which was OK because I already knew all about him.

Shirley Bray, Oklahoma City, Okla.

11. Follow the patterns.

I look for families’ first-name patterns and for first names that are family surnames. Such patterns provide clues to female relatives’ families, as it often was customary to give a male child his mother’s maiden name. I’ve also found that in some cases, a daughter was given the mother’s maiden name.

Jeri Taylor, Morehead, Ky.

12. Focus on the effect, not the cause.

Many people spend a lifetime searching for their ancestors’ naturalization records, and they never find them. I thought this would happen to me until I stumbled across a solution. My research subject, Manuel E. Rencurrell, was a longtime resident of Boston. I’d searched every available naturalization index to no avail.

I decided that instead of looking for the cause, naturalization, I’d look for the effect, voting. I requested Manuel’s voter-registration records and received his voter card. This proved that he’d become a citizen—and his date of naturalization and the court where it happened were on the card.

P. Emile Carr, Palm Coast, Fla.

13. Seek neighborly advice.

In 20th-century city directories, you’ll often find a cross-street index—an excellent resource for finding living relatives. This index is arranged alphabetically by street, then by the address numbers of houses, apartments and businesses. It also gives the residents’ names. You can use a cross-street index to find names of people living next-door to an ancestor—if they still live there, they still may remember your relatives.

David Powell, Grand Prairie, Texas

14. Go slow and steady.

I knew an approximate date of birth (1809) for my ancestor and a rough location (Alsace, France). I ordered birth records on microfilm for one city at a time for all the cities in that area, and searched each one. All on one birth record, I found my ancestor's information, plus his parents' and grandparents'.