What do you want to accomplish this year with your research? Find that brick wall? How are you going to do that? Send email? Send letters? Use the message board? Get all your family to fill out a family group sheet? Bribe them? Threaten them? NO. Appeal to their curiosity? Do a DNA test? Get a family member to do a DNA test? Claim it and do it. Brick wall - how long since you took that ancestor out and showed them to someone? Bring them out and show them off either here or on a message board. It pays to advertise. Here's your free commercial. Have you ask family members for help? I can tell you but personal experience, you may not have ask the right question. Those who don't do genealogy, don't know what clues are. For years I ask the wrong questions. When one of my cousins passed, her friend called my aunt and told her there were pictures and other family items she and her sisters needed to come and get. I took my mother and her sisters. At the end of the day, I got all of the pictures. In the pictures, I found pictures of both my grandmothers maternal and paternal grandparents, names and where they were born. All I had ever ask was questions about her parents. Never did It occur to me there was info about the grandparents. Re-think your questions. After the pictures, within 2 weeks I found researching cousins on both sides who gave me great info One gave me a info back to the 1300's. I use that as a bases of my research. Never assume all info is correct. I have a family tree from my husbands side, I know is incorrect. I use that info to prove mine. Take a moment and show off your ancestor, Kemis Massey Admin