Family history frustrations

Researching family history can be very frustrating sometimes. Every so often you hit brick walls in your research – particularly the further back you go when records aren’t as detailed and names often become repeated and so it is almost impossible to be sure whether the name in the records is actually your ancestor or someone else all together. It’s particularly frustrating when the brick wall is hit very early on – as is the case with one great-grandfather called John Smith who simply put his father’s name as “deceased” on his marriage certificate making it virtually impossible to trace further back.