Cluster Research for Genealogy

Tips for using cluster research when an ancestor is difficult to find

There are times when researching your ancestor that you aren't able to find further records. Sometimes records for the time and place may limited, or some of the information you have is not completely correct, or other factors are happening that are making your ancestor more difficult to find. In cases like this, a cluster research strategy may be helpful.

What is a Cluster Research Strategy?

A cluster research strategy is expanding your research to include people that were connected to your ancestor's life. Cluster research may include spouses, siblings, children, grandchildren, and other family members. It may also include people living near where your ancestor lived because relatives tended to live near each other.

Examine What You Know

To do a cluster research strategy, you'll first want to carefully examine all of the documents and sources that you have for your ancestor. It may help to write out in detail everything you know about your ancestor and how you know it. For example, you could write that you know that your ancestor was born in a certain place because it's listed on a particular census record, etc.

As you examine your sources, look at the images of the documents and make note of any individuals listed that are connected to your ancestor, such a witnesses at a marriage, relatives listed on documents, neighbors on the census with the same surname as your ancestor, people with the surname living nearby in a city directory, etc. It may also be helpful to make a timeline of your ancestor listing when and where your ancestor was through time in order to think about carefully what information you know so far.

Expand Your Search

Once have a clear idea in mind of what you already know about your ancestor, it's time to search outward from what you know already. You will want to study all of the known relatives of your ancestor including spouses, children, siblings, etc. You will also want to study anyone who is listed in documents about your ancestor because they can be potential relatives or people who came from the area that your ancestor came from. For example, if a witness is listed on a marriage, you'll want to study that individual and find out about them. Or a relative listed on a draft registration may help give you further information. Or people on a land deed or probate document can be studied. Or neighbors on the census can be studied, particularly those with the surname.

In addition to studying people named in documents about your ancestor, you can also study people living in the same area as your ancestor. Sometimes if you study those individuals, you will find out more about the individual you are searching for. For example, if you know your ancestor's specific birth place, but not his or her parents, it may help to study people of that surname in and around that birth place may help to identify possible families. Or if a woman's marriage place is known, but her parents are unknown, it may help to study people with her surname in around the marriage place.

We have many brick wall case studies our site that included a cluster research strategy:

• Brick Wall Case Studies #2: Discovering the family of a woman living in Ohio from an unknown place in New Jersey
• Brick Wall Case Studies #6: Finding the family of a Massachusetts Revolutionary War soldier
• Brick Wall Case Studies #7: Verifying the family of a Pennsylvania man with a common name
• Brick Wall Case Studies #11: Locating a San Francisco man's parents when a fire destroyed many of the genealogical records
• Brick Wall Case Studies #12: Finding the parents of a New Jersey man with no vital or census records that listed his parents
• Brick Wall Case Studies #13: Finding the family of a Pennsylvania woman with no birth record
• Brick Wall Case Studies #17: Identifying a Pennsylvania woman's family without a document that names her parents
• Brick Wall Case Studies #18: Finding the family of a man from South Carolina living in Georgia
• Brick Wall Case Studies #19: Finding a man and his parents when only his initials and last name were known
• Brick Wall Case Studies #20: Finding a Tennessee woman's parents without a birth record
• Brick Wall Case Studies #21: Finding a New Hampshire man's parents without a birth record
• Brick Wall Case Studies #22: Finding an Indiana man's family when he hadn't been found with them in the census
• Brick Wall Case Studies #26: Locating the family of a New Jersey man with many men in the area of the same name
• Brick Wall Case Studies #29: Identifying the family of a man who lived in Indiana who doesn't appear listed by name in any U.S. census records
• Brick Wall Case Studies #30: Finding the parents of an adopted child born in the 1870s in Ohio
• Brick Wall Case Studies #31: Identifying the family of a man with a common name

Need help finding more records? We have genealogy research services available. You can also try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1.3 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Related Topics on This Site

• Learning Genealogy Articles more than 140 helpful articles to help you to do genealogy more effectively
• Using U.S. Military Records in Genealogy A helpful video about using U.S. military records
• Genealogy Records Types A summary of common types of genealogy records for the United States and ways that they may be useful in your research