At which point do you admit defeat?

[Jill Eaton]

Does everyone have a criteria or cut-off point where they accept they are never going to find that definitive bit of information? Or do you all keep the ancestor on the back-burner on the off chance that new records will become available and identification will finally become possible?

I've got a couple of ancestors who, unless DNA matches throw up some results, will almost certainly be unable to locate.

An illegitimate great grandmother. Father unknown. Mother's name on the birth certificate and no biographical details to identify her age or family background. And the location of birth, the workhouse. Any documentation that might have helped - eg. Creed registers and workhouse admission and discharge books are no longer extant for her date of birth and she doesn't appear to be on any census before her marriage in 1891

John Williams. great grandfather. I've got a thread on Rootshcat regarding him. I've been looking for 10 years and in that time only learned his year of birth, his year of marriage, the year of his death and his probable religion. I've looked on the various web sites over and over again but have finally accepted that the above is as much as I'm ever likely to know with any certainty.

Frustratingly I can't go back any further with these two ancestors.

So what do you all do? Stop looking and concentrate on another ancestor? Or just keep looking until you have a eureka moment

Amended to add:

This is a general query. More about general genealogical principles and techniques than locating actual specific ancestors.

[rosie17]

Think we have all been in this situation with finding lost ancestor's   I still have several yet to find I would say just concentrate on another in the mean time ... I have found information on several ancestor's  years later  so don't give up 

Rosie

[Lisajb]

I've been trying to find Eliza Matthews origins for over 10 years. Fathers name missing from marriage cert (vicar made a habit of doing this), place of birth in census varies from Purton, Wiltshire to Wapley and Codrington, Glos. I think I have found her son living with a different couple and described as grandson, but not entirely sure. I've had a few threads on RC about her.

Now joined by Elizabeth Bishop, have details of her baptism, but there's not a trace of her afterwards. I'm more likely to give up with this one than with Eliza Matthews.

[Jill Eaton]

I've been trying to find Eliza Matthews origins for over 10 years. Fathers name missing from marriage cert (vicar made a habit of doing this)

Don't you feel like giving the vicar a piece of you mind and telling him to be more thorough?

I always feel this way about census enumerators...."Ireland!! What do you mean by just "Ireland" ask them whereabouts!!"

[groom]

I don't think we ever admit defeat or give up entirely. More and more records are becoming available, and you never know if one day something new will appear.

It's a little bit like looking for something at home, you know it must be somewhere but just cant find it. Then when you stop looking and do something else, you open a drawer and there it is staring at you! 

[panda40]

I put them on the back burner and work on another branch. I am currently going back over my tree updating my early research and adding sources which Mary be new or I missed documenting when I first started out. I have managed to get back a generation further than before due to records added over last year.
In regards to unhelpful vicars and parish clerks I had one who wrote John Smith and wife on all the baptism so you know the fathers name but will never know the mother name helpful **** not
Regards panda

[Lisajb]

I've been trying to find Eliza Matthews origins for over 10 years. Fathers name missing from marriage cert (vicar made a habit of doing this)

Don't you feel like giving the vicar a piece of you mind and telling him to be more thorough?

I always feel this way about census enumerators...."Ireland!! What do you mean by just "Ireland" ask them whereabouts!!"

Definitely! I'm sure a few other people would too - once he'd finished his tenure in Old Sodbury, he moved to a parish in London where he continued in much the same fashion

[iluleah]

I don't think any serious researcher ever 'gives up' on someone they are looking for. I work on the basis of getting a copy of every record they potentially generated in their lifetime and do that for all I research as it gives me a better picture of their life.

On personal experience I was looking for a great aunt who I loved to bits, knew where she was born, lived, who she married, where they lived and where he is buried, she told me 'family stories' and the rest of the family would laugh when I told them, said she was crazy...... I didn't think so, but could never find where they married and where she was for a great part of her life and it stayed that way for 30 years. As I knew her and so like many of us when researching OUR family we are emotionally involved and discount what we think doesn't 'fit'.
I eventually asked on the forum fully expecting no one would find anything and went onto research many dead ends but one which didn't seem to have any connection in my eyes to her at all answered all the questions and more. I simply was looking in the wrong place, I now know she was married twice,where she lived, that she worked as a professional photographer ( which I never knew) but that answered why she carried a camera around with her family just said it was her age/dementia and I would never have found it myself as there were no 'connection records' to that part of the world or her life.

[ThrelfallYorky]

I think we've all got at least a few pots simmering on that very crowded back-burner! Most of mine seem to contain Irish Stew!