If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

One thing I've learned in my many years of family history research is that it's often helpful to stop researching a particular line for a while, especially when coming up against the proverbial brick wall. After a few months, or even a few years, I go back and take a fresh look at the family. Many times this results in fresh leads.

I had an experience with that just a few months ago. I had spent many years researching the Hickey line of my family. I found plenty of information, but also had plenty of gaps. A few years ago, I switched gears and started researching my husband's family.

Now that I am ready to write a book about the Hickeys, I've been going back over my research to see what I know about the family and what I still need to find out. A few months ago, I was looking over the family of Mary Ann Hickey (James and Sarah's oldest daughter). I noticed that I did not have a death date yet for Mary Ann's son, Harry Columbus Bailey, so I went on Ancestry.com and did a search for Harry. I did not find any information about his death. However, in Harry's WWII draft registration, I found a new piece of information about another member of the family.

Mary Ann Hickey and her husband, John Louis Bailey, had 5 daughters. I had found marriage information for all but one of the daughters: Mary Ann Bailey. Years ago, I had searched and searched for a marriage record, but to no avail. Imagine my delight, then, when I saw the following on Harry's draft registration: "Name... of person who will always know your address: Mrs. Mary Aaronson - 3658 Ash St. (sister)."

I could scarce believe my eyes. Now that I knew Mary's married name, I could find her in the census and other records (or so I thought). I immediately did a search on Ancestry and other sites for Mary Aaronson. To my disappointment, though, I came up with nothing, zilch. I could not find a single reference to Mary Aaronson.

After many frustrating hours searching for Mary, I gave up. Then, a few days later, I had an inspiration. Since I had Mary's address in 1942, I decided to try to find her in the land records.

The Maryland State Archives has digitized all the land records for Maryland and put them on line at http://www.mdlandrec.net/. The search engine for Baltimore City records allows searches by street address for records created after 1972. The later records always cite the previous records for that property, so that you can follow a chain back in time to previous owners of the property.

I did a search for 3658 Ash St. and was able to get back to 1926, when the property was purchased by Mary A. and Thomas Arrington. Eureka! Now that I had the correct last name and the first name of Mary's husband, I was easily able to find them in the census and other records. I even found one of their descendants on Ancestry, who is also researching the family.

So, as the old adage says: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." You never know what you might find.