52 Ancestors Week 11: Brick Wall

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 11:

The theme for Week 11 is "Brick Wall." What ancestor is giving you fits in your research? What ancestor had been a brick wall, but you’ve broken through? Or, how about an ancestor who built brick walls for a living?

Welcome to Atop the Brick Wall....

    With apologies to my friend and fellow comic nerd, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug, I welcome you all to another edition of "Atop the Brick Wall". The name of that genealogy show would rock so hard. But, it's too much like my friend Lewis's show, "Atop the 4th Wall". If you're interested in his reviews and retrospectives, I highly suggest checking him out here: http://atopthefourthwall.com/

    That said brick walls are truly one of the most annoying aspects of genealogy. Imagine chugging away adding ancestors and suddenly you hit the wall like Wil E Coyote. It's not pleasant. Earlier this year I talked about one such brick wall in the form of Moses Goodwin. Three months later and the wall still hasn't been broken. That's okay. There are other brick walls out there and many of them are on my mother's side of the tree.

What's this? Wikitree has a new look? Yup!

    Meet my 6th great-grandmother, Phebe Southwick, a woman shrouded in so much mystery she reminds me of a femme fatale in a James Bond movie or something. Seriously. There's like nothing on her anywhere. I only know she existed thanks to her marriage to James Frothingham in 1784 and through the births of her children. So, she did exist! I wasn't just imagining her or anything. 

   That's always a plus, right? I'd hate to find out if someone never really existed. However, even with the marriage and births used as a source it's still not enough to break that brick wall. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked!

    Researching women is tricky. I'm not going to lie. Researching women in a specific time and place is even worse sometimes because all you get is stuff like her first name. Gender roles have thankfully changed. Though, it is interesting to note that women in predominately Catholic countries don't have this issue for the most part. Though, you do want to be careful because your Domenica Gullo or Célanise Lefebvre may actually be a lady with the same name. You still need to research even if you have all the information in front of you. Look at how long it took me to break the brick wall that was Domenica Gullo!

Phebe's son, Richard.

    Let's put all of that aside for a minute and look at how I got into this mess in the first place. As stories go, this is a good one. I was building up my second great-grandmother Gertrude Stevens's tree using Massachusetts records. You really can't go wrong with records in the Bay State for the most part. Anyway, my path to Phebe went from Gertrude to her mother Evaline Fisher to her mother Frances Miranda Frothingham to her father Richard Sprague Frothingham and them Phebe herself.

    That's where things went a little sideways. I initially found a Phebe Southwick and when I was starting out I was sure that she was Richard's mother and the wife of James Frothingtham.  I built her tree up and it was one of those family trees that goes back to the 1000s. If I remember correctly, Ancestry automatically added that branch. This was back in 2006/2007 so I didn't have any means of checking my work. I assumed things were great until I started taking genealogy up again in 2017. I started to look at my old solo research to see if there was anything I needed to clean up. After all you want to check your work every once in a while!

    I asked for help confirming a few things on geni.com because I was skeptical of what I saw. A branch as full as that should not have been automatically added to my tree. That and I don't recall there being any sources. This was why I asked for help. Another pair of eyes is more than welcome every once in a while. To make a long story short, there were two Phebe Southwicks existing at the same time. One who had a link to the distant past and the one who turned out to be Richard's mother.

    The other Phebe turned out to be a "gateway ancestor". That's a person whose lineage dates back to the signers of the Magna Carta and usually those trees can be pushed back further than 1215 AD thanks to the signers being royalty and all that. 

        Proving that James didn't marry that Phebe was relatively easy. The Phebe who descended from the Magna Carta Surety Barons died before a few of Richard's children with the other Phebe Southwick were born. If memory serves, this included Richard himself! I couldn't believe I never saw that. Ah well. We all make mistakes! Naturally, I took a chainsaw to that branch and deleted all of the profiles dating back to the 1000s.

    The story of Phebe Southwick is why pre-1600 genealogy gives me trust issues. I still don't understand how the branch was auto-added onto my tree on Ancestry in 2006.  I'll probably never have an answer to that nearly twenty year old mystery. There must have been a glitch or something because Ancestry never did anything like that again!

    When the dust settled, I still had a problem. Who was the Phebe Southwick who was clearly Richard's mother? Where did she come from? Who the heck were her parents?! I honestly don't know. The only clues I have to her identity is her marriage to James. In fact, her last name might not have been "Southwick" at all. That would be problematic! It doesn't help that she wasn't referenced in the Southwick genealogy book.

    The only thing I know for sure is that she was born around 1760 as evidenced by her marriage and the births of her seven children. The only way I know that she was connected to the Southwicks somehow is because her husband unfortunately died without a will. A man named James Southwick took care of the estate and belongings. His connection to the family is unknown. He could have been a brother or another relative.

    As of March 2025, Phebe remains one of my strongest American brick walls. She's a tough one to crack because researching women in New England during her time is tricky when there are other women around who share the same name. Brick walls like her are definitely annoying and when you hit it you have no choice but to move onto another branch on the tree. There's not much anyone can do here and my friends and I have exhausted all avenues of research. If you look at her profile on Wikitree, you'll see what I mean.

    I did learn one valuable lesson from all of this. Pre-1600 genealogy is not for the faint of heart. I still don't understand how all those people were automatically added back in 2006. It's a good thing I deleted them all. I was always a bit skeptical about them. Now I know why!

See you next time! Here's hoping the mystery of Phebe Southwick gets resolved!