Just like any other tree, a family tree needs to have strong roots and branches. If you make mistakes in your research, those mistakes spread out and affect other parts of the tree. If you have a brick wall problem, it may be that you made a mistake at some point or that you missed some useful information.
When you get stuck in your research, one of the best things you can do is go back to the beginning and check everything. To do this, you can use my Tree Health Assessment Tool.
This post was originally published in November 2022 and last updated on 24 June 2025
What is the Tree Health Assessment Tool?
The Tree Health Assessment Tool helps you examine and document the strength of evidence for each conclusion in your family tree. Instructions are provided in my previous articles: Build a Solid Foundation and Apply the Tree Health Assessment Tool.
It uses a simple color-coding system:
- Green: Strong evidence supporting a reasonable and defensible conclusion
- Yellow: Some evidence for the conclusion but it needs further analysis and research
- Red: Evidence is absent or significantly inadequate, such as no source citations, unreliable sources, inconsistencies, or doubts about conclusions
- Uncolored: Not yet researched.
Why the Tree Health Assessment Tool helps Solve Brick Wall Problems
Brick wall problems occur when you are unable to progress your research. They may result from insufficiencies in sources, or from insufficiencies in your process.
Before you can break down a brick wall problem, you need to know:
- whether the information in your family tree is accurate
- which conclusions in your tree need further evidence.
The Tree Health Assessment Tool forces you to examine this in a systematic manner and re-evaluate the strength of your conclusions. It helps you identify the flaws in your family tree and how you can address them.
Many brick walls exist because genealogists pursue research based on assumptions rather than reasonable and defensible conclusions. The visual nature of the color-coding reveals these weak foundations. When you see red or yellow in your direct line, you know you must strengthen that evidence before building further.
When conducting your assessment for a brick wall problem, make sure that you:
- include all relevant family members and their family groups
- examine the evidence objectively and critically
- identify all inconsistencies and doubts.
Brick Wall Case Study
For more than ten years, I searched for the identity of the mother of my maternal great great grandmother Sophia Jane Webb. Parents are usually recorded in a birth or baptism record, but I have not found either for Sophia. Her father was listed on her marriage record as George Webb, but her mother is not mentioned in any sources that I have found.
Applying the Tree Health Assessment Tool
Step 1: There’s no point researching someone until you are sure that they actually belong in your family. Use the Family Tree Chart and Evidence Table to establish that you have a green line from yourself to the subject person. I did this and confirmed that Sophia is my great great grandmother.
Step 2: Next, you need to evaluate all the information you have about the subject.
When I did this, I identified that the strongest evidence was for her death in 1931 in Gunnedah, New South Wales, so that became a solid foundation point.
Step 3: You need to move from ‘the known’ to the unknown. So, I progressively moved from that solid foundation point backwards in time, evaluating the strength and weaknesses in the evidence.
This revealed a critical flaw in what I thought I knew. Sophia’s death certificate and obituary stated she was born in Muswellbrook in 1830. However, the two sources were not independent – the same person provided the information for both documents.
More doubts about the birthdate arose when I examined evidence for other events in her life. She required permission to marry in 1855, so she must have been underage. And she had a child in 1880. The evidence for a birthdate of 1830 gave a yellow result, not green. I needed to consider alternatives.
This assessment revealed I had been searching for the wrong birth year in the wrong location. No wonder I couldn’t find her mother.
Step 4: Next, you need to write research questions or hypotheses based on the Tree Health Assessment. Use these to target your research, gather better sources and better evidence. If it involves identity issues, you should use DNA evidence.
My new research questions became:
- What was Sophia’s actual birth year?
- Where was she really born?
- Who were her parents?
I used DNA evidence from my mother’s test results to identify DNA matches who were related to us on Sophia’s line. I built family trees for these matches to identify their common ancestors, tested whether it was reasonable to conclude she was our common ancestor.
Step 5: The next step is to incorporate the new evidence, revise your conclusions and update the Tree Health Assessment.
From my mother’s DNA results, I identified the potential parents of Sophia: John Shaw and Lydia Matthews. The DNA evidence, combined with circumstantial evidence about timing and location, supported this as a reasonable hypothesis.
I then evaluated the evidence for the new hypothesis using the Tree Health Assessment Tool. The results for her mother were now green – multiple independent sources plus DNA evidence provided strong support. Her father remains yellow as the DNA results were inconclusive for his identity.
Step 6: A brick wall problem should be documented in either an evidence summary or an evidence argument (aka ‘proof summary’ and ‘proof argument’). Document all of the steps and include a Tree Health Assessment Chart and Evidence Table.
The Key Breakthrough
The Tree Health Assessment Tool prevented me from continuing to waste time on incorrect assumptions. By forcing me to critically evaluate what I “knew” about Sophia’s birth, I discovered my foundation was actually yellow, not green. This led me to question everything and ultimately find the correct mother.
With this systematic assessment, I was able to get my research back on track.
You can Solve Brick Wall Problems with the Tree Health Assessment Tool
To solve a brick wall problem, you first need to locate and fix any errors in your family tree. Then you need to re-evaluate the evidence and identify new research leads. The Tree Health Assessment Tool helps you approach brick wall problems in a systematic manner.
The tool’s greatest strength is revealing what you think you know versus what your evidence actually supports. Many brick walls crumble once you discover the conclusion blocking your progress wasn’t well-supported at all.
Start your next brick wall investigation with a Tree Health Assessment. You might discover your wall was built on poorly-supported conclusions that need strengthening before you can break through to the other side.
More information
Read more about the Tree Health Assessment Tool
Download a fact sheet about the Tree Health Assessment Tool
Read more about the Tree Health Assessment Tool in my book, The Good Genealogist.
For more of my articles about planning your family history, go to the Plan page.
For more of my articles about analysing sources, go to the Analyse page.
About the Author
Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.
