I first started my genealogical journey in the 1980s. No sitting in the comfort of my home doing my research. Once I'd exhausted the very little family documentation available to me, along with any vague names people could remember, I'd to take the train through to Edinburgh and pay a daily fee to do research in New Register House in Edinburgh. There I'd sit, filling in forms for a 'librarian' to take away and bring me microfilms of records which you then had to scroll through, bleary eyed, to try and find the person you were looking for. And a lot of the time I didn't find them. They were either not where they were meant to be or their name wasn't as expected. Many is the time I'd spend a whole day in Edinburgh, with a break for lunch at the McDonalds on the corner, and come home with very little new information, perhaps even nothing.
In genealogy a 'brickwall' is a tough research problem, a deadend which after hours of research still yields no answer.
My first ever 'brick wall' was my paternal grandfather - yes, as close as that. I knew his name - John McAra and his parents. Born in Shotts, so I'd been told. Around 1865 (from his gravestone) and his marriage certificate. Many times I tried to find a record of his birth and came up short. It was only decades later with computers and online searchable records from ScotlandsPeople that I was able to find him. Why was that? Their search tools allow you search options such as 'fuzzy matching', 'phonetic matching' and even 'wildcards' and of course, you can broaden your search to the whole of Scotland. And there he popped up as John McCarry born in a Glasgow Hospital in 1864! 
That would not be the last time I would find the McAra surname in a different incarnation. By my reckoning, I have now come across no fewer than nine versions.
However, at least he wasn't a complete brick wall as I already knew from other sources who his parents were. It was researching another paternal line that I came upon the name of one of my 3 x great grandmothers - Sarah Diammond. What an interesting name I thought. I need to find out all about her. Ha! She had married William Boag, a cottonspinner, in 1819 in Glasgow, and by 1841 they are recorded on the census as living in Eaglesham with their family of five children. That census reveals something important - Sarah was not born in Scotland, but in Ireland! 
Transcription from Ancestry.co.uk
No more detail than that in Scotland's first census. I had hoped by 1851 when more detail was recorded to gain additional information, but that was not to be. By 1851 William has remarried! Presumably Sarah has died between 1841 and 1851. There should be a Parish record of her death somewhere, but to this day, I haven't found it.
Is it there still to be found?? Could she have gone back to Ireland, leaving her family behind??
One of her sons died in 1855 and she is named as deceased then on his death certificate. So again, presumably she has died. But when? and where?
Her birth and early life is even more of a mystery. I know she is Irish. She married William Boag when she was 16 (or she said she was, but I guess she could have been younger.) Did she come over from Ireland on her own or with family? There are no records at all of Irish immigrants to Scotland, so I have no idea when she came over. Focusing on Irish records would be the next step. But many Irish records, especially those relating to the Church of Ireland, are no longer available, having been destroyed in a fire in 1922 during the Irish Civil War. However, I have been able to find Diammonds in County Derry and County Down, a few Sarah Diamond baptisms around 1800 ..... but as to whether these are the right people, I have no idea.
I researched pockets of 'Diammonds' in Scotland and found some but have no way of knowing if they are in any way family as the link stops at 'Ireland'. Knowing the names of Sarah's children would perhaps be a clue as families do tend to repeat names from previous generations. This is when I got a few clues - her first two sons were named Thomas and William (after their father and paternal grandfather), then her next two were called Hugh and Joseph. Maybe I should be looking for her father being a Hugh or a Joseph. (In Parish birth/baptismal notices it is mostly only the father's name that is given). Sure enough I can find a few Hugh Diammonds and Joseph Diammonds in the Diammond families I'd already found. But still no idea if they are even distantly related.
Then two small breakthroughs - researching her daughters who had been named on the 1841 census, I discovered they had been baptised as Catholics! The sons had all been baptised in the Church of Scotland! Sarah was a Roman Catholic! I quickly rechecked their marriage notice from 1819 - they had been married by an 'independent' minister - it was indeed a mixed marriage. That should now prove helpful in my continuing search of Irish records as I can now almost certainly 'discount' any Protestant families.
So after decades of trying to break down this brick wall, what do I know of Sarah?
Baptised a Roman Catholic in Ireland at the turn of the 19th century, she came over to Scotland before 1819, married a Protestant, had a large family, sons brought up in their father's religion, daughters in hers, and dies between 1841 and 1851. It's a 'story' but not a complete one and I feel I owe it to her to keep going.
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