Stop and Admire Your Family Tree Milestones

On Saturday I made my backup files and closed down Family Tree Maker a couple of hours early. Why would I do such a thing? Because I reached a big milestone. I wanted to savor it a while before moving on to the next one.

How many milestones have you reached in your genealogy research? Think back to when you started building your family tree. How much did you know?

These types of genealogy victories are important milestones in your family tree journey.

I grew up knowing the names of my eight great grandparents. That's a great start! I'd met only two of them, and I was too young to remember it. Only four of them had emigrated to the United States; the other four stayed in Italy. But I never realized I didn't know one great grandmother's maiden name until 2003 when my aunt said it was Caruso. That was the year I began building my tree.

And that's when I started reaching family tree milestones.

Milestone 1: Locating Ancestors' Place of Origin

My ancestors arrived in America in 1898. First two of my 2nd great grandparents came. A year later, two of my great grandparents came, pregnant with Grandma.

Grandma's last living sibling told me her family came from Avellino and Pastene. That was only a clue in my genealogy trail. You see, Avellino is both a city and a province in Italy. So where did they come from? And Pastene, well, I was hearing it as Pastena, and I headed off in the wrong direction for a while.

Then I found my people. An 1898 ship manifest said my 2nd great grandparents came from Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. It used an abbreviation of the town, but when I found it on the map, I saw a section of that town called Pastene. At last I was on the right track. Grandma's family came from the Pastene in Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, Benevento, Italy.

Figuring out who came from Avellino—and where—took a few more years. But I did it.

Milestone 2: Finding Documents from Another Country

I spent a few years at Family History Centers viewing microfilmed vital records. I viewed only my maternal grandfather Adamo's hometown, Baselice. I knew next to nothing about his family. I had his parents' names and those of two of his siblings.

Once I located Adamo's mother's birth record in 1856, and his father's in 1850, I was ready to start climbing that tree. Soon I realized I should document everyone in this small town's records. Otherwise I wouldn't know who was related to whom. Too many people had the same name. By 2012, I'd added more than 15,000 people from Baselice to my family tree.

Today this is much easier because these records are available online. All my ancestors came from small, neighboring towns with tons of intermarriage. That's why my family tree has 86,957 people today. And there will be many more.

Milestone 3: Breaking Down a Brick Wall

So who came from Avellino and where? It had to be someone on my maternal grandmother's branch, but it wasn't her parents. The answer came from Grandma's uncle's World War I draft registration card. He said he was born in Tufo, Avellino. I rushed off to a Family History Center and by sheer coincidence, they had a reel of microfilm for the town of Tufo. Someone else had ordered it, so I got to view it.

I found Grandma's uncle's birth record, and those of two of his siblings who died young. No one in my living family knew about these children. Grandma's parents were from Pastene. Did her grandmother Colomba come from Tufo? I couldn't find her there.

But I kept on pushing. I found Colomba's brothers living in Tufo. They had children there. But at least one of these documents told me Colomba's brothers weren't born in Tufo. They came from the neighboring town of Santa Paolina, Avellino.

At long last, I found Antonio and Colomba's 1871 marriage record in Santa Paolina. This confirmed that Antonio was born in Pastene and Colomba was born in Santa Paolina. Open up the floodgates!

Milestone 4: Making Quality Source Citations

That brings me to Saturday's milestone. For two years I've been revisiting Italian documents online to create source citations. I used Family Tree Analyzer to export a list of something like 70,000 people in my tree with zero source citations. The horror!

I worked my way through one location at a time, picking off the smaller ones first. On Saturday I finished citing sources for everyone in my family tree from Santa Paolina! That leaves a handful of unsourced people from the USA, England, Ireland, Canada, and Japan. I give them another try once in a while.

But the frightening bulk of what's left are people from two of my Italian towns. From Pesco Sannita, I have a whopping 9,646 people to cite. And, saving the scariest for last, from Baselice, I have 18,594 people to cite.

Let me explain. Those Baselice people came from the microfilm I was viewing way back when. So I cited the microfilm numbers. But guess what? You can't get microfilm anymore. So I threw out those source citations leaving 18,594 people with nothing to show for themselves.

Also, Using Shortcuts!

The good news is, I keep finding ways to be more efficient in this source citation project. I completed Santa Paolina ahead of schedule because of a couple of tricks I put into use toward the end. I can't wait to work on the next town with these new tricks up my sleeve.

Let me share one that's been a huge time saver for me. I'm working with the Italian records on the Antenati Portal. There's a separate collection (a separate web page) for each available year's:

• birth records
• death records
• marriage records
• marriage banns
• extra marriage records—the fabled "wedding packets"

Instead of opening tons of tabs in my web browser, or re-opening a collection I used before, I'm using a new trick. It's a Firefox browser feature—I don't know which other browsers have this. Firefox lets you drag one tab onto another to create a tab group. You can name that group, save that group, expand and collapse that group. Tomorrow you can open all your groups again in a flash.

I created eight tab groups for Santa Paolina death records. I made one group for each decade from the 1810s through the 1880s. Within each group, I arranged the tabs in order. The 1820s group has tabs for 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823, etc. Now it's much faster to locate a particular person's death record and cite the source. Each page is ready and waiting in memory.

My plan is to create similar groups for my 9,646 Pesco Sannita people right from the start.

How About Your Milestones?

What other milestones have you reached or are you trying to reach?

• Are you putting together binders or charts to share with family? I made 40 copies of a large chart to share with my Sarracino/Saviano cousins many years ago. That created quite the buzz.
• Are you separating truth from myth? My sons' 2nd great grandfather was NOT the brother of the captain of the Titanic. The captain didn't even have brothers!
• Are you gathering documents for membership to the DAR or for dual citizenship? I don't qualify for any of that. I'm descended from peasants.
• Are you writing a book or detailed paper about a particular ancestor? I've done a bit of that, and even worked on my own life story. It's a lot of fun to track down all your past addresses, schools, and jobs.

Be sure to celebrate your family tree milestones. You can share your news with friends and family and even on social media. Or go ahead and take the rest of the day off. Cheers to you, intrepid genealogy researcher!

Sometimes Vital Records Are All You've Got

What do you do when there's no mention of your ancestors in the newspapers? When they attended school for a precious few years? When there's the thinnest of paper trails? This has been the story of my family tree.

When I began building my tree, I learned my ancestors arrived in the United States between 1899 and 1920. The 1940 census tells me my paternal grandmother completed the 8th grade at school. She was the most educated member of her generation in my family tree. Three out of four of my great grandparents who came to America never went to school at all. So let's not talk about school records.

Don't be discouraged if your ancestors left behind nothing but vital records.

As for newspapers, the one name I found several times was that of Giovanni Sarracino. He was my maternal grandmother's father, and somehow he managed to buy a whole building in the Bronx, New York. I found his name listed in several real estate transactions. I wish I knew how a man with zero years of school became a successful businessman. But I don't believe I'll ever find that out.

Almost all my ancestors who came to America settled in New York City. You can imagine my delight when the New York City Municipal Archives put a huge chunk of their vital records collection online. I found tons of my relatives' records to download for free!

I wasn't able to go back any further in my family tree because those generations stayed in Italy. Then a particular man in Italy decided to put his country's vital records online. Once I learned about these online records, I never had to view microfilmed records again. Bye-bye, low-quality images. The vital records for my ancestral hometowns are online for free. And the quality of the images is outstanding.

Almost 10 years later, I'm still expanding my family tree using these vital records. Vital records are a government's documentation of births, marriages, and deaths. They can also include divorce records, but divorce wasn't legal in Italy until 1974.

Check out the 1961 comedy "Divorce Italian Style" starring Marcello Mastroianni sometime. Here's the film's description on IMDb.com: "A married Sicilian baron falls in love with his cousin and vows to wed her, but with divorce illegal he must concoct a crime of passion to do away with his wife." In short, your spouse had to die for your marriage to end. So there are no divorces in my family tree except in America.

So often I see people ask if we are researching our family history or merely collecting records. Well guess what? Sometimes that's all you can do. You collect those vital records because that's all there is.

And there's nothing wrong with that. If you're lucky enough to have vital records available for your ancestors, grab them! Piece together their families. You may discover that they lived in one town for many generations. You may learn that your great grandfather was one of 12 children. You may find that your 2nd great grandmother had five children who died as infants. That all says a lot.

At the moment, my family tree has 86,920 people. Yeah. When I started looking at Italian vital records on microfilm viewers, I made a discovery. Almost everyone in my ancestors' tiny, remote towns had a connection by blood or marriage. So I started piecing together the extended families.

I've connected almost everyone in the vital records of my two grandfathers' hometowns. They came from Baselice and Colle Sannita in Southern Italy. I've built the families of my closest relatives in the nearby towns of Pesco Sannita, Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, Apice, and Santa Paolina. And I will keep connecting people in those towns for many years to come.

I love that the names in these towns are all so familiar to me. I love how I can look at a DNA match's last name and know which Italian town holds our shared ancestor. I love how a set of marriage records can take me back two generations and lead me to another town. I love everything I can learn from vital records.

To find vital records for your ancestors' hometowns, start at the FamilySearch Wiki. If you find them, start by searching for the ancestor who was born most recently. It may be your grandparent, great grandparent, or someone from an earlier generation.

Use the vital records to learn the names, ages, and occupations of your ancestor's parents. Look for your ancestor's siblings. Search for their parents' marriage record and their birth records. Then move back in time to the previous generation. This is how I wound up with 86,920 people in my family tree.

You may not care to document the husband of the niece of the wife of the brother-in-law of your 4th great uncle as I've done. But you know why I'm doing that? Because I'm creating a resource that will help descendants of these towns long after I'm gone. That's why I've been working like a fiend to create source citations for all those people.

If you have any Italian ancestry, the Portale Antenati can take your family tree back to the late 1600s as it has for me. I've been writing about it for almost 10 years because I want you to learn how to help yourself. Every day I see people asking the Internet, "Do you know my ancestors?" Instead of casting a weak line like that, you could be finding your people yourself. Take a look at how to do it:

• Where Have You Been All My Life?
• Collect the Whole Set
• How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives
• Why I Recorded More Than 30,000 Documents
• Step-by-Step Discovery of My 5th Great Grandparents
• Finding the Siblings Your Ancestor Never Mentioned
• Becoming Italian Was a Long, Hard Journey
• How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website

Once you've gathered all the facts you can about your relatives, you can learn more about their lives. Find out:

• What made them leave their home country.
• What their lives were like in the old country.

If birth, marriage, and death are all you can hope to find, don't let it discourage you. There's a lot of meat on those bones.

A Clear Map to Your Unsolved DNA Matches

Last week I showed how to limit your AncestryDNA match list to those with common ancestors. Seeing who these shared ancestors are can make it much easier to solve a new DNA match.

I mentioned that these DNA matches can also be seen on Ancestry ThruLines^®. That visualization can be quite helpful. So let's look at how you can see where a match belongs in your family tree, even before you build their branch.

My maternal grandmother's ancestors have a big old brick wall. Their hometown didn't keep vital records before 1861, so I'm stuck. I often wonder if a distant cousin knows something about these undocumented ancestors.

See Where Your DNA Matches Are Hiding

I'll start by going to ThruLines in Ancestry's DNA menu and choosing the horizontal view. This shows my direct ancestors and me, all the way through my great grandparents. I'll expand this view by clicking my great grandmother's name. She's my maternal grandmother's mother, Maria Rosa.

I couldn't place these DNA matches when I saw them in my match list. Here's where to look to solve your best matches.

A little icon tells me that Maria Rosa's grandfather is the shared ancestor of 10 DNA matches. I'll click that icon to see who they are. This provides a new view of an expanded family tree. There are six people descended from my 2nd great grandmother Vittoria. They include my mother and me, my first cousin, and four other DNA matches I've solved before.

But ThruLines also shows DNA matches descended from two of Vittoria's siblings. Descending from her brother Gaetano are three DNA matches. I've figured out two of them (they're siblings), but the third one is new to me. We share only 9 cM. She's the daughter of one of the siblings, so I can place her in my family tree. She's my 4th cousin once removed.

Descending from Vittoria's sister Paolina is one DNA match. Her Scottish last name and 4th cousin connection would have placed her low on my priority list. But thanks to ThruLines, I see exactly how and where she should fit. All I need to do is research her mother and grandfather who are not in my family tree yet. ThruLines tells me their names, dates, and where they fit.

Start Doing Some Guided Research

This branch begins with my first cousin three times removed, Antonio Zuccaro. I have a copy of Antonio's 1881 birth record from the family's hometown of Santa Paolina, Italy. I also have a copy of his 1904 marriage record from that town. He married a Santa Paolina girl named Gioconda Maria Rosa deSpirito. What I didn't know is who Antonio's children were or if he and his wife came to America.

This view of ThruLines tells me exactly what searches I need to conduct. The evidence says Antonio and Gioconda had a son born in West Hoboken, New Jersey. So I'll start by searching for Antonio Zuccaro in America. I found:

• Antonio and Gioconda's 1904 ship manifest. One month after their marriage, they were on their way to join the rest of his family. His parents and brothers had settled in West Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1893.
• Antonio's World War I draft registration card. This card has the same birth date as his Italian birth record. It puts him in West Hoboken, New Jersey, on 12 Sep 1918. And it has a slight misspelling of his wife's uncommon first name of Gioconda.

I'm quite impressed by this young immigrant, Antonio. After a lot of digging in a 1918 New York City directory, I found the company where he was an "agent" in 1918. It was the Lint, Butscher & Ross Realty & Construction Company in Manhattan. A 1929 Union City, New Jersey, directory shows what happened next. Antonio is the president of the A E Zuccaro Development Corporation. Some of his children work for him. That sounds like the American Dream.

Work Your Way to Your DNA Match

One of those children is the next person in the ThruLines tree: Ernesto. To connect to my DNA match with the Scottish last name, I need to document Ernesto and his daughter. I found:

• Ernesto's World War II draft registration card. He was living across the street from where I found the family in the 1929 city directory. His mother Gioconda lives with him.
• A few census records I can use to name Ernesto's siblings.
• His daughter's marriage license and obituary, confirming the dates seen in ThruLines. Now I know her husband's name. I'll bet my DNA match is using her Scottish husband's last name.

Yes! I found my DNA match. I noticed that the family moved from New Jersey to California, and I sure do love the California birth index. It tells you the mother's maiden name. As ThruLines says, this woman is my 4th cousin. Our common ancestors are our 3rd great grandparents Simblicio Conzolazio and Rufina Zullo.

Sometimes ThruLines won't give you all the names to connect the generations. When it does, it's such a powerful tool for solving a DNA match.

And speaking of ThruLines:

• How to Use Ancestry ThruLines for Research Leads
• Using Ancestry's ThruLines to Find DNA Matches
• Attracting a New DNA Match

This Filter Makes DNA Matches Easier to Place

September is half over, and it's time I tackled this month's task from my 2026 Genealogy Calendar. It's a simple goal: Solve more DNA matches.

I manage 4 AncestryDNA tests for my parents, my husband, and myself. Looking at Ancestry, I realized there's a DNA match filter I haven't been using. I can filter the list of matches for any of these tests to include only those with a common ancestor.

The common ancestor label means the match and the test-taker share the same ancestor. That's such a time-saver!

Filter Your List

To start, I went to my mom's list of DNA matches and filtered it to show only those with a common ancestor. As I scrolled through the list of nearly 100 people, I could see I've figured out many of them. I always add a note to a DNA match when I've solve their identity, and those notes are visible in this list.

The first match I see without a note is a potential half 3rd cousin or a 3rd cousin twice removed. The common ancestors are Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. They are my 5th great grandparents (mom's 6th).

It's interesting that Emanuele and Giovanna aren't in this match's family tree. Ancestry must be figuring out the connection using other means. On her Italian side, this DNA match's tree ends at her grandfather. And his last name is not in my family tree.

Looking at this one type of DNA match led to a huge branch of my family tree.

Look for a Connection

Using this DNA match's family tree as a launch pad, I searched for records for this man with the Italian last name. (Note: My ancestors are 100% Italian, so I need to follow an Italian branch.)

I found his 1917 New York City marriage certificate. I'm so grateful for the online records of the New York City Municipal Archives. And guess what? His mother Carolina, whose last name is familiar, is in my family tree! Thanks to her son's marriage record, I now know who Carolina married. And this document tells me she gave birth to a son in Orange, New Jersey.

I checked my tree to see that Carolina's great grandparents are—can you guess?—Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. Then I turned to my handy relationship calculator spreadsheet. To find my relationship to Carolina, I went to column "I" (my 5th great grandparents) row 8 (Carolina's great grandparents). She is my 2nd cousin 4 times removed. This DNA match is 3 generations down from Carolina, so I went down 3 rows in the relationship calculator. That shows this DNA match is my 5th cousin once removed, and my mom's 5th cousin.

Here's what's curious. AncestryDNA says this match and mom share 33 cMs. It predicts the relationship is in the 3rd cousin range. But I went to the Shared cM Project Tool found on the DNA Painter website. I entered 33 as the total number of cMs shared. The result? This tool found a 53% chance mom and her match were no closer than 5th cousins.

In this case, it pays to use all the tools available to you.

I added a note to this DNA match. I marked her as mom's 5C through Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. Now I've got more research to do! I learned who my cousin Carolina married, but he isn't from her town in Italy. I discovered their 1881 marriage record in Italy and found birth records for four of their children. One of those children appears to be the groom from the NYC marriage certificate. The NYC certificate says he was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1893, but I have his 1893 birth record from Santa Paolina, Italy. I'll keep searching, but so far the 1910 census confirms that the groom was born in Italy.

I'm so lucky to have a ton of Italian vital records available online through the Antenati portal. Without them, my family tree would end at the great grandparent level. How disappointing that would be! Still, the Italian records create many dead ends. Using DNA matches, I can discover who came emigrated and continue documenting branches.

Try Another Avenue

I'll bet some of you are saying, "Why not use Ancestry's ThruLines® to find this relationship?" That did occur to me, and this solved DNA match is there. But the amount of digging it took to find her was ridiculous. I had to keep consulting my family tree. First I worked my way up to Emanuele Ricciardelli and Giovanna Consolazio. Then I had to look at my tree to see that I want the descendants of their son Samuele. And then I want the descendants of his daughter Anna. Once I followed those branches, I did find this DNA match as well as her brother. I didn't even know her brother was in my or mom's DNA match list.

Now that I have drilled down to this level in ThruLines, I see many more DNA matches I need to explore. I should have started doing this earlier in the month!

Have you tried Ancestry's common ancestor filter before? I'm always happy to see "common ancestor" in the match list, but somehow I never realized it was a filter until today.

How to Find Your Ancestor's Place of Origin

"How can I build my family tree when I don't know where my ancestor came from?" It's a common problem for many people when they become interested in genealogy.

My roots in America aren't that deep, so my ancestors told us where they came from. That made it easy for me to dive into vital record collections from their hometowns in Italy. But for those of you with deep roots, your immigrant ancestor's origin may be lost.

In 2021 I offered to research my daughter-in-law's family tree. She had no idea where her last name came from. Was it Italian? It ends in an o. I discovered that her roots in Pennsylvania—where she still lives—go back 12 generations. Because the family was so well established in the area, I found plenty of documentation on them.

As it turns out, she has ancestors from France, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. She has a direct connection to William Rittenhouse—a famous name in Philadelphia. Rittenhouse Square is a public park on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

But what if no one has documented your deep-rooted family? How can you find their place of origin?

Discovering your ancestor's town of origin opens up endless family tree research possibilities.

Trace One Line

Start your search by choosing one last name from your ancestry. It may be your last name or any one ancestor's last name.

Trace that family line as far back as the records in your home country allow. Follow the family through census records and other documents. See if the spelling of the name ever changed. Look for documents that say where a person or their parents were born. A census record might tell you where your ancestor and their parents were born.

When you reach a generation born in another country, try a more specific search. Look for immigration or naturalization records. A World War I draft registration card gave me the birth place of my grandmother's uncle. (No one else in the family was born in his town, but it was a critical clue.)

If you can't get a solid lead on a town of origin, here's a good trick to try. Go to your favorite family tree website, such as Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, etc. Do a search for the last name you're tracing. Keep the details minimal. If you've discovered the country of origin, include that in your search. If your people arrived in a particular decade, look for others coming at about the same time.

Go through your search results to see if any town names come up again and again. This is a hot lead for you to pursue. This is exactly how I discovered the hometown of my great grandmother. She spoke of her town, but her accent made it hard to understand. When I saw other people with her last name coming from a town that sounded like what she said, I had my breakthrough.

Check Your DNA

Take a DNA test to see which countries are in your makeup. If a good amount of your DNA is from an unexpected area, that may be your first clue. Take a look at your matches for people who share similar origins. One of your matches may have the clues you need.

Lots More Places to Look

Finding that hometown is so crucial to your research that I've written about it many times. Here are 5 articles you should scan for more research tips:

• "Where Did Grandpa Come From?" cites examples from my research. I found town names on ship manifests, naturalization papers, passport applications, draft cards, and more.
• "4 Key Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Hometown" shows how I used a minimal search to find my great grandmother's hometown.
• "6 Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Town of Birth" adds birth, baptism, marriage, and military records to the list of places to look.
• "6 Ways to Find Your Ancestor's Hometown" goes into the value of tracing an ancestor's siblings. If you can't find your ancestor's records, their siblings' records may have the details you need.
• "This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name" covers the female problem. What was her maiden name? This name can get lost over time, and it's your key to finding her ancestors' place of origin. See how I used one resource to discover my 2nd great grandmother's maiden name and trace her ancestry.

I know it can be difficult to break through this particular brick wall. But don't give up until you've tried all these research tips. The answer may be waiting for you to take a look!

How to Handle Inexplicable Genealogy Documents

I'm still spending hours a day creating the missing source citations for my huge family tree. I use efficiency techniques, such as working through one ancestral hometown at a time.

That's why I noticed a repeating error in one of my hometowns in Italy that is inexplicable. How can this keep happening again and again?

Here's what's happening—and how I'm handling it in my family tree. One of the greatest things about Italian vital records is the "matrimoni processetti". (That translates to pre-marriage inquiries, according to Google Translate.) These are the documents required before a man and woman can marry. All in one place, you can find the evidence to take a family back three generations! These documents include:

• the groom's birth record
• the groom's father's death record, if he's dead
• the groom's father's father's death record, if he's dead (which can include the groom's great grandparents' names)
• the groom's mother's death record, if she's dead
• the groom's previous wife's death record, if there was a previous wife
• the bride's birth record
• the bride's father's death record, if he's dead
• the bride's father's father's death record, if he's dead (which can include the bride's great grandparents' names)
• the bride's mother's death record, if she's dead
• the bride's previous husband's death record, if there was a previous husband

Jackpot, right? Civil record-keeping began around 1809 in Italy, so these documents are priceless.

Where Did This Come From?

As I work on the town of Circello, Italy, I'm finding handwritten copies of vital records that do not exist!

His marriage documents include a handwritten copy of his birth record. Only problem? It does not exist!

Here's an example. A document says Domenico Cerrone was born on 25 Mar 1812 to Giovanni Cerrone and Arcangela diTello, and it's record #45. But when I go to the town's 1812 birth records, record #45 has the same date, but all different people. It's the birth record of Domenico Fiscarelli, born on 25 Mar 1812 to Pietro Fiscarelli and Carmina Iacobacci. Now, I'm the lunatic who indexed every available vital record for this town. So I know there is no civil birth record for Domenico Cerrone, son of Giovanni and Arcangela.

So far this has happened 12 times, all in Circello. In a couple of cases, the copy in the matrimoni processetti contradicts the civil record. Everything's right but the date. What document was the clerk looking at when they made this copy? What do I do with this?

Cite the Source and Acknowledge the Problem

In each case, I created a source citation that points to this inexplicable document. But I went a step further. In "Leave Breadcrumbs for Future Genealogy Research", I explain how to use stock phrases in a fact's description field. For example, it used to be common to reuse a name if a baby died. The next baby of the same sex gets that same name, so you know the first baby had to have died. If there's no death record available, I note that the first baby died before the second baby's date of birth and write: "His brother [Her sister] of the same name was born on this date." Without an approximate date of death and that note, it would look like I made a careless mistake in my family tree again and again.

Stock phrases are the solution to the inexplicable documents problem, too. Each time the marriage papers include a copy that's not in the civil records, I add a phrase to the description field. "This record is not found in the [year] civil records; only in the [year] marriage documents."

When the copy shows a different date than the original civil record, I use the date from the original record. Then I add a note about it in the description field. "The copy of the birth record in the [year] marriage records has a different date of [date]." And I add a source citation for both versions of the birth record.

Why Cite an Error?

If you're wondering why create a source citation for two versions of the same fact, here are two good reasons:

• Citing both documents shows you've done your research.
• You may find another document that proves the inexplicable record was correct.

These stock phrases serve me well. See if the software or website you use for your family tree has predictive typing. It should. With predictive typing, I type "This record is not", and the software shows me the matching phrases I've typed before. I can choose one and change the years as needed. Each time I need to use "His brother of the same name was born on this date.", all I type is "his bro" and choose the correct phrase.

What types of inexplicable documents have you found in your genealogy research? How do you handle them?