One Genealogy Project to Answer All the Questions

Since you became a genealogist, which questions does the family ask you the most? Is there a common thread to the questions? Here's what I've been hearing this month.

Dates, Dates, Dates!

My three first cousins' mother and my mother are sisters. These siblings are eligible for dual citizenship, but I am not. Our Italian-born grandfather took his Oath of Allegiance become a U.S. citizen when their mother was a baby. My mother was negative three years old. They've been texting me because I have all the information they need. They asked me for:

• our shared grandparents' birth dates
• our grandparents' marriage date
• the birth and death dates of their father's three siblings

For me, it was a snap to find these dates in my family tree and text my cousins the answers.

The building blocks for this useful genealogy project include a family group sheet and a descendant chart.

How Old and Who?

While visiting my mother, she asked me how old her paternal grandmother was when she died. I pulled out my iPhone, found her in my tree on Ancestry.com, did the math, and said Marianna lived to be 73 years old. "But we have her photo," Mom said. "She looks so old!" It's true. By today's standards, Marianna looks very old in her studio portrait. "What was her husband's name?"

That question was interesting. My mother didn't know her grandparents' names. They never came to America, so she never met them. Yet to me, the family tree builder, not knowing their names is unthinkable.

Who, Where, and Why?

A few years ago I created a "book of life" for my mom's first cousin. She's the perfect recipient of a book of life because she's always had a deep interest in our ancestors. She texts me often with family tree questions, such as:

• What was Aunt Elsie's maiden name?
• What was Uncle Al's street address in Bridgeport?
• Where was my grandmother born?
• Do you have a photo of my grandmother's father?

She texted me when her newest great grandchild was born. "Add her to the family tree!" I love those texts.

She also asked the deepest question I've gotten about the family. She wondered why her Italian-born grandfather Giovanni chose to come to New York. Why there? The short answer is opportunity. I said he most likely followed someone from his town who'd made the trip and found work. That's the story with most of the immigrants I've researched. But here's what I learned from ship manifests. Her grandparents, Giovanni and Maria Rosa, followed Maria Rosa's parents and siblings. They settled in the Bronx, New York, a year earlier.

It was my earliest genealogy research that gave me the names and some of the dates for my closest ancestors. Then ship manifests for Giovanni, Maria Rosa, and her family identified their hometown. I found the town's vital records on the Antenati Portal. Then I filled the family tree with names and dates none of my relatives had ever known.

Those are the goodies we can share with all the cousins who show interest. The questions my family has are pretty basic stuff: names, dates, and places. Wouldn't it be nice to share your hard work with the people who'll care the most about your discoveries?

The Perfect Genealogy Project

I can answer the questions my relatives ask with standard genealogy reports. I can combine them in an electronic file or print them out and place them in a binder. When I created a book of life for my cousin in 2019, I focused more on her father and his family. (I'm related to this cousin through her mother.) But my cousins with questions descend from my great grandparents, Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano.

I'd like to make a book of life for Giovanni and Maria Rosa, and share it with this core group of cousins. In that 2019 book of life, I used paper cut-outs to enlarge areas. And I printed some highlights on yellow paper to place on top of black-and-white documents. This time, I'll create everything in Photoshop, PowerPoint or something else, and save it as a digital file to share. I can get as colorful as I like.

Now I'd like you to choose a particular couple in your family tree. Which ancestral couple ties you to the cousins you're in touch with the most? Start pulling together the document images you've collected for the couple. These may include:

• birth, marriage, and death records
• ship manifests
• naturalization papers
• census pages
• draft registration cards
• obituaries

Next, turn to your family tree software. If your family tree is online only (don't get me started), check the website for the types of reports available. Take a look at:

• A family group sheet for the couple (they call it a family group record on FamilySearch.org). This will contain dates and places for the ancestral couple and their children.
• A descendant report or narrative. This puts the facts you've collected into more of a story format and can pack in a ton of information.
• A descendant outline. This will cover more people, offering all the names, dates, and places.

Now look at your family tree's chart capabilities. On Ancestry.com, be sure to check out the LifeStory tab of your ancestor's profile page. On FamilySearch.org, look at the customizable Time Line.

• A descendant chart can include all the cousins with whom you plan to share this project. But you may need to slice it up into printable sections. Geneanet.org has a descendant chart you can customize. FamilySearch.org has Person Details in the Print Options menu.
• A waterfall chart (in Family Historian software) or a horizontal hourglass chart (in Family Tree Maker) is like a descendant chart. The chart in Family Historian looks terrific—it's a thing of beauty. It has the main person on the left, and each descendant generation in columns to the right. But you can customize it to flow right-to-left, top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top if you prefer. The horizontal hourglass chart has the main person on the right and descendant generations to the left. (Choose 0 ancestors to focus on the descendants.)

Customize the charts and reports until you're happy with them. Save them as PDFs or images you can insert into this project. Now I'll refer you back to my "Book of Life" article for the creation process. If you'd like to go all digital like me, take all the pieces and use whichever software is comfortable for you. Oh! This is the perfect opportunity for me to try out NotebookLM from Google. Now I'm psyched to do this!

When I have something ready to share with my cousins, I'll give you a peak, too. Let's do this!

Search by Town Alone for Unexpected Discoveries

On my last trip to Italy, I took tons of cemetery photos in my ancestral hometowns. At home I uploaded them to Find a Grave. Today I decided to see who might have had the same idea as me.

I started my search on Ancestry, choosing the database "Italy, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s-Current". I didn't enter any names or dates. Instead, I selected a town I haven't visited yet. Santa Paolina, in Avellino, Italy, was the birthplace of my 2nd great grandmother. She and her husband are my earliest immigrant ancestors, settling in New York City in 1898.

Last year I tried a wide search on Ancestry. (See "Use a Wide Search to Find New Connections".) I used Grandpa's hometown and focused on Ellis Island records. This yielded a ton of results because so many people from that town came to America.

This time I'm looking at Italian Find a Grave results and choosing a different town.

This search expanded a dead end in my family tree. They were in a town I couldn't have imagined.

There are two search results for Santa Paolina, and I have no faith in the first one. It claims this woman was born in Santa Paolina on 22 Nov 1869, but she wasn't. I checked all available birth records from the town. (See "How to Create Your Ancestral Hometown Database" to find out how I did that.) She wasn't born in Santa Paolina on that date or any documented date, even though her last name comes from the town.

The second result is for a woman who is in my family tree—Maria Felicia Spinelli. She was born in 1836 in Santa Paolina. When I followed the link to Find a Grave, I found the names of her husband and three children. I didn't know their names before because she married a man from another town and moved there. I never would have looked for her in a town that's a 90-minute drive away on today's roads. Unless she could afford to take the train, she may never have seen her family again.

This is the type of discovery I love. Most of the time it takes a DNA match's family tree to show me what happened to someone who left the towns I know. (See "Why Care About Your DNA Matches?") Using the Find a Grave entries as clues, I had no trouble at all locating:

1. Maria Felicia's marriage to Leonardo Capozzi in her adopted town of Faeto in 1856
2. her husband's birth in that town in 1832
3. their son Giovanni's birth in 1857 and death in 1860
4. their son Donato's birth and death in 1859
5. their son Donato's birth in 1860. Find a Grave says this son and two of his siblings died in Chicago, so that opens up more search possibilities.
6. their son Giovanni's birth in 1862 and death in 1864
7. their daughter Raffaela's birth in 1865. Her birth record includes an extra document saying she died in Faeto in 1948.
8. their son Vito Antonio's birth in 1869
9. their son Michele's birth in 1872

Here's an entire branch of someone's family, someone who may share DNA with me, that was hiding. I needed this one search result to break it all wide open.

But what is my relationship to Maria Felicia Spinelli? I've added a lot of Santa Paolina people to my family tree, but many of them are not my actual relatives. Maria Felicia has four different connections to me. She is the:

• niece of the wife of the husband of my 5th great aunt Maddalena Consolazio
• 1st cousin of the husband of my 1st cousin 5 times removed Carolina deGuglielmo
• 1st cousin of the wife of my 1st cousin 5 times removed Carmine Alessandro Ricciardelli
• 1st cousin of the wife of my 1st cousin 5 times removed Ponziano Luigi Ricciardelli

All four of those relationships involve my 2nd great grandmother, Colomba Consolazio, from Santa Paolina.

If you know your family has deep roots in one town, try searching for only the town in a limited database. This research technique can help if you think someone left their hometown. Or if you're wondering why their trail went cold. It can be a great way to find more family members. This works especially well with smaller towns. And it always helps if you're familiar with the last names from your ancestral towns. (To learn how to get familiar with the last names in a town, see "Searching for Family in a New Town Takes Practice".)

So, who's been hiding from you? Can you find them by their town?

What Makes You Crazy About Genealogy?

I watched "Psycho" the other night. Anthony Perkins, in the role of Norman Bates, said one thing that got me thinking. When talking about his taxidermy hobby, he said, "It's more than a hobby. A hobby's supposed to pass the time, not fill it."

If that's true, Norman, what should I call genealogy? I retired because work was cutting into my genealogy time. I spend about eight hours a day on my family tree. I don't pass the time with genealogy. I fill the time with genealogy. And I couldn't be happier.

Oh, so that's what Norman means to say. He devotes so much time to taxidermy, and cares about it so much, that it's more than a hobby. Hobby isn't a strong enough word. I'd say devotion is a better word. I have a strong devotion to genealogy. That's what drives me to achieve more and more each day.

Once you understand your motivation to do genealogy, your goals become clear. Let them drive your family tree research.

What Drives You?

If spending all your free time on your family tree sounds too much like work, there's one element you may be missing. Call it a goal, a motivation, or a purpose. It's a driving force that will keep you excited by your genealogy "hobby" every day.

My earliest family tree goal was to gather all the census records for my closest family. Then I discovered I could view vital records for my Italian ancestors. After exploring one of my ancestral hometowns, I had a new goal. I wanted to document and connect everyone from that town. After finishing with that town, I moved on to the next. I have a handful of towns where I can connect almost everyone.

Before I do, though, my number one goal now is to create all the source citations I skipped in my giddy excitement. I have a spreadsheet that still contains more than 40,220 people who have no source citations. The documents are all downloaded to my computer, so I went for it, adding facts without sources. But my mission is to create a family tree that will be a treasure for anyone with roots in my ancestral hometowns. And that requires source citations so they can go see the documents for themselves.

Define Your Genealogy Motivation

I became interested in my family tree while planning my honeymoon in Italy. I did make it to my paternal grandfather's hometown on that trip, but I didn't know where to look.

Walking around Grandpa's hometown, I felt a physical pull deep inside me. I needed to discover my ancestors. I wanted to know all their names. Once I discovered the availability of Italian vital records, I made myself an expert on their towns.

What question or desire got you interested in genealogy? There are many reasons people spend time and money on genealogy, including:

• Finding a missing ancestor or birth parent
• Discovering where the family came from
• Solving a case of misattributed parentage
• Applying for dual citizenship
• Proving or disproving family lore
• Working on a personal, never-ending puzzle
• Bringing history to life in a meaningful way
• Preserving family history for future generations
• Sharing your findings with distant cousins

Once you define your genealogy motivation, you're ready for the next step.

Set Your Goals

Now that you've put your finger on what motivates you, what goals do you need to reach?

If your motivation is to apply for dual citizenship, you need specific documents. You must discover the place and date of birth of the ancestor through which you will ask for citizenship. How can you break that goal down into steps? Let's say you don't know Grandpa's town of birth in the old country. You have to seek out as many of his records in his adopted country as you can. Many records may include his town of origin. Make a list of every type of record that should be available for him. Censuses, a ship manifest, naturalization papers, draft cards, an obituary, a death certificate. Your goal is to find them and learn all you can from them.

If your purpose is to discover your birth parent, you need to take at least one DNA test. Then upload it as many places as possible. You'll have to spend your time taking online webinars to learn discovery techniques. Then explore your closest DNA matches. You may need to create family trees for important DNA matches. On any given day, your goal can be to solve one more DNA match and see how they connect to any of your other matches.

If your motivation is the never-ending puzzle, you'll never lack something to do. Your goals can be to document all your ancestor's siblings. Then find out who they married and document their families. Then move up a generation and do the same thing. If I hadn't found all the siblings, I wouldn't be able to see that my paternal grandparents were third cousins.

If your purpose is to help your distant cousins, publish your family tree online. Make your family tree as reliable and accurate as possible. Your individual goals can be to:

• Check your tree for errors and correct them
• Make sure your facts have source citations that any interested party can verify
• Seek out new record collections that may hold information for you
• Maintain a consistent, professional style in how you present names, dates, and places

Track Your Progress

Almost two years ago, I used Family Tree Analyzer to spot everyone in my family tree who had no source citations. About 87% of my people had no source citations. It was more than 70,000 people. Today I've got that number down to 40,220. It could take me another two years to finish this important project! And that's why I push myself so hard. My daily goal is to remove 100 people from that list. I've had days where I completed citations for more than 150 people. Those days usually end with a sore wrist from working my mouse so hard.

The point is, I always know where I stand with this goal. Seeing that huge number of unsourced people go down each day drives me to do more.

Does your family tree pass the time or fill the time? Are you lacking motivation? Would you be more productive if you had specific goals? Being productive makes me feel fulfilled. It can do the same for you.

And why was Norman Bates so devoted to his craft of taxidermy? Ask his mother's 10-year-old corpse.

This Free, Elegant GEDCOM Analyzer Is a Wonder

How does your family tree measure up? When I tried out Ancestry Pro Tools almost two years ago, I didn't care about its Tree Checker feature. I had free Family Tree Analyzer software to help me find all kinds of mistakes.

Even without subscribing to Pro Tools, my tree on Ancestry has a rating of 8.3 ("Very good"). What's keeping me from scoring a 10? A few data errors, lots of missing source citations, and what they think are 10,398 duplicate people. (They're not.)

But I found a new tool for improving your family tree rating called GEDminer that's outstanding! You've got to take a look at this thing. There's nothing to download, but you need to export your family tree's GEDCOM file first.

The instant, deep analysis of your family tree is worth a ton, but this genealogy tool is free.

GEDminer is a web-based program that's a very friendly way to see how your family tree measures up. If you're skeptical or want to see it in action first, you can view an analysis of their sample GEDCOM. Please understand your file is NOT uploaded to a server. The data processing happens in your web browser, and all the results go POOF! when you close your browser. (Your data may stay in your computer's cache memory for a while.)

Go to https://gedminer.com and drop your GEDCOM file in the box on the webpage. (The link to see sample data is beneath the box.) I dropped in my latest GEDCOM with 85,360 people. I know I'm missing tons of source citations—I'm always working on that. So where do I stand?

• My Tree Health Score is 75.33%. It says that's better than 55.56% of other users.
• I scored 74.09% in Completeness (defined as names, dates & places filled in). When I click on Completeness, it breaks this down into terrifying numbers:
  • 50,805 non-living people missing a death place
  • 47,995 non-living people missing a death date
  • 10,007 people missing a birth place. I have been putting a state or county into the birth and death place fields when I see they're empty. I have a long way to go.
• I scored 52.42% in Sourcing. This says I still have 40,616 people with no source citations. The spreadsheet I'm using for this huge task agrees!
• I scored 99.9% on Consistency (defined as free of errors & warnings). It lists 5 people with "data errors" for me to fix, but these are only a taste. They include people who were too old or young when their child was born. But the full, detailed list of data errors is in the next section.

Beneath these scores is a section called Quick Wins. This tells me my family tree has:

• 23 data errors (I worked on it and got it down to three errors, two of which are supported by the documents: an 88-year-old father and a 56-year-old mother.)
• 10,007 people without a birth place (I got it down to 9,953.)
• 40,616 unsourced people

The last two are also found above in the Tree Health Score section. But under Quick Wins, you can click these problem types and go to a new page filled with the exact details.

Click a type of error to see complete details about what you need to correct. Then export the full list as a spreadsheet and get busy.

• When you click to see your data errors in detail, the new page gives you the option of seeing:
  • All data errors
  • Date issues only
  • Age issues only
  • Relationship problems only (for me, these were all mothers who were too young)
  • Duplicate Facts only (for me, most of these are cases where I have two very different death records for people, so I recorded both)
  • Quality issues only (this would be key missing facts; I have none!)
• When you click to see your missing places or unsourced people errors in detail, the new page gives you the option of seeing:
  • All missing items
  • Line Origins only (these are the people you're stuck on—you can't ID their parents)
  • Missing Dates only
  • Missing Places only
  • Unsourced people only
  • People with no spouse (if we knew the spouse, they'd be in there, right?)
  • Missing Deaths only

Best of all, after you scroll to the bottom of a long list and click Show All, you can scroll back up and choose Export CSV. This gives you a spreadsheet to use to complete your fixes. You can tackle them one-by-one and delete them from the spreadsheet or mark them done.

I won't export my list of unsourced people since I'm already working on that. But when I'm finished with that project, I can use GEDminer again to see who slipped through the cracks.

While you're on that detail page, look close to the top of the page for four links:

• Suggestions
• Errors
• Vital Sharpener
• Tree Structure

Now:

• Click Vital Sharpener to see all the incomplete dates in your family tree. Sometimes we can't do anything about these because no records are available. But if the people are from the 1900s or later, try a new search on a site you don't use all the time.
• Now click Tree Structure right next to Vital Sharpener. These results have different categories to view:
  • Hidden Cousins tries to group together people with the same last name. That doesn't work well for my tree. Welcome to small towns in Italy.
  • Unlinked Individuals shows you the unattached people floating in your family tree. I have 184 people with zero connection to me. But they're in there on purpose. If more vital records ever become available, I may be able to connect them.
  • Duplicate Finder says I have 409 people with the same (or almost the same) name and birth year. I don't have enough information to be sure some are the same person. I'll review them and see if I can find a few that I should merge. You'll see that the list ranges in match-i-ness from 100% on down. My lowest duplicate is a 57% match, but they're worth looking into. They have the same name, same hometown, same father's name, and very close birth years.

The bonus facts this free tool displays about your family tree can be real eye-openers. And it's all interactive. Click around!

Still Not Sure? Here's the Old Way.

Before I found GEDminer, I planned to show you how you can use Family Tree Analyzer to find these errors. I'm so impressed with GEDminer, but you know I appreciate the heck out of Family Tree Analyzer. So here's what to click. You won't get your score, but you will get lists of what needs your attention. Get your GEDCOM file and open it in Family Tree Analyzer.

To find data errors, click the Errors/Fixes tab and under Data Errors select:

• Birth before father aged 13 and mother aged 13
• Birth after father aged 90+ and mother aged 60+
• Birth after mother's death and more than 9m after father's death
• Marriage before aged 13 and spouse aged 13
• Marriage after death and after spouse's death
• Facts dated before birth
• Birth after death/burial
• Birth after baptism/christening
• Facts dated after death
• Burial/cremation before death
• Child born too soon after sibling
• Child likely born too soon after sibling
• Male Wifes and Female Husbands
• Duplicate Fact
• Possible Duplicate Fact

One way to find duplicate people in your family tree is to go to the Errors/Fixes tab, choose Duplicates? then sort by Birth Date.

To find unlinked individuals, click the Main Lists tab. In the Relation column of the Individuals table, filter to select "Unknown".

Here's the report I used to make a spreadsheet of all my people who had zero source citations. Go to the Main Lists tab and find the Num Sources column in the Individuals table. Click the down arrow for that column and Sort A to Z. Filtering doesn't work, although it should. I exported the full list, then deleted everyone who didn't have zero source citations.

I hope you find this breakdown of problems inspiring and not discouraging. After you've made a good amount of corrections, go back and see the improvement in your family tree.

5 Steps to Start Building Your Family Tree

Everyone begins this journey the same way. Something sparks our interest genealogy. We decide we want to build our family tree. But we don't know quite what to do.

We write down our name, add our parents and siblings, and enter what we know about our grandparents. Then we realize we don't know where Grandpa was born. We're not sure of Grandma's mother's name. We have no idea when our immigrant ancestors arrived.

That's when the search for records begins. But how can you be sure this record—this ship manifest or census page—is showing your ancestor? This might be the moment you get frustrated and feel ready to give up.

I see people online every day who are getting started with genealogy. They ask vague questions and seem to expect a distant cousin to hand them their family tree. That's not a good way to start. Instead, identify the closest ancestor for whom you are missing basic facts. Let's say it's Grandpa. Do you know his date of birth? If not, ask your parents and cousins. Do you know his parents' names? If you don't and your relatives don't, you need to search for records. You can't go any further with your family tree until you establish the basic facts for Grandpa.

Using family tree building software on your computer has many advantages.

Now, before you go any further, you must decide how you're going to record all the facts and data you find. Your family tree will be meaningful to you, of course. But it can be important to your relatives and descendants, and to distant cousins you've never met.

How will you record, preserve, and share your family tree? Here are 5 steps to start building your family tree.

Step 1. Choose Your Software

Writing or drawing your family tree on paper is not a good option. You can't share it unless you want to photocopy all the pages. You'll have to keep redrawing the tree when you discover new information. You can't add new facts without squeezing them in and making the whole thing hard to follow. You need computer software.

Don't build your tree online only. This may seem like an easy option, and it is, with all the guidance and hints. But easy can lead to an incorrect family tree in a hurry.

Some family tree websites leave your information open for strangers to edit. Do you want that? Do you want a stranger to decide your grandmother is their grandmother and not yours? Professionals don't put their research in a place where it can be overwritten.

You can search online for family tree software that meets your needs. Find a program that runs on your type of computer and fits your budget. There are plenty of free ones, but even the paid ones are not expensive. Here are some of the most popular family tree programs in alphabetical order:

• Family Tree Builder. Written for Windows, there is no native Mac version. Download and use for free at https://www.myheritage.com/family-tree-builder.
• Family Tree Maker. Works on Windows and Mac. Synchronizes your desktop tree with your tree on Ancestry.com. Download for $80 at https://www.mackiev.com/store_us.html.
• Legacy Family Tree. Written for Windows, there is no native Mac version. Download and use for free at https://legacyfamilytree.com.
• RootsMagic. Works on Windows and Mac. I've downloaded RootsMagic 8 for free at https://www.rootsmagic.com/download/rootsmagic-8. RootsMagic 11, the latest version, costs $39.95 at https://www.rootsmagic.com/rootsmagic. You can download a free trial to see if you like it.

A reader of this blog highly recommends Family Historian, currently in version 7. I've never heard of this product, but it's worth a look; for Windows users only. There is a free trial. Note: The link is to a UK website, but I'm seeing the price in U.S. dollars.

Step 2. Search for Records

You can use free or paid genealogy websites to find records and documents for your family tree. I subscribe to Ancestry.com. I've found tons of vital records for free on the New York City Municipal Archives website. I get my Italian vital records on the free Portale Antenati. But if I don't find what I need on those sites, I check the free FamilySearch.org. There's also MyHeritage.com and Geneanet.org, but you'll need a subscription to search.

Wherever you search, take these steps first:

• Establish some basic facts about your closest ancestors. Ask your relatives for your ancestors' birthdays and birth places if you don't know them.
• Find out which records are available for your place of interest, and what years they cover. Your parents or grandparents may be too young to find in a particular collection.
• Don't assume someone else's family tree is correct because it's online. And never pull their data into your own tree. This can cause a terrible mess and waste your time. You need to treat each of their "facts" as a hint and find out for yourself if they are correct.

When you find a record and you're confident it's your people, download the document image. That way you can add it to your family tree. Decide right this minute what type of file naming and storage system you will use.

Before you move on from that downloaded document and its facts, create a source citation. Without it, you don't have verifiable facts. Without it, your family tree is hearsay.

Wouldn't you love to find your ancestors in a well-sourced family tree?

Step 3. Create Source Citations

Anyone who has ever skipped the step of creating source citations regrets it, or will regret it soon. Let's say you entered a 1909 naturalization date for your uncle. But you didn't cite the fact that the date comes from the 1910 census. Now your cousins want to know how you know their father became a citizen in 1909. They want to apply for dual citizenship. But you can't answer the question because you failed to cite your source.

A source citation relieves you of all the drama. And it doesn't need to be difficult. Sometimes you can copy a source citation from the place where you found the record.

At the most basic level, your source citation must include three things:

1. The title of the record holding this information. For instance, 1910 U.S. Federal Census.
2. Where you found it. For instance, a record from the 1910 United States Federal Census collection at this URL.
3. Certificate number, page number, or line number. You need a distinguishing fact about this record to help someone else to find it. Include a certificate number and state for a birth, marriage, or death certificate. Include the year, place, and even the line number(s) for a census page.

Your goal is to allow anyone who finds your family tree online to be able to go see the document you used as a source. And if you don't see source citations in someone else's family tree, don't accept any of their "facts" as truth. They are unproven hints.

Step 4. Preserve Your Research

Always imagine the worst-case scenario. Your computer gets stolen. Your home goes up in flames. What can you do today and every day to preserve your family tree research?

First, digitize everything. Paper can burn, tear, or get lost. Scan or photograph any paper documents in your possession. I keep my originals in a fire-proof safe.

Establish a logical, practical file naming and storage system. Stick to it and you'll always be able to find what you need with little effort.

Make a habit of creating backups of your work. I work on my family tree every day, so I make backups of my Family Tree Maker file at the end of each day. Each Sunday morning I copy the week's backups onto two external hard drives. I'm also storing my work on the cloud (Microsoft OneDrive) at all times.

Leave yourself a note of where you left off for the day. That way, even if you don't get back to your family tree for a week, you won't waste any time.

Step 5. Share Your Work

I love when a 6th or 7th cousin contacts me after seeing their grandparents in my family tree. My goal is to allow distant cousins to follow my links to the original documents and grow their own family tree. That's why I share my family tree on Ancestry.com and Geneanet.org.

I've also told some of my close cousins how to go to my tree on Geneanet and print out trees for themselves. Geneanet makes it so easy to create the printout you want. And the website is free.

You can also create a "book of life", like the ones on PBS's "Finding Your Roots" with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I created one especially for my mom's first cousin on her 80th birthday. Plus, I filled an accordion folder with census pages and ship manifests for my ancestors.

Let your relatives know about your genealogy research. They may have documents to share with you. They'll contact you first when there's a new baby in the family. And they'll turn to you for answers once lost to time.

Take these five steps to heart. Build a thoughtful, well-documented, thorough family tree that will live beyond your lifetime.

Taking the Next Step in Family Tree Analysis

Last week I showed you how to use a spreadsheet to gain insight into your family tree. If you're a Mac user, be sure to see the useful comments beneath that article from Mac user Mick.

In the article I challenged myself to tackle a bigger project. I wanted to use Microsoft Power BI Desktop software to further dissect the data and look for trends. I've always been a frustrated programmer, meaning I want to be good at it, but I get so frustrated! This time I got clear step-by-step Power BI instructions from Microsoft Copilot—what a lifesaver.

Working with the Data from Your Family Tree

The first step was to import my spreadsheet of everyone in my family tree into the program. The spreadsheet I exported from MyHeritage Family Tree Builder last week had problems. It wasn't possible to use that file because several rows didn't follow the format. So I exported my people from Family Tree Analyzer (old reliable). Once I imported the spreadsheet, I could see all the category names in Power BI Desktop. These include ID, LastName, FirstName, BirthDate, BirthLocation, etc.

How many ways can you think of to analyze your family tree?

Next, in Power BI Desktop's Report view, I created a table to hold all the data. I gave it some visual formatting to make it easier for me to understand:

• Bold column headers with a color background.
• Alternating white and light green rows like some ancient, pleated computer printout paper.

Note: I'm using the town of Colle Sannita in these examples because it's so complete in my family tree. About 95% of the available vital records are in my tree. The other 5% are records of people from out of town or who I can't identify.

Then I used the Filters column to the right of my table and added one data field: BirthLocation. I chose Advanced filtering, not Basic filtering. This let me filter down to any birth location that contains a certain town name, like Colle Sannita. When I click Apply filter, I can see that it's working. Hurray!

But I want to see how many people that filter includes. How many people in my family tree have I documented as being born in Colle Sannita?

I consulted Copilot to find out how I can do this. First I had to add a new function to my data fields to count the rows. The Copilot guidance used the generic title of RowCount for this. Next, to show the row count, I had to add a "card" to display it on. I did that and formatted it until I got what I wanted: a whole number with a comma to show thousands. My total count before applying a filter is 85,362 (bigger than it was last week). To make it more straightforward, I changed the function's name from RowCount to People. Now my card says 85,362 People.

Let's put it to use!

• When I filter BirthLocation to contain Colle Sannita, I have 25,120 People.
• When I filter BirthLocation to contain Baselice, I have 17,335 People.
• When I filter BirthLocation to contain New York, I have 902 People.
• When I filter BirthLocation to contain Bronx, I have 293 People.

I can do this with MarriageLocation and DeathLocation. I can do it for last names. I'll clear out my filter and drag LastName into the Filter section. I'll type my name, Iamarino, in the search box, and I see right there that I have 815 people with that last name. When I click Apply filter, the main screen shows the filtered list of people and the card says 815 People.

Getting More Specific

Now let's try two filters at once. I know there was an earthquake in Colle Sannita in 1805 that killed many people. I'm going to drag both DeathLocation and DeathDate into the Filters area. Using Advanced filtering, I'll choose:

• DeathLocations that contain Colle Sannita, and
• DeathDates that contain 1805.

Combining these filters leaves me with 54 people. I know the earthquake happened on 26 Jul 1805, thanks to Colle Sannita expert, Dr. Fabio Paolucci. I see people in this list who died well before the earthquake. I'm going to change my DeathDate filter to "contains 26 Jul 1805" or "contains 27 Jul 1805". This brings the list down to 28 people. (I can't add more than two dates, but a visual scan of the dates showed that all the victims seemed to die on these two dates.)

I created another filter to find years with very high or low death counts. I added a filter for DeathLocation that contains Colle Sannita, and one for DeathDate. I can keep changing the year and clicking Apply filter to see how many deaths there were. Here are a few results:

• 1810 had 113 deaths
• 1811 had 165 deaths
• 1812 had 145 deaths
• 1813 had 88 deaths
• 1860 had 126 deaths

I wanted to find a way to export or graph these numbers, but FRUSTRATION! My only choice would be to keep changing the filter and jot down the results in another spreadsheet. (Any programmers reading this are laughing their heads off.) I tried creating a dashboard that could show the results of various filters, but it didn't work. If I do make a separate spreadsheet, I can use Excel to turn the data into line graphs and bar charts. I have started doing this. See the image below.

It didn't take long to enter facts into a new spreadsheet to make these line graphs.

Going Deeper

Next let's try a 3-part filter. I'm wondering if the girl babies outnumbered the boy babies in my ancestral hometowns. I'll create a filter that contains a BirthLocation of Colle Sannita and a BirthDate of 1810. I'll include Gender, which shows me the Female/Male split without my having to touch it. Then I'll keep changing the year.

• In 1810 there were 199 births: 103 female and 96 male. Girls win.
• In 1820 there were 170 births: 79 female, 91 male. Boys win.
• In 1830 there were 177 births: 93 female, 84 male. Girls win.
• In 1840 there were 139 births: 71 female, 68 male. Girls win, but it's a close one.
• In 1850 there were 210 births: 114 female, 96 male. Girls win.
• In 1860 there were 206 births: 113 female, 93 male. Girls win.
• In 1870, 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910 the boys win. Change in the water?

Now let's take a quick look at the marriages I've documented in Colle Sannita. There are two main churches, but the one in the heart of town is much older. I'll filter the MarriageLocation to those containing the older church: San Giorgio Martire. Wow! I've got 4,119 people who I know married there. I'll change the filter to show the location of the newer church in the area called Decorata. I've got 245 people who married there.

How are these both odd numbers? My guess is because of people who had more than one marriage. Only the preferred marriage appears in this database.

One more filter for the road. Italians have a tremendous reverence for the Virgin Mary, so they use the name Maria a LOT. Even the boys got Maria for a middle name. So, how many people in my family tree from Colle Sannita have a first name that contains Maria? 21,491 people!

I'd love to hear your suggestions for other ways to dissect the facts in my family tree.