If you spend any time on social media, you've seen them. The before-and-after images with the words "how it started" and "how it's going." Usually the joke is that things are not going very well at all.
What if we apply the same idea to our family tree research? How it started for me was a 1989 conversation with my Grandma Leone and a hand-drawn tree of her family. How it's going is a family tree with 32,000 people from all my grandparents' hometowns.
Then I had a conversation with my Grandpa Iamarino. He told me a bit about his sisters. I'd known nothing about them! Now my family tree has his sisters, their children, and generations of their husbands' ancestors.
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| "How it started" was a 1989 conversation and a scrap of paper. "How it's going" is a treasure trove of documents and family history. |
Fast-forward to 2002 when my husband-to-be and I were planning our honeymoon in Italy. I wanted to know more about where my ancestors came from. I started with the EllisIsland.org website. I found ship manifests for my two grandfathers. When I noticed that everyone named Iamarino came from one town (Colle Sannita), I took out a notebook. I filled tons of pages with facts about every Iamarino emigrating from Colle.
My husband bought me Family Tree Maker software with a subscription to Ancestry.com. He thought it was time I graduate from the slips of paper I was laying out on the floor to simulate a family tree.
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| "How it started" was a notebook filled with info from ship manifests. "How it's going" is a collection of 505 digital manifest images. |
I did indeed graduate. I found my extended family in the census records. Not a single one of my ancestors had come to America before 1890. Our roots here are still so shallow.
My next how it started / how it's going began in about 2006. I learned I could visit a Family History Center at a local church to view microfilm of Italian vital records. For five years, I viewed and documented EVERY vital record (1809–1860) from my Grandpa Leone's hometown of Baselice. I chose his town because I knew almost nothing about his family.
I started this project by finding his parents' birth records in 1850 and 1856. Now I knew their parents' names.
The only way to know my relationship to other Leones in town was to piece together all the families. So I brought my laptop to the Family History Center and typed a line in a text file for each record. Here's an example:
- Pasquale Maria Cernese b 1 apr 1809 to Giovanni di Saverio 35 (bracciale) and Battista di Giovanni Colucci
That's a birth record for Pasquale Maria Cernese, born on 1 April 1809. His father was Giovanni Cernese, a 35-year-old laborer, and the son of Saverio Cernese. His mother was Battista Colucci, daughter of Giovanni Colucci.
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| "How it started" was viewing barely-legible vital records by appointment. "How it's going" is a family tree more than 32,000 strong. |
With this type of shorthand, I created a text file that's 29,864 lines long. After each long session at the microfilm viewer, I'd go home and try to work everyone into a Family Tree Maker file. I found a connection to about 15,000 people from the town.
During the entire five-year process, I was yearning to do the same for my Grandpa Iamarino's town. But the visits to the center were a pain. Then, everything changed in 2017. The Italian government published digitized vital records for tons of towns online. Now I can see clear images of the vital records I'd struggled to read on crappy microfilm viewers. Plus, the records don't end in 1860. They go way, way beyond.
And Grandpa Iamarino's hometown vital records are online for me, too! As are my great grandmother Caruso's hometown records. My Grandma Leone's parents' town has very few records online, but they are helpful. And when I discovered two other towns where I have roots, I found their vital records online, too.
Much to my horror, the Italian website completely changed their format today, making it seemingly impossible to download a high-resolution image of your ancestor's document. This stinks! UPDATED: How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.
For my research, how it started is the five years of squinting at microfilm with a computer in my lap. How it's going is my searchable database of records from my Italian hometowns. And a family tree of more than 32,000 people that's been growing by almost 100 people a day lately.
Why so much growth? Because how it started was asking Grandma and Grandpa about their siblings. How it's going is piecing together the thousands of unions from my ancestors' towns. For instance, I can find the marriage records for my 3rd great grandparents. Then I can find the births of all their children, who their children married, and which kids they had. It adds up fast.
It helps my cause that all my people came from such a tiny footprint on the Italian map. In 2005 my cousins showed me the exact spot where Grandpa Iamarino's house once stood. They pointed out that I could see Grandpa Leone's town in the distance.
A man from one of my towns could meet and marry a woman from one of my other towns. In fact, my 3rd great grandfather Francesco Liguori did just that. He lived in Circello—my one real connection to that town. But he married a woman from the neighboring town of Colle Sannita. They had eight children in Colle, introducing his last name to the town. And that meant I had to explore Francesco's extended family in the Circello vital records.
How did your interest in your family tree start? Think back on your origin story and then ask yourself, "How's it going?"
My "How did it start" is much like yours. Sitting with my grandmother as she told me her family history. I was between 12-15 years old (1980-1983). Fast forward to 2012, my sister became interested in genealogy. I had the basic tree. She sparked my interest. I now have about 12,000 direct relatives in my tree. She no longer has time to work on her genealogy and I became a member of the local chapter of OGS.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had asked more while my grandparents and their siblings were alive.
DeleteHow I started was interviewing my grandparents, aunts and uncles every opportunity I had, taking notes in a yellow pad with a ballpoint pen, and hoping that later I could read my own twisted writing. During that time I was drawing the trees freehand in the same yellow pad using pencil instead of pen so I could erase. One day I discovered FTM - it may have been my husband who told me about it, knowing my interest in my ancestors. I ordered the fist floppy disk and the rest is history. I've only traveled to Puerto Rico, not Italy or Spain, but my mother's Spanish cousin, a journalist and historian, has been able to help me with research, fotos and interviews. His help has been invaluable, & since he doesn't use software, I shared the PDF of our ancestors and descendants with him. I subscribe to Ancestry, My Heritage & 23andMe did my DNA & my husband's with all 3 to confirm the paper research, but still depend on my tree's accuracy based on the paper trails. Having grown up with both paternal & maternal family including "grand" ancestors has been an invaluable experience in my formation and my genealogy data. I consider myself among the most fortunate. My tree is only about 3600 individuals, as I take my time belaboring research to avoid errors. I enter every single branch, no matter how distant, all the way up and all the way down with in-laws included. Since the census included every person living and present in a household on the day taken, I enter the maids and visitors in the data notes with my comments to clarify each one. Your blog, DiAnn, has been of great value to me.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for reading, and for sharing your story.
DeleteOne very fortunate day in 1990 I sat with my Grandmother and reminisced with her for hours. She died at age 94.5 in 1991. She carefully wrote the names and birth years of her parents and grandparents and my deceased grandfather's parents on a yellow legal pad and made sure I could read her Italian style handwriting. (How on earth did she remember the birth years?). She also told me one of my great great grandparents had come to her town in Sicily from the "boot". She said he "had to come" but no one would speak of the circumstances. Fast Forward, I found that man and his town in the Province of Cosenza and 2,000 other relatives from that humble start. Everything she told me about birth years and remarriages of various relatives was accurate. It absolutely took my breath away when I found the record to back up what she had told me. I still get that feeling when I work on my tree and I feel it connects me back to my beloved Grandmother. I wish she was still here to share this journey with me.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing that she remembered all the dates. There's a later note on the scrap of paper from my conversation with Grandma that says, "And it's all correct!" I noticed she had even given me her sister-in-law's maiden name. I had it wrong in my tree for a while, but the right name was in my possession the whole time.
DeleteI hope I am as clear as my Grandmother in the future. Sharp and brilliant to the end. I went to the Antenati website today after reading your blog. OMG I know I would not have gotten very far with the current set up. Glad I downloaded when I could. Many thanks to you for that!
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother's sister Stella was sharp as a tack till the day she died -- one day short of her 97th birthday. I hope that's me. I'm so angry about the Antenati site!! That's going to have to be my next blog -- how to deal with the MESS they've made of it. Thank goodness I downloaded my towns already.
DeleteI'm blown away every time I read one of your posts. What tenacity you have!
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry that they have ruined the Antenati site. Sites changing is a major thorn in my side. I think many of them change just for the sake of changing, not because they are actually trying to be helpful. If they wanted to be helpful, they wouldn't make us have to relearn everything!
My family history adventure started with my maternal grandparents. I just wish that I could remember all the stories that they told me. I do remember some and one involves my brickwall matrilineal 2nd great-grandmother. She was adopted. My DNA match lists seem to be completely devoid of anything pointing to her. I also wish that Grandma and Grandpa were still with me because I have so many more questions now than I did when they were living. My Granny lived quite a bit longer than they did and I will never forget the look on her face when I shared with her the names of her maternal grandparents. She had never known them.
How is it going? My main tree, which is the tree for the family I grew up with (not my biological father), has grown to almost 14,000 people. It includes both blood relatives and in-laws and, in some cases, their in-laws, too. Many of these families were intertwined several times over. I can't throw a stick in South Carolina or Georgia without hitting a cousin. :)
Keep up the great work!
I never thought about it, but I sure wish I could show any of my grandparents the names of so many of their ancestors. How wonderful that would be!
DeleteI've worked on corporate websites since 1997, and complete site redesigns are often influenced by what the competition's website is doing. Or, it looks stale, let's completely change it, etc.
DiAnn, got to your article through OGS (found I had some Canadian roots a few yrs ago!). My Genealogy journey started in the early 1980's: a conversation with my Mother about family recipes (started by an article in Sunset Magazine). After getting Mom to pull the family recipes from the huge numbers she had, I sent a form letter to every family member I could think of. Then I started visiting the ones within range. As we talked recipes the person would mention items they had about ancestors: photos, letters, documents, an amazing amount of misc. Stuff! If not given to me I made copies and for several years I was more interested in gathering "stuff", doing Oral history, etc. than research. The research came later, especially after I retired and newspapers were digitized and online! That was a MAJOR boost as I found so much on the various families that Did Not Come Down to My Generation. I had very few stories and, not knowing about them, did not always ask the right questions.
ReplyDeleteLong story short, newspapers stories just allowed me to nominate a Great Grandmother to the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame! Information I knew Nothing about until newspapers.
There are many more stories and I just hope I live long enough!!!
That's an amazing story, Linda! I'm jealous of people who can find their family in the newspapers. My family was in Italy until 1899, and all I've found are brief mentions of real estate transactions by my great grandfather. My grandmother's generation didn't even seem to have wedding announcements in the paper.
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