Create an Ancestor Profile from Vital Records

How much can you ever know about your peasant ancestors? I spend all my time reading 19th-century vital records from a handful of rural Italian towns. Most records contain X's instead of signatures because almost everyone was illiterate.

In places like these, you can't expect to find your ancestors in the local society pages. No one could read, so there wouldn't be a need for such newspaper coverage. All you have are birth, marriage, and death records. Well, almost.

You can find some general local history about your ancestral towns. Last week I wrote about using Google Books to learn more about the places where your ancestors lived. You may find a good reference book in a library, too.

Without published stories, what can you learn about your family from vital records and a book or two? Here are examples from my extended family tree.

Successful Man Suffers Many Losses

When you find every available vital record for a family in your tree, you'll begin to see a snapshot of their lives.

Nicolangelo Nista was born in 1788 in my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita, Italy. Piecing together the vital records for his immediate family, I discovered:

• His first wife and two of their daughters died on August 2, August 7, and August 9, 1834. The dates make it reasonable to think a sickness was going through the town at the time. That year saw many more deaths than the surrounding years.
• Four of his other children had already died before 1834.
• His wife's death left Nicolangelo with six children to raise, ranging in age from 18 to two years old.
• He married a younger widow the following year.
• They had four children together, two of whom died in infancy.
• His sister Nicolina was luckier in life, despite dying at the age of 46. She had at least two children who grew up, married, raised a family, and outlived her.
• His brother Giovanni became a priest and lived to be 78 years old.
• Nicolangelo lived to be more than 72 years old. The available death records for the town end in 1860, and Nicolangelo was still alive.
• He was a proprietario—an owner of property or a business. Despite his losses, Nicolangelo is likely to have lived a comfortable life.

Earthquake Hits Home

The same town of Colle Sannita has suffered several earthquakes. The 1962 earthquake damaged my grandfather's childhood home so badly, they had to demolish it. On my second visit to Grandpa's town, my cousins showed me the stone front doorstep. It was all that remained of his home.

I have a list of the 40 victims of an earthquake in Colle Sannita way back on 26 July 1805. Civil records for the town begin in 1809, yet I've managed to place a few of the victims in my family tree. One of them was my 38-year-old 5th great grandaunt, Libera Nigro.

See how one piece of local history from your ancestral hometown can add very real context to your family tree.

Libera and her husband Giovanni had three daughters that I've found. Sadly, Libera and two of her daughters, ages four and five, died in the 1805 earthquake. Without that list of victims, I would have no record of little Grazia and Anna Maria, my 1st cousins 6 times removed.

Suffering and Serendipity

I love to put entire families together from my ancestral hometowns. In doing so, I often see cases of several children dying young in the same family. It's so sad to see a couple name their baby Giuseppe, for example, only to have him die so soon. They name the next son Giuseppe, and he dies young. Then they name the next one Giuseppe. Each time I see this happen, I say, "That's a doomed name for them."

It also makes me sad to see a husband and wife die on the same day or a few days apart. These death records don't include a cause of death, but we may assume they died of the same cause. Maybe they both caught the flu or had some sort of accident.

One thing I noticed years ago always makes me laugh. You see, most of the old-country Italians in my family tree were poor. They usually gave their children one or two first names. For example, my 5th great grandparents named one son Angelo, and the other Tommaso Antonio.

Sometimes I find a well-to-do family. What's funny is that these richer families often give their children four or five first names. One such family named their children:

• Angela Maria Lorenza
• Maria Luisa Barbara Margarita
• Maria Amalia Carmela Camilla
• Domenico Maria (he got short-changed)
• Francesco Saverio Gaetano Achille
• Carolina Maria Vincenza

Pay attention to each detail from vital records. You may find common patterns like this.

Their father had the honorary titles of Don and Baron. At different times his occupation was landowner (proprietario), gentleman (galantuomo), or well-to-do (benestante). I always joke that these families were rich enough to afford more names for their babies.

The keys to developing a profile from vital records are:

• Find every available vital record for the immediate family.
• Notice the timing of events.
• Search for historical points of interest, like earthquakes, famine, disease, and war.

What stands out about your ancestors' vital records?

And speaking of vital records:

• Tackling Several Genealogy Projects on the Fly
• Solve Genealogy Mysteries Step-by-Step
• Use What You Know to Break Down a Brick Wall

Surprising Free Finds from Google Books

Long-time reader of this blog, Suzanne, found two books that mention my great uncle. She had no luck on Newspapers.com, but she found him when she searched Google Books.

She encouraged me to pick up and continue the search. Two legal briefs help explain how my immigrant uncle and my great grandfather came to own a building. They were leasing it in 1905 from a brewing company—a company that may have had some bad lawyers. My ancestors parlayed this lease into ownership of the building where my mom was born.

What else might I find on Google Books? As usual, I didn't have much luck in searching for the names of my ancestors. Changing tactics, I searched for the names of my ancestral Italian hometowns. I searched for Santa Paolina, a small town in southern Italy, and I made a surprising discovery.

Imagine finding this one-of-a-kind biography of your ancestor.

In my family tree is the 1873 birth record for my 2nd cousin 4 times removed, Fioravanti Ricciardelli. His great grandfather, Emanuele Ricciardelli, is my 5th great grandfather. One search result in Google Books is "History of the Municipalities of Hudson County, New Jersey," written by Daniel Van Winkle in 1924. This isn't what I expected when searching for my town.

The book details the lives of Hudson County's notable citizens, including my cousin Fioravanti. Thanks to the page-and-a-quarter devoted to my cousin, I learned:

• His father, also named Emanuele Ricciardelli, was a "Red Shirt" who fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi for Italy's freedom.
• I knew from vital records that Emanuele and his wife had only 4 children in Santa Paolina. Now I know why. The book says the family moved to another town that's a half hour away by modern transportation. That's unexpected. They may have had more children in their new town.
• My cousin Fioravanti was an accomplished musician, business owner, and inventor.
• In America, he married a distant cousin from Santa Paolina, also named Ricciardelli. They had 9 children in New Jersey.
• The book says Fioravanti raised and educated all his siblings.

This is the type of detail I never get to learn about my Italian relatives. Even if I had discovered the family in U.S. documents, they wouldn't give me this much detail. Without this book, this family was a dead end. What a wonderful find!

Start Your Google Books Search

To search Google Books, go to google.com and start a search as usual. Then click "Books" below the search box. Note: You may have to click the word "More" before you see the "Books" option. Next, for more satisfying results, click the words "Any view" and choose "Preview and full view." Now you can fully explore the best results. If you find something you want, you may be able to download the book as a PDF. Note: You can save a step by going straight to https://books.google.com.

With this Google Books search, I can learn more about the WWI battle that almost killed my grandfather. What can you find?

Get creative with your searches. You never know what you'll find. Think about:

• People and Places. Try family and town names from your family tree. I found an 1888 Italian book about the history of my ancestral hometowns. It tells me their populations at the time.
• Historical Events. Which wars or other important events had an impact on your family? I'll search for the World War I battle where they captured my grandfather and imprisoned him for a year.
• Maps. I'd love to find a book with old maps of my towns of interest. The closest I came is a book with a folded-up map in the back. They didn't scan the unfolded map!
• Workplaces. Search for the company where your ancestor worked. What was happening when your relative worked there?

Devote one hour to Google Books and you'll understand more about your ancestors' lives. It's a massive resource. Thank you to Suzanne for reminding me to give it more attention.

And speaking of searching:

• Searching for the Missing Link in Your Family Tree
• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research
• How to Avoid Searching for Non-Existent Genealogy Records

An End-of-Year Tune Up for Your Family Tree

The end of the year is a perfect time to give your family tree a thorough check for errors. How many times during the past year did you:

• Add a person without checking if their birth date fits in with their parents and siblings?
• Change the way you record a particular fact, like someone's nickname?
• Accidentally attach a marriage date to the first spouse instead of the second?
• Update a person's birth year without changing their parents' estimated birth years?
• Attach a census fact to the youngest child in the family who wasn't born yet?

All kinds of human errors can happen while you're caught up in the genealogy zone. I generated two reports to find errors in my more than 33,000-person family tree:

• In Family Tree Maker, I ran the Data Errors Report.
• In Family Tree Analyzer, I opened a brand new GEDCOM file to look for the usual types of errors. If you don't use Family Tree Maker, create or download a GEDCOM file of your family tree. Then open it in Family Tree Analyzer and check out the error list.

Human error will always creep into your genealogy research. Here are 2 reports that will find the mistakes in your family tree.

I saved the Family Tree Maker report as a very long PDF file. It's long because it lists "The marriage date is missing" each time I don't know a couple's marriage date. That isn't an error. These early documents aren't available, so I'm ignoring that message.

The report also thinks it's an error when a husband and wife have the same last name. It isn't. I use only maiden names for the women in my family tree, but sometimes a Marino marries a Marino. What're you gonna do?

Here are the errors from the Family Tree Maker Data Errors Report that I'm fixing in my family tree:

• The birth date occurred before his/her father/mother was 13. This happens when new information changes my estimated birth date for a person. Let's say I add a person to my family tree with a birth year of 1800. If I know their parents' names, I give them an estimated birth year. My rule is to say the parents are 25 years older than their oldest child—until I find hard facts. So I'll give the 1800 baby's parents an estimated birth year of "Abt. 1775." But what if I discover that baby was born in 1782? If I don't redo the math for the parents' estimated birth year, I'll have a "parent too young" error.
• The birth date occurred after his/her mother was 60. I have two very large families where the children's births spanned way too many years. In one case, the oldest child was so much older than the rest that their birth year had to be wrong. I had to look at their children, too, to make sure I used a valid date estimate.
• The birth date occurred more than one year after his/her father died. This happened with people born in the 1700s. All I could do was adjust the child's birth year to the year their father died.
• The birth date occurred more than one year after his/her mother died. Same problem as above.
• Baptism date occurred before individual's birth date. This was my typo, and I' glad the report pointed it out.
• The individual was married before the age of 13. Unfortunately I have a couple of cases where that's true.
• The marriage occurred after the death date. A man's wife died before him, and I marked his death date as After her date. Then he remarried, and I forgot to delete that death estimate.

These reports will find conflicting facts in your family tree.

• The marriage occurred after the spouse's death. I must have given a marriage date to the first spouse instead of the second. It's too easy to make that mistake.
• Event immigration (or divorce or marriage) contains no data. I can't explain how some of these happened, so I appreciate this safety net.
• This individual's children sort order may be incorrect. I thought that was automatic. I may have clicked the wrong button on this family.
• Person does not have a preferred spouse set. Somehow I added marriage date without adding a spouse's name.
• The birth date is missing. These are living people I added recently. I don't know how old they are, so I'll have to add estimates based on their parents' ages.
• The name may include a nickname. I had a man's nickname in parentheses with his name. Now I've changed the nickname to an alternate Name fact.
• Residence date occurred before individual's birth date. The 1940 census says where the family lived in 1935. It may be the same house or the same place/town. Twice I gave the 1935 address to kids born after 1935. Now I've deleted those residence facts.
• The age at death is greater than 120. This is usually not an error. If I don't have a document to tell me when someone died, but I know they were dead when their child died, I'll say they died "Bef. [the child's death date]." This error report isn't taking the "Before" into account.
• The burial date occurred before his/her death. This was my typo, but yikes! What a thought.

Find those troublesome families in your family tree with one of these genealogy error reports.

When you're working in Family Tree Maker, the software will make an alert sound if:

• You add a baby to a parent who's too young, too old, or too dead.
• A bride or groom is under the age of 13.
• A husband and wife have the same last name.

I appreciate those warnings—except for the last one. But if you update someone's birth date later, you may not get the warning. That's what these reports are good for.

Give your family tree an error cleanse before the new year. Start off 2022 with a cleaned-up, fine-tuned, fortified family tree.

Keep These Genealogy Resources Always Within Reach

Our genealogy research evolves over time. And we change our methods as we expand our family tree. I've gotten to a point where there are certain resources I must have handy as I work on my tree.

Here are 7 of my most-needed resources. Because of my heritage, some of my tools are Italian-specific. But I'm sure there are similar resources for your heritage.

1. Google Translate

After years of Italian research, I understand all the important genealogy words. Months, numbers, relationship words, and more. But sometimes a record mentions a mother-in-law (suocera), brother-in-law (cognato), or some other word I don't know or can't remember.

When that happens, I rely on Google Translate. It's critical when I'm faced with a free-form document explaining how a soldier died in the war. Or how someone died in a tavern while passing through another town.

I keep Google Translate on the always visible bookmarks toolbar of my web browser.

2. Google Maps and Bing Maps

I need both map websites on my bookmarks toolbar. When I'm reading an old vital record, and it includes a street name, I want to see the place! Google Street View is wonderful for seeing the house or the neighborhood. But Bing Maps does a better job of showing every last street name in my ancestral Italian towns.

Keep both types of maps handy. Each one has its benefits, and you'll get more value by using both.

If I'm looking up a street in Italy, I locate it on Bing Maps, then find the same, unmarked location on Google Maps. Now I can use Google Street View for a better perspective.

For U.S. addresses, Bing Maps includes the county name up at the top. Google Maps makes me read a Wikipedia entry to find the county name. I like how Bing does it.

3. Ancestry and Antenati Websites

Lately I've been searching for missing documents for whoever I'm viewing in my family tree. If I discover that someone born in Italy went to America, I need their immigration record. I go straight to Ancestry.com to find the document.

Let's say I find out that one of my distant cousins in Italy married a woman from another town. I go to the Antenati website and look for his wife's missing birth record.

Both websites are critical to my progress.

4. "Colle Sannita nel 1742"

I'm so lucky to have this book! It's a detailed listing of every family in my Grandpa's hometown in the year 1742. When I'm lucky enough to identify people who were alive in 1742, I can often find them in the book.

When I do, I learn the whole family's names and ages. I learn where they lived, what they did for a living, and what property they owned. The book details more than 500 families. If the publisher ever does the same for my other towns, I'll buy those books in a heartbeat.

A United States equivalent of this book might be land records and wills.

5. Street Name Changes for Grandpa's Hometown

The book about Colle Sannita tells how the ancient street names changed over time. Have you noticed how many European countries have streets named for FDR and JFK? Those weren't the original names.

Keep important notes handy by using the Plans tab of Family Tree Maker.

In Italy, they renamed many streets for Italian heroes (Vittorio Emmanuele, Umberto I, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Count Camillo di Cavour) or for important dates in their history (IV Novembre). I update the old addresses so I know where to visit in Grandpa's town.

I use the Plan tab of Family Tree Maker to keep my list of old street names and modern equivalents handy. When I spot an old street name in a vital record, I click over to my list to see the new name. Using the current street name allows Family Tree Maker to plot it on the map.

6. Translations of Italian Occupation Words

Old Italian vital records may show someone's occupation as something that doesn't translate. That's why I keep a spreadsheet of all the Italian job words I've found, and their English translations. I started by copying an old website that was making the rounds. Then I added more words I found that weren't on that website.

When I need the list, I right-click Excel in my Windows toolbar and choose my Italian occupations file. If you're using foreign-language documents, make a spreadsheet of words that trip you up.

Make sure all your family tree-related files are easy to find when you need them.

7. Grandparent/Ahnentafel Chart

Are you using my grandparent spreadsheet with Ahnentafel numbers in each cell? If so, keep it handy. Any time you discover a new direct ancestor, put them in that chart immediately. Your chart is a great way to really see which direct ancestors' names you're missing.

Each of the tools above is either physically on my desk (the book), or bookmarked on my computer for quick access. Make sure everything you need to forge ahead with your research is as handy as possible.

What are your must-have tools and resources when you're working on your family tree?