Unexpected Finds from FamilySearch Labs

It's been a while since I looked at the "Labs" section of FamilySearch.org. This is where you can take advantage of their enormous "Full-Text Search" project. You can find new documents for your family tree because your ancestor merely gets a mention.

I went to https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text and started by entering two names and one place. They were my great grandfather (Giovanni Sarracino) and his brother-in-law (Semplicio Saviano) in the Bronx, New York. They were businessmen whose dealings are still clouded in mystery. I don't know how they came to own a building with retail stores and four apartments.

Here are three complete surprises I found there. This should inspire you to search these records, too!

Find unusual genealogy documents where your ancestor is a supporting character, not the star.

My Great Grandfather's Signature

My first result says my great grandfather was a witness on a Petition for Naturalization in 1940. I don't know this other man. He didn't live in my great grandfather's neighborhood or come from his hometown. But how cool is it to see my great grandfather's signature for the first time?

My 2nd Great Uncle's Children

Next I found several pages of Bronx probate records. The subject of the records was Giuseppa, the widow of my great grandfather's brother. At first I didn't see a connection and didn't know who she was. But one of the pages is a 1908 baptism record from St. Rita's Church in the Bronx. That caught my eye. They baptized my grandmother there in 1899.

The baptism record is for my 1st cousin twice removed, Angelo Sarracino. He's the son of Angelo Sarracino (my 2nd great uncle) and his wife Giuseppa Orrosa.

This legal filing has an astonishing 100 pages, each of which I downloaded as an image. Here are the details I found in this document that I didn't know before:

• Giuseppa Orrosa (spelling uncertain) died on 2 Feb 1920 at 222 East 150th Street, Bronx, New York. With some difficulty, I did find her New York City death certificate. Too bad it uses her husband's name as her father's, and her mother's name is the same as hers.
• Her eldest son Anthony filed several legal papers to claim Giuseppa's financial holdings. Some of his siblings were minors, and there was no will, which complicated things. The document shows how much he paid for lawyers and his mother's funeral.
• Giuseppa had $1,339 in the bank, $750 at home, and held a promissory note for $1,000. My great grandfather and his brother-in-law's wife must have borrowed money from Giuseppa. I had no idea she was also involved in my great grandfather's business dealings.

Searching for more Sarracino documents led to a string of discoveries.

• I found New York City vital records and Italian birth records in towns that are new to me.
• I found a previously unknown child for Giuseppa who died after two days.
• I found several spellings of her maiden name. Her exact town of origin is still a mystery to me.

All the documents have different spellings of her maiden name. Only one spelling variation has a match on the Cognomix website. This website shows you where you can find any last name in Italy today. That one spelling is Orasi. I tried doing a wide search for anyone name Orasi coming to America. None of the leads from this wide search turned out to be helpful.

As I went through the 245 pages of search results, many were from Giuseppa's probate records. To narrow the search, I used only Semplicio Saviano's name. This led to a very sad discovery.

My Cousin James' Difficult Life

Semplicio and his wife Giovina had 11 children, four of whom died by the age of four. Giovina died at age 46 when her youngest child was only seven years old. Her son James was 12 years old at the time. All I knew about James was that he lived to be 79 years old and never married.

This set of 1928 documents shows that James was a delinquent child who ran away from home often. The file claims he had an IQ of 37 and had two mental examinations before his mother died. His father once placed him in an institution, a "Catholic Protectory", for six weeks, where he did well. At one point, Semplicio had to file a report with the Missing Persons Bureau. James' probation officer lists many incidents where James:

• was found dirty and neglected
• was delinquent from school
• called in a false alarm
• was begging for money at 3 a.m. by the Brooklyn Bridge!

A court order forced Semplicio to pay $3 a week for the boy's "maintenance", and he was having trouble keeping up.

An official interviewed James' sister Columbia. She said his weak mental and physical state were due to convulsions when he was born, and a 12-hour coma. The family wanted James to go back to the Catholic Protectory. There he could do manual work away from the "so-called crowd of defective children".

The institution said they'd welcome James. But if he didn't do well, the only alternative was to send him to the now-infamous Letchworth Village. It seems that never happened. Semplicio suggested in 1928 that James should work in the lumber yard where his brother Anthony worked. Anthony could keep an eye on James. The 1930 census shows that James was a lumber helper. In the 1950 census he's a pin boy at a bowling alley.

This document contains facts about Semplicio's family that I would never have known. It describes the family home in great detail. It lists the jobs, schools, and income of the whole family. I like the description of the apartment even more because this is the same building where my mom grew up. It's where my grandparents lived when I was a kid.

This amazing find tells a new, detailed story about my 2nd great uncle Semplicio's family.

The full-text search section of FamilySearch is well worth visiting every several months. Everything I described here didn't show up in my results the last time I looked. What will you find?

How to Share Your Family Tree With Cousins

Sometimes a cousin will ask if I have a printout of the family tree to share with them. Well, no. My tree has more than 83,000 people. If you specify which part of it you want, I can make a PDF. But can a family tree chart ever show you all the details you want? No. A family tree chart will only show names plus birth, marriage, and death dates and places.

I've kept a copy of my family tree on Ancestry.com since the early 2000s. I build my tree on my desktop using Family Tree Maker then synchronize it with my tree on Ancestry.

A few relatives asked for access to my Ancestry tree, and I sent them an invitation. But some invitations were never opened. Only one person noticed when I deleted my original tree, voiding their access.

Give the Cousins What They Need

When a cousin asks for the family tree, how can we provide a tree that's:

• useful
• printable
• customizable
• easy-to-explore, and
• provides access to all the juicy details?

If you've been paying attention, you know I dislike collaborative family tree websites. I'm a control freak and won't allow anyone to change my facts. That's why I'm not going to consider the likes of FamilySearch.org, Geni.com, or WikiTree.com.

I'm already using two websites to display my family tree and allow others to find my work. Let's take a look at sharing your family tree on Ancestry.com and Geneanet.org.

After so many years of use, I can't tell if Ancestry's interface is overwhelming for guests of my family tree.

The Ancestry.com Option

I went to a friend's Ancestry.com tree where I have a guest role. I wanted to see what's available to me as a non-owner and non-editor. There are limits to what I can see and do:

• I can see the vertical or horizontal family tree layout and a fan chart with 5 generations of ancestors. But I can't customize the fan chart. (You can customize your own fan chart if you pay for Ancestry Pro Tools.)
• It's a bit hidden, but I can print one individual's tree view or fan chart. But first I have to display exactly the right people on the screen. I must expand or collapse siblings and generations before finding the print button.
• I can click any individual to see their profile page. This shows me all their facts plus any sources, and a list of parents, spouses, children, and siblings.
• I can see notes attached to any fact right there in the list of facts. In my tree, an emigration fact's description field says the destination and ship name. "Left for New York on the Lapland." Each immigration fact gives specifics about their arrival. "Arrived join uncle Antonio Pilla at 22 West Street, Newton, Massachusetts."
• Unless I'm the tree's owner or an editor, I cannot see notes attached to the person. This disappoints me. I wanted these notes to help other people investigating my family tree. This is where I record, among other things, military record details and obituary text.
• On each person's profile page, you can look at the sources attached by the tree's owner. If they've done it well, you can view the record and the image for yourself.

What I can't tell you is how easy or confusing this may be for someone who hasn't been using Ancestry.com for many years.

My Ancestry.com family tree has one big advantage. A visitor can see the document images I've attached to any person. I removed all photographs when Ancestry said they had rights to your photos. I don't own all the photos in my family tree, so I don't want to share them. The photos are in my Family Tree Maker file, but I marked them private to keep them offline.

I mentioned that some people never looked at my Ancestry.com tree even after asking for access. So I want to look at option two.

The Geneanet.org Option

Two years ago, you couldn't synchronize your Family Tree Maker to Ancestry.com for months. I had to find another option. I liked Geneanet.org because it's free and I can replace my GEDCOM at will. No worries about synchronizing. I can replace my whole GEDCOM each time.

Despite what their website says, I cannot upload my document images to the site along with my GEDCOM. If you know how to do it, please tell me.

I give my Geneanet family tree link and my Ancestry link to people in case Ancestry limits their access. You may need to create a free Geneanet account to explore my family tree, but I'd say the price is right.

Seeing a person's timeline alongside the family tree view might make Geneanet.org easier for a cousin with a casual interest.

Aside from being free, here's why I like Geneanet for sharing your family tree with relatives:

• The family tree view is easy to navigate. You can click plus signs to expand family units. You can click and drag the tree around to look at other generations. You can search for a person by name at the top of the family tree view. No complaints there.
• Clicking any person in the family tree view opens a right panel filled with their details. It's a complete timeline of all the facts attached to this person. Click any fact to see its complete source citation. This includes a clickable link to the source, if it's included. This panel also includes any non-private notes attached to a person. That's a big plus.
• With a person of interest selected, click the top-left tab to switch from Family Tree to Profile. The Profile view has everything in one place.
  • Birth and death dates and places.
  • Parents' names and lifespans.
  • Spouse's name and lifespan, along with marriage date and place, and children's names and lifespans.
  • Siblings' names and lifespans.
  • Life events, in order, with full details and source citation. This list displays any notes you may record in a fact's description field.
  • Source citations (again), all in one list.
  • Family tree preview showing 3 generations of ancestors with their names and lifespans.
  • From the preview section, click to print the person's ancestry or descendancy chart. Or click Printable Family Tree for more options. Choose the type of chart, color themes, and specify the number of generations. I find this easier than Ancestry.com's option. You can also create a family history book through a partner called Patronomia. You can save it as a PDF for free.

When a cousin wants to see a family tree chart for their branch, Geneanet.org lets them create a customized treasure.

My only complaint about Geneanet.org is personal. It refuses to recognize that DiAnn has a capital A. It's fine with the last names in my tree that have lowercase prefixes, like diPaola and delGrosso. It even allows a name like LaBrusco, where I capitalize the L so it doesn't look like an uppercase i. But it doesn't like that my first name has two capital letters. There are so many unusual first names. This seems like a programming problem to fix. It's ignoring the case of the letters in first names.

I'm going to send an email to any of my cousins who've shown interest in the family tree. I'll link them to my Geneanet.org tree, and give them an overview of how to use the site. This could be the perfect self-help solution for their needs.

Do you have any ancestors from Italy's Benevento Province? Search for your names in my Geneanet family tree. Take advantage of my ridiculous amount of research.

Hardship Lessons Your Ancestors Learned

My parents were born during America's Great Depression. When I was a kid, they often told me I had to "clean my plate"—eat every last bit of food—and waste nothing. My dad would say, "Take all you want, but eat all you take." I'm sure this is why I hate to waste anything to this day.

Your ancestors lived through bad economic times. See how they pulled through with this genealogy resource.

If you look into the causes of the Great Depression, here's what you'll find:

• Black Tuesday. The stock market crash of 1929 erased billions of dollars in wealth.
• Bank Rush. In a panic, people rushed to withdraw their savings, causing many banks to collapse. Think of the scene from "It's a Wonderful Life."
• Reduced Spending. Other than escaping to the movie theater, people stopped all discretionary spending. Consumer confidence faded and commercial revenue dried up.
• Tariffs. The ill-fated Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act imposed tariffs on imports. This raised prices across the board. Trading partners retaliated with their own tariffs. They cut their imports from the U.S. Nobody wins.

My parents didn't suffer too much during the Great Depression. They were lucky—their fathers had jobs. Take another look at the 1930 census to see how your ancestors were doing.

• My maternal grandfather Adamo has his own shoe repair shop, a wife and two young children. He rents his apartment from his father-in-law, so he doesn't have to fear losing his home.
• My great grandfather Giovanni (Adamo's father-in-law) is not working. But he owns his building. It has 4 apartments on the second floor and stores on the first floor. He and my great grandmother are fine.
• My paternal grandfather Pietro is working in a steel mill. He has a wife and daughter and rents his home. He hates the work, but at least he has a job.
• My great grandfather Pasquale (Pietro's father-in-law) is a railroad worker. He owns his home. One of his teenage sons works in the steel industry. They're reasonably secure.

How did some of my other relatives fare during the Great Depression?

• Great uncle Giuseppe has a job with the War Department. He rents his apartment and has three boarders.
• Cousin Pasquale works as a tile setter and rents his apartment. With a wife and six children who are too young to work, life has to be difficult.
• Cousin Giuseppe works for the railroad and rents his apartment. He has a wife and five young children to support.
• Cousin Celia is a widow raising eight young children in her rented apartment. She owns a candy store, but you can't imagine revenue is great at the time.
• My uncle's father works for the railroad while my 18-year-old uncle works as a plumber. His family of seven rents their apartment on these two paychecks.

Look at 2 key spots on the 1930 and 1940 census to see how people in your family tree made it through the worst economic times.

On the whole, my extended family soldiered through the Great Depression. They relied on the steel industry and railroads to put food on the table. The frugal habits my parents passed down to me are a clear sign of the austerity they knew as children.

How were your ancestors doing at the end of the depression in the 1940 census?

• My maternal grandfather Adamo still has his own shoe repair shop. He still rents his apartment from his father-in-law.
• My great grandfather Giovanni, ever the businessman, is working again. He's the proprietor of a beer garden.
• My paternal grandfather Pietro switched from the steel mills to a much cleaner job. He is a stone setter for a costume jewelry company.
• My great grandfather Pasquale developed black lung disease from his railroad job. He's retired and living on a pension with my great grandmother.

The censuses can give us a little glimpse of our ancestors' lives during the Great Depression. But it's the spending habits they passed down that give us the real insight.

I used to think it was funny that my Grandpa Pietro never threw anything away. He'd repair it, even if it looked ridiculous. A shovel with its spade nailed onto the wooden handle. A lawn chair with more duct tape than metal. I inherited a lot of my ancestors' frugal habits.

It makes me wonder what lessons today's generation will pass down to their children. "Don't subscribe to every streaming service." "If your phone still works, you don't need a new one." "Don't eat so much take-out."

What picture do your ancestors' 1930 and 1940 censuses paint? What lessons did they pass down to you? What lessons can you learn from them to use today?

And speaking of census records:

• How to Squeeze Everything Out of the Census
• Simplify Your Genealogy Info Gathering With This Form
• 3 Unique, Key Facts about Every U.S. Federal Census
• How to Fully Process Your Census Documents
• 4 Tips for Finding a Missing Census Record

4 Reasons to Digitize All Your Genealogy Work

The Ellis Island website was my first stop when I became interested in genealogy. After I found my grandfathers' ship manifests, I looked for people with my closest ancestors' last names. I recorded everything I found in a notebook.

Then a friend turned me on to Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com. From that point on, I stopped filling notebooks and filled my Family Tree Maker file instead. Each discovery, document, and photograph needs to be in your family tree. Unless you're keeping a 100% paper family tree, that means you need to digitize everything.

Are you looking for a compelling reason to digitize all your genealogy holdings? Here are 4 of them, with a cute acronym—PEAS.

Go fully digital to protect your family tree and reap the benefits.

1. Protection

I have so few paper genealogy documents they fit in one file folder. They include hard copies of some of my ancestors' U.S. vital records. I keep them in a metal safe.

By keeping all your genealogy work in digital format, you can better protect it from harm or loss. I build my tree in Family Tree Maker, attaching important documents to the tree. Each day when I'm finished working on my tree, I:

• export a GEDCOM file
• create a smaller backup with no media files attached
• create a large backup file with all media files attached
• copy these files, the Family Tree Maker file, and its automatic backup file to the cloud.

All these files become part of my weekly backup plan so they're kept on two external hard drives as well as the cloud.

I store my tons of document images on OneDrive. These include vital records, censuses, ship manifests, naturalization documents, and much more. Whenever I add a new document image, I capture it in my weekly backup routine.

My genealogy work can survive any catastrophe that might happen to my computer.

2. Efficiency

I've seen people debate the best type of binders to use for their genealogy research. Binders? My family tree has 83,000 people and will continue to grow. Saving my work as paper printouts in binders is crazy. I'd need a second house to hold them all, and a ton of money for the materials.

I did fill one accordion folder with large printouts of my closest ancestors' papers long ago. I thought I'd bring it to family gatherings. That only happened once. I run a 98% paper-free office. No clutter allowed.

Efficiency means it's easy to take all my work with me.

3. Access

When I visit my mother, she always has some random question about the family. "Where did Uncle Silvio live when he went to high school?" That's not something I know off the top of my head. But I have my iPhone, and I can find his 1940 census page on OneDrive. She's always asking me when someone's birthday is, or how old they'd be if they were alive. I can pull up my tree on Ancestry.com to answer those questions.

At home, I work on my family tree using a tower computer, not a laptop. I keep a laptop to take with me when I travel. It's fantastic to be able to access every bit of my work from that computer using OneDrive. On one trip, I renamed downloaded vital records to make them searchable. Since the files are on OneDrive, the changes I made synchronized to my tower computer when I got home.

4. Searchability

As I mentioned above, I rename downloaded files to make them searchable on my computer. I have huge collections of Italian vital record images from my ancestral hometowns. Because I've renamed them, I can find what I need in a second. I use a Windows-based program called Everything to show me every result.

Name your genealogy files in a way that improves your search results.

Let's say I've added the 1814 marriage of Pietro Mazzone and Vita Nicola Tosto to my family tree. Now I want to find and add all their children. Because of the naming style I use, I can search for all their children at once.

In the Everything program, I type "Mazzone di Pietro to find:

• his 6 children's births
• 3 of their deaths
• 7 of their marriages

Each result is clickable, opening the document image.

This is possible because I renamed the files with the person's name and their father's name. (I use the Italian word di, meaning of, before the father's name as a shorthand.)

With consistent file naming, you can search for and find whatever you need.

Let's Get Digital

Now here's your challenge. Come up with a concrete timetable that works for you, and:

• Scan or digitally photograph all your paper documents and photographs. Then name and store the files using a logical system that makes sense to you.
• Rename and organize all your downloaded genealogy document images. Depending on your preference, you can store the files by file type of document or by family name.
• Use HandwritingOCR to capture text from handwritten or printed pages. Save them as text files. You can save the text of newspaper articles in an individual's notes section in your family tree. If you have handwritten notes, capture their text to make it more usable.
• Follow a weekly plan to keep digital backups in more than one location. If you don't work on your family tree each week, you can follow a monthly backup plan. Use external hard drives and cloud storage to help ensure the safety of your data.
• Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree each time you work on it. Keep this file safe and make it part of your regular backup plan.

Now's the time. Reduce your reliance on paper and safeguard your assets. Make your genealogy research thoroughly modern.