Find Your Passion and Genealogy is Pure Joy

Everyone with an interest in their family tree was a beginner once. And it seemed overwhelming. Then we find our way. We make mistakes. We go back and fill in what we missed. After a while, our family trees have leaves on almost every branch.

Is this when some people get tired of genealogy? Do they imagine there's nothing left to do?

If that's how you're starting to feel, you haven't found your passion yet.

A single spark can ignite your passion for your family tree.

Finding That Passion

I became so passionate about genealogy that I resented having to work for a living. So my husband and I did the math, and I was able to retire a few years early.

Now I can devote my time to the two tasks that spark my passion.

1. Citing my sources. In 2017 vital records for my ancestral hometowns came online. I downloaded them all to my computer. I decided to piece together tons of families from these towns without citing my sources for now.

Big mistake! Who's going to believe my family tree without sources? So I've been creating all the missing source citations. I've made a lot of progress and should finish later this year.

At the start, more than 9,000 blood relatives in my family tree had no source citations. Today it's down to 814 blood relatives. I push to complete at least 100 people a day. I've gone as high as 180 people in a day.

When I finish the 814 remaining relatives, I'll have 52,000 non-blood relatives to tackle. But they're not as big of a priority. I'll keep working on this project, but it may not get all my attention every day.

This passion is making my family tree valuable to anyone with relatives from my towns. It will be my legacy.

2. Italian vital records. Once I retired, I took things up a notch. Instead of searching the document images for one relative at a time, I began renaming the images. Now they're all searchable on my computer. I name each birth and death record for the individual and their father. For example, take the 1814 birth record of Antonio Bianco, the son of Francesco Bianco. I renamed the image "8 Antonio Bianco di Francesco". (8 is the document number. The di means of in Italian and makes a great shorthand.) The image's folder location tells me the type of record, year, and town. It's in the "1814 births" folder for the town of Baselice.

For marriage records, I name the groom and bride and use the document number. For example, "15 Giovanni Iamarino & Libera Scrocca".

With the images renamed, I can search for a particular name or for all the children of Francesco Bianco. This is a tremendous help when you're piecing together a whole family.

When I finish renaming an entire town's records, I create a spreadsheet and publish it on my website. Anyone with ancestors from my towns can search these files for their people. They can see where to find their documents online. This is a valuable service, so I'm passionate about working on the next town. (See "How to Create and Share Your Ancestral Town Database".)

Now It's Your Turn

What about you? What can you do to keep up your interest and improve the quality of your tree?

Seek out the parts of the family-tree building process that excite you. When you find one, pour your time into it. I'll bet it keeps you eager to come back for more. Here's a checklist to get you started.

• What’s your favorite part of the process?
  • Reviewing your online hints. See "3 Ways to Tell If That Hint is No Good".
  • Checking out every decent search result. If I discover that one of my Italian nationals came to the United States, I do search for them in U.S. records. Then I do the same for their children.
  • Working on one document type at a time. When I decided to improve my downloaded document images, I went through one type at a time. I fixed them in Photoshop. I found it exciting to crop the big black backgrounds out of draft registration cards. Now my images look better and take up less space. (See "How to Improve Your Digital Genealogy Documents".)
  • Examining your DNA matches' trees. Sometimes it's a DNA match's tree that tells me who married whom, and who left Italy. These are valuable leads.
  • Poring over new record collections. What a joy it was when the New York City Municipal Archives put lots of vital records online. Now I can find vital records for relatives at my desk. (See "When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?")
• What needs improvement?
  • Is your style consistent? Add quality to your family tree by using a consistent style for names, places, and dates. (See "Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree".)
  • How complete are your source citations? The free Family Tree Analyzer can show you exactly who is missing their citations. It's easy to generate a list. See "These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable".
  • Do your images need help? Why put a color-faded photo in your family tree when you can correct the color? Why have a huge black border around that ship manifest? You can use photo-editing software to improve all your images.
  • Are you happy with your document filing method? If you can't find the document you need right away, you may need a more logical system. See "3 Simple Rules for Managing Your Digital Genealogy Documents" and "3 Rules for Naming Digital Genealogy Documents".
• What can you chip away at each time you open your tree?
  
  I'm lucky to be able to treat this hobby like it's the full-time job I always wanted. But you may not have much time to spend on genealogy. Which tasks can you pick up at a moment's notice and make good progress on? Some suggestions:
  
  
  • Make a list of your closest DNA matches. Work on identifying the closest match you don't already know. (See "Digging Into a DNA Match's Family Tree".)
  • Run any report from Family Tree Analyzer and whittle down the list. For instance, run a Data Errors report and check the results against your family tree. How many can you fix in one sitting? (See "How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree".)
  • Start a folder for one ancestor and gather more and more documents to use in their "Book of Life". Keep a text or Word file in that folder, too, with ongoing notes to use in their book. See "How to Create a 'Book of Life' for Your Relatives".
  • Keep a detailed note about where you left off for the day. Return to the same task next time without having to jog your memory.

Someone once said choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Well, if you find your passion for genealogy, you'll be glad to work on your family tree every chance you get. You'll feel driven to make it the best it can be.

Go find your spark and light that fire!

A Mild Scrub for Your GEDCOM File

A GEDCOM file exported from Family Tree Maker isn't compliant with the GEDCOM standard. That's what a reader of this blog told me. That's a problem if you export a GEDCOM and want to import it into different software. You may lose some data.

After going through the article he sent me ("How to Scrub Your Data", by Keith Riggle), my eyes glazed over. But I decided to see which changes I'd like to make to my family tree in the spirit of following best practices.

Protect your family tree file for the long haul by replacing outdated fact types.

As I looked into it, I discovered something new about the text editor I use every day—Notepad++. There's a plugin for use with GEDCOM files, of all things. It's called GedcomLexer, and it does a better job of displaying your GEDCOM file. To install it, I went to the Plugins menu and chose Plugins Admin. Then I selected GedcomLexer from the list.

Now all the 4-letter GEDCOM tags in my file are blue and bold. A person's ID number is maroon. Source and family numbers are orange. All other text is gray, with one exception. It displays what it calls a User Tag in bold magenta. The User Tags I see in my file include:

• _LINK
• _FREL
• _MREL
• _MILT

The initial underscore seems to be another way of showing that it isn't an official GEDCOM tag. The LINK tag happens when I add a URL in the Web address field of a source citation. I'm going to ignore that tag. I know my links work when I upload my GEDCOM to Geneanet.org. And in RootsMagic 8 they're displayed as Source comments or Detail comments. The article on data scrubbing suggests putting it in the source citation's notes. I have tens of thousands of source citations. No thanks.

The FREL and MREL tags also happen automatically. They're near the end of a GEDCOM where Family Tree Maker keeps track of family units. I can't find any online reference to them, but the word Natural comes after each one. They must mean Father's RELationship and Mother's RELationship. When I import my GEDCOM into other software, family relationships remain intact. Even an adopted relationship makes the transition. So I won't give anymore thought to FREL and MREL.

The MILT tag is the one that bothers me. First of all, the discontinued GEDCOM tag for Military Service is MILI, not MILT. I use this tag for military service dates. And I don't see any logical, GEDCOM-valid substitute. I checked my grandfather in RootsMagic 8 (a file created from a GEDCOM), and his military facts were intact. On Ancestry, everything's fine, but on Geneanet, all his military service dates are labeled Conscription! I'm not going to do anything about this one either.

Deciding What to Change

Let's keep this simple and choose a few easy-to-replace discontinued tags to edit. Here's how to begin:

• Go to https://www.tamurajones.net/GEDCOMTags.xhtml and scroll way down to Overview Table.
• Paying attention to the last column (labeled 5.5.5), look for familiar* GEDCOM tags marked with a red X. The X means they have discontinued this tag. The more common discontinued tags (you may find others that you use) include:
  • ARVL for arrival
  • DPRT for departure
  • EMPL for employment
  • SSN for Social Security Number
• Make yourself a running list of the ones you'd like to change.
• Export your GEDCOM file and open it in a text editor.
• Search the file for discontinued tags.
• In your family tree software, replace discontinued tags with approved tags.

*If you aren't at all familiar with 4-character GEDCOM tags, scroll through your GEDCOM file a bit. You'll see things repeated, like NAME, DATE, PLAC (for place), BIRT (for birth), DEAT (for death), RESI (for residence), SOUR (for source), etc.

It's a shame Family Tree Maker offers these discontinued fact types in its selection list. But going through this exercise should be enough to make us remember which ones not to use anymore.

Making the Changes

More things to do with your GEDCOM:

• An Easy Way to Rid Your Family Tree of Typos
• 4 Ways to Safeguard Your Digital Family Tree
• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree

1. ARVL and DPRT. When I first started using Family Tree Maker, I noticed there were emigration and immigration fact types as well as departure and arrival fact types. I decided to use emigration and immigration for a person's first voyage, and departure and arrival for later trips.

Now I see they've discontinued ARVL and DPRT. In my GEDCOM file, instead of ARVL and DPRT, I have TYPE Arrival and TYPE Departure. Is this Family Tree Maker's method of handling the discontinued tags? I do have EMIG and IMMI tags. I'd prefer to go with them.

This long-overlooked feature in Family Tree Maker is just what I need for this GEDCOM cleanup.

What I'll do in my Family Tree Maker file is:

• Go to a person with a Departure fact and select it in their Person tab.
• On the right, beneath the person's profile image, click the Options button. Then choose Fact Data Options.
• This opens a Departure Fact Data Options window. At the top, select "Show facts for All individuals". In my family tree, this covers 222 Departure facts.
• Beneath the list of people, check the box for "Change selected facts to this fact type". Choose Emigration from the list, then click OK. Done!
• Now choose an Arrival fact and follow the same steps, changing the fact type to Immigration.

That was so easy. The steps will be different if you don't use Family Tree Maker. I have a free copy of RootsMagic 8, and I can only change one instance of a fact data type at a time.

If your family tree software doesn't let you change every instance of a tag at once, you'll have to do it one at a time. Use your GEDCOM file to find each instance and scroll up a bit to find the person's name. Then make the change in your family tree software.

2. EMPL. I haven't used this tag, but if you have, you can change it from Employment (EMPL) to Occupation (OCCU).

3. SSN. In my early days, I recorded the Social Security Numbers of deceased relatives. This number is often included in a U.S. Social Security Death Index record.

I thought it would be handy if I needed to request more detailed information about that person. Take my grandfather's first wife, for example. Before I learned her maiden name, I thought about paying to see her Social Security application. Then I discovered her name when I found her passport application by using her birth date.

Soon after I started, there was an uproar over the publication of SSNs and the possibility for fraud. I decided to stop recording these numbers as a record type. I put them in the person's notes or skipped it from then on.

When I search my GEDCOM file for "SSN", I find only two SSN facts (for my grandfathers). There are also 4 mentions of "SSN" within a person's notes (that's fine). I'll go to my grandfathers in my Family Tree Maker file and move their numbers into their notes.

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It came as a shock to me that Arrival, Departure, and Military aren't valid GEDCOM tags. As I said, I'm sticking with Military unless someone can suggest a better alternative. But from now on I'll always use Emigration and Immigration for all trips. Think about these trips in modern-day terms. You have to go through Customs and show your passport for an international trip. So EMIG and IMMI seem reasonable.

If you want to scrub your GEDCOM harder, see the related articles at the end of "How to Scrub Your Data".

4-Tool Combo Solves a DNA Problem

I've been playing around with the chromosome browser on MyHeritage. In my DNA match list on MyHeritage, I have a woman, her father, and his mother. (They're all my AncestryDNA matches, too.) I know their roots are in the Italian hometown of my dad's family.

Their relationship to each another should look interesting on the chromosome browser. I compared them to myself and my dad and my 6th chromosome is where the action is! My dad and the woman and her father and her grandmother all intersect on two parts of my 6th chromosome.

Then I looked at my dad's DNA test. I added the 3 family members (but not myself) on his chromosome browser. I found that the 4 of them intersect on my dad's 6th and 11th chromosomes. That's a solid connection.

So here's the big question. Why does the grandmother show up in my Family Tree Maker file as "wife of 4th cousin 1x removed"? There was a ton of intermarriage in our shared ancestral hometown. So the grandmother and I have 27 different relationships in FTM, but none of them are by blood.

I've let this go unresolved for too long. It's time to bring in genealogy tools in addition to the chromosome browser.

I knew they were related to each other. A chromosome browser tied them to Dad and me.

Tool #1: Family Tree Analyzer

A reader of this blog once told me that Family Tree Maker has a known flaw when it comes to relationships. There will be cases where it is wrong—particularly with more distant relationships. The reader suggested I defer to Family Tree Analyzer for the correct relationship.

So I opened my latest GEDCOM file in Family Tree Analyzer. I found the grandmother in the Individuals table. When I scrolled over to see the Relation to Root column, it said she's my 6th cousin once removed. Aha! So there is a true cousin connection.

Tool #2: Ancestry.com

I build my tree using Family Tree Maker and synchronize it with my tree on Ancestry.com. What a surprise to see that my Ancestry tree already knew she is my 6th cousin once removed. She's labeled as such on her profile page.

On that page I can click our relationship to see a list of generational steps from her to me.

Tool #3: Family Tree Maker

Back in Family Tree Maker, I followed those generational steps. I went from her to her father, grandfather, great grandmother, and up that paternal line until I saw it.

Way up the line, her 5th great grandparents had a yellow color code. (I use color-coding in FTM to identify my 4 grandparents' lines.) That tells me they are direct ancestors of my paternal grandfather. When I clicked their names, I saw that they are my 6th great grandparents. (Family Tree Analyzer agrees.)

Tool #4: Relationship Calculator

I wanted confirmation and to see my relationship to her son and granddaughter. (They each have more than one connection to me.) I opened my relationship calculator spreadsheet. First I went to the column for my 6th great grandparents. Then I went down that column to the row where my DNA match is this ancestor's 5th great grandchild. The column and row intersect at 6th cousin once removed.

The next 2 rows show my relationship to her son (7th cousin) and granddaughter (7th cousin once removed). Finally! I've known about these DNA matches for years without understanding our relationship.

Multiple tools pointed to one relationship. Then my color-coded family tree brought it all together.

I did look at the Shared cM Project tool on DNA Painter to try to figure out my relationship to the grandmother. But there were too many possibilities. I also looked at the diagram of possible relationships diagram on MyHeritage. Our true relationship is too distant to show up there. Even when I compared her to my father's DNA test, it leaned toward a 3rd cousin relationship. (Thanks, endogamy.) The true relationship of 6th cousins was too far away to show.

As I mentioned, I'd already placed these 3 DNA matches in my family tree. I can take their lines back to my 8th great grandfather, born in 1671. But it always bothered me that the real picture of our relationship was hiding. Family Tree Maker does know that my 8th great grandfather is my DNA match's 7th great grandfather. But I would never have seen the true relationship without the help of other genealogy tools.

The truth is out there, as they say.