Searching for an Ancestor By Name Is NOT Enough

I've been thinking a lot about why people have trouble with their genealogy research. I see people on Facebook every day asking family tree questions and hoping for the best. They give little or no details and keep the question generic. For example, someone may ask, "How can I find my grandfather's death record?" They don't state his name, when or where he died, or anything useful.

Here's what must be happening. People have seen TV commercials for Ancestry.com or episodes of "Who Do You Think You Are?", and they get the wrong idea. TV makes it look as if all you need to do is enter a name in the search box and boom! Everything's delivered right to you.

In particular, I'm seeing these generic questions in Italian genealogy groups. If they've used the Antenati Portal, I'll bet they've only tried a search-by-name. (The Antenati Portal is critical for Italian family tree research.) Or else they're expecting to find Italian records on Ancestry—and those are rare.

A generic genealogy question or a search-by-name won't help you with your family tree. Get specific!

Start at the Top

If you're new to genealogy, or a newcomer asks for your advice, here's what to do. Go to the FamilySearch Wiki and find out what records exist for the ancestor's place of origin.

For example, let's say the ancestor we want to find came from the Toledo province in Spain. The FamilySearch Wiki tells us that civil record-keeping began in 1871. Some towns began as early as 1837, but you'll need to know the town. The Wiki page for Toledo has a button for "Spain Online Genealogy Records". You can click that for a long list of links to different types of records.

Many times the document you need will not show up in a search-by-name. This is very true of the Italian Antenati Portal. Not all records are searchable. You may have to spend the time looking at individual record books. And that's why it's so important to learn where your ancestors came from.

Work Your Way Down

For the best results, you need to know not only the person's country of origin, but their town of birth. This way you can go straight to the right set of records and start looking. I always do it this way.

Many of you, of course, don't know your ancestor's town of birth. You may not even be sure of the country. Here's a trick I like to use. I used it again yesterday and had success.

Go to a site like Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage—whichever one you like. Do a search using nothing but your ancestor's last name and an approximate year of birth. Now narrow down the search results to show only immigration or naturalization records.

You may not get anywhere with your family tree without trying this simple genealogy trick.

Even if none of these people are your relatives, you can see where they came from. I did this years ago when I couldn't understand the name of my great grandmother's hometown. I knew what it sounded like when she said it, but I didn't know how to spell it, so I couldn't find it on the map. And her last name, Caruso, is too common.

But my search paid off. I saw one result that looked like it matched what she used to say. That turned out to be correct, and it opened up the floodgates. I've taken her family tree back as many as six generations in that same town.

Need a jumpstart? See "6 Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Town of Birth".

I appreciate that people want to find some distant cousin who can help them build their family tree. But you won't find that cousin if you don't know any specifics. Do the initial research to find out where your people came from. Then, if you want to reach out to people in a genealogy group, spell out the details! You're sure to find people who are willing to help.

How to Create Your Own Family Tree Source

My only source for some of the earliest people in my family tree is the personal research of Dr. Fabio Paolucci. Dr. Paolucci has roots in two of my ancestral Italian hometowns and a passion for genealogy. His research is very valuable to me. I created a generic source citation in Family Tree Maker to attach to facts I learned from him.

Now I want to create a more specific source for certain facts I learned from Dr. Paolucci. On 26 Jul 1805, there was an earthquake in my grandfather's hometown of Colle Sannita. Dr. Paolucci emailed me a link to a list of the earthquake victims and their details in 2007. I saved it as a text file so I could work my way through the names. Thank goodness I saved it because that link doesn't work anymore. Since then, I've connected 33 of the 41 victims to my family tree.

Follow these few steps to place a completely custom source citation in your family tree.

Here's how I'll use this list of earthquake victims to:

• create a brand new source document
• create a source citation
• attach the citation to the 33 people.

Create a Document

The text file I've had on my computer since 2007 had a handful of my personal notes. Most of the people have the notation IN TREE. One person has a note saying she is my 6th great aunt. I removed those notations for a cleaner list that other descendants of the town can use.

I copied and pasted the list into a new Word document and gave it a title:

Victims of the 26 Jul 1805 earthquake in Colle Sannita, Benevento, Italy
Compiled by Dr. Fabio Paolucci

Then I put the names in alphabetical order by last name which makes it easier to use. From Word, I saved the file as a PDF. It's better to put a more stable and universal format (Acrobat PDF) in your family tree than a Word document.

Upload the Document to Your Family Tree

I do all my genealogy work in Family Tree Maker. Then I sync it to my tree on Ancestry and upload it to Geneanet to share my research. To add this PDF to my family tree, I went to FTM's Media tab and dropped in the PDF file. I always assign a category to any media in my FTM file. My categories include Cemetery, Census, Citizenship, etc. The best choice for this item is the category Other. It contains a bunch of items that don't fit any other category.

The caption for the media item is the same as the title: Victims of the 26 Jul 1805 earthquake in Colle Sannita, Benevento, Italy. I added this description to the Media item:

A list of the victims of the 26 Jul 1805 earthquake in Colle Sannita, Benevento, Campania, Italy, compiled by Dr. Fabio Paolucci from the town's 1805 parish records.

This media item is now ready to use.

Create a Source to Hold the Document

To create my new source, I found one of the people from the list in my family tree. Her line item in the list reads:

Maria Callara, figlia di Giuseppe Callara & Giovannangela Piacquadio, moglie di Costanzo delGrosso, di anni 48.

That one line has a lot of detail for my family tree. It says that Maria Callara was the daughter of Giuseppe Callara and Giovannangela Piacquadio, the wife of Costanzo delGrosso, and she was 48 years old. As it turns out, there is a copy of Maria's death record in her daughter Serafina's 1820 marriage documents. The record has the same details and includes the words "sotto le rovine del terremoto"—beneath the ruins of the earthquake!

Maria's facts already have a source citation that links to the 1820 copy of her death record. Now I can add a new source citation that contains the full list of victims.

First I chose to create a new source citation for Maria's death date. I gave it the title, "Victims of the 26 Jul 1805 Earthquake in Colle Sannita". I attached the PDF file from the media library to the source citation. Then I copied this citation to the other facts: Maria's name and year of birth.

With the source created, I went back to the Sources tab in FTM to add a bit more detail. As a citation detail, I added the same blurb I gave to the media file:

A list of the victims of the 26 Jul 1805 earthquake in Colle Sannita, Benevento, Campania, Italy, compiled by Dr. Fabio Paolucci from the town's 1805 parish records.

Now I can attach this one source citation to the facts for every 1805 earthquake victim in my family tree.

Attach the One Source Citation to Each Fact

There's a big benefit to having this one source citation for all the victims. I'll be able to see them all at a glance by viewing the citation.

To do this, I worked through the list of names one line at a time. I went to the person in my tree, removed the generic source citation and attached the new source citation. In some cases, the list is my only source of a victim's parents' names or spouse's name. Those facts need the new source citation, too.

In the end, I attached my new source citation to 102 facts. Now I have a complete, documented record of the victims of the 1805 Colle Sannita earthquake.

Think about your family tree. Was there an event that claimed the lives of several people? How can you document that event to make it more permanent and official? Wouldn't that source citation benefit others with a connection to your family tree?

And speaking of source citations:

• How to Batch Process Your Genealogy Documents
• 3 Steps to Take When Your Source Links Break
• Take the Time to Improve the Sources in Your Family Tree

5 Efficiency Techniques That Fortify Your Family Tree

With so many responsibilities to juggle, your time is precious. When you do find time to work on your family tree, you don't want to waste a second.

That's why you need to focus on your efficiency. Efficiency helps you get more done in less time. Here are 5 different ways for you to reap the benefits of efficiency in your genealogy work. They boil down to: (a) focusing on one thing at a time and (b) not reinventing the wheel.

Efficiency techniques give you a higher quality product: your family tree.

1: One Task at a Time

When you do find time to work on your family tree, don't waste a second. Make your own version of this task list (see "How to Run Your Genealogy Research Like Clockwork"). Then choose whichever one you're in the mood for and get right to it.

Your task list should include a mixture of things you know you need to do and things you want to do. For more ideas of things to add to your task list, see "Work in Batches to Strengthen Your Family Tree".

2: One Process at a Time

When I find a census page that contains a large family from my family tree, I need to go through a whole process. I have to:

• Download the census sheet image.
• Give it a name that follows my chosen file-naming pattern.
• Crop and enhance the image in Photoshop.
• Add metadata to the image.
• Attach it to the head of household in my family tree and share it with each member of the household.
• Add facts from this census to each member of the family.
• Create a source citation and attach it to all those facts.
• File away the original image, or keep it in my holding pen until file backup day. (See "This 3-Step Backup Routine Protects Your Family Tree".)

Did you realize you're following a process? Does it have a lot of steps? Think them through and make sure nothing got overlooked.

You'll find it's more efficient to complete the entire process in one sitting. Don't go through the steps for the head of household and worry about the rest of the family later. That's so inefficient. Instead, "Get into a Groove to Fortify Your Family Tree".

3: One Record Type at a Time

Last month I completed a task I thought of long ago. I wanted to find images of the ships my ancestors took from the old country to the new one. Somehow I never got around to doing it. Then I made it a priority. I spent part of two days working on nothing but the ship images. Now, after so much procrastination, it's done!

But most days I spend my genealogy time on one thing: Italian vital records. My ongoing project is to add all the missing source citations to my family tree. The bulk of them are citations for the Italian vital records in my tree.

Focusing on that one task makes me very efficient. If you have missing source citations, you'll be more efficient if you tackle one record type at a time. It could be ship manifests, census records, vital records, or anything else you need. To make your source citations shine, see "Add Consistency to Your Source Citations".

4: One Whole Family at a Time

While working on my missing Italian source citations, I've tried different techniques. I needed to see which is most efficient. First of all, it's by far more efficient to work on one town at a time. My missing source citations come from several different towns. By working on one town at a time:

• I save typing. All my source citations are going to use the same town.
• I stay in one section of the Antenati portal (where they keep the vital records). That means I don't have to navigate to another part of the website.
• I avoid picking the wrong town while adding the citation to Family Tree Maker.

But I did try an experiment. I opened the 1812 birth records for this one town. I went through them page-by-page, looking up the people in my family tree. (They're ALL in there.) I added each missing citation to my tree. I did this all the way through the 1819 births. It was nice that I didn't have to do anything in my web browser but turn the page. But I found that I had to move around in my tree so much that I accomplished less in a day.

What's more efficient is to work through an entire family of siblings at a time. There's no moving around in my tree. I can see them all on one screen in Family Tree Maker.

I have a copy of all the vital records on my computer. It's very efficient for me to:

• search for all the siblings at once using their father's name.
• open each set of Antenati records in a new browser tab.
• customize my source citation template for each sibling.

That's how I complete so many in a day. See "How to Become a Genealogy Efficiency Expert".

5: Use Templates

Why waste time retyping something long and complicated from scratch? Let's say you're creating source citations for a specific type of document. You have tons of these documents to cite, and it'd be nice if they all followed the same style.

No problem! Give some thought to how you want these similar citations to look. Then type out and save a template in a text file. I crank out more than 100 source citations a day for my Italian relatives' vital records. I'm sure not going to type each one out in full each time. That's not efficient. Instead, I start from a citation template and make a few changes to match the record. See the Efficiency section of "2 Keys to Tackling a Big Family Tree Project".

I keep a handful of specialized templates in my text file. These ensure consistency while saving time.

Are you using efficiency techniques to maximize your precious genealogy time?

A 7-Point Genealogy Document Checklist

A conversation with an Ancestry user led me to download several vital records for my family tree. Most of my relatives lived in New York City, so I'm a frequent user of the NYC Municipal Archives website. I knew the drill:

• Use the search form to locate the birth, marriage, or death certificate I need.
• Download the PDF and rename it.
• Use Adobe Acrobat to extract the images.
• Use Photoshop to crop and enhance the images.
• Add metadata to the images including a title and the source citation.
• Add the images and facts to the person in my family tree.
• Create the source citation in my tree and attach the images to it.
• After adding them to my weekly computer backup process, file the PDF and images away.

While going through this process, I thought I should share it with you in detail. Here's how can make your genealogy documents searchable, verifiable, and reusable. Once you locate a document image for your family tree, here are 7 steps to follow:

1. Follow Your File Naming and Folder Structure

Once you make this genealogy checklist a habit, you'll never misplace another document image.

Follow logical rules and you'll always know what to name your digital genealogy files. And you'll know where they belong. As I downloaded my first NYC death certificate, I knew what I had to name the file. The format is LastnameFirstnameEventYYYY, or, in this case, BasiloneAngeloDeath1929.pdf.

I also downloaded Angelo's marriage certificate (BasiloneAngeloZeollaAngelinaMarriage1919.pdf) and the bride's birth certificate (ZeollaAngelinaBirth1902.pdf).

2. Save the Source Citation Immediately

It's valuable to store a source citation within your document images as well as in your family tree. First, copy the source citation before you leave the website that has the document image. You can copy it to a temporary text file. Many times the website will have a citation you can copy. For these NYC documents, I have my own template:

New York City Municipal Archives; NYC Department of Records & Information Services; YEAR BOROUGH TYPE certificate #; URL

Add the citation to the image's metadata. Metadata is information that stays with the image no matter where you put it. To do this, right-click the image on your computer and choose Properties. That will open a small window. There, click the Details tab. You can paste the source citation in the Comments field.

Note: Fill in the Title field in the image's metadata, too. My titles start with the year so each person's document images arrange themselves by date. For example, "1891 birth record for Adamo Leone".

3. Extract All the Important Facts

Examine your new document image. Which facts from the document do you need to enter in your family tree? At very least, you've got a person's name, an event date, and a place. Does the document also confirm parents' names or a spouse's name? There may be more there than you expected. See "27 Key Facts to Extract from a Death Certificate".

Whatever you learn from the new document, add those facts to your family tree.

4. Add the Image to Your Family Tree

Add your new document image to the primary person in your family tree. That person may be the:

• newborn
• deceased
• bride or groom
• head of household
• passenger, etc.

Your family tree software may let you drag and drop the image into a person's media collection. If you saved a Title in the image's metadata, that title should appear in your family tree.

In Family Tree Maker, I always edit the image to include its exact date and assign it to a category. My categories (some are custom) include Vital Records. I choose that category for all birth, marriage, and death records.

If you need to attach this document to more than one person, don't drop the same image into your family tree twice. Instead, link the second person to the same image. Let's say you dropped the marriage certificate image into the groom's media collection. Now you want to attach it to the bride. Go to the bride in your tree and choose to add an existing image. Then navigate to the husband and choose the existing document image.

It isn't difficult to create source citations for your family tree. But you need to make it part of your genealogy routine today!

5. Add the Source Citation to Your Family Tree

Now your family tree has new facts and a new image. It's time to create a source citation for all those facts.

You'll create a single source citation, then attach it to each fact you learned from the document. All the facts, even if they belong to more than one person, will share a single source citation. Find out "How to Share Documents and Citations Within Your Family Tree".

When I have a document image that goes with a source citation, I attach the image to the citation itself. They belong together. Anyone who finds your family tree online with find everything they need to verify your facts.

6. Note Any Conflicts of Information

Sometimes a document has different information than you had in your family tree. For example, my grandfather's World War II draft registration card says his date of birth is 28 May 1894. No it isn't. His actual date of birth is 30 May 1891.

Early on in my family tree efforts, I saved that incorrect 1894 date and used his draft card as the source. That was the correct thing to do. Years later I saw his birth record and his military record at the archives in Italy. This was better, more official information.

I removed the draft card as a source for his date of birth and corrected the date. I used his birth and military records as the source for the correct date. I added a note to his draft card image and facts, saying it has the wrong date of birth.

Some documents are better than others. A town official recorded my grandfather's date of birth the next morning. People can lie about their age. And in some cases, long ago, they may not have known the correct date. Always try to find the document that is by definition the most reliable.

7. Make Sure the Image Gets Backed Up

I work on my family tree every day—often in marathon sessions. I can't afford to do file backups monthly or less often than that. It'd be too risky. That's why file backups are part of my Sunday morning routine. Without fail, I hold new document images in a special folder until it's time for my weekly backup routine. See "This 3-Step Backup Routine Protects Your Family Tree".

Yes, this seems like a lot to do. But I guarantee your family tree research is worth the effort. When you've followed this checklist enough times, it will become second nature. Is it time to revisit your existing document images?