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.