Showing posts with label Antenati. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Antenati. Show all posts

05 June 2018

Collaborating with Your DNA Matches

Finding this record of an 1802 birth was the key.
Finding this record of an 1802 birth was the key.

In an average family situation, you grow up with your biological mother and father and know many of their relatives.

That doesn't describe everyone—I know. But stick with me for a moment.

If your DNA match list includes 1st and 2nd cousins, you should know who they are. If it includes 3rd cousins, you may be familiar with their names or know who their grandparents were. I've met a couple of 3rd cousins this way, and they helped me fill in their parts of my tree.

It's that 4th to 8th cousin DNA match that presents the real challenge. If you're 4th cousins, you share a set of 3rd great grandparents. And who (besides a genealogist) can name their 3rd great grandparents?

The most productive DNA match to collaborate with is likely the one with familiar last names in their family tree. And if your match has a family tree online, they've probably done some worthwhile research.

It's OK if you're concerned about your privacy. You don't need to share the identities of anyone younger than your great grandparents.

Go ahead and show one another what you've found—focusing on a branch where you think you'll find a connection. Together you can advance one another's work. How will you know which branch to look at? Last names and hometowns could be your clue. Or you may start out with no clue at all!

I'm incredibly lucky that all my ancestors come from a single province in Southern Italy. (One exception: My great great grandmother Colomba came from the neighboring province.) Better still, the vital records from my five ancestral hometowns are available online.

I used a simple program called GetLinks to download thousands of vital records to my computer. Having the documents makes searching for records quicker and easier than paging through the website that hosts them. (To learn how I did this, see How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.)

On Sunday one of my DNA matches reached out to me. Each of our last names comes from the same little town in Italy. We found one another years ago, but we've never found our actual family connection.

When your tree is really big, there are tons of avenues to explore. So I'd never gotten around to exploring her family tree on Ancestry.

Then she asked for my collaboration in the best possible way. She said, "Here's my ancestor, and his mother Maria had your last name. I know her father was Pietro and her grandfather was Francesco. I think her grandfather could be this Francesco in your tree. What do you think?"

Not only was that enticing, but her question showed me exactly where to jump in and start exploring.

This tree connects me to my DNA match...sort of.
This tree connects me to my DNA match...sort of.

She and I both realized that if my Francesco was the same man as her Francesco, he had to have been married twice. That's because I have his 1820 marriage record, and Pietro was born well before that. So I searched for evidence.

Francesco's 1820 marriage documents mentioned no first wife. I needed his son Pietro's birth record so I could see his mother's name. But Pietro was born before the start of civil record-keeping in 1809.

What to do?

I approached the problem from the other side. I should be able to find a copy of Pietro's birth record in his marriage documents. But I didn't know when he got married.

How would you try to figure out when he got married?

I took another look at his daughter Maria. I found her birth record in 1855 and saw her mother's full name. I went backwards, year by year, looking for Maria older siblings. This helped me zero in on her parents' marriage.

Now I had Pietro's mother's name. I confirmed that she died shortly before Francesco remarried in 1820. My Francesco and my DNA match's Francesco were in fact the same man.

Here's the kicker, though. It's Francesco's second wife who's my blood relative. Not Francesco or Pietro or Maria.

So, my dear DNA match, we still haven't found our real connection! It's back to work, but now we have more to work with.

On the plus side, my DNA match has the same last name as my first cousin. And I've learned a lot from my match's tree that could help me with my cousin's tree.

So pick out your most intriguing DNA match and reach out to them. Collaboration may get you both further than you'd ever have gotten on your own.

25 May 2018

Finding Relatives in Your Ancestral Hometown's Cemetery

The entrance to the cemetery in my grandfather's Italian hometown.
The entrance to the cemetery in my grandfather's
Italian hometown.
I've twice visited the cemeteries in my ancestral hometowns in Italy. In 2005 I visited three towns and photographed each grave that had a last name from my family tree.

Over time, I learned the identities of just about every person whose grave I photographed. Some were closely related, like my grandmother's first cousin Vincenzo. Others were more distant relatives, but they have a place in my tree.

I learned exactly who most of them were from other relatives. For instance, my mom's cousin knew grandmother's first cousin Vincenzo. She had photos of him and his family.

Two weeks ago I visited the cemetery in Colle Sannita for the first time, and two other towns for a second time.

You can't go to an Italian cemetery and find graves from the 1700s the way you can in America. Be sure to research the burial customs in the country you'll be visiting. They may condense remains into a single family grave. They will remove those who died a long time ago.

The first thing I noticed on my second trip to one cemetery was this reuse of graves. I remembered there was a Leone family grave on the left wall, so I went straight to it. The names and photos of the husband and wife who were in that grave in 2005 were now placed to the left of the marble slab. A baby who was in his own grave in 2005 was now placed to the right of the marble slab. And in the center of this single grave was a newly deceased Leone relative.

I visited the Colle Sannita cemetery on the day before I was to visit my cousins. I found their father in one grave, their brother somewhere else, and their mother in a third location. My cousins were waiting for the cemetery to say their parents could placed together with their brother. "But the cemetery never called," my cousin told me.

If you have the chance to visit a cemetery where your ancestors lived, you may also find that it has changed over time. Some people will have moved, and others will be gone.

Two headstones ready to be removed.
I don't know you now, Angela. But I will find you.
Was Innocenzo your husband?
My task now, having taken so many new photographs of graves, is to try to identify as many people as possible. Thanks to the Antenati website, I have thousands of birth records from my ancestral hometowns on my computer.

The plan is to find birth records for the deceased and learn who their parents were. Finding their parents may be enough to place the person in my family tree.

I took many photos while thinking, "This person is too young. I probably can't find out who their parents were." But, as time goes by, I may someday learn who they were.

I adore my family names. Each and every one is special and beautiful to me. Pausing to look at the photos on their graves, I did feel as if I were paying my respects to a beloved family member.

If you ever have the chance to visit a cemetery containing one or more of your relatives, look around. Especially if the cemetery is in a small town. Find other names you recognize and do a bit of research.

A dedication to my relative, Michelina Leone.
A dedication to my relative, Michelina Leone.

One of my 2005 grave photos was for Michelina Leone. I didn't know who she was. A couple of years later, while corresponding with a distant cousin, I learned how important Michelina was to my family.

When my grandfather's sister Eva died from an accidental poisoning, her cousin Michelina stepped in and raised Eva's young sons. Two weeks ago, in a church my Leone family hometown, I found a plaque dedicating a church pew to Michelina Leone.

Now I knew she was someone important to me.

And that's how I feel about everyone in my ancestral hometown cemeteries. They're all important to me.

08 March 2017

Collect the Whole Set!

It's been my experience that anyone who becomes involved in genealogy becomes obsessed with genealogy. We each have our areas of focus. Some people spend years trying to go back another generation in one troublesome branch of their tree. Others concentrate on the males only, climbing the tree one generation at a time. Me? I want everything. Everything!

When I started my tree, all I knew about my mother's father's family were his siblings' names (Eve and Noah to his Adam!) and that his mother might have been named Mariangela (she wasn't). But I wanted to know more. First I wrote to the webmaster for his town's website and he was kind enough to send me my grandfather's parents' names, birth dates and marriage date, as well as the birth dates of his siblings. Then I began ordering microfilm through the Family History Center of the vital records from his hometown in Italy.

Armed with my great grandparents' names and birth dates, I was able to locate their birth records and learn their parents' names. During that search I found other names that may have been siblings to my great grandparents.

That's when I knew I had to document all the records (1809–1860) for the entire town to see exactly how they all fit together. In the end, this long process yielded about 12,000 people for my family tree.

Twelve thousand people.

Documenting the vital records available for my grandfather's town.

The whole time I worked on that project, which was about five years, all I kept thinking about was how much I wanted to do the same for my other grandfather's town—the town my maiden name comes from. But work got in the way, and I no longer had the freedom to go view microfilm at my local Family History Center during their limited hours. I kept hoping that my other grandfather's town's records would be digitized and made available on familysearch.org, but it didn't happen.

Then I discovered an Italian website that has the vital records for all of my ancestral hometowns! So now it begins again. I am meticulously downloading every single birth, marriage and death document from the town of Colle Sannita, ranging from 1809–1942 with a few gaps. That's a lot of documents.

Sooo many downloadeds Italian vital records!

As I download them, I make note of two key last names: that of my grandfather (Iamarino) and his mother (Pilla). Once I have them all I will begin:
  • transcribing the basic facts into a spreadsheet,
  • entering confirmed relatives into my Family Tree Maker file,
  • piecing together every relative in the town.
Today my tree has more than 19,000 people. (I told you I'm obsessed.) After this project, I should hit 30,000. That's a great start, don't you think?