Step-by-Step Source Citations for Your Family Tree

Any genealogy task is less daunting when you break down the steps.

You know more about genealogy research now than when you started. If you were finding your first census records today, you'd handle them better than you did way back when.

Why not double back and improve your early source citations? If that seems overwhelming, break it into logical chunks. Divide up the work by:

• Document type. Handle all your census records a year at a time. Or your ship manifests, a decade at a time.
• Family group. Who is your first-born immigrant ancestor? Work your way down their direct-line descendants.
• Direct lineage. Forget all the cousins for the moment. Climb your tree one direct ancestor at a time, improving their source citations as you go.

I used to recommend a very simple source citation method. But when my Family Tree Maker file got corrupted, it was an opportunity to do a much better job with my sources. I learned about a feature I hadn't understood before, and I wanted to use it.

My favorite source citations to do are for my thousands of Italian vital records. It's an easy process, and I can complete a lot of them in one sitting.

Develop and stick to a thorough routine when you add a new document image to your family tree.

Document-Handling Process

To make citing your source easier, stick to a multi-step process each time you find a new document. Here's my process:

1. Download the document to your computer and name it according to your style. My style is LastnameFirstnameTypeYear.jpg. My great grandfather's birth record is IamarinoFrancescoBirth1878.jpg. For a marriage record, I include both names: IamarinoFrancescoPillaLiberaMarriage1901.jpg.
2. Crop and enhance the image. If there is more than one document in the image, crop out the ones that aren't your family member. And I'll bet the document could use more contrast. I leave census sheets and ship manifests as is. But I enhanced and crop every vital record.
3. Add a title and comments to the image's file properties. This step is the key to making your source citations easy to create. If the title begins with a year, all document images appear in chronological order in your tree. "1878 birth record for Francesco Iamarino." The comments field includes the source of the image and its URL. My format is "From the [Italian Province] State Archives: [URL]."
4. Place the processed document image in your family tree, attached to the person(s) in the document.
5. File the image in the proper folder. I file documents by their type. Some of you may file by family name.
6. Make note of the image in a document tracker. This gives you a quick view of what you have and what you need for any given person.

When it comes to U.S. census sheets or ship manifests, I add quite a bit more to the image file's comments field. Most of my U.S. records come from Ancestry.com. I click the title of the document in the search results so I can copy the source citation and details from that page. Then I continue to the image for more details to record.

The source citation details you need are available when you find that document online.

Here's the comments field from my grandfather's 1920 ship manifest:

line 10; New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957; Roll - T715, 1897-1957 - 2001-3000 - Roll 2883; S.S. Lapland; image 308 of 627

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7488/NYT715_2883-0308?pid=4016695711

Source Citation:
Year: 1920; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 2883; Line: 10; Page Number: 161

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

And here's Grandpa's 1930 census:

lines 88-90; 1930 United States Federal Census; Ohio - Trumbull - Girard - District 0045; supervisor's district 8, enumeration district 78-45, ward of city 3, sheet 16B; image 32 of 36

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/6224/4661200_00206?pid=68966506

Source Citation:
Year: 1930; Census Place: Girard, Trumbull, Ohio; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 0045; FHL microfilm: 2341618

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

Source Citation Creation

Since my images have all this wonderful info attached to them, it's easy to build the source citation. Let's take Grandpa's 1920 ship manifest as an example. I'm using Family Tree Maker as my software.

1. Copy the document image's entire comments field to a temporary text file.
2. Click to add a new source citation for the immigration fact.
3. Select the document collection title from your list of existing sources. This one is "New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957." (If it isn't in your list, you'll need to create it now.)
4. Remember that temporary text file you created? Paste the Source Citation and Source Information text into the appropriate fields in the source template. Paste the URL in the Web address field.
5. Before saving your citation, you can add the document image to the citation itself. This was the feature I learned only recently that I like so much. Click the Media tab in the source template. Link to the document image you've already placed in your family tree.
6. Save and close your source template.

Did you record more than one fact from the same document? I have the date Grandpa's ship left Naples and the date it arrived in New York City as 2 facts. You can copy the source citation you created and paste it as a source for all the related facts.

Your family tree software does all it can to simplify the creation of source citations.

It's a big job, I know. A really big job. But here's how I see it. I do some genealogy work every single day. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that whole process of finding and processing a document. That's when I'll choose an easier task. Like renaming the files in my huge collection of Italian vital records. Or improving some sub-set of source citations. I like having tasks to choose from that need different levels of effort.

Choose how you'd like to divide and conquer this big task: by family group, by document type, by direct lineage. Then do it, because the benefits are worth it. Your well-sourced family tree is far more reliable than an unsourced tree. People "borrowing" relatives from other trees will choose your sourced facts every time. DNA matches who view your tree will see that your family tree is correct, and has the receipts to prove it.

I'll bet your well-crafted source citations will inspire you to push on and get the job done.

Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree

Run this program to clean up typos and boo-boos in your family tree.

I've been a webmaster or web content producer since 1997. I've always believed consistency makes a website a look professional.

When I started building my family tree, I realized consistency is critical there, too. I wanted my tree to be as professional as possible. That includes recording and documenting facts in a consistent way.

Once in a while, I like to use the free Family Tree Analyzer tool to give my tree a consistency checkup. There's a new version of the program out, so visit their website for the download.

You need to export a GEDCOM file from the latest version of your tree. Then launch Family Tree Analyzer and import your GEDCOM. Choose the Export menu at the top and select Facts to Excel. This generates a spreadsheet you can save. Now you can sort and filter the information as you wish.

Use Family Tree Analyzer to export your facts to a spreadsheet. Now inconsistencies are easy to find.

I want to check the consistency of the occupation and location facts in my family tree.

Consistent Treatment of Foreign Words

When it comes to Occupation facts, my family tree is full of Italian-language job titles. Two years ago, I used Find and Replace in Family Tree Maker to add the English translation to these Italian words. For example, I searched for "sartore" and replaced it with "sartore (tailor)". But I wonder if I overlooked any Italian job titles.

Let me find them in the Facts spreadsheet I created. I can either Sort or Filter the FactType column. (I prefer Excel's Filter function, but you can do what's comfortable for you.) Now I can scroll down the spreadsheet with my eyes on the FactComment column. I'm looking for Italian words that have no translation.

I see a few that are words I still can't translate. I also see one common word that I left untranslated by accident. It's contadino. That's the most common occupation in my family tree. It means farmer or peasant. The spreadsheet tells me this job title belongs to Francesco Iampietro. I'll go to him in my family tree and make the fix.

Paging Francesco Iampietro. Holy cow, look at this crowd!

It figures. I have 12 men in my tree with this same name! But this is an 1817 fact, so that narrows down the list a bit. After viewing the facts in my tree for almost every man with this name, I can't find this 1817 fact. The spreadsheet tells me his GEDCOM individual ID number is 12869. So I'll resort my spreadsheet to show more of Francesco's facts.

He turns out to be older than I thought, born in 1740 and died on the date in 1817. When I view his facts in Family Tree Maker, I can see that I updated his source citations, but I overlooked the missing translation of his job title. I'll fix it now.

The spreadsheet shows me one blank occupation fact. I had added a year and place, but no job title. I'll have to view the original document to find this person's missing occupation.

I may want to revisit the records with untranslatable job titles. I'll bet the documents have bad handwriting. I hope they'll make sense to me now because I have more experience.

Consistent Treatment of Place Names

Next I'll turn to place names. I like to include the word County in U.S. addresses. For exanple, Burgettstown, Washington County, Pennsylvania, USA. I find it makes some place names easier to understand. I can sort the Facts spreadsheet by the FactLocation column. Then I'll scroll down the list looking for places missing "County".

I quickly found a Brooklyn, New York, address missing the word County. It was the home of a family named Abbate. I can:

• go to the Abbate family in Family Tree Maker
• update the address, and
• choose to update every instance of the original address at once.

I'll continue checking for the missing word County. I'll also see if anything else looks like a possible typo. For example, if an address shows up many times, followed by a different spelling, I'd bet that lone address is wrong.

Family Tree Analyzer is a great tool for finding inconsistent place names.

I see one place name listed as Unknown. When I view that person in my tree, I see I forgot to add her address to the Residence fact for the 1940 census. Easily fixed.

It's a pretty quick process to find errors and inconsistencies in your tree's facts. Why not make this a regular checkup? How often you should perform a checkup depends on how often you work on your family tree. I find that I'm reminded to have a checkup each time Family Tree Analyzer releases a program update.

How's your consistency looking?

Is This Name a Coincidence? I Aim to Find Out

Her last name makes me think Dad's childhood crush was a distant cousin.

I sent my dad a photo from my late aunt's collection. "Do you know these women with your mother?" I knew the background was his Bronx apartment house.

I wanted to know about one particularly beautiful young woman. I have another photo of her in a different location. Someone wrote on the bottom "Amelia and me," and this pretty lady was on the right. I assumed she was the "me."

This photo triggered lots of memories for Dad. "The older woman on the right is Mrs. Pozzuto, who lived across the street from my grandmother [in Girard, Ohio]. The three women are her daughters, Amelia, Marie and Margaret. The one you pointed out is Amelia. I was in love with her when I was about 9 or 10. Marie married Tony who taught me how to drive at 12 or 15 years old in Girard. That might be me in the picture with my grandmother on the extreme left."

Way to go, Dad! Pozzuto is a last name from my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita, Italy. It's a key name in our family tree. I had to investigate.

The 4 women were named Pozzuto. If you knew my family, you'd know that's no coincidence.

Starting the Search

The first thing I did was pull up my great grandparent's 1930 census from Girard, Ohio. I wanted to see their neighbors. Two families down from my Iamarino family, I found the Pozzuto family!

• John Pozzuto, 35 years old, born in Italy, arrived in 1916, married for 10 years
• wife Agnes, 26 years old, born in Italy, arrived in 1906 (so I know they married in America)
• daughter Marie, 9 years old, born in Ohio
• daughter Amelia, 6 years old, born in Ohio
• daughter Marguerite, 4 years old, born in Ohio

Wouldn't it be great if John Pozzuto was our relative? I'm sure it was no coincidence. A Pozzuto living across the street from my Colle Sannita-born great grandfather?

I knew what I needed to search for:

• an immigration record for John (Giovanni) Pozzuto, born in 1895, coming to America in 1916
• an 1895 birth record for him from my collection of Colle Sannita vital records
• a 1920 Ohio (most likely) marriage record for Giovanni and Agnes
• Giovanni in America before his marriage

The first solid result I found was for Margherita Pozzuto's Ohio marriage. It lists her parents as John Pozzuto and Agnes Natale. Now I have a maiden name for Mrs. Pozzuto.

On Ancestry.com, this record had several leads in the Suggested Records column. From those records I learned that:

• John Pozzuto died in Girard, Ohio in 1959.
• Marie Pozzuto's middle name was Julia and she married Tony Dellagnena in Ohio in 1946. So it was Tony Dellagnena who taught my under-aged dad to drive.
• Amelia's middle name was Rose, and she married Nicholas Victor Basciano in Ohio in 1950.
• Margaret's birth name was Margherita, and she married George Bella in Ohio in 1951.

Narrowing the Scope

I needed to know more about the father of the family, Giovanni Pozzuto. I searched for World War I and II draft cards and found 2 possibilities. The World War I card was for a Giovanni Pozzuto born in 1896 in Colle Sannita. When I looked at his birth record in my collection, it said he married a girl named Angela Martuccio in Italy in 1920. That rules him out.

The World War II draft registration card is right on the money. His wife is Agnes and his address is the one I know on Dearborn Street. This card says he was born on 24 Jan 1895. I checked my Italian vital record collection. There is a Giovanni Pozzuto born in Colle Sannita who is a match. He was born on 24 Jan 1895 to Antonio Pozzuto and Annamaria Zeolla.

OMG, when the names Pozzuto and Zeolla come together, I get chills. Those 2 names combined hold the secret to the DNA relationship between my mother and my father. I've worked nearly every Pozzuto vital record into my family tree, and plan to do the Zeolla records next.

But this particular Pozzuto birth record is not in my tree yet. I had trouble positively identifying his parents, Antonio and Annamaria. There's a couple in my tree that seems like a good match. But they had a son named Giovanni in 1901, so they couldn't have had a Giovanni in 1895 who lived beyond 1901.

Finding a Good Fit

I began searching for any variations of Antonio Pozzuto in my tree, born around 1870. Giovannantonio, Giuseppantonio, Francesantonio, anything.

I found a Giuseppe Antonio Pozzuto born in 1871. His wife is not Annamaria Zeolla, but she is Maria Zeolla. They married in 1891. I already found 5 children born to them between 1893 and 1899.

This looks like a good fit for Giovanni, but more research is needed.

The husband's father was Saverio, and that is the name of the couple's 1st son. The wife's father was Giovanni Vincenzo. I already had their son Vincenzo, born in 1899—after the Giovanni I'm trying to place in their home.

It does fit for my Giovanni from Ohio to be this couple's son. And one of the other children in the family was born at the same address as Giovanni: Vico Selice, 5.

I'm going to place Giovanni in this family with a big old asterisk. In Family Tree Maker, I'll add a bookmark to his name. This tells me to look at his notes to see if I can resolve any problems.

If I did put him in the right family, Dad's boyhood crush was his 4th cousin Amelia. How fun is that?

Dear readers, I love doing this. I've been working with my parents to name all the old neighborhood people in my late aunt's photos. Everyone knew everyone else who lived there.

And in my small ancestral hometowns, nearly everyone was related. It seems if I dig long enough, I find a connection.

Now I must do what I can to eliminate Giovanni's asterisk.

Comparing Family Tree Programs Is an Eye Opener

Want to appreciate your family tree software? Check out the competition.

Have you ever considered changing your family tree software program? I've used Family Tree Maker since 2002 when I began this obsessive hobby. Industry-leading software tends to have the best programmers and the biggest budget. I have no problem paying for an update every few years. Even if I were on a tight budget, I'm sure I could cut back on something else to scrounge up $50 or $80.

Blog reader Nancy C. sent me her list comparing the features of several family tree programs. I'll admit I've thought about having a look at other programs. And now I want to see why she loves the Family Group Sheet feature in Legacy 9.0. You can download the free standard edition of Legacy 8. I don't know how different Legacy 9 may be.

I installed the program and fed it a brand new GEDCOM file with 23,305 individuals. It is taking forever to load.

My first impression is that Legacy has a 1980s low-budget look and feel. I'm hating every second of this experience. Isn't is funny how we get so used to our preferred software that everything else is impossible to figure out?

As a computer pro, I know a bad software interface when I see it.

I'm finding that most features are not available in the free version of Legacy. When I'm viewing one family, it lists the children in no apparent order. I found a File Maintenance option called Set File Sorting Order. Maybe that will put the children in age order. Nope. I don't know what that did, but it didn't fix the completely random order of the children.

I did find one report I like that I've never seen in Family Tree Maker. It's a timeline of the ancestors of whichever individual you choose. The chart is a grid showing the lifespan of each of the person's ancestors. You can see how their lives overlap. If you don't know when a person died, you have the option of keeping or changing the default 70-year lifespan. People with an estimated birth or death date have a dotted line.

One feature I liked in Legacy 8 is this timeline chart.

It's interesting to see which of my ancestors had very short lives. I'm also seeing a lot of dates that don't make sense. Like parents who weren't old enough when their child was born. I'll have to check these people in my tree and see what the problem is. Did I make a mistake, or is this chart using an estimated date that doesn't make sense?

You don't know how good or bad your software is until you look at another program.

Since I truly despise what I have seen of this software, let me tell you about some of the Family Tree Maker features I love.

• The index with a search box at the top, various sort options, and custom filters, lets me find anyone in a heartbeat.
• The tree view lets me see a few generations at once.
• Color-coding makes my direct ancestors (and which line they belong to) immediately visible.
• The side panel for any given person holds a lot of information and is customizable.
• A new feature of the Notes, Media, and Sources tabs lets me know how many items are there before I click to see what they are.

I'd love to be a great programmer and create the ultimate family tree software. But I can't think of anything better or more useful than Family Tree Maker and the tree view on Ancestry.com. Please share in the comments section below why you love your family tree software. See if you can persuade me.

What's in Your Genealogy Toolbox?

It's just you and WiFi for a week. Which genealogy tools are mandatory?

What are your must-have family tree-building tools? I'm talking about the indispensable items you'd have to have if you were cut off from everything else for a week.

Get ready to hit the road or run to the panic room. Grab your genealogy toolbox!

Here's what's in my genealogy toolbox.

When Visiting an Archive

I've visited the New York City Municipal Archives because the bulk of my family comes from the Bronx. I've visited the New York State Archives in Albany. And the archives for the province of Benevento in Italy. I spent 5 years viewing microfilm at my local Family History Centers.

The most important tools for those genealogy field trips were:

1. Blank forms

I wanted to view as many vital records as possible for my extended family. Before my visit to the NYC Municipal Archives, I created forms in Word for key facts from a vital record. I printed out a small stack of birth, marriage, and death forms to bring along. I filled in the blanks each time I found a relative's document. (This idea belongs to my research buddy Dawn Fulton.)

2. A USB flash drive

At the New York State Library and Archives, I wanted to look up an event from my childhood in the newspaper. When I found 2 articles about it, I was able to save the articles as PDFs. But I had to have a flash drive with me.

3. My iPhone's camera

While viewing microfilm at a Family History Center, I took some awful images with my iPhone. They were awful because (a) the microfilm viewer was a thousand years old, and (b) I couldn't avoid the iPhone's shadow. But they were better than nothing.

That camera is just the thing when visiting cemeteries. And I had it with me on my one-of-a-kind visit to see my grandfather's military record in Italy.

4. A laptop with a text editor

For 5 years I sat in dark rooms viewing microfilmed vital records. To make the most of my time there, I kept a laptop open in my lap beneath the table and typed everything I saw. For each document I used abbreviations to capture the facts. Man did I get fast at typing Italian names. Here's a sample:

-Rosaria Colucci b 16 jun 1815 to Michele di Giuseppe 30 and Mariarosa di Pietrantonio Izzo 25 bap 17 jun 1815

That means Rosaria Colucci was born on 16 Jun 1815. Her father Michele (son of Giuseppe) was 30 years old. Her mother Mariarosa Izzo (daughter of Pietrantonio Izzo) was 25 years old. The baby was baptized on 17 Jun 1815.

At first I was fitting people right into Family Tree Maker. But I could go dramatically faster by typing the basics there, and fitting families together at home.

When Visiting a Cemetery

In 2012 I visited the Bronx cemetery where practically my entire family is buried. It was my 1st visit, and I was with a cousin who knew exactly where to find our people. So cousin Joseph was indispensable that day.

When I returned in 2017, I found my grandparents using landmarks. They're close to a corner and a fence. But I couldn't find my great grandparents and their family. And I'd never found my other grandfather.

After searching for a while, I pulled out my iPhone and opened the Ancestry app. I remembered that after my 1st trip to this cemetery, I made a note of the section, range, and grave numbers. That did the trick! The Ancestry app was indispensable because I'd made note of the grave locations.

That day I also visited the cemetery office to ask where to find my grandfather. It was the first time I'd seen his grave since we buried him in 1992. Now I keep a text file on my phone with a list of family members' grave locations.

At My Desk

I have lived on a keyboard since 1983. It's second nature for me to do everything on my computer. This is where I have the bulk of my genealogy tools. Any decent research session will involve a few of these tools.

1. Family Tree Maker. It's the only family tree software I've ever used. No regrets.
2. Ancestry.com. This is where I keep my public tree, work with DNA matches, and do my searches.
3. My downloaded Italian vital records. These are not on Ancestry and some are not on FamilySearch. I downloaded my ancestral towns' records from the Italian Antenati (ancestors) website.
4. My document tracker. My most used spreadsheet is where I keep track of every document I add to my tree (download your own copy).
5. GetLinks. This image-downloading tool from a Portuguese-speaking programmer is a game changer. Without it, I'd still be downloading my Italian records, one at a time.
6. Photoshop. You can improve a lot of bad document images by adjusting their brightness and contrast. I like to crop out the excess, too.
7. Family Tree Analyzer. Once in a while your family tree needs a checkup. This free program has a host of tools for finding the mistakes you never knew you made.
8. My database of town records. I'm entering the basic facts from my vital record collection into a spreadsheet. It makes it so easy to find out if, for example, Francesco Bianco and Maria Caruso had another baby I didn't know about. Adding more records is always on my annual list of genealogy goals.
9. My grandparent chart. I open up this spreadsheet each time I learn another direct ancestor's name. My chart (download one for yourself) includes placeholders with each ancestor's Ahnentafel number. The chart is also color-coded for your 4 grandparents' different branches.
10. My surnames list. This spreadsheet is an alphabetized list of my direct ancestor's last names only. I've got 84 of them so far—all Italian.
11. My relationship calculator. I made this chart to help figure out the likely relationship of a DNA match. You can download your copy of this file, too.
12. My chart of Italian occupation translations. There was a page online long ago with a long list of Italian occupation words. Like, calzolaio means shoemaker. I grabbed those translations and added in several more that I know from my ancestral towns. It's handiest to me when I can't make out all the letters. I can scan my chart looking for a similar word.

Now I want you to add your comments at the bottom of this article. I'm sure you're using tools I haven't yet realized I need. And I'll bet you have tools for other types of research trips. Like, I have a digital audio recorder I can bring along to record conversations with my relatives. What are your favorite genealogy tools?

2 Ways to Give Your Family Tree a Checkup

Don't wait for an annual checkup for your family tree. Do it often.

Have you added any people to your family tree lately? Have you added or changed any facts? Then it's time for a checkup.

Even when you think you're being extra careful, mistakes can happen. Why not spend a few minutes every 2 months or so to find and fix your slip-ups? The things you forgot and the goofs you made will surprise you.

Here are 2 ways to give your family tree a checkup. You'll feel more confident about your tree after you've fixed some errors. You'll feel even more confident if you don't find any errors!

1. Run Family Tree Analyzer

The free Family Tree Analyzer program gives you one-stop shopping for all kinds of errors. Launch it, load your latest GEDCOM file, and click the Data Errors tab.

Check all the boxes to find these errors:

• Birth dates that are:
  
  • after the person's death
  • more than 9 months after their father died, or any time after their mother died
  • before either of their parents were 13 years old
  • after their mother turned 60 years old
• Death dates that are:
  
  • after their burial (yikes)
  • after they were 110 years old or more
• Marriage dates that are:
  
  • after the bride or groom's death
  • before the bride or groom turned 13 years old

Give your family tree a quick checkup with the powerful error finder in Family Tree Analyzer.

You may have what I call legitimate errors. For instance, I do have some babies who were born before one of their parents was 13. In one case, when I looked in my family tree, I found a note saying "The mother was 12 years old." That's more of an "unlikely" than an "impossible" feat.

I also have a baby born almost 11 months after his father died. But that's what the birth record says. I have a note wondering about the man who reported the baby's birth. Is it possible he was the real father?

If seeing all the errors at once is too much, click one checkbox at a time, and resolve or look into those errors.

2. Check Your Family Tree Software

The only family tree software I've ever used is Family Tree Maker. I hope that you're using desktop software for your family tree, and not keeping it only online. Building your tree online doesn't give you the same level of control. And you'll miss out on lots of features.

Every once in a while I check a few of the tabs in Family Tree Maker for errors. This time around I found several place-name errors. I'll bet they got messed up when I had a failed synchronization with Ancestry.com. But they were an easy fix.

In Family Tree Maker, look at these tabs:

• Check Media for images that are:
  
  • uncategorized
  • missing a caption, date, or other information
• Check Places to find any that are not properly categorized
• Check Sources to find any that have no facts associated with them

Each tab in Family Tree Maker gives you a different way to find errors.

If you give your tree regular checkups, your errors should be minor. Of course, your first checkup may be a bit of a shocker.

Make this a routine and keep your family tree healthy and hearty.

Family Tree Disaster-Recovery Tips

When the worst happens, your obsession with thoroughness will pay off!

Nothing makes me more depressed or more angry than a computer problem. It could be a hardware upgrade, a software upgrade, or network issues. These problems make me scream and curse more than anything in the world.

I'm going through this depression and anger now because of my family tree.

My software, Family Tree Maker, announced an update to the program last May, so I pre-ordered it. I got the update in late September. My favorite thing about Family Tree Maker is being able to synchronize all my edits to my tree on Ancestry.com. I want my latest and greatest finds to be there for relatives and DNA matches to see.

When they launched the software update, there was a known problem with Ancestry.com. They said we could synchronize our trees with Ancestry…probably. But, if a sync failed, we shouldn't try again until we got the "All clear".

I did have a couple of successful syncs, but then it failed. So I waited. And waited. On November 6 the company issued a patch and said it was OK to sync.

It was pretty amazing that they could track the problem to one person.

Not for me. After struggling for a while, I started a chat with their support staff. Amazingly, they isolated the problem. My file got corrupted at one specific person in my large family tree. Their advice was to:

• Delete this one person from my family tree on Ancestry.com
• Download a new GEDCOM from my online tree (which was way out of date)
• Restore my Family Tree Maker file from this GEDCOM
• Attempt to synchronize again.

That worked. My desktop and online trees are once again synchronized. But now my tree has 22,420 people instead of 22,500 people.

I have to restore 80 missing people manually. And possibly a lot of individual facts. I'll do it with the help of the last GEDCOM I made from my Family Tree Maker file before this mess started.

The best tool for restoring the 80 missing people is the free program, Family Tree Analyzer. I can use it to open the last GEDCOM of my 22,500-person family tree. Then I can go to the Individuals tab and make sure it's sorted by the first column: IndividualID.

At the bottom of the list of individuals, are the most recent people I added before the crash. I will work my way up from the bottom, restoring the people and facts I've lost.

Having documentation and good tools can help you recover from a family tree disaster.

I'll re-sync my tree after I restore every 20-or-so people.

This will get me back up to my full amount of 22,500 people. But I am worried about individual facts I may be losing. Recently I've been finding and adding missing birth dates to people in my tree. But I didn't attach their document images. I have a feeling I'll have to start that project over.

I did download a synchronization failure report from Family Tree Maker. It's 62 pages long, showing recent additions, deletions, and changes. That may be helpful.

Earlier this week I was giddily finding death records for some of my 5th great grandparents. With that info, I was able to add several 6th great grandparents to my tree. But in my excitement, I didn't crop and add the death record image to the person in my tree. So I can't look at my folder of document images to re-create what's missing. (Sadly, I was planning on going back for those documents today!)

But there's a bright side. As I discovered the names of those 6th great grandparents, I added them to my grandparent chart. That means I can:

• Look at the name of a recently added ancestor in Family Tree Analyzer who's my 6th great grandparent.
• Find them in my grandparent chart. That'll tell me who they married and who is their child…the one who's my 5th great grandparent.
• Find the death record again, and add it to the tree.

This mess raises a bunch of questions:

• How many daily backups should I keep? I've been keeping 4 or 5, and I make a full backup after each work session. Maybe I'll keep a few more.
• Do I need to keep a log of what I do during each session? I'm often doing one thing in particular. I may be tracking down missing birth or death records. Or cleaning up source citations. I could write that in a log.
• Should I check for errors using Family Tree Analyzer more often, like weekly or monthly? I could do it on Sundays—my normal computer backup day. If nothing turns up after a few weeks, I may relax and do it monthly.

So what's the moral of this tale of woe?

• Document what you're doing.
• Track what you've found and what you were looking for.
• Back up your file a lot!

This is my first family tree crisis, and I don't want it to happen again. Luckily, I'm in decent shape because of my digital "paper trail". I'm grateful for all my extra documentation steps.

How to Use Your Personal Genealogy Database

If you think my latest project is crazy, allow me to prove you wrong.

I shamelessly told you about my latest obsession. I'm renaming all the files in my collection of Italian vital records. By adding the name of the person its about to the file name, I create a searchable database on my computer.

I still need to rename the death files from 1845–1858, which I'll complete this weekend. But I wanted to show you an example of how well this ambitious plan pays off.

I opened my family tree and focused on my dad's ancestors. Seventy-five percent of his ancestors came from the town I'm working on, Colle Sannita, Italy. I had to climb a few generations because the "younger" ancestors died at a time when I have no death records.

As my first subject, I'm choosing my 5th great grandmother Orsola Mascia. I know Orsola was born in 1770 because I found records for 5 of her children that helped me set her age. And I know she married my 5th great grandfather Giuseppe d'Emilia. But I don't know when Orsola died or who her parents were.

Let's see what we can do about that.

I have a main folder on my computer for the town of Colle Sannita. Inside that are 225 folders of birth, marriage, and death records sorted by year. Starting at the town's folder, I enter the name Orsola Mascia in the folder's search box and press enter. I get 8 results. A small number is easier to sift through, so I'm happy with that.

A quick search on my computer instantly found my 5th great grandmother.

You can see from these results that the best matches are at the top. Exact matches come first. As you go down the list, you'll see that some results contain "Orsola" and "Mascia", but not together.

This is an important point. You can do an exact search by adding quotation marks ("Orsola Mascia"). But what if her full name was Orsola Maria Mascia? I wouldn't get the right results. So I always keep the search a bit looser.

When I double-click the first result, I'm hoping to see that she's married to Giuseppe d'Emilia. He's my 5th great grandfather.

And it is her! My file renaming project is paying off. I learned that:

• Orsola Mascia died on 4 March 1838 in Colle Sannita.
• She was 66 years old and also born in Colle Sannita.
• Her parents were Saverio Mascia and Prudenzia Zeolla.
• Her parents were both dead before this date. I know that because I see the word "fu" before their names. That means was, as in, this was her father, but he's dead now. (See "How to Read an Italian Death Record".)

What a victory! I found the names of another set of my 6th great grandparents: Saverio and Prudenzia. (Cue the Beatles' "Dear Prudence".) Because of Orsola's birth year, I know they were born no later than the mid 1740s.

This key record was hiding in a batch of files...until I renamed it.

Now that I've made this discovery—and so easily!—let's walk through all the steps I need to take next.

• Add the new facts to Family Tree Maker:
  
  • Add Orsola's place of birth, and her date and place of death.
  • Add her parent's names and estimated birth year (25 years before Orsola was born) and death dates of "Bef. 4 Mar 1838".
• Get the document image ready for Family Tree Maker.
  
  • Crop the image in Photoshop and save it to my FamilyTree/Certificates folder.
  • Right-click the cropped file on my computer and choose Properties. Then add a title and description to this image's details. The description includes the exact URL where anyone can find this document online. (For more detail, see "How to Increase the Value of Your Family Tree Images".)
  • Drag the image into Family Tree Maker. It retains and displays the facts I added.
  • Since it's my only document for Orsola, I'll make it her profile image.
• Make note of this find in my Document Tracker. I record every document in my family tree in one Excel file.
• Add her parents to my grandparent chart. Her Ahnentafel number is 133, so her father and mother are 266 (double hers) and 267 (double hers + 1), respectively. This tells me exactly where to put her parents in the grandparent chart. (See "3 Things to Do with Ahnentafel Numbers".) Download a grandparent chart for your family tree. It's color-coded for your 4 grandparents and includes Ahnentafel numbers.

My newly found 6th great grandparents now take their place in my grandparent chart.

That was big. A breakthrough! I'm eager to search more of my ancestors with missing dates and parents.

If your people are from a small town, and you can find vital records, go get 'em! I hope you'll have as much success as I know I will.

2 Ways to Find the Loose Ends in Your Family Tree

You know all those things you left unfinished in your tree? No you don't.

With so many branches in your family tree, how can you find all the loose ends? How can you find every spot where you didn't finish searching for facts?

I have countless branches in my family tree. That's what happens when you piece together everyone who ever lived in your ancestral hometowns. Researching one of my grandfather's towns added 15,000 people to my tree. And now I'm working on the other grandfather's town.

Sound crazy? Think of it this way. I'm so familiar with every family name and street name from my grandfather's towns that the worst handwriting doesn't slow me down a bit. Plus, I had to work out every relationship in town to take Grandpa's branch back to the 1690s.

The whole time I was working on his town, I was dreaming of doing the same for all my ancestral towns. But before I add another 15,000 Italians to my family tree, I want to take the time to tie up some loose ends.

Here are 2 great ways to quickly see which birth, marriage, and death facts you're missing. These are loose ends you may be able to tie up.

1. Use Your Family Tree Software

I use Family Tree Maker, so you'll have to see how you can do this in your program. The idea is to sort your index of people by birth date, death date, or marriage date.

If you're reasonably sure of the year, you can search for the exact date.

In Family Tree Maker, your index of people is probably showing names and birth dates by default. If so:

• Click the pull-down menu next to the word "Sort"
• Choose "Birth Date"
• Scroll through your index and look for estimated or incomplete birth dates

If you want to look at Marriage Dates or Death Dates instead:

• Click the icon to the right of "Index" that looks like 3 vertical bars
• Choose "Marriage Date" or "Death Date"
• Click the pull-down menu next to the word "Sort"
• Choose "Marriage Date" or "Death Date"
• Scroll through your index and look for estimated or incomplete dates

With the list sorted, you'll easily see where you have:

• an estimated date (such as "Abt 1818"), or
• an incomplete date (such as "1836" or "May 1817").

On my computer I have vital records from my ancestral Italian hometowns for a certain range of years. If someone from one of my towns has "1863" as their birth date, I should be able to find their birth record. Then I can change the birth year to an exact date. Loose end tied up!

2. Use Family Tree Analyzer

If your family tree software doesn't have an easy sort feature, or your tree exists only online, have no fear. The must-have free program Family Tree Analyzer has got you covered.

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and:

• Load your latest GEDCOM file
• Click the Individuals tab
• Click the top of the "BirthDate" or "DeathDate" column to sort the facts
• Scroll through the list and look for estimated or incomplete birth or death dates

To examine marriage dates in Family Tree Analyzer:

• Click the Facts tab
• Select all "Relationship Types"
• Select only the "Marriage" fact
• Click the "Show only the selected Facts for Individuals…" button
• In the new window that opens, click the top of the "Fact Date" column to sort by marriage date
• Scroll through the list and look for estimated or incomplete marriage dates

You may find that you have a long list of incomplete dates. Whenever I have a big task to do, I like to whittle it down by going after the easy stuff. Pick that low-hanging fruit and shorten that list as much as you can.

If your family tree software can't handle this project, Family Tree Analyzer can.

For this project, I would first work on the dates that are a bit more certain. "1818" is more certain than "Abt 1818". I must have a source for that "1818", but the "Abt 1818" is an educated guess or guestimate.

Tackle the missing months and dates first. Then you can work on the harder-to-find estimated dates.

You won't find them all, so don't beat yourself up about it. But I'm sure you can shorten that list of loose ends. Most of them are loose simply because that wasn't your focus at the time.

For instance, let's say I was entering an exact marriage date for a couple. The marriage documents included birth records for the bride and groom. That gave me a source for each of their parents' birth years. Because I was focused on the marriage facts, I didn't take the time to chase after the parents' birth records. The result is 2 loose ends.

Before you begin your next research project, take some time to see what you've overlooked. Go back and tie up as many loose ends as you can. Those exact dates will help your research in the future.

This Chart Finds Hidden Relationships in Your Family Tree

My intertwined, overlapping, twisted family tree just got a new tool.

It seems that 98% of the people with my maiden name have roots in one town in Southern Italy. Colle Sannita is the birthplace of the Iamarino name. (See Where Did Grandpa Come From? to learn how important your ancestor's hometown is.)

So when I noticed Maria Cristina Iamarino, born in 1863, married a man named Paolucci, I had to dig deeper.

Many of my DNA match's relationships connect to the name Paolucci. It's a prevalent name in Colle Sannita. Most of these relationships connect to my great aunt's in-laws. My Great Aunt Assunta Iamarino married Donato Paolucci, and his family is enormous. That time I connected my dad to his best friend it was through that same Paolucci family.

Maria Cristina Iamarino is my 1st cousin 4 times removed. Her grandparents are my 4th great grandparents.

Her husband is Francesco Saverio Paolucci. In Family Tree Maker, I see that his great grandparents are my 5th great grandparents. They are Pietro and Carmina.

As a direct descendant of my 5th great grandparents, he does have a blood relationship to me. I thought I'd find it by using Family Tree Maker's Relationship Calculator.

The Relationship Calculator in Family Tree Maker isn't taking everything into consideration.

While viewing Francesco Saverio Paolucci in my tree, I can click Tools / Relationship Calculator. In the Relationship section there is a pull-down menu listing our relationships:

• husband of 1st cousin 4x removed
• father-in-law of 2nd great aunt

That's no good. Neither one is a blood relationship, and he's the great grandchild of my ancestors. I know our common ancestors are in my paternal grandmother's line because I use color-coding.

A combination of tools helped me find our hidden relationship.

Using the Relationship Calculator I can compare Lucy Iamarino (my grandmother) to:

• Pietro Piacquadio. He is her 3rd great grandfather. So far, so good. Now to his son.
• Donato Piacquadio. He is Lucy's 3rd great uncle because he's the brother of her 2nd great grandmother. Now to his daughter.
• Angela Piacquadio. She is Lucy's 1st cousin 3x removed. Next is her son.
• Francesco Saverio Paolucci. That's where the Relationship Calculator fails. It shows only in-law relationships and finds no common relative. But I can see their common ancestors!

What I need is a chart that can help me put a name to distant relationships. I found one, and using it is a real mind-bender partly because of its diamond shape. Using the chart I found that:

• Lucy and Francesco Saverio are 2nd cousins 2x removed.
• Francesco Saverio and I are 2nd cousins 4x removed. Of course that makes sense because I'm a 2-generation descendant of Lucy, his 2nd cousin 2x removed. My dad has to be (and is, per the chart) Francesco Saverio's 2nd cousin 3x removed.

Here's another challenge with this family that I'd like to solve. If I can figure this out, I can stop missing out on distant cousin relationships.

Francesco Saverio Paolucci (my 2nd cousin 4x removed) and his wife Maria Cristina Iamarino (my 1st cousin 4x removed) had 2 sons who married sisters from my grandfather's family. (If you're going insane reading that, add this: My paternal grandparents are 3rd cousins, both named Iamarino.)

The 2 sons (Giovanni and Antonio) are my 3rd cousins 3x removed. Their wives (Carmela and Maria Maddalena) are my 2nd great aunts.

Since the 2 men are on my paternal grandmother's side, and the 2 women are on my paternal grandfather's side, I should have multiple relationships to their kids. I happened to meet one of the sons of Antonio and Carmela—as well as his son—in their home in Colle Sannita in 2005. Antonio and Carmela's son is my 1st cousin 2x removed, but let's see what else he is.

The Family Tree Maker Relationship Calculator won't even try to call him anything but my 1st cousin 2x removed. But the chart I found doesn't give up. As the son of Antonio, he is also my 4th cousin 2x removed. And his son, who is my 2nd cousin 1x removed on his mother's side, is my 5th cousin 1x removed on his father's side.

The chart is on Wikimedia. Zoom in on it before you lose your mind.

I also found a calculator that let's you skip the running-2-fingers-along-the-chart step. To use this calculator, choose a common ancestor for you and the person you want to figure out. I'll use the calculator to figure out my relationship to the man I met in Italy who is my 2nd cousin 1x removed on his mother's side. We're roughly the same age.

In the calculator I enter that I'm the 5th great grandchild of the common ancestor (Pietro/Carmina). The man I met is the 4th great grandchild of the same ancestor. The calculator says we are 5th cousins 1x removed. It gives me the option of seeing a relationship chart. While I appreciate the visual, it took me 3 tries to get the right chart. So I made my own version in Excel. You can download my chart for yourself. If you want to make it fit on a piece of paper, you'll have to give up some generations.

I made an easier-to-use chart to figure out distant relationships.

I'm not sure this will solve my problem with DNA matches who only map to an in-law. But if there's a common ancestor hiding in my tree, all secrets will be revealed.

What got me started on this topic was a new discovery. I've been talking about here Francesco Saverio Paolucci. Well, all I knew about his mother was her name was Angela Piacquadio. I hadn't found her parents yet. When I did find them, Angela went from one of those long in-law relationships to my 1st cousin 5x removed.

That's how I learned Francesco Saverio Paolucci was the great grandson of my 5th great grandparents.

That's how all these cascading relationships changed.

Take a look at your family tree. Who is missing parents because you haven't looked for them yet? Are their parents are already waiting there in your family tree?