How to Find What's Missing from Your Family Tree

One morning I had the idea of "finishing" one family unit in my tree at a time. Finishing them means locating and adding every document I know is missing. I thought I'd take a look at the hints on Ancestry.com and compare them to what my Document Tracker says I'm missing.

The first family in my alphabetical Document Tracker is the Abbate family. I found the 1898 marriage certificate for Francesco and Mary Abbate I'd been missing. It gave me their parents' names and their Manhattan addresses. I added the certificate image and its source citation to all the associated facts. I added "1898 (cert.)" to the marriage column of my Document Tracker for both Francesco and Mary. That tells me I have the certificate image in my family tree.

But Francesco Abbate is the father-in-law of the 1st cousin once removed of the wife of my 1st cousin! No offense to my 1st cousin's lovely wife, but I'd like to spend this effort a little closer to home.

I wondered how many families were in my enormous family tree. When I opened my latest GEDCOM file in Family Tree Analyzer, it said I have:

• 46,600 individuals
• 15,472 families
• 9,587 blood relations

Woof! Where do I start? The answer has to be with my parents. I know I downloaded their 1950 censuses, but I haven't added them to my tree yet. What else can I find for them before moving on to their parents?

If you focus on one document-type at a time, you'll be more efficient and consistent in how you capture facts for your family tree.

You may be wondering why on earth I haven't added their 1950 censuses to my family tree. When they released the census, but Ancestry hadn't yet indexed it, I downloaded 44 images. Then I held them until I could use Ancestry's source citation and link. I haven't gotten back to it yet, but the images are ready and waiting for me.

A Generation-at-a-Time Process

So let's start. Look at your parents. What documents and records can you still find that belong in your family tree?

• Do you have every census they appear in?
• Do you have birth, marriage, and death records?
• Do you have yearbooks and directories?
• Do you have key photos and mementos, such as a wedding invitation?

I tracked down my dad's 1950 census on Ancestry. I added a correction to the family's last name. It was off by one letter. Now I have the source citation I need for the document image I saved months ago. Dad was on line 2 of his census page, meaning they asked him extra questions at the bottom of the page. I learned that he was in his first year of college in 1950, and he was not working while he studied.

I love how specific this census is. It says his family lived at 562 Morris Avenue. But it also says they're on the 4th floor (which I knew) in apartment 16 (which I didn't know). I'm adding "4th floor, apartment 16" to the description line of the 1950 residence fact for my dad and his family.

Now my dad's 4-person family has their 1950 census images and source citation. I added the 1950 census to my Document Tracker for all 4 people.

Once you've finished your father, how will you proceed? You can stay in that generation and finish gathering your mother's documents. Then go up a generation, gathering everything for each of your grandparents. Will you spread out to gather documents for the siblings of each generation? How soon will this process spiral out of control? My mind is reeling already.

A More Manageable Process

Instead of plodding through every level of my family, one-by-one, I have another idea. What got me started on this whole project was a random hint featured on my Ancestry homepage. It was the immigration record for someone in my family tree.

I opened my Document Tracker with the idea of locating all my immigration records. That's what brought me to Francesco Abbate.

An up-to-date document tracker is your best friend when trying to "finish" a family unit in your family tree.

What if we pick one type of document and concentrate on nothing else? Don't you think that will be productive? When I look at the list of all my hints on Ancestry, there's a unique category for the 1950 census. I can click that to see only those hints and work my way through them.

You can sort this list of hints by last name or first name, or choose to see the most recent. If you sort by last name, you'll see families grouped together. That makes the most sense because you're going to pick off whole families at a time.

As you work your way down the list, be sure to add your new finds to your Document Tracker. As you do so, take a look in your tree at each person you're adding. Make note of which other documents you have for them, and which you're missing.

When you've finished locating one type of document, like the 1950 census, move on to another type. You can tackle:

• other census years
• immigration records
• naturalization papers
• vital records, and more.

Through repetition, you'll get better at creating source citations. You'll make a habit of adding new finds to your Document Tracker.

If you've been busy with a brick wall for a while, this project will make you feel great about your amazing progress.

Family Tree Research Takes Time to Bear Fruit

Twenty years ago I knew absolutely nothing about my great grandmother in Ohio. I met her only once when I was five years old.

When I was about to leave for my 2003 honeymoon in Italy, my aunt mentioned my great grandmother's last name. Caruso. I never knew what it was before that moment.

After visiting Italy, I wanted to know more and more about my ancestors. Great grandma Caruso was one of my biggest mysteries. Relatives couldn't agree on her first name. A cousin who grew up with great grandma Caruso remembered her saying she was from "Pisqua Lamazza." Well, that isn't a town. But it was a clue.

Maria Rosa was barely a memory for me. Now I have so much great information!

Here are all the puzzle pieces that had to come together for me to trace great grandma Caruso's past. Once I cracked her mystery, I was able to climb five generations up her family tree.

Immigration Record

I had to figure out what town she came from that sounded like "Pisqua Lamazza." I tried a simple trick that I've used over and over again. I searched Ancestry for anyone named Caruso coming to New York Harbor in the early 1900s. In the search results, I paid attention only to each person's hometown.

And then I saw it. Pescolamazza. That was it! I could imagine someone with a heavy accent pronouncing that town the way great grandma Caruso did. Now that I had the name of her hometown, I went to Google Maps. But Pescolamazza doesn't exist. A separate Google search had the answer. The town of Pescolamazza had changed its name to Pesco Sannita in 1947.

To my delight, Pesco Sannita is very close to my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita. And all my other ancestral hometowns.

Knowing the town name, I found a 1906 ship manifest showing the arrival of Maria Rosa Caruso in America. The only problem was, it said she was married.

For years I wasn't sure this was my great grandmother on the ship manifest. Then I saw the truth was hiding in plain sight.

Town Hall Record

Based on her age written on the July 1906 ship manifest, Maria Rosa Caruso was born in 1881 in today's Pesco Sannita. An Italian friend offered to go to the town hall to request Maria Rosa's 1881 birth record for me.

The town clerk said Maria Rosa wasn't born there. He suggested she might be from another town. How disappointing!

Marriage Record

In 2009 I visited the New York State Archives. I found out my great grandparents married on 29 November 1906 in Steuben County. I had the certificate number, so I sent away for the document.

I realized that Maria Rosa married my great grandfather four months after arriving in America. Four months!

Her marriage certificate managed to get both of her parents' names wrong. They listed Maria Rosa Caruso's father as Francesco deBenevento. This was obviously a misunderstanding. He was Francesco Caruso from the province of Benevento. For her mother, it said only Maria Luigia. No last name.

But now I had a document saying she was 26 years old in late 1906. So she wasn't born in 1881. She was born in 1880. The Pesco Sannita town clerk would have checked the index of the book of 1881 births. He didn't look beyond the year we requested.

They're great to have, but your immigrant ancestor's new-world documents often have bad information.

Another Cousin

It's so important to put your family tree online. Another cousin found me and shared a lot of information about the Caruso family. He'd been to Pesco Sannita a few times. Too bad he didn't find me sooner.

Thanks to him, I learned the names of all the Caruso brothers. They were working for the railroad before sending for their only sister. They must have worked with my great grandfather and arranged for him to marry their sister. That's why my great grandparents married so quickly.

I still wondered if the 1906 ship manifest was the right one. It said she was already married. When I took a closer look at it, I could see a very light "S" written right over the "m" for married. A few lines above her, someone had lightly written "single" over the "m" for married. Now, at last, I knew I'd really found her.

Vital Records

I'd spent a few years viewing microfilmed Italian records at a Family History Center. I was concentrating on another branch of the family. It would take many more years before I'd get around to Pesco Sannita.

That all changed in 2017. I learned the Italian government was putting digitized vital records online for free. The Antenati website gave me access to tons of records from Pesco Sannita.

My first stop was the 1880 birth records. Not only did I find Maria Rosa's birth record—with her parents' full and proper names—I discovered she was a twin! Sadly, the second-born twin, Luca, was stillborn.

To this day, I'm continuing to explore the Pesco Sannita vital records to grow Maria Rosa's family. The early drip, drip, drip of clues about my great grandmother is now a full-on stream of facts.

All kinds of obstacles may keep you from climbing to that next generation in your family tree. Solving the mystery of a single ancestor can take:

• a bunch of different documents
• some imagination, and
• access to just the right records.

Gather every shred of evidence you can, and if that isn't enough, gather more!

How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website

UPDATED 31 MAY 2022 with a much easier way to get to the high-resolution version of any image.

UPDATED 2 APR 2022 with an insanely easy way to zoom in on an image.

People are still upset about the redesign of the Italian ancestry website, Antenati.

Take heart! You can master the Antenati site with a few key tips.

Why They Changed the Website

There was a time when the Antenati site went down almost every day. Since the change, I found the images were slow to load a couple of times. And only once did I find the site unavailable. That's a big improvement.

The redesign makes site maintenance easier for their team—no doubt. It's a huge website! The homepage today says its contains:

• 65 different state archives
• 1,383,064 register books
• 100,761,770 images.

As a 25-year website maintenance veteran, I get why the Antenati team wants to make their lives easier. Now let's make your life easier.

Adapting to the Changes

Create Source Citations. Every Antenati document in my family tree has a source citation that's partly wrong now. UPDATE: The old source's image URL now takes you to image 1 of your document's register book. But my citations do spell out the province, town, type of record, and year of the document. Even with a bad URL, that is enough information for anyone to go see the original.

Here's one of my old citations:

From the Benevento State Archives: http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Baselice/Morti/1856/199/007850708_01745.jpg.html

You can see the document is from Benevento, from the town of Baselice, and from the death records for 1856. So my old citations aren't a complete loss.

Your new Antenati documents need a new style of source citation. Here's my template.

My new Antenati source citation format is this:

From the xxx State Archives, YEAR TYPE, TOWN, document xx, image xx of xx at book url
image URL

I keep that text (and so much more) in my Notebook.txt file that's always open on my computer.

Using the same image as an example, I'd change:

• "xxx State Archives" to "Benevento State Archives"
• "YEAR TYPE, TOWN" to "1856 nati, Baselice"
• "document xx, image xx of xx" to "document 65, image 35 of 41"
• "book url" to "https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/detail-registry/?s_id=757415"
• "image URL" to "https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/wWK9rlj/full/full/0/default.jpg" (Find out how to get the image URL below.)

Altogether, the new source citation is:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1856 nati, Baselice, document 65, image 35 of 41 at https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/detail-registry/?s_id=757415
https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/wWK9rlj/full/full/0/default.jpg

This format gives you all the information you need to go see the document for yourself, online or in person. It includes the URL of the register book and the URL of the high-resolution image of the document.

Navigate Smartly. Getting to the register book you want is easier than it was before. We used to click a province, click a time period, click our town, click a document type, and click a year. That got you to the right collection of images.

Now I start at the homepage and enter the name of the town I want. Then I can narrow down the results. Maybe I want only birth records. I can scroll down the town's results page and click Nati below the Tipologia heading. Then I can either scroll through the years or click Espandi below the Anno heading, and choose my year.

Note: I always view the site in Italian. If you haven't figured out that Anno means year and Nati means birth, you need to get grounded. The FamilySearch wiki is a great resource for learning Italian genealogy words. Memorize a few words and make things much easier.

Now that you're looking at the register you want, the best thing to do is look for the index pages. If the book cover is image 1, click the forward arrow at the bottom of the viewer to make sure the index isn't image 2 or 3.

If the index isn't in the beginning of the book, you need to go to the end. But the Antenati site doesn't have a button to let you jump to the end. You need to use the thumbnail view menu. Here's how:

• Looking at your register book, click what's meant to be a page view icon on the right (see #1 in the image below) and choose "Right" to display thumbnails on the right. (Not all books have true thumbnails right now.)
  
• Scroll down the thumbnails and click any one to jump to that image.

Once you know what and where to click, the new Antenati site is easy to master.

Zoom in to Read. The index and documents may be too small to read. But the plus button at the bottom of the viewer doesn't work, right? Actually, the plus button is completely unnecessary! Once I realized this, I avoided tons of frustration.

To zoom in on any image, simply click the image! Click it again to zoom in further. I didn't realize this until April 1st when the 1950 U.S. Census was released on the NARA website. They use an almost identical image viewer, and I found out you can simply click the image to zoom in.

Get the High-Resolution Document Image. They must not want us to find and download the high-resolution images like we used to. Why else would they make it so tough to get to them?

While it is a big inconvenience, I've turned this process into a habit. Now it's second nature for me to get the document image I want.

This section is all new as of 31 May 2022.

Getting the vital record you need from the new Antenati website takes a few more clicks. Don't worry! It'll become routine after a few tries.

The Antenati site no longer gives us a button to download a high resolution image of the document we want. That feels like such a tease. But here's a solution for you.

Start by going to the page you want within any register book. As you click from page to page, you should notice that the last section of the URL (after the last slash) in the address bar of your web browser changes with each page. Copy that last section and paste it into this URL that you will keep in a safe place, replacing only the word TARGET:

https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg

For example, I'm looking at a document and the URL ends in 5K6QgbP. If I paste that into my template URL, replacing the word TARGET, I get https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/5K6QgbP/full/full/0/default.jpg. If you click that link you'll see the document all by itself. You can click the image to enlarge it. And you can right-click and save that wonderful high-resolution image.

This may seem like a pain, but wow is it easier than the method I've been using since last November!

I like to leave all the browser tabs open until I complete my source citation. Copy the register book URL, the image URL, and the page number in the register.

Adapt and thrive. It's not that bad once you get used to it, and we're still getting a free resource that's intensely valuable. Remember:

• Gather source citation details as you go.
• Use the hidden thumbnail page navigator to get around.
• Zoom in by simply clicking the image once or twice.
• Paste the end of the URL into your template URL and get that high-resolution image.

The old website was no picnic. Make this one work for you.

And speaking of Italian vital records:

• How to Read an Italian Birth Record
• How to Read an Italian Death Record
• How to Read Italian Marriage Records

Build a Rock-Solid Family Tree Foundation

A family tree needs a well-made foundation. But unlike other construction projects, your tree needs a solid base at the top.

With a solid foundation, you can add distant relatives like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Imagine if you knew the names of all your 6th great grandparents. Plus all their siblings. And everyone's spouses. Then you could attach younger generations to the right branch as you discover them.

That's what I'm doing with my pet project. I'm piecing together everyone from my grandfather's hometown of Colle Sannita, Italy. I'm lucky. All my ancestors came from a handful of neighboring towns where they lived for centuries. The towns were a bit isolated, so the number of intermarriages is astonishing.

Researching the earliest birth records can take you back several generations.

A Foundational Database

In 2017 I downloaded the town's vital records from the Italian website, Antenati. I have more than 38,000 document images arranged in separate folders. There's a unique birth, marriage, and death folder for each year. The years range from 1809–1942 with several gaps. It's a total of 225 folders. (Note that civil record keeping began in 1809 in most Italian towns.)

Next, I made the files easy to use. I renamed each one to include the name(s) of the document's subject(s). Along the way, I realized it'd be helpful to include the name of the subject's father in the file name.

For instance, "007853904_01008 Damiano d'Emilia di Teofilo.jpg" is more useful than "007853904_01008 Damiano d'Emilia.jpg." Why? Because now I can search my computer for every child born to Teofilo d'Emilia.

Two Reasons for This Naming Convention

Reason #1: Keeping the number (007853904_01008) in the file name makes it easy to cite the image's URL. To do this, I keep a special text file in each of the 225 folders. The file contains a template for each image's URL. The template for the folder of 1852 death records says this:

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Morti/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01006-01067)

To reconstruct the URL for this exact file, I change the 00000 in the template URL to 01008. Why keep the whole number when I need only the last 5 digits? Because the marriage files, and some other records, come from more than one location. There can be different sets of numbers within a year. The template for 1852 marriages looks like this:

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Matrimoni+pubblicazioni/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01086-01147) [These are the marriage banns.]

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Matrimoni+processetti/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01148-01502) [These are the birth and death records required for the marriage.]

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Matrimoni/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01503-01536) [These are the marriage documents, often with a separate notation for civil and church wedding.]

The beginning of the file number (i.e., 007853904) plus the last 5 digits helps form the exact URL.

Reason #2: I use the Italian word "di" before the father's name in each file name (i.e., Damiano d'Emilia di Teofilo, or Maria Rosa Pilla di Nicola). "Di" means of, and it's a common way to show that someone is the son or daughter of a particular man. Italian records may use the word "fu" (meaning late or deceased). But to simplify my record searching, I use "di" in the file name even if the father is dead.

Understanding the Antenati URL structure helps you write the source citation.

Placing the Babies

The renamed vital records are easy to search on my computer. I use a Windows program called Everything, and it's a godsend. My plan is to fit as many babies from the town as possible into my published family tree. What an awesome resource my tree will be for anyone with Colle Sannita ancestry.

Here's the process:

1. View the document to find the baby's name, the father's name and age, and the mother's name and age. (Ages are not always included, but you can estimate.)
2. Check Family Tree Maker to see if the baby is already in there. If so, prepare the image (crop, enhance, add meta data) and add it to their profile with a source citation for each fact.
3. If the baby is not in the family tree, look for the father and mother. See if they're in the tree as husband and wife. If so, add this baby and the document.
4. If the baby and parents are not in the tree, search for:
   • The marriage of the grown-up baby. If there's a place for their spouse in the family tree, there's now a connection to this baby and their document.
   • The death of the mother or father. Their death records should include their parents' names. Check if they are already in the family tree.
   • The remarriage of one of the widowed parents. Does their new spouse fit into the tree?
   • Siblings for the original baby. One of them may have married someone who's already in the family tree.

That last idea was a game-changer. I revisited a dozen 1809 babies that I couldn't place in my family tree on the first try. Once I tracked down their siblings, I found the connection I needed and worked the whole family into my tree.

Reaching Higher Than the Foundation

The earliest documented babies have parents born around the 1780s or earlier. If I find their death records, I learn the names of their parents, born around the 1750s or earlier. And if I'm lucky enough to find that generation's parents' names, I can check my ultimate reference book. My friend from Colle Sannita, Dr. Fabio Paolucci, published a book detailing every family in Colle Sannita in the year 1742. When I connect someone from the book to my family tree, I can wind up with ancestors born in the 1600s!

If you have Italian ancestors, see if a similar book is available for your town. You won't regret the investment. Use the search box on https://abenapoli.it to look for your ancestral hometown. The book I bought is called "Colle Sannita nel 1742" ("nel" means in the). The book for another of my towns is called "Apice nel 1753." A search for "nel 17" brings up a long list of books detailing the residents of many towns in the 1700s.

This rock-solid foundation will help me place more and more townspeople in my family tree.

I connected all the 1809 babies, and I've already got 31,000+ people in my family tree. Thank goodness I retired last month, because this obsession is an absolute blast!

Don't Believe Everything Your Ancestors Told You

When someone asks me to research their family tree, I pick out the key facts from what they've told me, and go to the available documents.

As an Italian-American, I know our ancestors "Americanized" their names to fit in. And I know many of us heard our ancestors came from Naples. It's my job as an Italian ancestry researcher to see past the changed names and look beyond Naples.

It was common for our immigrant ancestors to never speak of the old country. If your elders didn't mention their hometown by name, you likely don't know where they were born.

Genealogy documents hold the clues you need. Your ancestor's immigration record may name their hometown. If not, you can search for naturalization records. Also check World War I and II draft registration cards. While one of these may tell you only the country of birth, the other may have the exact town name.

I can plot ALL my ancestors on a thin strip of a souvenir map from Italy. It took a bunch of documents to make this happen.

But Where, Exactly?

My Sarracino and Saviano ancestors are a perfect example of using documents. My grandmother and her sister told me their family came from two places: Pastene and Avellino. When I began to research, those two specific places became a problem.

Looking at Google Maps, I found Pastena, which is what I thought I heard. And there was a big Sarracino family from the town. After adding the wrong family to my tree, I learned they were not my family. And when I looked for Avellino on the map, I found it was both a city and a province. Imagine if you knew your family was from New York, but you didn't know if that meant the city or the state. Big difference!

It was the documents that set things straight. I found the 1899 ship manifest for my Sarracino and Saviano great grandparents. The hometown written on the manifest was Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. Checking the map again, I found a hamlet within Sant'Angelo a Cupolo called Pastene. Pastena/Pastene—a one-letter difference. The two places are in different provinces, which makes a world of difference. They store the vital records for each province separately. And they're filed separately online.

Having solved the Pastene mystery, I didn't know where Avellino came into play. If both my great grandparents were from Pastene, who came from Avellino?

Another genealogy document to the rescue! My great granduncle's World War II draft registration card had the answer. They misspelled the town, but the map made it clear. He was born in Tufo, a small town in the province of Avellino.

I followed the document trail in Tufo and found a surprise. My 2nd great grandmother Colomba wasn't from Tufo. She was from the neighboring town of Santa Paolina. She and her father's ancestors all came from Santa Paolina. One more document, a death record for Colomba's mother, held another surprise. My 3rd great grandmother was from Apice, a town in the Benevento province.

Think about that for a moment. The oral history said my family was from Pastena and Avellino. The documents showed me this part of my family actually came from:

• Pastene (part of Sant'Angelo a Cupolo in Benevento)
• Santa Paolina in Avellino
• Apice in Benevento.

You've got to follow the documents.

Grandma didn't lie. But your family's word-of-mouth history is a lot like a game of "telephone".

Two Proud Grandpas and One Strong Accent

Two of my ancestral hometowns were always a given. My two immigrant grandfathers were proud to say where they were born. I've known this all my life: one was from Baselice and the other was from Colle Sannita, both in Benevento.

There was only one more hometown I needed to identify. My Caruso great grandmother met my great grandfather in upstate New York. I didn't know where she was born. I connected with my Dad's first cousin June who grew up with her grandmother. She said my great grandmother was also proud of her hometown. With my great grandmother's Italian accent, the hometown sounded like Pisqualamazza.

First I checked the map. Pisqualamazza is not a town. Then I had an idea. I checked Ancestry.com for immigrants named Caruso. Yes, that's a common name. But I was searching for a hometown that looked something like Pisqualamazza.

It hit me like a thunderbolt. I found a Caruso from the town of Pescolamazza. I can totally understand how Pesco could sound like Pisqua. There was only one problem. Pescolamazza also isn't on the map.

A regular Google search for Pescolamazza explained it all. The name of the town evolved over the centuries:

• Pesclum
• Pesco
• Piesco
• Lo Pesco
• Lo Pesco de la Macza
• Pescolamazza
• and in 1947: Pesco Sannita

At last I found my great grandmother's hometown: Pesco Sannita, also in Benevento.

You can't find your immigrant ancestor's birth record if you don't know their town. Use the documents you can find to pin down the town of birth. Identifying the towns and accessing their vital records is why my family tree has 30,000 people.

So, keep the oral history in mind, but follow the documents!

Sorting Out a Hot Mess in Your Family Tree

It all started with Angela. When I landed on her in my 29,000-person family tree, I noticed I had her death date, but not her parents' names. She died in April 1809—about a month after my part of Italy began keeping birth, marriage, and death records.

I pulled up her death record. I found her parents' names and added them to my family tree. Then I saw a bigger problem with her father, Pasquale. His facts were a hot mess.

I found two versions of Pasquale's 1799 death record:

• in his son Angelo's 1815 marriage documents
• in his grandson Pasquale's 1853 marriage documents

In both versions of the death record, Pasquale is the son of Tommaso Cocca and Angela Gentile. That's fantastic because Tommaso and Angela are in the town's 1742 census. (The census is captured in a book called "Colle Sannita nel 1742" by my friend, Dr. Fabio Paolucci.) In both death records Pasquale's wife is Costanza Iamarino. I knew two of Pasquale and Costanza's children: Angela (born in 1776 per her death record) and Angelo (born in 1795).

But here's the problem. In my family tree, I had also identified Mariangela Iamarino as Pasquale's wife. That couple had two children in 1771 and 1773.

A note in my family tree made me wonder if he really had married both Mariangela and Costanza. Here's my note:

"Pasquale's death record (from his granddaughter Carmina Cocca's 1837 marriage documents) says he died on 2 Jul 1795, was the son of Giambattista Cocca and Pietronilla Vignogna, and was married to Mariangela Iamarino. I believe I've combined 2 men."

Finding More Facts to Sort Out the Mess

Now that I've stumbled upon this Pasquale mess again, it's time to set things straight.

The first thing to do is look at the 1795 death record in Carmina Cocca's marriage documents. In all, I found three versions of Pasquale's 1795 death record, but only one included his age at death.

Two different death records, with two different wives, made it clear I'd merged two men.

The available facts make it clear I accidentally merged two Pasquale Cocca's into one. So how do I separate them while maintaining each man's facts?

If I could duplicate Pasquale in Family Tree Maker, I could remove the wrong facts, spouses, and kids from each man. Since there is no duplication option, I'll make a note of each fact that belongs to the Pasquale who died in 1795:

• He married Mariangela Iamarino
• They had 3 children: Giambattista, Donata, and Maria Maddalena
• I now know he died in 1795 and his parents were Giambattista Cocca and Pietronilla Vignogna

Separating the Families Carefully

To avoid losing sight of Mariangela and her children, I'll follow these steps:

1. Select each of the children and detach them from Pasquale, but not from Mariangela Iamarino.
2. Select Mariangela and detach her from Pasquale.
3. Create a new Pasquale Cocca as Mariangela's husband and father of her children.
4. Add this new Pasquale's death date and his parents' names.

With all the facts and steps in front of me, I can fix this mess without missing anything. I'll remove that very important note and bookmark from the other Pasquale Cocca, too.

Now I've given Mariangela and her children their very own Pasquale Cocca. When I added his parents, I found that they, too, are in the 1742 census. I used the census to add Pasquale's paternal grandfather and his two older siblings. Since Pasquale is not listed in the 1742 census, I know he was not born in 1740, as his death record says. I'll give him a birth date of Abt. 1743.

Don't Assume You'll Remember These Things

I'm so grateful I left myself a note about Pasquale.

The Bookmarks feature of Family Tree Maker is an important way to keep your notes visible.

When I add a note in Family Tree Maker, I give the person a bookmark. Seeing that bookmark in the list of all people lets me see there's something about this person I need to know. Once I solve a problem, I remove the note and the person's bookmark.

If there's a hot mess in your family tree, gather as many facts as you can. Pay attention to the discrepancies. Take careful notes so you can undo your errors and set things straight.

Skip a Generation to Fill in the Blanks

You're closing in on an ancestor's birth record that you've wanted forever. You didn't find it in a search result. No. You found the birth date listed on other documents.

Then one day you discovered that his hometown's vital records are available online. And here you are, going page by page, looking for that important date.

But Murphy's Law beat you to it. The exact page you need is missing! Oh, the humanity!

Even if pages aren't missing, you may find that several years are missing. With most of my towns, the marriage records from 1861 through 1930 are not available. Birth records are hit-or-miss in the early 1900s and end in 1915. It breaks my heart every single time I run up against those missing records.

What can you do? How can you learn who your 2nd great granduncle married when the marriage records aren't available?

The answer is time travel…in a manner of speaking. Skipping ahead a generation can help you find the facts.

Let's say you have a 2nd great granduncle born in 1860. Since the marriage records end that same year, you won't find his marriage record. But you may find his children's birth records. You may find their marriage records, too. And if the evidence is clear, you may learn who your 2nd great granduncle married.

Note: Sometimes you get lucky and find who and when they married written in the column of their birth record. I love when that happens!

I spent my holiday vacation renaming thousands of document images. They're marriage records from my Grandpa's hometown in Italy. I finished the marriages through 1860, renaming each file to include the subject(s) of the document. Then I jumped ahead to tackle the remaining marriage records from 1931 through 1942.

It made me so happy to find Grandpa's younger sister's wedding. There was a treasure in there. She was born in 1922, and the birth records stop at 1915. My grandaunt's 1922 birth record can only be found in her 1941 marriage records. So now I have it!

Only by paging through all the records could I learn more about this family.

Let's look at how to examine these 1930s marriage records for new relationships. I randomly chose the 1931 marriage of Giovannantonio Marino and Concetta Iamarino. The marriage record tells me Concetta is 25 years old. The birth records for that year (1906) are not available.

I see that her parents are Pasquale Iamarino and Orsola Marino. That couple, born in 1862 and 1863, is in my tree. He is my 2nd cousin 4 times removed, and I know they married in 1889 because it's written on both their birth records. Until now, I never knew they had a daughter named Concetta because she was born in a year with no records.

Now I can add Concetta to my family tree as the daughter of my 2nd cousin 4 times removed. I can add the details of her 1931 marriage. And I can piece together her husband's family.

In Concetta's case, I already knew when her parents married. But there will be cases where a 1930s marriage will fill in the blanks on dead ends in my family tree. Let's not forget the 1880s birth records, either. They will hold children of men and women who are in my family tree, but whose marriage documents are out of range. It's their kids who will tell me who many of my 1840's-and-later babies married.

These renamed documents help me fill in the blanks for missing people.

These later documents sometimes provide copies of out-of-range death records, too. They can point me to a first marriage that may have resulted in children who are new to me.

It can be difficult to skip a generation this way. You have to make certain there's enough evidence. (See Are You Sure They're the Same Person?) Be sure you have enough facts to know you've found the right family. No matter where your people came from, there were probably several people in their town with the same exact name. Pay attention to who their father was.

The important thing to remember is that you don't know which records will fill in those blanks. It pays to go through them all. That's my goal: to piece together everyone from Grandpa's town. We're all related! And I'm determined to find out how.

Are You Sure They're the Same Person?

I got an email from Geni.com where, unfortunately, I uploaded my family tree years ago. I say "unfortunately" because I didn't know people would try to correct me and want to "take over" people in my tree.

The email said it found duplicates and wanted me to merge some people. I checked them out, and each one was clearly the same person in different family trees. I approved them all. I really don't care.

What I do care about is MY tree. My living, constantly developing family tree I build in Family Tree Maker and synchronize to Ancestry.com. In my tree, I make no assumptions. I base every fact on available documents.

It was a coincidence to get the Geni email about mergers the same day I was considering a merger within my own tree.

Should These People Be Merged?

Recently I've been examining the earliest available vital records from my grandfather's hometown. I can fit nearly every person named in the early 1800s birth, marriage, and death records into my tree. It's kinda easy when all the families intermarry over and over again.

I'm examining the earliest vital records so I can identify more people in this amazing book I bought. The book contains a detailed description of each of the 560 households in Grandpa's town in the year 1742. (That's the year the town did a complete census for tax purposes.) I've tied into about a quarter of these families so far.

Imagine a set of marriage documents that tells you the names of the bride and groom's great grandparents!

The town's marriage records get more valuable in the mid-1820s. That's when they include:

• the groom's birth or baptism record
• the bride's birth or baptism record
• the death record (if it applies) for the bride and groom's deceased parents
• the death record (if their father is dead) for the bride and groom's deceased grandfathers

The death records show why a parent or grandparent can't give consent for the marriage. They're dead.

Imagine finding the marriage of a couple born in 1800, and learning the names of their paternal great grandparents! It's a genealogist's gold mine.

In these records I found 2 brothers named Cocca who married 2 sisters named Cocca. I knew they fit into my family tree. So I started processing all the documents from their 1827 and 1830 marriages.

Because the brothers' and the sisters' fathers were dead, there were lots of records. I was able to connect both families to households found in the 1742 census.

That's when I had a decision to make. You see, the Cocca brothers' paternal grandmother was Colomba Lombardo. Her 1816 death record says her parents were Domenico Lombardo and Cristina Pilla. And that couple is in the 1742 census. Domenico was born in 1696; Cristina in 1704. Awesome!

Colomba fit into a family listed in the 1742 census. But hold on. There's already a Colomba there.

As I added Colomba to this family, I noticed Domenico and Cristina already had a child named Colomba. Was she the same person? Should I merge them?

Let's look at the facts:

• In the 1742 census, there is a 1-year-old girl named Colomba Lombardo. That tells me she was born in 1741.
• In the 1816 death records, there is a 68-year-old Colomba Lombardo from the same family. According to this death record, she was born in 1748.

Now, we all know death records can be inaccurate. And I know that at this time in history, my townspeople weren't 100% sure of their age. They didn't have to put their exact birth date on forms all the time like we do.

So maybe the Colomba who died in 1816 wasn't 68 years old. Maybe she was 75 years old and is the same baby from the 1742 census. If she were born in 1741, she'd be 8 years older than her husband. That's a little unusual in this town, but not out of the question.

Then again, there's always the possibility that baby Colomba found in the 1742 census died as a child. It would be customary for the couple to give their next baby girl the same name.

Because I know this custom, I cannot assume that the Colomba who died in 1816 is the Colomba who was born in 1741. For now, I will leave them both in my tree as sisters.

How can I ever prove they were sisters and not the same person? The answer may be waiting in more of the town's marriage records. So far, I've found only one child for Colomba and her husband. As I work through more marriages, I may find more. Those extra documents may give me more facts about Colomba's birth year.

The moral of this story is never make assumptions. Learn the traditions and customs of your ancestral hometowns. Seek out every possible document. Build on the evidence only, no matter how tempting it may be to "merge" people in your family tree.

For now, I'll add a note to each Colomba Lombardo in my family tree, explaining why they both exist. This way, anyone who finds them in my tree on Ancestry will understand that this was a choice, not an error.

Make Your Genealogy Documents Speak Volumes

Census sheets, ship manifests, birth, marriage and death records. These are the documents that bring your ancestors to life. Without them, you have no tangible evidence for your extended family.

The digital documents I collect are the heartbeat of my family tree. And I spend a good deal of time processing and caring for them.

My goal today is to get you thinking about how you handle your digital documents. What can you do to be more efficient? More thorough? More careful? More importantly, how can you make your family tree more valuable?

Careful work pays off in the form of a highly reliable family tree.

Note that I have very few paper documents, and I've scanned them all into digital files. You won't find anything about color-coded binders and folders on this blog.

I have a vast collection of meticulously annotated, logically filed, safely backed-up documents. I make a habit of putting each new digital document through a series of steps. After downloading the digital document, I:

1. Name the file in my usual style, which is most often LastnameFirstnameEventYear. For example, MartuccioMariaDeath1801.jpg. Note: I name census sheets and ship manifests for the head of the household or the traveling group.
2. Crop the image in Photoshop to remove excess background or an unneeded facing page. Many old Italian birth and death records have 2 or more records in an image.
3. Enhance the contrast so the document is easier to read, if necessary. Photoshop has a few good controls for this.
4. Add a title and description to the document file's properties. These 2 field carry over when I drag and drop them into Family Tree Maker. I follow a pattern like this:
   • Title: 1801 death record for Maria Martuccio
   • Description: From the Benevento State Archives [followed by the exact URL of the image]
5. Attach the image to the appropriate person(s) in Family Tree Maker. I turn the earliest image I have into a person's profile image.
6. Create a source citation for each fact in the document.
7. Add a notation to my document tracker spreadsheet so I know I've got this document.
8. Keep the image file in a special folder, waiting for my weekly backup of all new files.
9. Move the file to its final destination in my collection of digital family tree folders.

Annotated images tell you exactly where they came from.

Yes, it's a lot, but it all serves my goal: To have the best family tree as a resource for anyone with roots in one of my ancestral hometowns. I want to be the absolute go-to family tree because of how carefully I document every fact in my tree.

Consider these ideas for your family tree document handling and care:

• 4 Important Steps for Each New Document lays out the same philosophy in an easy-to-follow flow.
• Get into a Groove to Fortify Your Family Tree gives you a simple way to think about, and follow, this practice.
• Can Your Genealogy Work Survive Without You? offers advice on preserving your genealogy research for future generations.
• How to Make Your Family Tree Fireproof! explains why I keep everything possible in digital form, and how to preserve it.
• 10-Minute Genealogy Tasks You Can Do helps you develop a discipline for handling your documents smartly. These tasks are a great way to make genealogy progress in small amounts of time.

What do you say? Is your family tree—your legacy—worth doing right?

Be More Thorough with Your Family Tree

I have a mantra for keeping things tidy, and it works for genealogy, too. I call it "all-the-way away," as in "Don't place your shoes by the door. Put them all-the-way away in the closet."

I spent the weekend working on my family tree with this mantra firmly in mind. It's clear that this slower, much more thorough process results in:

• more discoveries
• fixing past errors
• a more fortified family tree

My family tree includes nearly everyone in my small ancestral hometowns. It has 25,306 people. Far too many times I've added names and dates to my tree without being thorough.

When you find a new person to add to your tree, it isn't enough to take down names and dates. You've got to be thorough and add documents and sources right then and there. Put those shoes all-the-way away.

Here's what I'm doing now. I hope it'll inspire you to do something like it.

I've been writing about this book I have, detailing each family in Grandpa's hometown in the year 1742. I want to get every last fact from the book into my family tree. But that means I have to trace all the families back to their ancestors who were alive in 1742. And that means I have to extract every last clue available in the vital records from the town.

I began this journey of thoroughness last week. I chose a last name from the town that's early in the alphabet: Basile. I worked through each Basile in my document tracker spreadsheet. I found and attached missing vital records to each Basile.

I realized I could do a lot more than complete the Basile lines in my document tracker. I could, and should, look at every Basile document in the collection and see if it fits into my family tree. That would be the best possible use of my completely indexed collection of vital records.

No more rushing through the cousins. I found out this cousin used to live near me.

But wouldn't it be more fun, rewarding, and engaging to start with my maiden name? Why put off the most important name of all, waiting for it to come up in the alphabet?

Instead of going further with the B names, I jumped to the first Iamarino name in my family tree. Abbonnanzia Iamarino was born in 1848. For each Iamarino name in the index of my family tree:

• I searched my document collection for missing facts
• I cropped each vital record image and attached it to the right person
• I created a thorough source citation for each fact taken from each document image
• I added mention of each new document to my document tracker

I left off on Sunday with Francesco Saverio Iamarino, born on 27 June 1786. It looks as if I have all available vital records for him. I'll mark in my document tracker that his 1st marriage documents are outside the range of available vital records. (His 1st marriage happened before 1802 when he was only 16!)

I can see in my family tree that Francesco Saverio's ancestors are listed in the book of 1742 residents of the town. (I can see this because I use a photo of the book as their profile image.) But one of his grandmothers is a dead end. She was alive in 1742. Is there anything more I can learn about her? I want to be thorough before I move on.

Her name was Angela Caporaso. That wasn't a common last name in this town, so I checked the book's index. I gasped when I saw there was only one Caporaso household in town in 1742.

I turned to entry #9 in the book, and guess what? I found her! This one entry contains a ton of information about Angela's family in 1742:

• her father Francesco had died by 1742
  
• her mother Elisabetta Scrocca, is 42 years old
• her 17-year-old brother Antonio is now the head of household
• Angela is 14 years old
• her brother Giuseppe is 9 years old
• her older sister Teresa is 22 years old and married to a man from several towns away

None of Angela's family members were in my family tree yet. I would not have found them without thoroughly going through my people one by one. A search of my vital records collection shows no one else named Caporaso in this town. I believe Francesco Caporaso moved here when he married Elisabetta Scrocca. Her name has deep roots in the town. They raised their family here, and it was the first Caporaso family in town. Maybe Angela's brothers Antonio and Giuseppe did not carry on the family name.

Angela Caporaso is no longer a dead-end because I'm squeezing every drop out of the resources that I have. And now I have 25,312 people in my family tree.

One of my goals is to stretch my families far back enough to find them in the 1742 town register.

This thorough method is much better than the smash-and-grab genealogy we sometimes do. On Sunday I followed a Donato Iamarino across the ocean to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I found his ship manifest, naturalization papers, and World War II draft registration card. I found his wife's 1958 Pennsylvania death record. I learned that he later moved to Connecticut, where he died in 1981. I was living a few towns away in Connecticut the day he died!

My message to you is to slow down, and enjoy thoroughly exploring each person in your family tree. You don't know where each one will lead you. Each journey may be the most exciting one of all.

And speaking of thoroughness:

• Step-by-Step Source Citations for Your Family Tree
• Overwhelming Clean-up Task? Start With Direct Ancestors
• 7 Steps to Perfect Family Tree Document Placement