How to Find Your Ancestor's Place of Origin

"How can I build my family tree when I don't know where my ancestor came from?" It's a common problem for many people when they become interested in genealogy.

My roots in America aren't that deep, so my ancestors told us where they came from. That made it easy for me to dive into vital record collections from their hometowns in Italy. But for those of you with deep roots, your immigrant ancestor's origin may be lost.

In 2021 I offered to research my daughter-in-law's family tree. She had no idea where her last name came from. Was it Italian? It ends in an o. I discovered that her roots in Pennsylvania—where she still lives—go back 12 generations. Because the family was so well established in the area, I found plenty of documentation on them.

As it turns out, she has ancestors from France, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. She has a direct connection to William Rittenhouse—a famous name in Philadelphia. Rittenhouse Square is a public park on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

But what if no one has documented your deep-rooted family? How can you find their place of origin?

Discovering your ancestor's town of origin opens up endless family tree research possibilities.

Trace One Line

Start your search by choosing one last name from your ancestry. It may be your last name or any one ancestor's last name.

Trace that family line as far back as the records in your home country allow. Follow the family through census records and other documents. See if the spelling of the name ever changed. Look for documents that say where a person or their parents were born. A census record might tell you where your ancestor and their parents were born.

When you reach a generation born in another country, try a more specific search. Look for immigration or naturalization records. A World War I draft registration card gave me the birth place of my grandmother's uncle. (No one else in the family was born in his town, but it was a critical clue.)

If you can't get a solid lead on a town of origin, here's a good trick to try. Go to your favorite family tree website, such as Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, etc. Do a search for the last name you're tracing. Keep the details minimal. If you've discovered the country of origin, include that in your search. If your people arrived in a particular decade, look for others coming at about the same time.

Go through your search results to see if any town names come up again and again. This is a hot lead for you to pursue. This is exactly how I discovered the hometown of my great grandmother. She spoke of her town, but her accent made it hard to understand. When I saw other people with her last name coming from a town that sounded like what she said, I had my breakthrough.

Check Your DNA

Take a DNA test to see which countries are in your makeup. If a good amount of your DNA is from an unexpected area, that may be your first clue. Take a look at your matches for people who share similar origins. One of your matches may have the clues you need.

Lots More Places to Look

Finding that hometown is so crucial to your research that I've written about it many times. Here are 5 articles you should scan for more research tips:

• "Where Did Grandpa Come From?" cites examples from my research. I found town names on ship manifests, naturalization papers, passport applications, draft cards, and more.
• "4 Key Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Hometown" shows how I used a minimal search to find my great grandmother's hometown.
• "6 Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Town of Birth" adds birth, baptism, marriage, and military records to the list of places to look.
• "6 Ways to Find Your Ancestor's Hometown" goes into the value of tracing an ancestor's siblings. If you can't find your ancestor's records, their siblings' records may have the details you need.
• "This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name" covers the female problem. What was her maiden name? This name can get lost over time, and it's your key to finding her ancestors' place of origin. See how I used one resource to discover my 2nd great grandmother's maiden name and trace her ancestry.

I know it can be difficult to break through this particular brick wall. But don't give up until you've tried all these research tips. The answer may be waiting for you to take a look!

Don't Try This Unreliable Genealogy Practice

Every day is Day One in someone's genealogy journey. And they don't know where to start. They post questions online with minimal details and hope for the best.

You know what that approach gets them? Frustration and confusion. Let's say they're hoping to learn the names of great grandpa's parents. All they know is which country he came from. So they tell you an Anglicized version of his name and ask if anyone out there is his relative. Does anyone expect that to work?

Don't take a shot in the dark when it comes to your family tree. Try these genealogy steps first.

People, I beg you. Back up. You don't have details about great grandpa, but what about grandpa or grandma? Did they live in your country, or were they immigrants in your country? Start with them.

Search for every piece of grandma or grandpa's paper trail. These documents can include:

• a ship manifest showing their arrival
• a marriage record
• census records
• birth or death certificates
• military registration cards
• naturalization papers
• passport applications

There's a good chance you will learn:

• their date of birth
• where they were born
• when they immigrated
• who their parents were

Here's how this method worked for me, and how it can work for you.

My Grandfather's Paper Trail

I knew nothing about my maternal grandfather Adamo Leone's family. The only nugget I'd heard was that he had a brother Noah and a sister Eve. (Adam, Eve, and Noah!) In my earliest days of genealogy, I found his 1914 ship manifest on the Ellis Island website. There he is on line 17, and it says his father is Giovanni Leone in the town of Baselice, Italy. I knew his birthday already. Now his hometown and father's name were all I needed to begin looking up Italian vital records.

My favorite tidbit about this Leone family? There were five children, and besides Adam and Eve and Noah, there were Mary and Joseph! But let's not Anglicize those foreign names. My grandfather was ALWAYS Adamo, and my other grandfather was ALWAYS Pietro. The Leone kids were Adamo, Eva, Noé, Maria, and Giuseppe.

My Great Grandmother's Paper Trail

No one ever told me my great grandmother Maria Rosa's last name until 2003. After I learned her name was Caruso, she was still a tricky puzzle to solve. A cousin-in-law spotted her in my online family tree and wrote to me many years ago. According to my dad's 1st cousin, Maria Rosa said she was from a place that sounded like Pisqualamazza.

I tried something that became a favorite genealogy trick of mine. I searched immigration records for anyone named Caruso arriving in the U.S. in the early 1900s. I scanned the results for any hometown that might be a match. And I found it! The town was Pescolamazza.

Once her town's records came online, I was able to take that branch of my family tree back six generations.

My Great Granduncle's Paper Trail

I've had some lucky breaks. My two grandfather's often mentioned the names of their hometowns. My maternal grandmother's family was a bit tougher. Grandma's parents died before I turned one year old. But their children knew where they came from. The last time I heard this was in 2004 when my great aunt told me her family came from "Pastena and Avellino".

That wasn't quite enough to go on. There's a Pastena and a Pastene in Italy, and both towns have families named Sarracino. That led me to document the wrong family! As for Avellino, that's both a city and a province, so where were they from?

My break came from my great granduncle's World War II draft registration card. Too often these draft cards leave out the name of the town of birth. But this one is very specific. It says he was born in "Tofo, Province of Avellino".

It was easy to discover that the town's real name is Tufo, so I began viewing vital records. I discovered my 2nd great grandparents had seven children in three neighboring towns. Besides Tufo, there was Santa Paolina in Avellino, and Pastene in neighboring Benevento.

At that point, I knew more about my family than my grandmother and her siblings did.

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Yes, you need to back up. Don't post useless requests online before you know what you're looking for. Search the records that are available to you and find the clues you need. This path of discovery is what genealogy is all about. It's why people like me get addicted to the research. It's fun and rewarding, and more important than that, it's based on documented facts.

Start your search the smart way!

Searching for an Ancestor By Name Is NOT Enough

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

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

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

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

Start at the Top

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

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

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

Work Your Way Down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Familiar with Your Ancestral Homeland for Free

If you're over 21, you probably had your last world geography lesson a long time ago. How many details can you remember about countries other your own? For example, I'm from the USA, and I realized I can't name more than half the provinces in neighboring Canada.

There's an easy way to learn about your immigrant ancestors' homeland. Understanding the regions, states, and cities will inform your genealogy research.

How to Use This Free Resource

The FamilySearch Wiki offers a free, easy-to-use guide to the country of your choice. On the Wiki's main page you'll see a map of the world. Start by clicking a continent, then choose a country. I'm going to start with England.

This free genealogy resource makes those overseas homelands seem closer and more familiar.

When I click the continent of Europe, I see an alphabetical list of its countries. I'll click England. Then I see an alphabetical list of all the English counties. Since I'm not sure which county I need, I'll click the country name at the top of the list.

Once you choose a country, you'll see a more detailed map. This map divides the country into its sections. These may be counties, provinces, prefectures, states, regions—it depends on the country. Beneath the maps is a list of the sections, each with a link to more detailed information.

There are people in my family tree from Derbyshire, so I'll start there. The detail page tells me there are 132 parishes in the county. I know this family lived in Spondon. In the list of Derbyshire parishes, I'll go to the letter S and click Spondon.

At this town level, you can find links to document collections, maps, and many references. I like the country map showing all the counties. In my family tree, one English group is from Derbyshire, and another is from Lancashire. Seeing this map, I learn that Derbyshire borders Lancashire. That's quite a coincidence.

When I click the continent of Asia and the country of Japan, I see a list of the 47 prefectures within the eight regions. My husband's ancestors came from Hiroshima, and I see that's in the Chūgoku region. (I didn't know that off the top of my head.) The Japan section of the Wiki doesn't have much detail. But it does have a link to a very detailed Wikipedia page. There I found that Hiroshima is on the island of Honshu, which is where you'll find Mount Fuji.

I have cousins whose Italian ancestors emigrated to Brazil. (See "How to Make the Most of an Intriguing Genealogy Lead".) I'm not at all familiar with the geography of that country. I'll click the South America continent and the country of Brazil on the FamilySearch Wiki. First I see a map breaking down the five regions and 27 states. Did you know Brazil has 27 states? I didn't.

Many of these cousins went to Itapira in São Paulo, but I don't have a feel for where that is on a map. On the FamilySearch Wiki page for Brazil, I'll click the São Paulo state. First I see that the state borders the Atlantic Ocean, and it's pretty far south in the country. When my cousins arrived, the city of São Paulo was a convenient location, populous and not too far from the shore.

The state has tons of municipalities. I'll click the only one I can tie to these cousins: Itapira. This page links to document collections that can be very useful to my research.

It should be fun to look at a more familiar location, like the place where I grew up. (See also "Discover Your Ancestral Hometown's History".) I'll click the North America continent, the United States, New York, and Rockland County. Here I find a list of populated places. It's divided into towns, villages, hamlets, census-designated places, and one ghost town!

They created the ghost town in 1928 by submerging a settlement of 30 houses to create a lake I visited as a kid. I never heard about this before!

The place I lived for most of my school years (age 5–19) is a "census-designated place" that covers only 2.2 square miles. But my old house sits in a village that didn't exist until four years after my family moved away. The information about the village led me to a collection of historical photos that blew my mind.

When I was in school, I used to ride my bike to a beautiful street nearby called Wesley Chapel Road. I brought a camera along and photographed some of my favorite old houses. The village's website features one of those farm houses in a photo. The house dates back to 1896. There's also a 1904 photo of a little house my family passed all the time. It shows a big family standing by the picket fence.

I learned they named one of the main streets nearest my old house, Forshay Road, after W. Spencer Forshay. He established a cigar manufacturing shop there in 1851. I never thought about the area being that old. I can relate to the photo of a snow-covered street near the school where I attended 1st and 2nd grade. It seemed to snow all winter long when I was a kid.

If I can find fun new facts about the place where I grew up, imagine what you can find about the places your ancestors lived.

Whichever country you choose to explore, be sure to look at the right column on the map page. This can contain:

• beginning research tips
• types of records kept
• historical and cultural background
• local research resources, and more.

Where does your genealogy research tell you to explore first?

How to Create Your Origins Chart

You may have seen people sharing a different kind of family tree online. Instead of showing the names of their direct ancestors, each block shows a person's place of birth. I made a somewhat different version of this chart.

My family tree is so extensive, it includes nine of my 9th great grandparents. When I created my Elder Scroll, it was clear I had more ancestors from one town than any other. Having more Colle Sannita roots than any other justifies all the time I spend on this town.

But a visual is always nice, isn't it?

Get out your crayons! Create your Origins Chart and see clearly which places are the most important to your genealogy.

To make my origins chart, I used the 10-generation fan chart I exported from MyHeritage last April. These are so beautiful and fun to look at. If your tree is on FamilySearch or Ancestry, you can see your fan chart there, too.

I used Photoshop for this project, but you can make an old-school version. Print your fan chart in black and white and get out different colored markers or crayons.

The MyHeritage fan chart using blocks of color to separate my ancestral lines. It uses a different color for each of my 8 great grandparents. There's also a version that shows all the names rather than color blocks.

I opened the color-block chart in Photoshop and kept the fan chart with all the names open on MyHeritage. (You can keep your family tree open for reference if you aren't using MyHeritage.)

Divide and Color

Starting at the center with myself, I saw that my maternal grandmother, my mother, and I were all born in New York City. So I outlined the 3 of us, filled the area in with one color (yellow), and wrote New York City on top of it.

If you're doing this on paper, outline and/or color in each group of people from one place. Make a separate key to show which place each color represents.

Next I chose the area representing my father. It was already colored baby blue, so I kept that color and labeled it Ohio. He's my only ancestor born there. His mother is my only ancestor born in New York State, outside the city, so she gets her own label, too.

Now comes the parts of my family tree with the deepest roots. The reason I kept my tree open on MyHeritage was so that I could click any person and see where they were born. My maternal grandfather and all his ancestors came from Baselice, Benevento, Italy. I outlined them, made them red, and labeled them with the town name.

All my great grandfather Sarracino's ancestors came from one town. His wife and her paternal ancestors came from the same town. So I outlined those blocks and made them orange. I labeled them Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, Benevento, Italy. Then I carved up my great grandmother Saviano's maternal ancestors. I colored in and labeled them: (1) Santa Paolina, Avellino, Italy, and (2) Apice, Benevento, Italy.

My paternal grandmother's section was simple. Her maternal side came from one town. I colored them green and labeled them Pesco Sannita, Benevento, Italy. Her paternal side was all Colle Sannita. So is most of my paternal grandfather's side. I carved out the ancestors not from Colle and colored them dark blue. I labeled them Circello, Benevento, Italy. Everyone else on my paternal side is from Colle Sannita. I colored them a lighter blue and labeled them Colle Sannita, Benevento, Italy.

These colorful fan charts from MyHeritage inspired me to turn my family tree into an Origins Chart.

How to Use Your Origins Chart

As you look at your colorful origins chart, remember to keep the scale in mind. My chart has a big chunk of yellow from New York City, but that represents only 3 people. The big chunk of baby blue from Ohio is only one person—Dad. His family was only in Ohio for a short time, and he moved to New York City as a toddler. So despite the large block of color, Ohio represents a very small part of my genealogy research.

It's the earlier color blocks that drive my genealogy research. When you consider the scale, Colle Sannita is an enormous chunk of my family tree. The second largest is Baselice. I've spent years researching these towns' vital records. I created and published inventories of all the available vital records. I have fit almost everyone from these towns into my family tree.

But it's clear I can do a lot more work with the other towns. I've gathered the vital records for all my direct ancestors already. But with such deep roots, there's much more to discover.

• Sant'Angelo a Cupolo is problematic because they have no vital records before 1861. But I can try to connect more of the town's families.
• Pesco Sannita holds a lot of promise for me.
• Santa Paolina is my only ancestral town outside of the Benevento border. It's close by in the neighboring province of Avellino. I've found DNA cousins with roots in this town. I need to connect more of those families.
• Circello has an added bonus to drive my research. My aunt's husband had roots there and in Colle Sannita. That gives me lots of ways to connect to him and his children, my maternal 1st cousins.
• Apice, the little ghost town I've written about before, is my latest target. I've almost completed an inventory of its available vital records. My nearest ancestor from Apice, my 3rd great grandmother, was born in 1816. That's so early that I didn't expect to find a lot of relatives. I was wrong. Like all these small towns, every family intermarried. That creates a lot of connections I'm eager to pull into my family tree.

You can see how your origins chart can focus and drive your research. Of all the towns I've visited, it was Colle Sannita and Baselice that had the strongest pull on my heart. My origins chart actually bears that out.

Can you see which places in your origins chart make up the most of you? If you have lots of unknown places—areas you can't color in—that's where you should focus your work. What if you haven't done any research in a place that winds up being a very important part of your story?

I invite you to create and share your origins chart. Then use it to guide your genealogy research.

You Must Find Your Ancestor's Hometown First

My first article in this blog—eight years ago—explains the first step to take in your genealogy journey. You must find out where your ancestor came from. If you don't know your ancestor's hometown, you can't be sure any of your search results are the right person.

Most people know where their parents were born, and their grandparents, too. When I was a kid, my grandparents still lived in the building where my mother was born. My father would mention his hometown in Ohio. I knew my grandmothers were born in New York. And I heard the names of my grandfathers' hometowns in Italy many times.

It's your great grandparents who may be your first genealogy obstacle. If you don't know where they came, where will you search? You need to find clues to point you in the right direction.

You can't tell your ancestor from a stranger unless you know where they came from.

My very first article for this blog, "Where Did Grandpa Come From?", lists five resources for finding a town of origin:

• ship manifests
• naturalization papers
• passport applications
• draft registration cards, and
• a website for tracing Italian last names. (I use a better one now.)
  

"4 Key Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Hometown" explores four of those resources. Using them, I broke through brick walls.

• A ship manifest and a phonetic clue led me to my great grandmother Maria Rosa Caruso's hometown in Italy.
• A World War II draft registration card pinpointed a town in Italy no one remembered.
• My grandfather's declaration of intention named his hometown—but I knew that already. What I didn't know was that his birthday was different than the one we celebrated!
• A passport application proved my grandaunt's husband had roots in the same town as her. I knew they both had the last name Sarracino for a reason!

"6 Places to Discover Your Ancestor's Town of Birth" goes a bit further. It shows how birth, baptism, marriage, and military records held important clues.

"6 Ways to Find Your Ancestor's Hometown" adds a few more tips:

• Say your relative died in an English-speaking country. It's likely his death certificate Anglicizes his parents' non-English names. My 2nd great grandmother's last name was Girardi. Every U.S. document that mentioned her had a different version of her name. With a bit of imagination, I finally figured it out.
• A marriage certificate in a person's new country may include their foreign hometown. Or it may have the name of a country you weren't expecting.
• Try a broad search for a last name only. See where everyone else with that name came from. This is how I solved my great grandmother's hometown. And she has a common last name.
• If you can't find a document for your person that has their hometown, search for their siblings. One of them may have extra documents for you to view. And one of those documents may have exactly what you need.

Finally, there's DNA. "How DNA Can Help Find Your Ancestral Hometown" explores how a DNA test can show your ancestors' origins. I'm sure my AncestryDNA communities are so accurate because my tree is so extensive. If you don't have an enormous family tree with lots of references to those towns of origin, there's still hope.

Take a look at the origins of lots of your closest matches. Which areas do you have in common? My DNA matches and I share Southern Italy. That's not too helpful unless you didn't know where your ancestors came from.

Next, take a look at any matches with a decent family tree. Also try searching for your ancestors in other people's family trees. So many people have written to me because they found their ancestors in my family tree. They got very lucky because I had the documents and the names and dates they couldn't find on their own. Be sure to use any new information to do your own research. Confirm everything!

Finding the right place of origin for your ancestors makes all the difference. Don't go down the wrong research path. You must find out where to look.

Look Past the Misspellings to Find Your Ancestors

My second grade teacher taught us to read by making us "sound it out." I remember my class sounding out a sentence in one voice. "We went to the park" sounded like: wuh ee, we; wuh en t, went; tuh oo, to; thuh uh, the; puh arr k, park." It sure sounded weird, but it worked.

That lesson from too many decades ago helped me break down a family tree brick wall last week.

There's an Italian-American woman who wants to visit her ancestral hometowns. She wants to identify her ancestors so she might connect with people in the towns. One branch of her tree was giving me problems. I couldn't be sure where this particular husband and wife came from, and my searches were coming up empty.

Then she shared a family history that her ancestor wrote about this brick wall branch. The document had exact birth dates for the couple. It listed 2 or 3 hometowns for both the husband and wife. That was curious. Then again, it could mean that they were born in one town and their parents were born somewhere else.

I focused on the husband first. I checked a website that lists the names of every town in Italy. Of the 3 hometowns in the family history document, only one existed. I did not find him there.

The other 2 towns did not exist, and the spelling didn't look like proper Italian. I figured this was how the town sounded to the family history author when her ancestor said it. This was a phonetic spelling of the town.

Say It, Don't Spell It

With that in mind, I kept saying the 2 misspelled town names aloud, over and over again. I scanned the list of Italian towns as I repeated the sounds again and again. I didn't find them.

You may not know how to spell the name of your ancestor's town. What to do? Sound it out.

One of the best methods for finding a hometown is to find your ancestor on a ship manifest. I knew I wouldn't find the hometown on his ship manifest because he came to America too early. My ancestors were kind enough not to arrive before 1898, giving me a good look at the names of their hometowns.

The family history document had one more good clue about this couple. They got married in Manhattan in about 1888. I went straight to the search page for the New York City Municipal Archives. I knew I should find the marriage document there. I hoped it would have the bride and groom's parents' names. I did not expect it to list a hometown.

My searches failed. I couldn't find this couple, even when I included all the city's boroughs and expanded the years. Then I searched for a variation of the bride's last name. Experience tells me that an Italian last name ending in i usually ended in o at an earlier time. So I searched for her name ending in an o. This produced a long list of possibilities. I looked at the search results, hoping to find one with both her name and his.

That's when I found them. I never thought a clerk would misspell his very common last name. I swear, the NYC clerks in the late 1800s were illiterate. Who spells Italy Ytali? Someone who hears an Italian pronounce Italy and can't spell, that's who.

See How It Sounds

Now I had my couple's parents' names, even though the clerk mangled each one. (Saverio is a first name. Saviero is not.) Since the groom's mother's name was not common, I did an Ancestry search for her. The one search result made me gasp. (I guess I'm a gasper.) It was someone else's family tree that included my groom's entire family—but not him.

Everything about this unsourced tree made perfect sense to me. The parents matched the NYC marriage record. The family history mentioned the groom's sister and brothers, and here they were. I never accept someone's family tree as fact, but I was able to verify what they were showing.

The one thing that made me certain this was the right family was their hometown. Remember those misspelled town names? The ones I kept saying aloud to hear their sound? This tree had one of the town names. When I said it aloud, I knew for a fact it was the misspelled town from the document.

Keep sounding out that foreign town name as you search for something that matches the sound.

Now it was time to prove this person's tree right or wrong. I searched the properly spelled town for my groom's birth record. I found him in the year before the date from the family history. (Always assume early ancestors may not know their own birthday.) There he was with the same parents I'd found misspelled on his NYC marriage record.

Knowing the right town, I used vital records to take the groom's family back 4 generations!

Most people would see that other family tree and think, "That's not the town great grandpa used to talk about." But I saw the town name and said it aloud as an Italian would. I heard it as a match for the botched spelling in the family history document.

When you pronounce an R in Italian, it sounds like a D. My grandfather used to call my grandmother Mary something that sounded like Moddy. That wasn't a D sound. It was a rolled R. That's why the family history had the town name so wrong.

What Else Makes That Sound?

My second grade teacher's "sound it out" method is still working for me. Have you heard your ancestor's hometown spoken with a foreign accent but never seen it written? You may not know how to spell it at all.

I used this method in my own family tree once before. (See Case Study on "What If There's No There There?") My great grandmother used to talk about where she came from. Her granddaughter passed that along to me as a phonetic spelling: Pisqualamazza. That's not a town. So I searched passenger lists for anyone around her age with her last name. I looked at each search result to see the hometown. When I saw Pescolamazza, I knew that was it. And that's where I found her birth record. Now I can name her 3rd great grandparents.

If you can't locate your ancestral hometown, keep your mind and ears open. Sound it out as you try to mimic the right accent. If you heard your grandfather say it when you were a kid, try to remember exactly how it sounded. Then see what sounds the same.

Harvesting Clues from Your DNA Matches

My DNA matches continue to disappoint me. After ignoring them for a while, I decided to browse through my new matches. I filtered my Ancestry DNA results to show only unviewed matches with a family tree.

I quickly viewed and dismissed about a dozen of them. What good is your tree if it has 3 people? Or if you include only living, unnamed people?

At last I found someone I could latch onto and research. His family tree contains only 6 people including himself. But I knew I was looking at ancestors with ties to my mother's side. That set my expectations on what to look for.

This is why I always say you've got to learn the last names from your ancestral hometowns. I looked at this skimpy tree and saw only 2 last names: d'Onofrio and Ferro. I knew from experience that those names come from my maternal grandfather's hometown.

I searched the vital records I have on my computer for the town of Baselice. I was looking for Leonardo d'Onofrio born in 1913 and Maria Addolorata Ferro born in 1912. I found both their birth records! I felt lucky because the birth records end in 1915, and some years are missing.

If you can find one or two of your DNA match's ancestors, you're in! Do the genealogy research your DNA match can't seem to do.

These are, without a doubt, the right people. Each one's birth record has a note in the margin saying they married the other in 1937. I have their marriage records, too.

With their documents open on one monitor, I launched Family Tree Maker on another. Would I be able to place them in my family tree? My DNA match is a 4th to 6th cousin. It may take some work to make the connection.

My first step was to check my family tree for the bride and groom—my DNA match's parents. They are not in my tree, but I can search the town's vital records for their parents. Hopefully I'll find a place where they fit.

I started with the groom's mother, Maria Teresa Pettorossi. I found her birth record in 1870. It named her parents and each of their fathers. That helped me positively ID her parents, who were already in my tree. Now I had a relationship to these people. But it wasn't a blood relationship.

I continued searching for each parent and seeing if they fit into my family tree. Because I spent 5 years piecing together the families of the town of Baselice, these new people all have a place. Unfortunately, their relationships to me are all through marriage. There was a lot of intermarrying in this somewhat isolated hill town. I'll bet I'm a 4th to 6th cousin of everyone from Baselice.

The best part of this exercise is how it's filling in missing marriages. There are tens of thousands of vital records available for this town. But the marriage records end in 1860 and pick up again in 1931. If I follow the children and grandchildren of the 1850s babies in my tree, I can figure out who they married.

I always intended to figure out missing marriages this way. This new DNA match is a good reason to start.

Because this is "my" town, I added several generations in a heartbeat.

There is one person in this family group I can't positively identify. I need an Angelamaria Petruccelli born in about 1851. There were 2 babies with that name born a few months apart, and I can't be sure which is the right one.

Because of that uncertainty, I can't go any further. As of now, this DNA match has at least 6 different relationships to me. But each one involves a marriage somewhere up the line.

Don't be too disappointed if you can't find a meaningful relationship to a distant DNA match. Focus on your closer matches. Then use the more distant ones to fill in some gaps in your own family tree. Take the facts they know from oral history, and back them up with documents.

And speaking of DNA matches:

• 3 Steps to Solving DNA Matches
• Don't Rely on Your DNA Match to Do the Work
• Let a DNA Match Guide Your Research for a While

How to Create and Share Your Ancestral Town Database

On Sunday, after finishing a bunch of chores, I was eager to launch Family Tree Maker. I wanted to do one thing. It's something I've been preparing for the last few weeks.

My Own Vital Records Database

You see, in 2017 I downloaded all the available vital records from my ancestral hometowns. These jpg files sit on my computer, organized in folders by year and type of record (birth, marriage, death). Whenever I wanted to search for an ancestor, I could go year-by-year and look at the indexes until I found them.

But there's a much better way. I've been renaming every document image file to include the name of the main person(s) in the vital record. The original image file name of 2 facing 1809 birth records was 007853875_00497.jpg. Now it's 2 Carmine Pasquale Zeolla di Antonio & 3 Anna Maria Martuccio di Giovanni.jpg. The image includes the birth records for:

• Carmine Pasquale Zeolla, son of Antonio
• Anna Maria Martuccio, daughter of Giovanni

In the future, if I need to find either Carmine or Anna Maria, I can locate these documents in a snap.

There are thousands of files in my collection. I want to squeeze every single relative from them. And that'll be way easier if I can search for their names on my computer.

A perfect combination of software makes my public genealogy database possible.

Breaking Through to Another Generation

With that in mind, I've been renaming the vital record files from my great grandmother's hometown. I'd already gone quite far in building her family tree. But I knew there were more ancestors hiding in those files.

Sunday night I hoped to add a generation to her family tree. One by one, I looked at her direct ancestors in Family Tree Maker to see who was missing a death record. Only two of my 5th great grandparents were still dead ends.

I use a Windows program called Everything to search my computer for an ancestor's name. It organizes the results by folder names, so it's easy to see which results are death, birth, or marriage records—and which year they're from.

I found the death records for my two dead-end 5th great grandparents easily. That means I discovered the names of four of my 6th great grandparents. All within a few minutes!

The database I'm creating by renaming the image files is invaluable. I'd love to share it with other descendants of my towns. If they find their ancestor in a list of all my file names, they can pull the original file from the Antenati website.

My database is the best thing ever to happen to my family tree. Now I have a way to share it.

Sharing My Hard Work

To make this database sharable, I need to capture all the file names in hundreds of folders and sub-folders. After researching, I found a reputable Windows program that can do the job. It's called Karen's Directory Printer, and it comes highly recommended.

I put it to work on my grandfather's town of Colle Sannita. I set it up to create a list of each file name and the folder it comes from. Within a couple of minutes the program generated a nearly 40,000-line text file of file names. This is the first time I've had any sense of how many vital records I have for this town!

There are many marriage documents I skipped in the file renaming process. At first I renamed only the marriage documents themselves. That made the couple's names searchable. But the folders also contain marriage banns, birth, and death records for the two families. Usually I rename those extra documents when I'm working on a particular couple.

But lately I've been renaming all the files in a marriage folders. I have a long way to go, but the very old death records are wildly helpful. I've been using them to bring some branches of my family tree back to the 1600s.

What I did for now is create a text file for each of my towns containing the file name every vital record on my computer. I'll regenerate the text files after I rename lots more image files. Finally, I can share this bounty with everyone who has a stake in any of my ancestral hometowns.

I've seen lots of people upset that these Italian documents online aren't searchable. It takes hundreds of man-hours to turn an image collection into searchable text. As long as I'm spending those man-hours, I may as well share the results.

This project will keep me busy for a long time. If you're thinking about doing something similar, there are many benefits:

• If you view and rename batches of files from a town, you will get familiar with the names. This helps you overcome bad handwriting.
• Individual searches for your ancestors become very easy.
• You may find that the whole town's related through marriage.

I'll add links to my database in the Free Genealogy Resources section of this blog. I'll upload the files to my www.forthecousins.com website. And I'll mention them in Facebook groups devoted to individual towns. Maybe I can interest the Antenati site, too.

Don't keep a big important genealogy project to yourself! You've got tons of DNA relatives out there who need your work.

And speaking of document image files:

• How to Create Your Ancestral Hometown Database
• Build Your Own Genealogy Research Library
• 3 Reasons Why Transcribing Every Document Is Not Crazy

What Was it Like When Your Ancestors Lived Here?

We watched "I Love Lucy" so much when I was a kid that my family still speaks in phrases from the show. One favorite comes from Lucy imitating Ricky mispronouncing "soak up some local color." It sounds like "sock up some lockel collar."

Whenever a member of the family is going on a trip, we tell them to "sock up some lockel collar." We can't go anywhere in 2020. So why not use a free online newspaper to get the "lockel collar" of the town I call home?

You can do this, too. Start at a Wikipedia page listing online newspaper archives from around the world. Many are free. Many are on the Fulton History website you may know, but others are not found there.

I went straight to the New York state newspapers and chose my Hudson Valley region. That led me to Hudson River Valley Historical Newspapers.

What if we search old newspapers for our ancestor's town instead of their name?

In the 12 March 1909 edition of the "Kingston Daily Freeman" is a story about a church less than 5 miles from my home.

The headline is "THE DEVIL IN CHURCH." I'm intrigued. This is a very small chapel within steps of a main road near the border of Fishkill, New York.

The article reads as follows:

"While holding prayer meeting in a small churh [sic] at Wiccoppe [sic], near Hopewell Junction, Dutchess county, the congregation was startled by the appearance of a figure clad in black wearing horns and a black mask and a pitchfork held in his hands. One of the members made a grab for the masker but he ducked out into the street and disappeared. The affair has stirred up a great scandal in the village."

What did he do? Hop on a Model-T motoring by?

Next I searched for my town in a paper called the "Rockland County Journal." I grew up in Rockland County, and it's an hour away from me now, across the Hudson River. I chose the earliest article in the results, from 20 March 1875.

I've lived in a lot of towns without knowing details of their past.

An article called "Bridging the Hudson" talks about some critical infrastructure in my area. There's a National Park near here called the Walkway Over the Hudson. It's a former railroad bridge turned into a walking and biking path. They completed the railroad bridge in 1889. Following a fire, they closed and abandoned it. Finally, they rebuilt it for pedestrians in 2009, and it's very popular.

The article says Boston merchants wanted New York to build the bridge. Boston is a 3-hour drive from me, and more than 4 hours from New York City. There is no other railroad bridge across the Hudson between here and New York City. The lack of a crossing isolated Boston merchants from the rest of the country.

Boston appointed a committee that, 14 years later, resulted in the bridge's completion. It also recommended the completion of a road from my little town to the city of Poughkeepsie. That's where the bridge is. That road, Route 9, is now the main artery connecting every town from here to Poughkeepsie. It's a 12-mile strip of:

• every franchise in America
• retail stores
• medical offices
• hotels
• restaurants
• businesses, and
• banks.

I always complain that I can't find my ancestors in newspapers. They weren't big businessmen. They weren't socialites. I haven't even found an obituary. And in Italy where they came from, most people were illiterate in the 1890s when my people left.

That's why we genealogists may find it useful to learn about our ancestors' hometowns. We may not find their names, but we may find their neighbors. I have one branch that lived in Western New York state. Their little town is ripe for newspaper exploration.

What local news can you find that had an impact on your family?

And speaking of history:

• What Was Happening When Your Ancestor Died?
• Did Your Ancestors Break the Mold?
• Finding Your Family's Fallen War Heroes

Don't Miss Out on Your Ancestors' Culture

We've all met them. The guy who spent an hour on Geni.com and claimed to be a descendant of Eric the Red. The woman who clicked into one family tree and boom! She brought her family back to the time of the Roman Forum.

If you expect it to be that quick and easy to build your family tree, you may have been mislead by TV commercials. And if a foreign language and detective work make you give up, you're missing out!

Take the time to get familiar with your ancestors' genealogy documents. You'll find cultural gems hiding between the lines. There are tools to help you with that foreign language. You will get better with practice. And along the way, you'll be learning about your ancestors' culture.

As a kid, I learned about 1940s American culture from Bugs Bunny cartoons. I learned lots of weird British phrases from Monty Python's Flying Circus. I was there for the comedy, but I was learning much more.

Now genealogy research is teaching me about my ancestors' Italian culture centuries ago.

In 2008, when I began reading Italian vital records from the 1800s, it was all new to me. I had to learn the Italian words for the months and all the numbers. The documents spell out the years and days. They don't say June 15, 1868; they say mille ottocento sessantotto, quindici di giugno.

I had to learn a handful of Italian words to get started: born and died, husband and wife, marriage, deceased, and so on.

Once I mastered those foreign words, I began to notice how they recorded some events. Like the abandoned babies. Only the midwife knew who the mother was, and the mayor could give the baby a made-up name. Sometimes a mother left her baby on someone's doorstep. It's like something out of an old movie.

My 5th great grandfather found a naked baby on his doorstep. The mayor named her Maria Giuseppa.

Then I learned it was perfectly normal to remarry 2 months after your first spouse died. A widower, like my 2nd great grandfather Nicoladomenico, might marry a much younger woman and keep having children. Nicoladomenico's 2nd wife, my 2nd great grandmother, was his daughter's age. Perfectly normal.

I learned that each marriage required the presentation of certain documents:

• the bride and groom's birth records
• the 2 times they publicly posted their intention to marry, with no objections
• the death records for any of their deceased parents
• the death records for their grandfathers, if their fathers were dead

That last part—the death records of their grandfathers—is the only way to find a record of a death before 1809 when church records are not available. (1809 is when they began keeping civil records in this part of Italy.) This past week I've been taking advantage of that practice.

I needed to find the death record of my 5th great grandfather, Gioacchino Tricarico. There was no other way to learn his parents' names. I knew he died before 1809 because there was no death record for him in the civil records.

To find his death record, I needed to find a marriage record for his grandchild. But the grandchild needed to marry after their father (Gioacchino's son) had died. I searched their town's civil records to learn the names of all his grandchildren. Then I searched the marriage indexes year by year, until I found a granddaughter who married in 1855.

The Italian tradition was for the bride's (or groom's) parents to give permission for his child to marry. If their father was dead, the grandfather could give permission.

There needed to be a reason for the missing permissions. So they included the death records of the bride or groom's father and grandfather.

This may be the single best thing about Italian marriage records. In the 1855 marriage records, I found the 1808 death record of my 5th great grandfather. I learned the names of his parents, my 6th great grandparents: Tommaso Tricarico and Orsola Antonelli.

Knowing how my ancestral hometowns kept their records helps me make unusual discoveries.

I've also learned from studying these documents that:

• A bride and groom often lived in the same neighborhood. There's a good chance their families owned adjacent land, and their marriage was an alliance for the strength of both families. That stood out even more when I saw the matchy-matchy pairings of children with similar names. Francesco married Francesca. Giovanni married Giovanna. It happened too often to be a coincidence. I guess it was better than flipping a coin. And who even had a coin?
• When a bride and groom came from different towns, they had to publicly post their intention to marry in both towns. They often married in the bride's town and lived in the groom's town. The groom was more likely to have a house or land in his town.

There are always exceptions to the rules. My 2nd great grandparents bucked the rules. Antonio from Sant'Angelo a Cupolo moved to Colomba's town when they married. I've been studying documents from her town of Santa Paolina. It seems her family was better educated, had better professions, and owned vineyards. It must have made more sense for Antonio to move to Colomba's town.

But this family kept rewriting the rules. Two of Colomba's brothers moved to the next town, Tufo. Tufo is famous for its vineyards to this day. My 2nd great grandparents followed the brothers to Tufo after their 1st baby died. They lived there long enough to have 2 sons. When one son died, the family of 3 moved back to Antonio's hometown. After having a few more kids, Antonio became my 1st ancestor to come to America.

As I went back further, I found that Colomba's mother came from another town called Apice. Colomba's parents married in Apice, but lived in Santa Paolina. This bolsters my idea that Colomba's family was more well-off than others.

So what's your rush? Do you really want a family tree that someone else put together? Someone who may have done a careless job? Or do you want to appreciate your ancestry? Do you want to know how they made a living, and why they emigrated? Do you want to try to understand their sorrow when child after child died in infancy?

Don't rush through your family tree building. Learn, experience, and savor the day-to-day culture of your ancestors. It's the history of you.