Work in Batches to Strengthen Your Family Tree

Do you want to make your family tree accurate, reliable, and highly credible? There are many things you can do:

• Add descriptions to your images.
• Be consistent with addresses.
• Cite your sources accurately.
• Choose a style and stick with it.

I know it can seem overwhelming—especially if you started your tree long ago or you can only work on it now and then.

But if you divide and conquer your tasks, working in batches, you'll see real and valuable progress. If you gang-up your tasks, you'll save time and gain consistency.

Here's what I mean.

Add Descriptions to Images

Step through each image in whichever family tree software you use, focusing on one type of image at a time.

In Family Tree Maker, I can sort my images by type (because I clicked a checkbox to categorize each one). Now I can go one-by-one through each census form image, for example, and include important information. I've chosen to note which lines a family is on, and everything you'd need to find the original image:

• town, county, state
• enumeration district, city ward, assembly district
• page number and image number if it's part of a set
• a URL on ancestry.com or familysearch.org.

Great annotations make your facts reproducible and verifiable.

Be Consistent with Addresses

Your family tree software may help you validate a place name when you are typing. Take advantage of that feature if you have it.

Otherwise choose a style for entering place names, verify them on Google Maps, and stick with your style. I prefer to include the word County in my U.S. place names. I think it seems confusing (especially to non-Americans) to have something like "Monsey, Rockland, New York". That's why I consistently use this format: "Monsey, Rockland County, New York".

Entering the address shows me exactly where my great grandparents lived.

Cite Your Sources

This will be blasphemy to some of you, but I do not like excessively long citations for the sources of my facts. I use a short format each time:

• 1930 U.S. Federal Census
• 1915 New York State Census
• New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

There isn't any question which collection I'm citing. Plus I put the full description and unique link on the image's notes.

No matter what format, do include your sources. It's absolutely key to the strength and reliability of your data.

Be Consistent in Everything

Do you always use the same date format? I prefer dd-Mon-year (24 Sep 1959) because you should understand it no matter where you're from.

Do you always capitalize last names? I don't, because I think you lose something with compound names like McCartney or deBlasio. But stay consistent.

Do you always spell out every word in an address? I do because I feel it leaves no room for misinterpretation.

For example, my mother was born at 260 East 151st Street, Bronx, New York. If your native language were not English, E. 151st St. would be more challenging than East 151st Street.

Do you have a preferred style for descriptions of immigration facts? That may seem like an awfully granular thing to call out, but I like to add specific information to these descriptions. Here's my format:

For each ship manifest I record the date the ship left as an Emigration fact (for a person's first voyage) or a Departure fact (for subsequent voyages). In the description I follow this format:

"Left for [destination city] on the [ship name]."

Then I record the date the ship reaches port as an Immigration fact (for a person's first voyage) or an Arrival fact (for subsequent voyages). In that description field I follow this format:

"Arrived [with which relatives] to join [which relative] at [address], leaving his [relative] in [hometown]."

Now think about your family tree. Where do you feel your data needs the most care? Is it your sources? Images? Particular facts?

Pick one and dive in. Work your way through as many people as you can in one sitting to ensure absolute consistency. Make notes about the style decisions you've made so you can stick to them.

By picking one type of task and working hard to plow through it all, you will see overall improvement in your tree.

That accomplishment should inspire you to pick your next subject and get busy strengthening your family tree. Then you'll be ready to grow your family tree bigger and better.

How I Gained 2 More Generations in 1 Day

Maria Rosa Caruso,
my great grandmother

Three months ago I wrote about how I used the "U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index" to learn the maiden name of my great grandmother's mother: Girardi.

Two months ago I wrote about how I'm downloading every vital record for my ancestral towns from an Italian genealogical archives web site.

Last night all that information came together to take me back two more generations on a branch of my family tree that hadn't grown in years.

Here's what happened.

I discovered many years ago that my great grandmother, Maria Rosa Caruso, was born in Pescolamazza, Italy. That was a problem at the outset because there is no such town! With a little research, I learned that Pescolamazza was renamed long ago to Pesco Sannita.

Pesco Sannita, in the province of Benevento, is a beautiful, well-manicured hill town that's very close to each of my other ancestral towns. (My heritage is highly concentrated!) I visited the town and its cemetery in 2005.

Over the last two days I downloaded every birth, marriage and death record for Pescolamazza from 1809 to 1942 (with a very big gap from 1861 to 1930). Once I had everything downloaded into sub-folders by year and type of document, I began searching for Maria Rosa Caruso's birth record and learned she had a twin brother Luca.

Maria Rosa's birth record.

This record confirmed her mother's full name of Maria Luigia Girardi. So I searched for Maria Luigia's 1840 birth record and found it. Et voila! I had her parents' names: Gioacchino Girardi and Maria Teresa deNigris.

I also found her husband's 1842 birth record—that's my great great grandfather Francesco Saverio Caruso—and learned his parents' names: Giuseppe Caruso and Luigia Pennucci.

The 1814 birth records are not available for Gioacchino Girardi and Maria Teresa deNigris, so I went searching for their marriage documents. Bingo!

The set of 1840 marriage documents told me that Gioacchino's middle name was Napoleone (was that 1814 patriotism or fear I wonder) and his parents were Nicola Girardi and Maria Pennucci. Maria Teresa's parents were Pasquale deNigris and Maria Emanuele Inglese.

Key facts from an Italian marriage record.

This generation of my 4x great grandparents was born between 1784 and 1793. I happily gained three new surnames (or cognomi in italiano): deNigris, Pennucci and Inglese.

I've expanded the families a bit more by finding two siblings for Maria Luigia Girardi and two for Francesco Saverio Caruso.

I will eventually squeeze every last drop of family out of these vital records as I did for my maternal grandfather's Italian hometown a few years ago.

6 Key Genealogy Facts on a Ship Manifest

I'm so lucky. All of my ancestors who emigrated sailed from Naples to New York between 1890 and 1920. The only document collection I need is "New York Passenger Lists". And every one of my people went through Ellis Island.

Ellis Island, December 2017

The ship manifest—the list of passengers on a particular ship for a particular journey—can tell you your ancestor's hometown. That alone is a significant boon to your genealogy research. It can lead you to their foreign vital records.

I'm more excited to find an ancestor who arrived in the U.S. in 1909 or later because there is likely to be a two-page manifest listing extra information.

The most treasured two-page ship manifests can provide your ancestor's:

Manifest Page 1

Not a nuclear family, but 4 out of 5
of these men are mine!

• Ship name (you can look for a photo of the ship)
• Departure date and port city
• Last name—a maiden name for many women
• Given name
• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Occupation
• Ability to read and write
• Nationality
• Race or people (e.g., Italian)
• Last residence (country and town)
• Name and location of nearest relative left behind
• Destination state and town

Manifest Page 2

And they were all going to the same place!

• Arrival date and port city
• Whether they have a ticket to their final destination
• Who paid for their passage
• How much money they are carrying
• If and when/where they were in the U.S. before
• Person they are joining here, often including the name and address of a relative
• Place of birth (country and town)
• A bunch of sure-fire extreme vetting questions, including (these are reworded):
  
  • Are-you-a-deadbeat type questions, such as were you in prison, an almshouse, or supported by charity?
  • Are you a polygamist?
  • Are you an anarchist?
  • Are you coming here because of a job offer?
  • Condition of mental and physical health
  • Are you deformed or crippled?
  • Height, complexion, hair and eye color
  • Identifying marks (including scars)

These are the blanks to be filled in for each person, but there is another set of facts for a genealogist to crave. Family members!

Sometimes you'll find an entire family traveling together. Or you may see a mother and her children, and the manifest will show the name and address of her husband who is already in the United States. Jackpot!

Your ancestor's ship manifest—assuming they did not sail so early that no questions were asked—should be the first thing you search for. You can't go back overseas and get that birth certificate if you don't know your ancestral hometown.

Not sure where to start? Check the census for your ancestor. It may include their immigration year.

7 Free Resources for the Frugal but Fanatical Genealogist

In high school my son had an assignment to create a document of his family tree. He laughed and said, "Mom, print that out for me?" That's as far as many people get: parents, grandparents, and a portion of their great grandparents.

But for those of us who keeping researching and researching, genealogy is a project that is never finished. And we don't mind at all.

Here are some free resources that won't "finish" your family tree, but they can make it stronger, broader, and more satisfying for you.

Census form

1. Free U.S. Censuses

Did you know that there's more to the census than the Federal census taken every 10 years? Some states also had their own census halfway between the Federal censuses. You can find the state and Federal versions for free on FamilySearch.org

2. Free New York Passenger Lists

Spanning the years 1820 through 1891, this free online collection can be searched or browsed by microfilm roll number, each roll spanning months. Another collection includes the years 1909 and 1925 through 1957.

Marriage certificate

3. Free U.S. Social Security Death Index

Search by name for SSDI records between 1962 and 2014. The results show the person's age, full name, birth and death dates, the state in which they died, and their last place of residence.

4. Free England and Wales Censuses

England and Wales censuses are available online from 1841 through 1911. Check out the full list of England resources on that page. You'll be impressed.

5. Free Canada Censuses

The Canada census is available online from 1851 through 1911 with a bonus year of 1906.

6. Free Find-a-Grave

Ship manifest

Have you considered trying Find a Grave for cemeteries worldwide? When you view their search form take a look at the pull-down menu next to "Cemetery in" and you may be surprised by the number of countries included. While the non-U.S. listings are slim, they are growing.

7. Free Genealogy Forms and Charts

If it helps you to have some paperwork to carry with you on your research travels, these genealogy forms and charts will be very useful. Print out ancestor charts, research logs, census forms, family record sheets, and more.

Everyone likes a bargain, and it is certainly worth your time to see what resources are out there that you haven't tapped into yet.

And speaking of free resources:

• What Language Barrier?
• Free Resource Provides Graphic Genealogy Research Basics
• Free Resource Lets You Plot Family Tree Locations

Let YouTube Tell You What You Don't Know

Are you overlooking one of the biggest free genealogy resources of all? If you're new to genealogy, or you've been doing it long enough to know there's more to learn, you'll be amazed at all the lessons you can learn on YouTube.

For starters, there's a seemingly endless amount of genealogy videos produced by Ancestry.com for free. Simply go to YouTube and subscribe to the Ancestry channel.

You'll find groups of videos including Ancestry's Desktop Education Series, featuring titles such as "Ways To Clean Up Your Family Tree", "Documenting the Enslaved in Your Family Tree", and "What Does That Say? More Paleography Tips & Tricks" designed to help you decipher difficult old-style handwriting.

Search within the Ancestry channel on YouTube for what you need.

Use the search tool to find videos on a subject of particular interest to you, such as census forms. Or search for the very likeable and extremely helpful Crista Cowan, an expert genealogist who's lucky enough to work for ancestry.com.

There is a very good chance you'll find a valuable free video on any subject that's important to your genealogical research. Be warned: These fabulous videos will show you how much you're missing by not subscribing to ancestry.com, but so do shows like "Who Do You Think You Are?" and "Long Lost Family". I'm not trying to sell you on anything, but if ancestry.com wants to hire me, and I can work from home in New York, I'm in!

But Ancestry's videos are just the tip of the iceberg. Search the site for "genealogy" or a more specific phrase, like "civil war pensions," and start watching. When you find a video provider whose work you enjoy, like Crista Cowan, subscribe to their channel. Subscribing to a channel simply means you'll be offered their videos first, and you'll have a convenient way to return for more.

There's nothing like a show-and-tell to teach you how to use a resource or point out exactly what you can find on a particular type of record. Watching a genealogy video may become your favorite way to start the day.

Why Did They Die?

In your family tree, you probably have people who died for reasons unknown to you. They weren't old, and you have no reason to think they were sickly. If you can't get a copy of their death certificate to learn the cause of death, you may want to turn to history.

A good place to start if your ancestor died in the U.S. is the List of disasters in the United States by death toll on Wikipedia. The page lists many notable disasters and may be sorted by year, type and location. It also provides links to articles explaining each disaster in detail.

As I browsed the list I found the location of Connellsville, Pennsylvania and an article about the 1903 Connellsville train wreck.

Can historic events tell you what became of your ancestor?

I know that many people from one of my ancestral Italian hometowns worked for the railroad in Connellsville, and it is quite possible that my great grandfather Francesco Iamarino worked there at that time. At the bottom of the Wikipedia article I followed a source link, and there was a list of the dead.

While carrying out my obsessively exhaustive documentation of every vital record from my grandfather Leone's hometown of Baselice between 1809 and 1860, I noticed that some years the death toll was much higher than others. For example, in this town of roughly 2,000 people, about 100 would die each year. But some years that number spiked above 200. This makes me wonder about epidemics and earthquakes.

On the BBC website I found an article titled History of deadly earthquakes. It lists earthquakes worldwide from 1906 through 2016. Using Wikipedia again I found a List of earthquakes in Italy. Long ago an Italian historian sent me a list of 41 people who died in my grandfather Iamarino's town of Colle Sannita. The list was dated 26 July 1805. On the Wikipedia page I see that there was an earthquake in Molise on 26 July 1805. On the 1805 Molise earthquake page is a list of towns, and it says that 44 people died in Colle Sannita.

Try to use local resources to learn about disasters. A transcription of a local Connellsville, Pennsylvania newspaper provided the names of the victims of the 1903 train wreck. And it was local records that produced the names of the Colle Sannita residents killed in the 1805 earthquake. For my own family, it took a trip to the New York City Municipal Archives to see the death certificate and cause of death for many of my relatives.

Given enough time, more and more things will be digitized. Given enough genealogical networking, more and more things will be shared to the benefit of us all. Be sure to investigate what natural or man-made disasters happened where your ancestors lived.

What Language Barrier?

I've spent countless hours harvesting information from old Italian vital records. It was a little intimidating at first, but once I became comfortable with the most important genealogical words—and completely memorized my numbers—I stopped seeing these documents as being written in a foreign language. To me they are fairly straightforward documents filled with valuable facts.

1804 Italian death record. No big thang.

You can achieve this familiarity with foreign languages, too. You can learn the keywords you need to identify in a foreign document. And once you look at enough documents to get comfortable with the strange, archaic handwriting, you'll be fine.

Here are several free wiki entries from FamilySearch.org to help you get accustomed to genealogical words in the language of your ancestors:

• Czech
• Danish
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Italian
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Russian (this is a downloadable PDF)
• Spanish
• …and don't forget the importance of Latin

Find more languages by clicking the map on this FamilySearch page: https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Main_Page

There is much more country-specific information available in the wiki, so if you don't see the language you want above, or if you need to understand how vital records work in another part of the world, start at the world map. My list above is very European focused because I did not find language help for African, Middle Eastern or East Asian countries. But there is plenty of critical information available about how records are kept, marriage practices, and more. Take advantage of it!

And speaking of foreign-language documents:

• Tips & Tools to Help You Translate Foreign Genealogy Records
• How to Read Names on Badly Written Vital Records
• You Can Read Foreign-Language Genealogy Records

How to Find State-Specific Death Indexes and Records

DeathIndexes.com is a compilation of free and subscription resources for finding death records in each U.S. state. The website is owned and maintained by Joe Beine.

I didn't expect her to have an obituary.

If you don't have a subscription to ancestry.com or a membership with another genealogy website, Joe Beine's lists can quickly help you discover exactly the resource you need to locate information on a particular relative. Each link tells you up front whether it takes you to a site that requires payment or provides free access.

Within the individual state pages, links are sorted for you by county. I decided to dive in and look for members of a particular family that lived in Steuben County, New York, and found a link to a website I'd never seen before. In one click, I downloaded a PDF that gave me the names, birth and death years, and cemetery name for every Caruso who died between 1912 and 2016 in that county.

Then I thought about my sister-in-law's distant relatives who lived and died in Broward County, Florida. I found another website I'd never seen before that is the searchable database of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Broward County. I'll need that when I go back to verify all the facts I have about her ancestors.

My favorite find, and I've barely scratched the surface, is a database of the local newspaper where my paternal grandmother's parents lived. A search for the last name Iamarino yielded one result: my great grandmother, Maria Rosa Caruso Iamarino. Apparently they published her obituary, which is a surprise to me. I can see the publication date, the page and column. I think I need to go to their local library to see the obituary, but I am happy to know it exists.

DeathIndexes.com also features a Genealogy Records & Resources link to several excellent resources for vital records.

If you have not yet explored this site, I highly recommend you do.

What To Do When You Have No Birth or Death Record

I've made it clear in my welcome message that I never trust someone else's family tree if they don't show their sources and I can't reproduce their facts. So even if I'm given facts by someone I trust, I will still do my due diligence and search for factual proof.

A good resource to use when you don't have access to someone's birth or death record is the Find A Grave website. If you're lucky, you may get to see an image of the headstone with full birth and death dates. A genealogist's giddy dream!

Here's an example of a situation where I wanted to verify the birth and death dates I'd been given for one relative, but you can also try this not when you're trying to prove someone else's work, but when you're trying to fill in missing dates.

I knew from census records that this man lived in Cleveland, Ohio and was alive in 1940. So I used the search form in Find A Grave to find an Edward Byrne who was born after 1855 and died after 1940 in Cleveland.

The search yielded five Edward Byrnes, but as my yellow highlighting shows, only two are buried in Cleveland. Focusing on those two, I see one was born in 1863 and died in 1941—that fits. The other, as it happens, is the son of the man I'm looking for.

When I click his name, I am not given an image of his headstone, but there are several facts recorded by someone I do not know. Once again, it's up to me to determine how many of these facts are trustworthy. But there is truly an abundance of facts, and I'm grateful for that.

I know from the census forms I've collected that he was a grocer. That fits. I know his street address in 1940. That fits. I have the names of many of his relatives, and I see them listed here. Short of seeing his birth and death certificates myself, this looks like credible data. And based on this information, I could attempt to purchase a copy of either his birth or death record from the state of Ohio.

Remember, the more resources you use to corroborate the facts about someone in your tree, the stronger your tree will be.

This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name

Somewhere along my genealogical travels I found out that my great grandmother's mother—who never came to America—was named Maria Luigia. But I didn't know her last name. I did a little research to see if Luigia was her last name, but it was inconclusive.

Flash forward several years as Ancestry.com's resources continue to grow and grow. Now there is a resource called "U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1935-2007" which the ancestry.com website describes as picking up where the Social Security Death Index leaves off. If you're lucky enough to find an ancestor in this collection, you may learn things like:

• Their father's name.
• Their mother's maiden name.
• A woman's married name.
• Their date and place of birth.

I happened to find the record for my great grandmother's brother, Giuseppe (Joseph) Caruso, and it featured one heck of a bad transcription for his place of birth (there are no images available). For his mother's name it said Maria L. Gilardo. Another sibling's record listed their mother's last name as something very not-Italian, like Girandiu. I also discovered the actual death certificate for Joseph Caruso, which Americanized his mother's last name to Gerard.

So, weighing all of these alternatives, I felt the most logical last name was Girardi (like Joe Girardi, the New York Yankees' manager). I did some research to find out if anyone named Girardi had come to America from their town of Pescolamazza, and they had.

This was enough to make me about 85% confident that I had the correct name.

Then I discovered the unbelievably valuable (to any descendant of someone from the Province of Benevento, Italy) Benevento State Archives. There I managed to find the actual 1840 birth record for my great great grandmother, Maria Luigia Girardi.

The moral of this story is to keep checking for new resources that can help you fortify your family tree.

1840 birth record of my 2nd great grandmother, Maria Luigia Girardi.

Where Have You Been All My Life?

When you've been at this crazy business of genealogy as long as I have, the past years of research seem to melt away. Those countless hours of searching, gathering and documenting are a blur because you're so focused on what you need to find next.

As a long-time subscriber to ancestry.com, I'm always pleased to see new collections added to the mix. Often when I thought I had every possible document there was to find for a specific ancestor, a new collection of documents becomes available, and I've got to gather the new bits of information, too. That's why I keep renewing my subscription.

If you subscribe to any genealogy sites, or if you use free sites like FamilySearch.org, it's important to keep going back to see what new tools and records they've made available.

The other day I saw a post in a genealogy forum on LinkedIn that mentioned the many treasures available for genealogists with family from the Benevento province of Italy. Well, lucky me. Every branch of my family comes from the Benevento province. The post included a link to the State Archives of Benvento. I feel sure I have visited this site in the past, but now its collection of vital records is astounding!

In pretty short order (despite the intense slowness of the website) I found the town birth record for my maternal grandfather and his brother, my paternal grandfather and his father, and my paternal grandmother's parents and one set of her grandparents.

That last one was a true miracle. It was only in the last few weeks that I discovered the maiden name of my paternal grandmother's (the Maria Rosa Caruso I've written about a few times) mother. It was Girardi, and I first found it misspelled in two or three new Social Security Applications Claims records on ancestry.com. I felt sure that the bad transcription of the name was really Girardi. Then I found a death record for Maria Rosa Caruso's brother Giuseppe. There I saw his mother's name in handwriting, but it had been Americanized to Gerard.

But last night I found my Maria Luigia Girardi's original birth record in the Benevento State Archives and lo and behold! I learned her parents' names! Now I have a brand new last name to add to my wildly long list: DiNigris. And equally exciting and mind-blowing, I discovered that Maria Rosa Caruso had a twin brother. There were a few twins in that branch of the family, so it's very interesting to trace it back to my great grandmother—especially when she did not pass down that trait.

So the lessons here are (a) you're never finished with this hobby, and (b) keep revisiting your sources to find out what's new.