How to Get Useful Answers to Your Genealogy Questions

I'm a long-time user of the Microsoft Bing search engine rather than Google. Bing is promoting its AI Chat feature to give you an easy-to-read summary of your search results.

I decided to enter some genealogy questions into the chatbot (now called Microsoft Copilot). It summarizes it answers from several sources, which it cites so you can dive deeper into the answers.

Question 1

First I asked a question that I know is a mystery to many researchers of Italian family history. I asked, "How long are bodies kept buried in an Italian cemetery?" Many people expect to go to Italy and find all their ancestors in the cemetery of their hometown. They're disappointed when they get there.

The chatbot answered:

In Italy, the length of time a body is kept buried in a cemetery depends on the type of burial. If the deceased is buried in an individual tomb, the plot can be leased for between 10 and 50 years, after which the lease can be renewed. If the deceased is buried in a communal burial ground, the remains are exhumed after only ten years. If the municipality needs space, after 20 years from the burial, the corpse can be exhumed, and the remains are put in a smaller box and then into a recess in the wall or in the family tomb, if some member of the family requests it; otherwise, the remains are put in the ossuary.

Follow-up question: "What is an ossuary?"

Answer: An ossuary is a container or room in which the bones of dead people are placed. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary. The word “ossuary” comes from the Latin word “ossuarium,” which means “a container for bones”.

I learned about this on my trips to my ancestral hometowns. The cemetery keeps a small footprint because they continually reduce each body's space. And the ossuary room in my maternal grandfather's hometown is quite a sight to see!

Ask detailed genealogy questions, and a chatbot gives you the results in a conversational style.

Question 2

Next I asked, "What are the child-naming customs in different countries?" The answer was long and didn't cover any countries I can use. It's better to make your question more specific. So I asked, "What are the child-naming customs in Latin countries?"

The chatbot answered:

Naming a child is a special moment for parents, and it can be influenced by various factors such as religion, culture, and family traditions. Here are some examples of child-naming customs from Latin countries:

• Argentina: In Argentina, it is common for children to take their father’s surname as their last name. However, it is not uncommon for children to have both their mother’s and father’s surnames.
• Brazil: In Brazil, it is common for children to have two given names, with the first name being the most important. The second name is often the mother’s maiden name or the father’s surname.
• Chile: In Chile, children are given two surnames, the father’s surname followed by the mother’s surname. It is also common for children to have two given names.
• Colombia: In Colombia, children are given two surnames, the father’s surname followed by the mother’s surname. It is also common for children to have two given names.
• Mexico: In Mexico, children are given two surnames, the father’s surname followed by the mother’s surname. It is also common for children to have two given names.
• Peru: In Peru, children are given two surnames, the father’s surname followed by the mother’s surname. It is also common for children to have two given names.

The part I wanted to confirm, because I was never sure, is that double last names from these countries are typically the father's last name then the mother's last name.

Question 3

A friend mentioned that a woman in her family tree became a widow, and then married her father-in-law. I wondered if that made their child the man's daughter and granddaughter, but not by blood, of course.

So I asked the chatbot a related question, "Are first cousins allowed to marry?"

In the United States, 19 states say, "Sure! Go ahead," while a few make it a criminal offense. Since I deal in Italian research, I was more interested in the second part of the chatbot's answer:

In general, the Catholic Church does not allow first cousins to marry. According to canon 1091.2, marriages are invalid up to and including the fourth degree. First cousins, therefore, cannot marry in the Church.

Digging a little deeper, I found that "the fourth degree" refers to first cousins. Now I'm wondering if I have anyone in my tree who somehow got around that rule.

Then, for the sake of this article, I asked, "Is chat bot one word or two?" It's one: chatbot.

Your Turn

I intend to keep this method in mind for future genealogy questions. What questions would you like to ask the chatbot? Do you have cultural questions about your ancestors' countries? Do you suspect an illness swept through their town during certain years? Are you curious about their marriage customs?

Leave a comment with questions you found helpful to your understanding of the people in your family tree.

Surprising Free Finds from Google Books

Long-time reader of this blog, Suzanne, found two books that mention my great uncle. She had no luck on Newspapers.com, but she found him when she searched Google Books.

She encouraged me to pick up and continue the search. Two legal briefs help explain how my immigrant uncle and my great grandfather came to own a building. They were leasing it in 1905 from a brewing company—a company that may have had some bad lawyers. My ancestors parlayed this lease into ownership of the building where my mom was born.

What else might I find on Google Books? As usual, I didn't have much luck in searching for the names of my ancestors. Changing tactics, I searched for the names of my ancestral Italian hometowns. I searched for Santa Paolina, a small town in southern Italy, and I made a surprising discovery.

Imagine finding this one-of-a-kind biography of your ancestor.

In my family tree is the 1873 birth record for my 2nd cousin 4 times removed, Fioravanti Ricciardelli. His great grandfather, Emanuele Ricciardelli, is my 5th great grandfather. One search result in Google Books is "History of the Municipalities of Hudson County, New Jersey," written by Daniel Van Winkle in 1924. This isn't what I expected when searching for my town.

The book details the lives of Hudson County's notable citizens, including my cousin Fioravanti. Thanks to the page-and-a-quarter devoted to my cousin, I learned:

• His father, also named Emanuele Ricciardelli, was a "Red Shirt" who fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi for Italy's freedom.
• I knew from vital records that Emanuele and his wife had only 4 children in Santa Paolina. Now I know why. The book says the family moved to another town that's a half hour away by modern transportation. That's unexpected. They may have had more children in their new town.
• My cousin Fioravanti was an accomplished musician, business owner, and inventor.
• In America, he married a distant cousin from Santa Paolina, also named Ricciardelli. They had 9 children in New Jersey.
• The book says Fioravanti raised and educated all his siblings.

This is the type of detail I never get to learn about my Italian relatives. Even if I had discovered the family in U.S. documents, they wouldn't give me this much detail. Without this book, this family was a dead end. What a wonderful find!

Start Your Google Books Search

To search Google Books, go to google.com and start a search as usual. Then click "Books" below the search box. Note: You may have to click the word "More" before you see the "Books" option. Next, for more satisfying results, click the words "Any view" and choose "Preview and full view." Now you can fully explore the best results. If you find something you want, you may be able to download the book as a PDF. Note: You can save a step by going straight to https://books.google.com.

With this Google Books search, I can learn more about the WWI battle that almost killed my grandfather. What can you find?

Get creative with your searches. You never know what you'll find. Think about:

• People and Places. Try family and town names from your family tree. I found an 1888 Italian book about the history of my ancestral hometowns. It tells me their populations at the time.
• Historical Events. Which wars or other important events had an impact on your family? I'll search for the World War I battle where they captured my grandfather and imprisoned him for a year.
• Maps. I'd love to find a book with old maps of my towns of interest. The closest I came is a book with a folded-up map in the back. They didn't scan the unfolded map!
• Workplaces. Search for the company where your ancestor worked. What was happening when your relative worked there?

Devote one hour to Google Books and you'll understand more about your ancestors' lives. It's a massive resource. Thank you to Suzanne for reminding me to give it more attention.

And speaking of searching:

• Searching for the Missing Link in Your Family Tree
• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research
• How to Avoid Searching for Non-Existent Genealogy Records

How to Sharpen Your DNA Detective Skills

How inspiring was "The Genetic Detective" TV series featuring CeCe Moore? It's fascinating to see her piece together an unknown person's family. In practically no time, she finds enough family tree evidence to identify the DNA donor.

While CeCe's detective work inspired me, it also confounded me. Why can't I get anywhere with the matches I find on GEDmatch?

Then I remembered…people upload their DNA to GEDmatch. That means they tested somewhere else. Maybe they're using the same name or handle on their original testing site. I found someone that way before. First I discovered him on GEDmatch, and then I realized he was my DNA match on Ancestry.

Over the long weekend I had fun identifying a couple of DNA matches who'd been a mystery for a long time. I solved each one by finding one familiar last name in their family tree. That last name was from one of my grandfather's hometowns in Italy. In the end, I pieced together their families to find a connection to myself.

I had another match I really wanted to crack. All I had was her photo and her handle, which I figured was some version of her name. She's one of those pesky DNA matches with a connection to both my parents.

Start with a Simple Search

A web search for her handle found her right away! There I saw the same photo of her and her full name. Returning to Ancestry.com, I discovered her last name might not be Italian. And, in fact, it was her married name. Thanks to New York City marriage indexes on Ancestry, I learned her maiden name, her birth date, and her place of birth.

Find Their Current Connections

I went to Facebook, as Cece Moore would do. Very little of my DNA match's page was public, but I made a big discovery. A photo of her and her mother had a comment from someone with a familiar last name. This person had a tree on Ancestry. I'd been looking at it a bit earlier.

Before long, I learned the names, birth dates, and birth places of this DNA match's parents and 2 older siblings. Then I learned the names of her father's parents. Finally, I could take this research back into Italian vital records.

That was the end of the Ancestry document trail. But I got what I needed. Her father's family comes from a town neighboring my ancestral hometowns. I needed to find her grandparents' birth records. Then I'd be able to build out their family trees until they connect to mine.

I had to marvel at what had happened so far. I went from knowing nothing about her to knowing very specific details. And it all happened in a few minutes.

Dig Into Their Ancestors' Past

With a kick-start from this match's relative's family tree, I found her great grandfather's birth record. The year before it, I found his parents' marriage records. And guess what? The 1857 bride was born in my grandfather's hometown. In fact, she and her whole family are in my family tree already.

I knew if I went back a generation or two, I'd find a connection to my family tree. And I did!

I did it! I found this mystery DNA's connection to my mom's side of the family fast enough to please the likes of CeCe Moore. I may know more about her ancestry than my DNA match does.

I suppose some of you are freaking out about the lack of privacy. We all leave a digital footprint and a paper trail. As a genealogy fan, aren't you glad your ancestors left behind a paper trail for you to follow?

I have no intention of reaching out to this DNA match. Or to many of the very-distant matches I've identified. I only want to use their ancestral clues to beef up my family tree. How else would I have learned that a teenage girl from Baselice, whose father died before she was born, married a man in another town in 1857?

I'm no crime solver, but I'm pretty damned happy with my genealogy detective skills today. Isn't it time to revisit your unsolved DNA matches?

4 Tips for Finding a Missing Census Record

These 4 tips will come in handy when you can't find that census.

Once in a while—but very rarely—I look at someone else's family tree research. My policy is to ignore hints and not look at other trees. Here's a situation where I will break my policy.

Today I wanted to write about 3 tips for finding a missing census for someone in your family tree. I had a case recently that seemed like a great example to share.

I was researching a family with a head of household named Costanzo delGrosso. I found him and his family living in Galeton, Pennsylvania, in 1930. His name was mistakenly written as Costanza DelGross, but it was him. Costanzo lived at 86 Germania Street. I noticed his neighbors' last names were Sollo, Greco, and Esgro.

Three families lived next to mine in 1930 and 1940. Finding them in 1920 led to my family.

Then I found Costanzo and his family in 1940. He still lived at 86 Germania Street. His neighbors were still named Sollo, Greco, and Esgro.

But I could not find Costanzo and family in the 1920 census. I had immigration records showing his family was in the U.S. since 1913.

Where were they hiding in the 1920 census?

Here are the tips I used to find that missing census.

Tip #1. Search for their address in the missing year.

The delGrosso family was at 86 Germania Street in 1930 and 1940. It's logical to search for them at the same address in 1920. But they weren't there. When this happens, be sure to check houses and streets that are close to the address you want.

Tip #2. Search for their neighbors in the missing year.

Costanzo's neighbors were the same in 1930 and 1940. Why not search for them in 1920 and look at the households nearby?

The right hint can set you in the right direction and open up the floodgates.

These tips led me to Costanzo and his family. They were a census sheet away from their future neighbors, and a block away from their future address. The problem was, Costanzo delGrosso's name in the 1920 census is written (and indexed) as Grosso Delroso. Grosso Delroso!

Most of his family's names are also recorded a bit differently in 1920 than they are in later years:

• Lucy becomes Lucia in 1930 and Lucie in 1940
• Libera becomes Labra in 1930 and Lea in 1940
• Mauro becomes Morris in 1930
• Deny becomes Daniel in 1930 and 1940

So keep your eyes and your mind open to different spellings.

While I found the missing census by searching for a neighbor, this brings me to another search tip.

Tip #3. Search for family members by their first names only.

How someone recorded Costanzo delGrosso as Grosso Delroso is beyond me. But did you know you can leave out the last name from a search and use first names to find the family?

Now I had 3 tips to share with you for finding a missing census. So I set out to apply these tips to Victor Abbate whose 1940 census is missing. And that led to…

Tip #4. Consult another family tree for leads.

As I said at the top, I usually ignore anyone else's family tree research. But today I got lucky.

I was trying to find Victor after he'd married and moved out of his father's home in Brooklyn, New York.

A family tree search result caught my eye. The owner of the tree knew Victor's exact birth date. All I knew was 1900. She had his parents' names as Frank and Mary. I had Francesco and Mary, so that's a match. And she had his proper name as William Vito Abbate. Did she see his birth certificate? I showed you how the delGrosso family's names changed from census to census. Is that how William Vito became Victor?

Besides the 1920 census, this family tree led me to the missing 1925 New York State census where "Victor" is "William". It led me to their 1915 New York State census where he's called "Willie"! And it led me to their 1905 New York State census where he's listed as "Victo". All the other facts fit. There's no doubt this is the right family.

I'm not taking any fact or document directly from this family tree. Instead, the tree pointed me to all the original documents I was missing. Now I know who "Victor" he married, who his children were, when he died, and where he's buried.

Will every hint from a family tree be this useful? No. But I want you to be open to using other trees as leads. Not as fact, but as leads for your research.

In 2018 I had a genealogy research goal of finding every missing census I'd listed in my document tracker. There were some I couldn't find—like Victor Abbate in 1940. With these 4 tips, I'm ready to take another look for them.

Which of your families have missing census sheets?

Make Your Digital Genealogy Documents Searchable

Who needs a search engine? Your computer is a search engine!

I'm constantly bouncing all around in my genealogy research. One day a person with my last name mentions their grandparents' birth dates. Another day a DNA match reaches out to me looking for our shared ancestors.

I need a quicker way to search for these connections.

One of my genealogy goals this year is to enter the details from thousands of Italian vital records into a spreadsheet. Then I can use Excel to search for a particular man's name and find the one who's married to the right woman. Or I can find all the babies born to a particular couple.

I've done a chunk of that work, but it's going to take years to complete.

Luckily, I found a faster method I can use in the meantime. Now that I've somehow become a "morning person", I'm using the evenings for an easier genealogy task. It's not exactly a no-brainer, but it is simple. And the benefits are really big.

This can apply to you, too, even if you don't have a huge collection of vital records on your computer.

Don't worry where you filed that document. Your computer knows where it is.

Whenever you're not quite up to serious family tree research, but you have your hands free, you can do this, too.

Rename your digital genealogy files to include the name(s) of the primary person.

I'll bet you've done that with census sheets, ship manifests, and other documents.

But did you realize you can search for any and all of a particular person's files on your computer at once?

This will really help you when you need to:

• answer a question from a new possible relative
• find the marriage record for a new person you added to your family tree
• figure out if the "Pasquale Iamarino" in this document is the same as the one in that document

I was especially happy to see how smart the search function can be. For instance, if I search for "Mary Murphy", but her full name is "Mary Jane Murphy", I'll still find her.

If I had any doubt about the value of renaming my files, one search washes all doubt away.

To save tons of time on future document searches, I've been renaming files like a madwoman.

At night, with the Yankee game on TV, I open my collection of Italian vital records. I've renamed every marriage record image from 1816–1860 to include the names of the bride and groom.

That means I can search at the town-folder level to find a marriage between any particular couple. A search for "Antonio Martuccio Maria Maddalena Paolucci" delivers their 1849 marriage record. Instantly!

The benefits are so important that I'm excited to rename more and more files. Plus, doing this makes me an expert on the names that come from each town. While renaming one file I thought to myself, "the groom must be from my other grandfather's town". And I was right.

Is your genealogy document collection named so it's searchable?

3 Tricks for Better Genealogy Search Results

When your family won't turn up, try some tricky searches.

How many times have you searched for your relative in a set of documents and found nothing? Or maybe you found a ton of results that looked like junk to you.

There's a good chance that the search results are bad because the transcription was bad. Did the volunteer transcriber have trouble reading the bad handwriting? Did they enter dramatically wrong data into the system?

Your search is doomed to fail, right? Not necessarily.

If you use partial searches, related searches and detailed searches, you may find your family.

1. Partial searches

It was common for our ancestors to have a first name and a middle name. But how were they identified on the census form? Did the person providing the information know them by their middle name only? Or by an adopted name in their new country?

Try leaving their first name out of your search completely. Fill in their age and place of birth, but use only their last name.

Try the opposite, too. I had more luck finding my grandfather on a census with only his first name of Adam. The census-taker wrote his last name in a way I hadn't expected.

Simplify your search. Toss out the extras, and your results may improve.

2. Related searches

When a family is tough to find, look at the kids. The particular combination of children's names in this family can be the key to finding them.

Do a search that includes all the kids' names. Leave off the last name and let the search focus on finding those kids together.

You can also try using the husband and wife's first names only. That combination may be what does the job.

3. Detailed searches

I'm having trouble finding my great grandfather's naturalization papers. His name often causes me problems. His given name was Pasquale Iamarino, but on some documents he is Patsy Marino. Or a combination of those names.

So I searched using his exact birth date. I didn't find him. I also searched using his birth year and town of birth, but no name.

His naturalization isn't showing up yet. But, I once found his wife's brothers on ship manifests by searching for their last name and town of birth only.

Here's an example using Pasquale Iamarino. I did a general search of all categories on Ancestry.com. I entered only his last name, his town of origin and his exact year of birth.

The results were terrific. In fact, they include one new result that I never expected to find. It's the claim ID for his railroad retirement pension. I'll have to buy a copy of it from the National Archives at Atlanta (why there?), but this is brand new information.

So many misspellings, but the results are all for my great grandfather.

My dad says Pasquale may have had black lung disease from years of cleaning out the furnace of coal-burning train engines. He had to retire early on disability. This pension claim may tell me a lot more about what happened to him.

Also, the Suggested Records in the right column of my Ancestry.com results are very impressive! Despite all the spelling variations, that exact birth year seems to have done wonders for my search. All those records belong to my great grandfather.

The point is to experiment. Don't give up if the results don't look promising. All these genealogical records are a gigantic database. You may need to slice and dice that database to get past bad transcriptions and misspellings.

Give it a try the very next time you don't get the results you want. Do a partial search, add in related names, or toss out the names and plug in specific facts.

Working on your family tree is a big puzzle. Clever searches are yet another piece of the puzzle.

Don't get frustrated. Get clever.

And speaking of searching:

• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research
• Find Those Stubborn Genealogy Documents with Creative Searches
• 3 Ways to Find Your Ancestors in a Huge Pile of Documents

Find Those Stubborn Genealogy Documents with Creative Searches

When you're researching your family tree and trying to find a family's missing document, what do you do?

You probably go to your favorite genealogy website and enter as much information as you know about the family. Everyone's full names, when and where they were born, and where you think they lived at the time.

But what if your search finds nothing?

Try using no last name for your search.

You could try the "less is more" approach. Go against your instincts and leave out key information. This can help you get past the census taker or the document indexer's errors.

Last night I was trying to find the 1940 census record for a particular family. I'd already found plenty of other documents for them. I had the names and approximate birth years for the parents and all the children. And I knew they lived in the Bronx.

I was sure a search for a family with these eight specific names had to get me the results I wanted. But no.

This is the time to try a creative search. Use several combinations of information until you find your document. Try searching with:

• No last name.
• No first name for the head of household.
• No birth year for the head of household.
• No place of birth for the head of household.
• No spouse's name.
• Fewer kids names.

When I couldn't find the Moylan family in the Bronx in 1940, I let their first names be the main search factor. I searched for them with no last name.

And it worked! I found a family with the correct first names living in the Bronx. Somehow the census taker wrote down the wife's maiden name instead of the family name. So the entire group was wrongly listed as Cunningham, and indexed as Cunningham.

Right people, wrong last name! Did Mary forget she was married? :-)

I was sure I had the right family. Yes, I knew the wife's maiden name was Cunningham. But even if I didn't, I had a match on eight first names, and everyone's age and place of birth.

This search technique won't locate all your missing documents, but keep it in mind.

Use a "less is more" search and you may find more and more of those missing genealogy treasures.

You may also enjoy:

• What To Do When Your Last Name Is So Common
• How to Avoid Searching for Non-Existent Genealogy Records
• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research

Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research

I admit it. What I'm about to share with you is common knowledge.

But common knowledge is often forgotten knowledge.

Many of us sneak in some quick family tree research time here and there, whenever we can. We're not focused on it as if it were our full-time job. (I joke, of course. Who's concentrating on their jobs?)

Our research habits may have gotten a little sloppy. Maybe we need to get back to basics.

Notice there's no last name in this search.

With that in mind, today I decided to track down some census records I simply couldn't find in the past. I used a few tried-and-true techniques and started racking up the wins. (See How To Squeeze Everything Out of the Census.)

Now I'm psyched for more! How many missing census forms can I find in one sitting? And do I really have to go to work tomorrow?

Here's what I did. You can do the same.

My maiden name is not easy for anyone to pronounce or spell, so I never expect the transcription to say "Iamarino".

No problem. Here are three techniques that helped me successfully locate a census for two Iamarino families:

1. Do a wild card search. I tried *amarino and ?amarino to locate nearly correct spellings.
2. Search for a family member instead. When my search for the head of household didn't work, I tried searching for his son Bernard—not as common a name as Peter.
3. Remove the last name completely. This did the trick! I had a family of four named Peter, Marie, Joseph and Bernard. That combination, with no last name, brought up the long-missing 1940 census record. "Iamarino" had been transcribed as "Lamarine".

I found them! Cousin Bernie was the key.

I recommend looking at your family tree and starting close to yourself. Fan out until you identify a family that's missing some census years. Then go to your favorite census search engine, whether it's ancestry.com, familysearch.org, or anywhere else.

Try various combinations of the three techniques above to see if you can find that missing census form.

If you find one, you won't be able to stop. If you fail a couple of times, pick a different branch and try again.

Happy hunting!

Case Study on "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Here's a lesson that supports my earlier post, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" I have one branch of my family where the information was pretty scant. In fact, I never knew my great grandmother's maiden name was Caruso until the eve of my first trip to Italy—the trip that sparked my interest in genealogy. Later I heard from a distant cousin named Michael who was very interested in the Caruso family tree and shared a great deal of first-hand information with me.

As with any information I receive without documentation, I set about proving all of the facts Michael had shared with me, and in doing so, I learned quite a bit more facts.

My great grandmother, Maria Rosa Caruso, had at least four older brothers, all of whom came to upstate New York in the very early 1900s. Giuseppe came here first because each of this brothers' ship manifests says they were joining their brother Giuseppe at 827-829 Canal Street, Elmira, New York.

Maria Rosa's ship manifest was the hardest to find, and even after finding it, I was not sure it was the right Maria Rosa Caruso for quite some time. The manifest has some facts that are correct for her (born in 1880 or 1881 in Pescolamazza, and coming to join her brother Giuseppe), but it also has facts that do not work.

The manifest says she was married as of July 1906, but that doesn't work because I have her November 1906 marriage certificate from Hornell, New York. It also says her final destination is Addison, New York. While that is not terribly far from Elmira, or even Cameron, New York, which is another place her brother Giuseppe lived, I have no facts putting any members of this Caruso family in Addison. There is an address beneath her brother Giuseppe's name, but it appears to say "236 Bore". I can't make anything out of that.

I kept returning to this 1906 ship manifest and finally noticed something very important. Where the manifest shows an "m" for married, in much lighter ink there is an "s" for single overwriting the "m". (See the far-right side of the image.) So it was an error.

That left me with the troubling town of Addison. But in a web search today I discovered that Addison was the end of a particular railroad line that connected with the New York Central Railroad. So there is a good possibility that Maria Rosa had her ticket from New York City to Addison and then had to get on the Erie Railroad to get to her brother. At that time, Giuseppe lived in Cameron, New York, on a street parallel to the railroad tracks where he worked. I can see a railroad line on Bing Maps that runs from Addison to Cameron. And on her marriage certificate, Maria Rosa lists her residence as Cameron.

Now I feel as if the 1906 ship manifest finally makes sense. And this illustrates how important it is to gather as many provable facts as possible about your ancestor and their entire family.