3 Important Tips for Great Genealogy Source Citations

Two weeks ago I wrote about "5 Ways to Find Loose Ends in Your Family Tree." Since then I've been having fun doing just that. I sorted the people in my family tree by birth date and focused on anyone with an incomplete birth date. (For example, 1870 instead of 12 Mar 1870.) Then I searched for the missing birth record for each person.

Many of these people were not born in my ancestral hometowns, which explains the missing date. Luckily, I often had evidence to suggest which town they came from. A marriage record or banns can include the hometown of the other spouse. In other cases, I used the Cognomix website to see which nearby town this person's last name may have come from.

To my joy and amazement, I've been having fantastic luck tracking these people down! While it would be easy to get carried away and forget about source citations, I know better. The very first thing I do when I find one of these birth records is capture the URL. In my case, they all come from the Italian Antenati website. The date, town, and URL are all I need to create a source citation.

So let's talk about source citations. You don't want to get into a situation where you have to re-create your search in order to get the details for a citation. It's far more efficient to make sure you do it in the moment.

Here are your 3 important tips for great source citations:

Your family tree source citations don't have to be a dreaded chore. Follow these 3 tips to firm up your genealogy research.

1. Follow a Document-Handling Routine

I know what it's like to find a set of documents that will add so many details to your family tree. You're so excited that you want to jump ahead and find the next document. But slow down! Follow a process for each new document you find—when you find it—and you will reap the benefits.

When you read through my 6-step document-handling routine, you may feel overwhelmed. But once it becomes second nature, you won't give it another thought. The benefits outweigh the burden, and this will be clear to you, too.

Take a look at "Step-by-Step Source Citations for Your Family Tree," follow the process, and you'll never have any regrets.

2. Develop a Format and Stick to It

A long time ago I wrote about my super-simple format for source citations. But the minute I needed to locate a document online that I downloaded long ago, I saw the problem with this format. I knew my citations needed more detail.

Then my Family Tree Maker file became corrupted, wrecking my existing citations. So I began the process of building improved source citations. To see what goes into this process, please read "Take the Time to Improve the Sources in Your Family Tree."

I believe consistency is crucial to a high-quality family tree. To see what I mean, read "Add Consistency to Your Source Citations." And when you read it, know that my family tree just topped 78,000 people.

3. Seek Out More Reliable Sources

Many times I find that family trees built on Ancestry.com have a fact that I could use in my tree. But when I look at their source, it's the generic "Ancestry Family Trees." This isn't a reliable source. And neither are the details given to me by my cousin Joseph, despite his incredible memory.

I wanted to improve upon word-of-mouth or second-hand sources.

It's important to your family tree that you:

• "Trade Up to Better Family History Sources" and
• "Choosing and Using the Most Reliable Sources."

An image of Grandpa's death certificate is more reliable than my memory of that day. The middle name on an image of Grandma's birth record is more reliable than what she claimed was her middle name. Sometimes all it takes to get better sources is a new search.

I hope you'll take these processes to heart and create source citations that will stand the test of time. Your family tree is your legacy. It will be out there after you're gone. Sure, some URLs may not work in the future. But the details you've recorded will point future genealogists to the source. Let's all do our best genealogy work.

Add Consistency to Your Source Citations

On Friday I finished an ambitious family tree project I started in January. I've been working at it nearly every day, and it was worth it. I've truly fortified my family tree. (See "Take the Time to Improve the Sources in Your Family Tree.")

I reviewed and perfected every single source citation in my enormous family tree! (If you don't have 57,125 people in your tree, you can do this in a lot less time.) The project's two goals were to:

1. Use a consistent style for each type of source citation. I started building my family tree about 20 years ago, so the older citations had almost no detail. It took me a while to develop my style.
2. Fix a problem that was happening behind my back. My last laptop was a nightmare. I blame it for most of my failed syncs between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com. Those failures were splitting and duplicating my citations. Normally I'll create a citation and share it among all the appropriate family members' facts. But the failed syncs split the citation into 10 citations for 10 family members. This bulked my tree's file size up to 5 gigabytes. It would take forever to save, to back up, to compact, and to store away.

At the end of this project, I cut my tree's file size down to a fifteenth of what it was. Instead of 5 gigabytes, it's 366 megabytes. On my new computer, my tree takes only a moment to save. And copying the file to a backup location takes a second. Plus, I know my source citations are "clean enough to eat off of."

An accident duplicated my source citations and fattened up my family tree file to 15 times its regular size. Here's how I fixed everything.

How to Make Your Citations Shine

Online-only Tree. If you build and store your family tree online only, your goal is to add citations where there are none. You can't access your citations in one place or share one well-crafted citation with a family.

See if you can access an alphabetical list of everyone in your tree. On Ancestry, go to your tree and click the Tree Search button at the top right. Choose List of all people. Now check each person to see who has facts without sources. Then find the sources! Keep a running list somewhere so you always know where you left off for the day. If your family tree is a normal size, this approach will work for you.

Desktop Tree. If you build your family tree using a desktop program, you can be a lot more efficient. You should have a tab that brings all your citations together, listing them by source title. In Family Tree Maker, I can see on the Sources tab that I have 327 source titles, 87 of which are individual towns in Italy. Apart from Italy, most of my sources are census and immigration records.

I began with the censuses, from the 1851 England Census through the 1950 U.S. Federal Census. For each one, I reviewed each source citation, one at a time. First I went to the head of household in my family tree and opened the census image. Then I found the original record online. (My sources are from Ancestry mostly, with a small number from FamilySearch.) I gathered the details I needed for my source citation. I shared the citation with every appropriate fact and deleted duplicates.

For each type of source, I have a format I stick to. In general, I copy the suggested citation from Ancestry or FamilySearch. (See "Choosing and Using the Most Reliable Sources.") Then I paste the entire citation, plus several more details, into the image's details. Now the image itself tells me where it came from.

With a census or ship manifest, I add the appropriate line number(s). For a census, I spell out the:

• enumeration district
• supervisor's district
• city ward
• sheet number
• image number online

Here's how the citation looks for a particular 1930 U.S. Federal Census:

• Source title: 1930 U.S. Federal Census
• Citation detail: Year: 1930; Census Place: Bronx, Bronx, New York; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 0070; FHL microfilm: 2341200
• Citation text: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
• Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
• Web address: https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/30164368:6224

And here's what I put in the image's details:

• lines 75-81; 1930 United States Federal Census; New York > Bronx > Bronx (Districts 1-250) > District 0070; enumeration district 3-70, supervisor's district 25, assembly district 2, block I, sheet 13B; image 25 of 35
• https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/30164368:6224
• Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Bronx, Bronx, New York; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 0070; FHL microfilm: 2341200
• Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
• Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

Note that the web address I record is not the URL of the image itself. It's the URL of the record on Ancestry. The record provides a link to the image, key details, source info, and a list of related documents for the same person.

By working on all the census citations one after another, you'll get very familiar with the format. You'll gain efficiency and consistency.

After all the census citations, I worked on a bunch of sources with small numbers of citations:

• birth and marriage records from Derbyshire, England
• immigration records from Hawaii and Florida
• death records from Ohio and Pennsylvania, and so on.

I wanted to pick off smaller sources before attacking my Ellis Island ship manifests. That's a trick I always play on myself. I'd rather complete 20 source titles than get stuck in a big one, knowing all those others are waiting for me.

Work on perfecting the source citations in your family tree one type at a time. You'll gain consistency and efficiency as you add value.

After removing duplicates, I have 246 Ellis Island citations in my family tree. I built each citation using the same, consistent format. As I explained above, I copy the suggested citation from Ancestry and add it, along with extra details, to the image.

But I still had my 87 different Italian towns' citations to fix. My Italian document images all come from the Antenati website. The website changed dramatically in 2021, leaving my citations with broken URLs. And the duplication in my tree was insane.

I worked my way through the towns saving the biggest ones for last. These were my closest ancestors' hometowns. My primary town, Colle Sannita, started with more than 7,700 citations, but I saw tons of duplicates. Now that it's all finished, I have 3,377 citations.

My citation format for the Italian vital records is designed to help you find it in the Italian archives or online. It looks like this:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1809 matrimoni, Colle Sannita, document 1, image 3 of 15 at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua1113932/5VNQENO

Here's the same format showing which variables you need to plug in:

From the PROVINCE State Archives, YEAR and DOCUMENT TYPE, TOWN, document #, image # of # at URL

Having done all this, my family tree is SO CLEAN! All my earliest sub-par work is now completely up to my high standards. And I know I'll never again go on a spree adding facts and documents without perfect citations.

I've been working full-throttle on my tree for a long time. I'm growing it by leaps and bounds as I explore the vital records from my ancestral hometowns. But that's been on pause all year for this clean-up project. Now my 57,125-person family tree will start growing like crazy again. But always with perfect source citations.

Choosing and Using the Most Reliable Sources

I'm so close to finishing the source citation clean-up project I started in January. It's been massive. My tree has more than 57,000 people, so I have tons of citations. And this review doesn't include my 1,000s of Italian vital record citations. I'll get to them next.

This review involves making sure each citation has:

• facts about the source
• specifics of the citation
• a link to the record, and
• an image if available.

Also, importantly, I'm making sure citations get shared, not duplicated. For example, bad Ancestry syncs caused one census citation for a family of 8 to split into 8 source citations. It was mayhem. That ends now.

I went through my source list alphabetically. But I saved a few big ones for last. They included the:

• Social Security Death Index (SSDI)
• Social Security Applications and Claims Index
• U.S. Public Records Indexes, volumes 1 and 2
• U.S. City Directories
• Find a Grave

For my U.S. Public Records Index source citations, my goal was to delete each one where I had a better source. Why? Because too many times I've seen this source say that a person's birthday was the 1st of the month when I knew better. These were estimates. They were definitely not reliable. So, if I had a reliable source for someone's birthday, I deleted their Public Records Index citation.

When you have a handful of sources telling you the same facts, do you need them all?

The Most Reliable Sources

Most of my family lived in New York City until the last several decades. That means I have access to many of their birth, marriage, and death records online. These are big clear images of the documents themselves. They haven't been available online for long, so I'm still finding and downloading more and more.

Actual vital record images are very reliable for dates and places. I know my maternal grandmother was born on 25 Oct 1899 even though her grave marker purposely says 1900. Names are subject to spelling errors and variations, but if you keep an open mind, you can gather what you need.

If I have an image of a relative's vital record, any other source that happens to be correct is a supporting source. And some supporting sources are more respected than others. I'm putting my faith in the birth record written on the day. If the SSDI happens to have the same date, it's a nice supporting source. But if a Public Records Index happens to be right too, do I need to cite it? Not if I have the real thing. It's not a reliable source, and it adds nothing.

U.S. WWI and WWII draft registration cards are well respected sources, too. Of course your relatives born in the late 1800s may not be 100% certain about their birth date. So mistakes can happen. But if you've got a young man born in the 1920s registering for the WWII draft, I'd bet he knows his birth date and won't make a mistake.

Post-1890s ship manifests can be reliable, especially for identifying hometowns. Naturalization papers often have a lot of correct dates and places. These are both great to have when they support your most reliable sources.

Make sure you're choosing the most reliable sources for your family tree facts.

Less Reliable Sources

My own birth is on Ancestry.com as an image of a New York City index page. It's not a very clear image, so the certificate number is open to interpretation. And I didn't have a first name on day one, so how could anyone be sure Female Iamarino is me?

Last year I ordered my paternal grandmother's upstate New York birth certificate. I hope I got the certificate number right. She's listed as Female Merino instead of Lucy Iamarino, which is why I couldn't find her for so long. I'm eager to get the certificate to finally confirm her birth date. If it's really the 10th, my dad had it wrong his whole life. And my son was born on her birthday, but we never knew it! My son is 30.

When you have a bad index image or a database of facts pulled from indexes, it can't compare to seeing the original document.

The 1900 U.S. census includes the month and year of each person's birth. How nice! But that's only as reliable as the person who talked to the census taker. A census is a reliable source for home addresses, but not much else. The censuses are fantastic supporting documents unless they have a glaring error.

When I went through my U.S. Public Records Index citations, I planned to keep them only if they were my only source for a name, birth date, or death date. I whittled the citations down from 132 to 37. Most of what I kept is the only source I can find for a contemporary person's date of birth.

The two domestic sources I have left to review are U.S. City Directories and Find a Grave. I love when I find a grave marker image or an obituary on Find a Grave, but I know they're not reliable. My grandmother's grave marker says she was born in 1900 because she hated that she was born in 1899. My aunt told me she requested it that way because otherwise "my mother would kill me." And an obituary writer may not have the facts straight.

I'm sure I'll keep every Find a Grave source citation because they're often the only way to know where someone is buried. But if they disagree with a birth or death date from a reliable source, I won't attach the Find a Grave citation to that fact.

You may not want to launch a months-long review of all your citations, so here's what you can do. Each time you're working on a particular family unit, take a good look at all your citations for them. Can you find a more reliable source for key facts? Is what you have a most reliable source, a solid supporting source, or a less reliable source?

Take the Time to Improve the Sources in Your Family Tree

Last week I had to swear off synchronizing my Family Tree Maker file with my tree on Ancestry. (See "A Major Family Tree Change to Fix an Ongoing Problem.") Too many failed syncs made it impossible to go on. In facts, those failed syncs did more damage to my desktop tree than I knew. I'm determined to see this as an opportunity to improve my family tree.

During my corporate life, I always hated when a boss would call a pain-in-the-butt project an "opportunity." An opportunity to improve our website. An opportunity to improve our support for the sales team. It wasn't an opportunity for workers like me who had countless hours of grunt work ahead of us. You can't sugar-coat that burden.

Yet here I am calling this problem an opportunity to improve the source citations in my family tree.

Failed syncs of my Family Tree Maker file left me with tons of splintered and unlinked source citations.

There were 2 things I now know happened to my desktop tree with each failed sync:

1. My tree no longer recognized some addresses. This was plain to see and easy enough to fix. I viewed each bad address in the Places tab of Family Tree Maker and made a few clicks. If you use FTM, see the company's instructions for standardizing locations.
2. My tree split my shared source citations into a bunch of identical citations. That's because an Ancestry tree sees each citation differently than FTM. Many citations weren't linked to anyone at all. These may be leftovers from people I deleted without first deleting their citations. Thousands of duplicate citations were increasing my tree's file size dramatically.

I've had a project on my radar to update citations for documents found on the Italian Antenati portal. The links in my old citations don't work anymore because of a huge change to the Antenati website. Spelling out the town, year, and document number would make each record findable—even if that website changes the links again. But it's a huge task.

Develop a Format and Stick to It

When I saw the mess my U.S., Canada, and U.K. source citations were in, I knew what I had to do. It was time to improve my oldest citations and make them match my current style.

For example, I'm looking at the 1920 U.S. Federal Census document image for my husband's ancestor. These days I like to add a ton of detail to the document image's description. But this early find says only:

lines 48-50; Honolulu City, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, enumeration district 45, sheet 11B; image 22 of 138
https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/6061/4442141_01017/114577201

That's pretty helpful, but my newer format is better. The citation should say this:

lines 48-50; 1920 United States Federal Census; Hawaii Territory > Honolulu > Honolulu > District 0045; Honolulu City, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, enumeration district 45, sheet 11B; image 22 of 138

https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/114577201:6061

Source Citation:
Year: 1920; Census Place: Honolulu, Honolulu, Hawaii Territory; Roll: T625_2036; Page: 11B; Enumeration District: 45

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.

Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

To be clear, I'm putting that extra long citation into the properties of a document image. When I drag the image into FTM, all that info comes along for the ride. Then I use everything from the URL down to populate the source citation for this document's facts. Let me dissect that format so you can follow my logic.

• lines 48-50 — This tells me and anyone who sees my copy of this document on Ancestry where to look on the page. This goes for ship manifests, too.
• 1920 United States Federal Census — This is the name of the record collection that has this document.
• Hawaii Territory > Honolulu > Honolulu > District 0045 — When you look at the document on Ancestry, this is the detail shown at the top of the screen.
• Honolulu City, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii, enumeration district 45, sheet 11B — These details can help locate this document on or off Ancestry.
• image 22 of 138 — This tells you exactly which image to go to in the collection on Ancestry.
• https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/114577201:6061 — The URL points to this record (not the document image) on Ancestry. This URL also contains the Source Citation and Source Information I add beneath the URL. I used to link to the image on Ancestry.com. But it's more useful to link to the record page.

This style includes enough detail so anyone can find the image—even without a link or an Ancestry account. And I attach the image to the Media tab of the citation itself. That's something I didn't know was possible until a few years ago.

Once I finish a citation, I copy and paste it to each family member in the census. And I can delete the duplicate copies each failed sync generated.

How to Check All Your Source Citations

I started this process by looking at the Sources tab in Family Tree Maker. There's a long list of all my sources on the left, in alpha-numeric order. Each one contains lots and lots of citations I can improve and share with each family member. In the end I'll have a neat, perfect list of citations with no duplicates.

As long as there's a mess to clean up, why not make the source citations in my family tree live up to my standards?

Each time I delete a ton of duplicate or unlinked citations, my tree's file size gets smaller. Amazingly, my FTM file went from 4 gigabytes on my failing laptop to 360 megabytes on my new computer. I'm still in shock.

I look forward to uploading my improved, streamlined GEDCOM file to Geneanet.org. I'll overwrite the version that's there, rather than synchronize it. I want anyone who sees that tree to find usable links to every bit of evidence I have for a person.

Once I finish my long list of U.S., Canada, and U.K. citations, I'll figure out how to tackle those obsolete Antenati citations.

Even if you haven't suffered damage to your family tree, revisiting your earliest citations is worthwhile. Have a look at them and see how many you're happy with. Bringing them all up to your standard will fortify your family tree.

How to Weed Out Those Unreliable Sources

Once in a while I spot them in the details of my family tree. Those questionable, unreliable sources.

When we're new to genealogy, we're more likely to borrow facts from the trees of strangers. It's a quick way to move things along. It can flesh out a more distant branch of relatives.

If you want your tree to be a reliable source for others, you cannot keep these lesser sources. You must trade them for the real thing. If it's an immigration fact, find that ship manifest and add the proper source. If it's a birth, marriage, or death record, track it down and record the source.

Our people deserve much better than the unreliable sources we're guilty of using.

I needed an easy way to find all the low-quality sources hiding in my very large family tree file.

First I exported an up-to-date GEDCOM file. Not familiar with that term? It's a text file containing the names, facts, and relationships of everyone in your tree. Any decent family tree software can export a GEDCOM. If you keep your tree online only, you should be able to download a GEDCOM.

Next, I launched the free Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) program. It can tell you more about your family tree than you can imagine. Then I used FTA to open my new GEDCOM file.

On the program's Main Lists tab, I chose Sources. There I found a long list of every source in my family tree—309 of them. It showed me how many uses there are for each one. I clicked the top of the FactCount column to sort the sources from least used to most used. It won't surprise my regular readers that the bulk of my sources are from the State Archives of Benevento. That's where I find Italian vital records for my ancestors.

For me, it's the least used sources that are most likely to be unreliable. They're the ones I used early on, when I didn't know any better.

While I can see all my sources in Family Tree Maker, Family Tree Analyzer shows me how many times I'm using each one.

I decided to replace the "Someone's Family Tree" sources first. They centered around my 4th cousin 5 times removed, Giovannangela Mascia. She was born in my Grandpa Iamarino's hometown in southern Italy. Her husband came from a nearby town, and that's where they raised their children.

I can't remember how I discovered this family in someone's tree years ago. But now there's no reason on earth for a stranger's tree to be my only source for these people. I have Giovannangela's birth and marriage records on my computer. They're in my collection of all the available records from Grandpa's hometown. Her husband and children's birth records are all available online.

It was time to replace every mention of "Someone's Family Tree" as the source for this family's facts. I started by finding Giovannangela's birth and marriage records on my computer. Then I found birth records for her husband and kids online. I added the document images to my family tree along with a proper source citation.

For her family, I attributed the facts to:

The State Archives of Campobasso
Birth records for (year) in Riccia, Campobasso, Campania, Italy
The exact URL where anyone can find the document

According to this other person's tree, part of the family came to America. I went to Ancestry.com to find their ship manifests for myself. One of Giovannangela's sons spent 14 years in Philadelphia before returning to Italy. He made a trip in 1901 to bring back his parents. I was very surprised by his parents' ages. Giovannangela was 75 years old, and her 83-year-old husband was senile.

They may be the oldest Italians I've seen coming to America. Both died a few years later.

Now I have a proper "New York, Passenger and Crew Lists" source citation for these facts. As I add these reliable sources, I can remove the unreliable source.

You may have developed good genealogy habits along the way, as I have. But your early work can cast doubt on the value of your family tree.

I encourage you to examine your source list and find any that you know are not high quality. Concentrate on replacing them one at a time. Pull your early work up to your current, more professional standards.

And speaking of those bad old sources:

• It's Time to Revisit & Improve Your Earliest Family Tree Research
• A Genealogy Catastrophe Made Me Mend My Ways
• Overwhelming Clean-up Task? Start With Direct Ancestors

4 Cornerstones of Genealogy Research

We all know the classic first rule of starting your family tree. "Start with yourself." Think back to your earliest genealogy research, and I'll bet you have a list of do's and don'ts.

I got interested in genealogy the year before my wedding. We were planning a honeymoon in Italy, and I had visions of finding distant cousins on my travels. (I didn't.) All I knew for sure was my grandfathers' hometowns, and that my maternal grandmother's family came from either Pastene or Avellino.

I filled a notebook with facts from ship manifests on the Ellis Island website. I pieced together families on squares of paper, laying them out on the floor. That looked stupid, I'm sure. So my husband bought me a 2002 version of Family Tree Maker software. It came with a basic subscription to Ancestry.com.

Now I had access to census sheets. They helped me piece together my grandmother's generation in New York City. I discovered Grandma's grandfather was my first immigrant ancestor. I finally learned his branch's town of origin from a ship manifest: Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. "Pastene," which I'd heard from my grandmother and great aunt, is a hamlet in the town of Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. Finally, I could find it on a map!

Learning the exact place of origin for Grandma's parents was so important. I realized it's a cornerstone to family tree building.

Cornerstone #1. Learn your ancestor's town of origin before going any further.

You see, I'd been going down the wrong path trying to find Grandma's Sarracino ancestors in Pastene. There's another town called Pastena (a one-letter difference) with a big Sarracino family. After adding the Pastena Sarracinos to my tree, I learned they were all the wrong family.

I struggled to find the hometown of my dad's maternal grandmother, too. A cousin-in-law who found me on a message board in 2006 knew my great grandmother. She often mentioned her town, calling it (phonetically) "pisqua-la-matzah."

Try finding that on a map! Here's how I figured it out. I searched Ancestry's immigration records for anyone named Caruso from a town that might be "pisqua-la-matzah." I found some from Pescolamazza. That's it! My great grandmother had to be from Pescolamazza. But it isn't on the map.

A quick search told me the town changed its name after World War II from Pescolamazza to Pesco Sannita. That is on the map, and it's a beautiful town. I've visited it twice.

The more research I did, the more record images I had piling up on my computer. That's when I realized the 2nd cornerstone of genealogy research.

Family tree research can get out of control in a hurry. Get organized now to lay a solid foundation.

Cornerstone #2. Follow logical and consistent document organization.

At first, I put every new document I found into one family tree folder on my computer. Rookie move. How would I know if a file with "1920" in its name was an ancestor's 1920 census or a 1920 ship manifest?

So I created sub-folders for each type of document I was collecting, including:

• census forms
• certificates (vital records)
• draft cards
• immigration
• passports

Then I adopted a file-naming format that makes it easy to find everything I have for a person:

• For census forms: LastnameFirstnameCensusYear. The name is the head of household.
• For vital records: LastnameFirstnameEventYear. The Event is Birth, Marriage, or Death. Marriage documents get both the groom's and bride's names, like BiancoAntonioCarusoMariaMarriage1818.
• For draft cards: LastnameFirstnameWW1 or WW2.
• For ship manifests: LastnameFirstnameYear. I could have included Immigration before the year, but sometimes it's travel, not immigration. If multiple people are traveling, I use the name of the eldest or head of family.

This system works well for me. However, there were too many times when I downloaded a terrific new record, only to find out I had it already. I needed some sort of cheat sheet to keep from doing that again.

Cornerstone #3. Track what you have and what you need.

I created a document tracker spreadsheet. Each column is a different type of genealogy document. Each row is a different person. The last column lists the documents I still need to find for each person.

I think every nationality has the problem of too many people with the same name. I distinguish same-named people in my document tracker by including their father's name.

While I was cruising along, super organized, DNA came into the picture. We're all frustrated when a good DNA match has no family tree to view. But it's just as frustrating when their trees have no sources. They're completely unreliable.

I never want anyone to doubt my family tree. And that leads us to the final cornerstone of genealogy.

Cornerstone #4. Add sources or your family tree is worthless to others.

I support the facts in my family tree with detailed sources and links to the original documents. I'm on my way to having the best family tree on earth for my ancestral hometowns.

If you don't know your ancestor's hometown, ignore that family tree that seems so promising. If those people are from the wrong town, they're not your family.

I had these 4 cornerstones in mind when I started this blog in January 2017. If you go back to the beginning, you'll see I outlined them in the first few articles. Each one comes from experience. It would have been better if I knew them from day one. And that's why I spend so much time on this blog. I want to encourage other genealogists, no matter where they are in their journey.

How solid is your family tree foundation?

One Man's Big Impact on My Family Tree

Revisiting a clean-up project instantly added dozens of relatives to my family tree.

In July I recommended using Family Tree Analyzer to find the unsourced facts in your family tree. For the steps, see Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations.

My report seemed to have a lot of false positives. Many facts in the list actually had proper sources in my family tree. Discouraged, I tried another method. I ran the Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker. I exported the report as a massive Excel file. It's huge because I have 25,000 people in my family tree, and I don't add a source for a person's sex. So everyone made it into the report!

I spent time deleting lots of lines from that spreadsheet. Then I decided to revisit the report in Family Tree Analyzer. This time I excluded another fact type (Parental Info) before exporting it to Excel.

With a bit more fine-tuning, the report turned out great.

I realized I could cut out all the dates that I left unsourced on purpose. When I don't know someone's birth date, I give them an estimate. In your family tree software, you can type "About" or "Abt" when you're entering an approximate date.

If they are a parent, I make them 25 years older than their oldest child. If I know their spouse's birth year, I estimate they were born about the same year.

Since there can't be a source for my "About" dates, I don't need them in this report. I sorted the report by the Date of Birth column and removed every line where the date begins with "ABT" (for about). Now I'm down to about 114 lines in the spreadsheet. The Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker produced a 45,000-line spreadsheet!

Diving into the New Unsourced Facts Report

The first few lines are for my young cousin-in-law. I have no sources for him, but later I'll see what I can find online.

I'd prefer to work on my 19th century Italian relatives first. The first one in the list is Lorenzo Capozza. In my family tree I see he was born in 1828 in my great grandmother's town of Pescolamazza. He married my 3rd great aunt, Nicolina Caruso, on 19 Apr 1856 in that town.

I must have been rushing along when I found this marriage fact. I didn't save the marriage record to my tree. I didn't chase down Lorenzo's birth date or parents. And I didn't add my sources. Bad genealogist!

Lorenzo was 28 years old when he married my aunt in 1856, so he should have been born in 1828. The marriage record says he was born in the same town, but something's wrong. I have all the town's available vital records on my computer. He isn't in the birth records for 1826 through 1829. I can keep searching each year's birth index, or I can go to the detailed records in the 1856 marriage documents.

Before I do that, the marriage record says Lorenzo's parents are Pietro Capozza and Maria Emanuele Pennuccia. I looked for them in my family tree.

One Man Makes His Mark

They're in there, along with their son Antonio, 5 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren, and at least 12 2nd great grandchildren! I'd already pieced together a huge family for them from the vital records collection. But I never found Lorenzo.

Feel free to borrow this image.

But that's only part of the story. All the people related to Pietro Capozza and Maria Emanuele Pennuccia in my tree are UNRELATED to me. I've given them all my "No Relationship Established" graphic as a profile picture. (See How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree.)

The moment I make Lorenzo the son of Pietro and Maria, all those people will be my relatives. The relationship is through Lorenzo's wife, my 3rd great aunt.

Why did I put this enormous unrelated family in my tree, you ask? It was an out-of-control case of mistaken identity! When my great grandparents married in 1906, a couple from her hometown were the witnesses. The male witness was Nicola Capozza—same last name as our Lorenzo. But he was from a different branch of the family.

I realized too late that all those descendants of Pietro and Maria were an unrelated family.

Until now.

With Lorenzo attached to his parents, all those people are now relatives. I have to remove the "No Relationship Established" graphic from each one. How tedious.

But I have a method I'd like to share with you.

This trick simplifies an error-prone task.

Here's how I handle a big change like that. I have that graphic attached to a large number of people, so finding all the right people in a list wouldn't be easy. What I do is:

• Click everyone in the family who needs the graphic removed, one at a time.
• Change their last name to begin with a 1. Capozza becomes 1Capozza. That makes it easy to find the right people in the list of who's attached to that graphic.
• Go to one person with that graphic and click to detach it.
• This brings up a list of each person attached to the graphic. I can select everyone whose name begins with 1.
• Once I remove the image, I rename everyone in my family tree whose name begins with a 1.

That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's very helpful. I used to struggle with removing that graphic from the right person. A lot of the townspeople have identical names! I use a 1 so it's at the top of my index of all people—easy to find.

Now comes a much bigger challenge. All those new relatives need their vital records and sources!

Can Your Genealogy Work Survive Without You?

Act now to preserve your genealogy treasures and leave instructions.

It happened again. While seeking a source for facts in my family tree, I learned a distant cousin had died. This man jump-started my research into our shared Caruso branch.

More than 10 years ago, he mailed me a book about our shared ancestral hometown. He also sent postcards and a brochure from a lodging he recommended when I visit. The book includes a few handwritten notes about our common ancestors.

I said I'd read the book as fast as possible and mail it back to him. He said, "No, you keep it. My children aren't interested in our heritage at all." That made me so sad.

Today my husband pointed to a new pile of letters and keepsakes my mom mailed to me. He said, "So if you die first, do I throw them out?"

I can hear you all shouting No! But do you have a plan in place? What will happen to your countless hours of research when you're gone?

Think through what you have. Decide on—and document—your succession plan today.

Original Documents

I'm not a big paper person. I have a very small collection of official birth, baptism, marriage, and death records. But you may have stacks of them.

Consider storing them in archival-quality boxes. And keep the boxes in a safe place. I inherited a large metal storage cabinet with drawers, a combination safe, and a door. I've moved all the family photos, baby books, and yearbooks into this cabinet.

It'll be a good place to store my recently acquired letter from my Uncle Johnny. He wrote home to tell my grandparents he was promoted to Staff Sergeant and would be able to send home more money. He dated the letter July 1, 1944. He died when his plane was shot down on a bombing run 6 days later.

Be sure to add sheets of paper that explain what everything is.

Document your family heirlooms as you preserve them for the future.

Keepsakes

These can come in all shapes and sizes, and their meaning can fade over time. My mom sent me her Washington Irving High School beret, which I recognized from old photos. She graduated in 1949!

My sons won't know what it is, but it conjures up a memory for me. Decades ago, I was in the summer home of my ex-in-laws, retrieving something from the attic. I spotted something intriguing. It was a black bowler hat, perched atop a styrofoam head. Pinned to the hat was a handwritten note that said, simply: "Uncle Anton's hat."

I didn't know who Uncle Anton was at the time, but I never forgot that hat. When I did some research into the family, I found Anton as a young man in Wisconsin. That old keepsake brought Anton's paperwork to life for me.

You need to pass on the story of each keepsake. You can do it verbally, write it down, or both.

Photographs

I paid a professional photographer for help with my grandparents' 1922 wedding portrait. He photographed it, digitally retouched the damaged areas, and put the new print in my old frame. The original photo is safely wrapped and stored away.

You can correct creases, tears, and color loss by scanning your family photos. Think about different platforms for sharing these treasures with your relatives. I used an invitation-only Pinterest board.

Find a safe place to store the originals, and keep backups of the digital files, too.

Digital Files

I have tons of digital historical files in my family tree collection. But it's the vital records that are most precious. Future researchers can find the census files online, the same as I did.

But my set of Italian vital records from a handful of my ancestral hometowns is unique. My copies of the documents are searchable by name. That's because I've been renaming each file to include the name of the person in the document.

This is something I want to share with other descendants of the towns. I don't own the files, but I own the work I've done.

I have all the files on my computer and synchronized on OneDrive. Once a week, I make an off-computer backup of each digital file I've added to my family tree.

I have a specialized database that will appeal to a particular audience.

Your Family Tree

I synchronize my Family Tree Maker file with Ancestry.com after each session of work. To me, this is the best way to make my work available to anyone who might care.

I make backups once or twice during a long day of research. I copy the backups to an external drive each Sunday. They sit on OneDrive, too.

Even if you're already preserving your family tree work, there's one important step we all need to take. Type up a document that explains all you've done. Tell your unnamed successor where to find all the bits and pieces you've stored. Make sure the most important people in your life know what you've done and where to find it.

I want you to enjoy the process of doing genealogy research. But I also want you to work on your family tree as if you'll be gone tomorrow. Your family tree is your legacy. Make sure your work outlives you.

Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations

Wouldn't it be great to have a safety net to catch all your forgotten source citations?

At times we all overlook adding sources to the family tree. When we start out, we don't know any better. Other times we forget or can't be bothered. These unsourced facts add up. And they make our online trees look less reliable.

There are a few reasons why facts in my family tree are missing a source citation:

1. I never add a source for a person's sex. It seems unnecessary.
2. I never add a source for an estimated birth year. If it's an estimate, there is no source. It's either 25 years before the birth of their eldest child or 25 years after the birth of their younger parent.
3. Something happens to distract me in that moment.
4. I experienced the fact (such as attending a wedding or funeral) but have no documentation.
5. I'm in an excited rush because I just found all this great information, and I can hardly believe my luck!

Most of the time it's #5.

So, how do we find these unsourced facts before things get even more out of control? In a word: software.

It's easy to create an Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker. Go to Publish / Source Reports / Undocumented Facts. I chose to share it as a CSV file. You can open a Comma-Separated Values file as a spreadsheet in a program such as Excel.

But there is a far better way to do this. This method has more steps, but it will save you so much time in the end.

Follow the steps to create a report and see where sources are missing.

I've written many times about the free Family Tree Analyzer program. (Find all articles on the Genealogy Lessons page.) There are so many incredibly useful things to do with it. Now I find it's a great way to identify all your unsourced facts.

Here's how:

1. Open your latest GEDCOM file with Family Tree Analyzer. (You can export a GEDCOM file from your family tree software, or download it from your online tree.)
2. Click the Facts tab and check the boxes for all relationship types.
3. Click the button to Select all Fact Types.
4. Click the right arrow, which will duplicate the list of fact types.
5. In this duplicate list, check the box for any fact types you don't want to include in this report. You should exclude facts that you know don't need a source. For example:
   
   • Child Born. The baby gets a source for their birth date. The parent doesn't need a source for having had the kid.
   • Custom facts. I have a custom Ahnentafel Number fact that doesn't need a source. If you have custom facts, you'll find them in this list in all capital letters.
6. Click the big button that begins with "Show only the selected Facts for Individuals…."

Your report opens in a new window. At the top of that window, choose to export this report as an Excel file (actually a CSV file). Now open the file in your spreadsheet software.

First, sort the spreadsheet by the source column and delete the many, many rows of facts that DO have a source citation.

Next, delete the unnecessary columns to make things easier to see. I deleted all but Surname, Forenames, DateofBirth, TypeOfFact, FactDate, and Location.

Choose to export your report from Family Tree Analyzer to a spreadsheet.

I'm left with an awful lot of rows of unsourced facts. But remember, I said I don't source estimated birth years. I can sort or filter the spreadsheet by the DateofBirth column and delete all the rows with "Abt" (short for About). That brings me down to a very manageable 133 rows of unsourced facts.

Finally, I'll sort the data by Surname so I can make my way through this task list. I'll delete a row once I've added the missing source citation to my family tree.

I know the complete dates from the 1800s fit into the category of "I'm in an excited rush." I have the documents to back up these dates. Now I need to go back and finish my work. I suspect some of the years (not full dates) in the 1900s will be birth years I took from a census sheet. Again, I need to finish my work.

It's nice to have this report as a safety net for days when you aren't on your best behavior. It's as if Family Tree Analyzer is your coach or teacher, reminding you to think about what you're doing. And by all means, show your work!

Add Value to Your Family Tree Documents

Prove to everyone that you've done your genealogy homework.

My husband gave me Family Tree Maker software and an Ancestry subscription as a birthday gift in 2002. It was a big step forward from scribbling my family history in notebooks.

Years later Ancestry.com introduced tree synchronization. It was great for people like me who worked on their desktop and wanted their online tree to show their progress.

Because I work in the desktop software, I never used my online family tree the way so many people do. I never accept hints, and I never add online documents to my online tree. That means you can't click a document in my online tree and go see the original for yourself.

I don't want my family tree to give the impression that I'm not doing quality genealogy research. So, when you visit my family tree on Ancestry.com, you'll see my document images offer a ton of information. I give each image (vital record, census sheet, ship manifest, etc.) detailed facts.

The images themselves offer everything you need to view the original and cite the source. If you've ever taken a close look at a potential cousin's tree, I'll bet you wished they gave you more proof.

Let's say you're looking on any genealogy website at someone's family tree. The tree includes a possible member of your family in the 1930 U.S. census, but you need proof. Is it your relative? You'd know for sure if he's your relative if you could read the street address. But it isn't on the page. Maybe it's on the next page.

That's why adding value to your documents is so important. I like to make sure anyone finding one of my documents can see:

• what the document is
• who the document shows
• when the event happened
• where the document came from
• how to cite the document
• how to view the original document

Vital Record Example

Carefully planned document annotations make your online tree highly valuable.

Most of the people in my family tree lived in Italy between the late 1600s and the early 1900s. I find their documents in an online collection of Italian vital records. My Italian vital records use a simple fact format. For example:

• Caption: 1876 birth record for Giovanni Sarracino, recorded in 1898—that tells you what the document is (an 1876 birth record) and who the document shows (Giovanni Sarracino)
• Date: 22 Oct 1876—that tells you when the event (the birth) happened
• Description: From the Benevento State Archives: http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+italiano/SantAngelo+a+Cupolo/Nati/1898/8287/101687791_00079.jpg.html—that tells you where the document came from (the Benevento State Archives, also known as the Archivio di Stato di Benevento), how to cite the document, and how to view the original document (follow the link)

My more recent relatives have the typical U.S. documents:

• census records
• draft registration cards
• ship manifests, etc.

Each type of document has basic facts I add to the image.

Census Record Example

The image file's data carries over to Family Tree Maker. Additional facts carry over to Ancestry.com.

Here is the 1910 census for my great grandfather.

• Caption: 1910 census for Giovanni Sarracino and family, p1 (the family is spread across 2 pages)
• Date: 26 Apr 1910
• Categories: Census
• Description: This is where you'll find a lot of information. I try to follow a format:
  
  • lines 96-100 (where to look on the page for this family)
  • 1910 United States Federal Census (the title of the document collection)
  • New York / New York / Bronx Assembly District 33 / District 1514 (where to find this page in the larger collection)
  • supervisor's district 1, enumeration district 1514, sheet 26B (specific, identifying facts located on the page)
  • image 52 of 74 (the exact location of this page in the collection online)
  • https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7884/4449901_00057?pid=18419163 (the URL of the image)
  • Source Citation: Year: 1910; Census Place: Bronx Assembly District 33, New York, New York; Roll: T624_1000; Page: 26B; Enumeration District: 1514; FHL microfilm: 1375013 (the source citation provided by the website where I found this document)
  • Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006 (more information provided by the website where I found this document)

Ship Manifest Example

Filling in all the details means someone finding your saved genealogy documents has hit paydirt.

Here's the 1898 ship manifest showing my great grandparents' arrival in America:

• Caption: 1899 immigration record for Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano
• Date: 24 Jul 1899
• Categories: Immigration/Travel
• Description:
  
  • lines 6 and 7 (Maria Rosa was pregnant with Maria Carmina)
  • New York, Passenger Lists, Roll / T715, 1897-1957 / 0001-1000 / Roll 0075
  • image 719 of 1062
  • https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7488/NYT715_75-0719
  • Source citation: Year: 1899; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 0075; Lines: 6-7; Page Number: 222

If you find one of my genealogy documents in an online search, I want you to have every last bit of information you need. You can take it as is, or go to the original location, and cite that source.

Yes, it's a lot of work. I have 6,647 media items in my family tree, and it grows nearly every day. But you've got to keep the long-game in mind. Your family tree is your legacy. You don't want your legacy to be half-baked, incomplete, or unsubstantiated.

My suggestion is to develop your format and stick to it going forward. Then, when you add a new document to someone in your family tree, revisit their previous documents. Give them a facelift while you're there. You'll be constantly polishing your genealogy work, making it better and better. Now that's a legacy.

And speaking of document images:

• 7 Steps to Perfect Family Tree Document Placement
• 10-Minute Genealogy Tasks You Can Do
• 3 Steps to My Ultimate, Priceless Family Tree