How I Brought this Ambitious Genealogy Project to Life

Last week I wrote about a genealogy project we can all use to supply answers to our families' questions. I'm in touch with one group of cousins more than the others. So I decided that creating a "book of life" about our shared ancestors was the best place to start. We all call them Babanonno and Mamanonna—my maternal grandmother's parents.

A couple of weeks ago, for the first time, I saw what Google's NotebookLM can do to generate content. (Thanks, Liz!) I dropped the biography I wrote about my grandfather into a notebook. Then I let NotebookLM generate an infographic and a slide deck. The results were impressive, though not perfect.

With the right tools and your own collection of family tree documents, you can create a "book of life" to share with your relatives.

Getting Started

Here's what I did to create content about my great grandparents—Giovanni and Maria Rosa:

1. Created a new notebook in NotebookLM.
2. Searched my computer for all the saved document images belonging to the couple. I dropped several images into the notebook as sources. These include:
   • birth and marriage records
   • censuses
   • a ship manifest
   • a photograph of the ship they took to New York
   • a photo of their grave marker
3. Used Family Historian software to create a descendant chart and family group sheets. Then I added them to the notebook as sources.
4. Created a Timeline Report in Family Tree Maker for both Giovanni and Maria Rosa. Saved them as PDF files, and added them to the notebook's sources.
5. Asked NotebookLM the following in its chat window. "Based on the Timeline Reports, use these 10 sources to tell me about the lives of Giovanni and Maria Rosa."

This produced a narrative of their lives. Here's a little snippet of the narrative. I like how it pulled certain facts from my sources to generate this summary of his employment:

Giovanni's work history reflected a variety of roles to support his large family. He was a bartender and saloon store-keeper in the early 1900s, a building painter for many years, and the proprietor of a beer garden by 1940.

Trying More Options

When you click the Reports option in NotebookLM, you need to choose a format type or create a custom report. I chose Biographical Narrative which produced a report that included historical context. I copied the result to a Word document.

I clicked the Mind Map option, which looks wonderful, but the text got cut off when I tried to download it as an image. I thought if I clicked on Giovanni's birth date in the Mind Map I could attach his birth record. Instead, it generated a new narrative for me, focusing on his birth and key events in his life. It points out that Giovanni's grave marker has a different date than his birth record. It's off by 4 days.

Next I clicked his wife Maria Rosa's name in the Mind Map. This generated a narrative about her immediate family. I did the same for each of Giovanni and Maria Rosa's children and copied them all into the same Word document.

It's important to review everything before putting it in your final product. Be sure to remove anything that's wrong or not what you want to share. For instance, I'll make the historical context more brief.

Then I tried the Slide Deck option. The deck looks wonderful, other than obvious errors in a map of the Bronx, New York. I downloaded the result as a PowerPoint file then saved that as a PDF.

Finally, I generated an Infographic, asking it to use exact dates for everyone's birth, marriage, and death. I also asked it to include the document images I uploaded when appropriate. While it looks beautiful, it didn't use my images, it used only a few exact dates, and it made several typos.

I spent decades working in marketing communications. So I can use this infographic as a guide and create my own. I can use the images I want, the dates I want, and not have typos. But I haven't tackled that yet.

I happen to have my own website and a long work history of creating and maintaining websites. It makes sense for me to take these materials and create web pages to display it all. I'm not including birth dates for anyone living. And I'm preventing search engines from crawling and indexing the pages.

While I took all the text and images to create a series of web pages, you can use paper printouts or whatever computer software you find most comfortable.

I shared the website link with my family, and right away they discovered a few things they didn't know:

• One of our great aunts didn't marry in the church, but in the courthouse.
• Some of the original, Italian first names of our ancestors had been unknown to some cousins.
• My mom didn't know about her father's unusual job in the 1950 census. None of us did!

Who's Next?

These steps are easy to reproduce when it's time to focus on another branch of the family. This project can get your relatives more excited about your family tree work. I like the idea of having a self-serve website that lets the cousins find the answers to their questions. And I can use their feedback to make this, and future websites, more useful to all my cousins.

Next up I need to do my mom's paternal grandparents, and both sets of my dad's grandparents. I've got the template now, so I can crank these out. How about you?

Looking for some more genealogy projects? Type project in this blog's search box, or click this link.

One Genealogy Project to Answer All the Questions

Since you became a genealogist, which questions does the family ask you the most? Is there a common thread to the questions? Here's what I've been hearing this month.

Dates, Dates, Dates!

My three first cousins' mother and my mother are sisters. These siblings are eligible for dual citizenship, but I am not. Our Italian-born grandfather took his Oath of Allegiance become a U.S. citizen when their mother was a baby. My mother was negative three years old. They've been texting me because I have all the information they need. They asked me for:

• our shared grandparents' birth dates
• our grandparents' marriage date
• the birth and death dates of their father's three siblings

For me, it was a snap to find these dates in my family tree and text my cousins the answers.

The building blocks for this useful genealogy project include a family group sheet and a descendant chart.

How Old and Who?

While visiting my mother, she asked me how old her paternal grandmother was when she died. I pulled out my iPhone, found her in my tree on Ancestry.com, did the math, and said Marianna lived to be 73 years old. "But we have her photo," Mom said. "She looks so old!" It's true. By today's standards, Marianna looks very old in her studio portrait. "What was her husband's name?"

That question was interesting. My mother didn't know her grandparents' names. They never came to America, so she never met them. Yet to me, the family tree builder, not knowing their names is unthinkable.

Who, Where, and Why?

A few years ago I created a "book of life" for my mom's first cousin. She's the perfect recipient of a book of life because she's always had a deep interest in our ancestors. She texts me often with family tree questions, such as:

• What was Aunt Elsie's maiden name?
• What was Uncle Al's street address in Bridgeport?
• Where was my grandmother born?
• Do you have a photo of my grandmother's father?

She texted me when her newest great grandchild was born. "Add her to the family tree!" I love those texts.

She also asked the deepest question I've gotten about the family. She wondered why her Italian-born grandfather Giovanni chose to come to New York. Why there? The short answer is opportunity. I said he most likely followed someone from his town who'd made the trip and found work. That's the story with most of the immigrants I've researched. But here's what I learned from ship manifests. Her grandparents, Giovanni and Maria Rosa, followed Maria Rosa's parents and siblings. They settled in the Bronx, New York, a year earlier.

It was my earliest genealogy research that gave me the names and some of the dates for my closest ancestors. Then ship manifests for Giovanni, Maria Rosa, and her family identified their hometown. I found the town's vital records on the Antenati Portal. Then I filled the family tree with names and dates none of my relatives had ever known.

Those are the goodies we can share with all the cousins who show interest. The questions my family has are pretty basic stuff: names, dates, and places. Wouldn't it be nice to share your hard work with the people who'll care the most about your discoveries?

The Perfect Genealogy Project

I can answer the questions my relatives ask with standard genealogy reports. I can combine them in an electronic file or print them out and place them in a binder. When I created a book of life for my cousin in 2019, I focused more on her father and his family. (I'm related to this cousin through her mother.) But my cousins with questions descend from my great grandparents, Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano.

I'd like to make a book of life for Giovanni and Maria Rosa, and share it with this core group of cousins. In that 2019 book of life, I used paper cut-outs to enlarge areas. And I printed some highlights on yellow paper to place on top of black-and-white documents. This time, I'll create everything in Photoshop, PowerPoint or something else, and save it as a digital file to share. I can get as colorful as I like.

Now I'd like you to choose a particular couple in your family tree. Which ancestral couple ties you to the cousins you're in touch with the most? Start pulling together the document images you've collected for the couple. These may include:

• birth, marriage, and death records
• ship manifests
• naturalization papers
• census pages
• draft registration cards
• obituaries

Next, turn to your family tree software. If your family tree is online only (don't get me started), check the website for the types of reports available. Take a look at:

• A family group sheet for the couple (they call it a family group record on FamilySearch.org). This will contain dates and places for the ancestral couple and their children.
• A descendant report or narrative. This puts the facts you've collected into more of a story format and can pack in a ton of information.
• A descendant outline. This will cover more people, offering all the names, dates, and places.

Now look at your family tree's chart capabilities. On Ancestry.com, be sure to check out the LifeStory tab of your ancestor's profile page. On FamilySearch.org, look at the customizable Time Line.

• A descendant chart can include all the cousins with whom you plan to share this project. But you may need to slice it up into printable sections. Geneanet.org has a descendant chart you can customize. FamilySearch.org has Person Details in the Print Options menu.
• A waterfall chart (in Family Historian software) or a horizontal hourglass chart (in Family Tree Maker) is like a descendant chart. The chart in Family Historian looks terrific—it's a thing of beauty. It has the main person (or couple) on the left, and each descendant generation in columns to the right. But you can customize it to flow right-to-left, top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top if you prefer. The horizontal hourglass chart has the main person on the right and descendant generations to the left. (Choose 0 ancestors to focus on the descendants.)

Customize the charts and reports until you're happy with them. Save them as PDFs or images you can insert into this project. Now I'll refer you back to my "Book of Life" article for the creation process. If you'd like to go all digital like me, take all the pieces and use whichever software is comfortable for you. Oh! This is the perfect opportunity for me to try out NotebookLM from Google. Now I'm psyched to do this!

I've been working on this project, and I'll tell you exactly how I did it in next week's article. You need to try this!

What Makes You Crazy About Genealogy?

I watched "Psycho" the other night. Anthony Perkins, in the role of Norman Bates, said one thing that got me thinking. When talking about his taxidermy hobby, he said, "It's more than a hobby. A hobby's supposed to pass the time, not fill it."

If that's true, Norman, what should I call genealogy? I retired because work was cutting into my genealogy time. I spend about eight hours a day on my family tree. I don't pass the time with genealogy. I fill the time with genealogy. And I couldn't be happier.

Oh, so that's what Norman means to say. He devotes so much time to taxidermy, and cares about it so much, that it's more than a hobby. Hobby isn't a strong enough word. I'd say devotion is a better word. I have a strong devotion to genealogy. That's what drives me to achieve more and more each day.

Once you understand your motivation to do genealogy, your goals become clear. Let them drive your family tree research.

What Drives You?

If spending all your free time on your family tree sounds too much like work, there's one element you may be missing. Call it a goal, a motivation, or a purpose. It's a driving force that will keep you excited by your genealogy "hobby" every day.

My earliest family tree goal was to gather all the census records for my closest family. Then I discovered I could view vital records for my Italian ancestors. After exploring one of my ancestral hometowns, I had a new goal. I wanted to document and connect everyone from that town. After finishing with that town, I moved on to the next. I have a handful of towns where I can connect almost everyone.

Before I do, though, my number one goal now is to create all the source citations I skipped in my giddy excitement. I have a spreadsheet that still contains more than 40,220 people who have no source citations. The documents are all downloaded to my computer, so I went for it, adding facts without sources. But my mission is to create a family tree that will be a treasure for anyone with roots in my ancestral hometowns. And that requires source citations so they can go see the documents for themselves.

Define Your Genealogy Motivation

I became interested in my family tree while planning my honeymoon in Italy. I did make it to my paternal grandfather's hometown on that trip, but I didn't know where to look.

Walking around Grandpa's hometown, I felt a physical pull deep inside me. I needed to discover my ancestors. I wanted to know all their names. Once I discovered the availability of Italian vital records, I made myself an expert on their towns.

What question or desire got you interested in genealogy? There are many reasons people spend time and money on genealogy, including:

• Finding a missing ancestor or birth parent
• Discovering where the family came from
• Solving a case of misattributed parentage
• Applying for dual citizenship
• Proving or disproving family lore
• Working on a personal, never-ending puzzle
• Bringing history to life in a meaningful way
• Preserving family history for future generations
• Sharing your findings with distant cousins

Once you define your genealogy motivation, you're ready for the next step.

Set Your Goals

Now that you've put your finger on what motivates you, what goals do you need to reach?

If your motivation is to apply for dual citizenship, you need specific documents. You must discover the place and date of birth of the ancestor through which you will ask for citizenship. How can you break that goal down into steps? Let's say you don't know Grandpa's town of birth in the old country. You have to seek out as many of his records in his adopted country as you can. Many records may include his town of origin. Make a list of every type of record that should be available for him. Censuses, a ship manifest, naturalization papers, draft cards, an obituary, a death certificate. Your goal is to find them and learn all you can from them.

If your purpose is to discover your birth parent, you need to take at least one DNA test. Then upload it as many places as possible. You'll have to spend your time taking online webinars to learn discovery techniques. Then explore your closest DNA matches. You may need to create family trees for important DNA matches. On any given day, your goal can be to solve one more DNA match and see how they connect to any of your other matches.

If your motivation is the never-ending puzzle, you'll never lack something to do. Your goals can be to document all your ancestor's siblings. Then find out who they married and document their families. Then move up a generation and do the same thing. If I hadn't found all the siblings, I wouldn't be able to see that my paternal grandparents were third cousins.

If your purpose is to help your distant cousins, publish your family tree online. Make your family tree as reliable and accurate as possible. Your individual goals can be to:

• Check your tree for errors and correct them
• Make sure your facts have source citations that any interested party can verify
• Seek out new record collections that may hold information for you
• Maintain a consistent, professional style in how you present names, dates, and places

Track Your Progress

Almost two years ago, I used Family Tree Analyzer to spot everyone in my family tree who had no source citations. About 87% of my people had no source citations. It was more than 70,000 people. Today I've got that number down to 40,220. It could take me another two years to finish this important project! And that's why I push myself so hard. My daily goal is to remove 100 people from that list. I've had days where I completed citations for more than 150 people. Those days usually end with a sore wrist from working my mouse so hard.

The point is, I always know where I stand with this goal. Seeing that huge number of unsourced people go down each day drives me to do more.

Does your family tree pass the time or fill the time? Are you lacking motivation? Would you be more productive if you had specific goals? Being productive makes me feel fulfilled. It can do the same for you.

And why was Norman Bates so devoted to his craft of taxidermy? Ask his mother's 10-year-old corpse.

This Free, Elegant GEDCOM Analyzer Is a Wonder

How does your family tree measure up? When I tried out Ancestry Pro Tools almost two years ago, I didn't care about its Tree Checker feature. I had free Family Tree Analyzer software to help me find all kinds of mistakes.

Even without subscribing to Pro Tools, my tree on Ancestry has a rating of 8.3 ("Very good"). What's keeping me from scoring a 10? A few data errors, lots of missing source citations, and what they think are 10,398 duplicate people. (They're not.)

But I found a new tool for improving your family tree rating called GEDminer that's outstanding! You've got to take a look at this thing. There's nothing to download, but you need to export your family tree's GEDCOM file first.

The instant, deep analysis of your family tree is worth a ton, but this genealogy tool is free.

GEDminer is a web-based program that's a very friendly way to see how your family tree measures up. If you're skeptical or want to see it in action first, you can view an analysis of their sample GEDCOM. Please understand your file is NOT uploaded to a server. The data processing happens in your web browser, and all the results go POOF! when you close your browser. (Your data may stay in your computer's cache memory for a while.)

Go to https://gedminer.com and drop your GEDCOM file in the box on the webpage. (The link to see sample data is beneath the box.) I dropped in my latest GEDCOM with 85,360 people. I know I'm missing tons of source citations—I'm always working on that. So where do I stand?

• My Tree Health Score is 75.33%. It says that's better than 55.56% of other users.
• I scored 74.09% in Completeness (defined as names, dates & places filled in). When I click on Completeness, it breaks this down into terrifying numbers:
  • 50,805 non-living people missing a death place
  • 47,995 non-living people missing a death date
  • 10,007 people missing a birth place. I have been putting a state or county into the birth and death place fields when I see they're empty. I have a long way to go.
• I scored 52.42% in Sourcing. This says I still have 40,616 people with no source citations. The spreadsheet I'm using for this huge task agrees!
• I scored 99.9% on Consistency (defined as free of errors & warnings). It lists 5 people with "data errors" for me to fix, but these are only a taste. They include people who were too old or young when their child was born. But the full, detailed list of data errors is in the next section.

Beneath these scores is a section called Quick Wins. This tells me my family tree has:

• 23 data errors (I worked on it and got it down to three errors, two of which are supported by the documents: an 88-year-old father and a 56-year-old mother.)
• 10,007 people without a birth place (I got it down to 9,953.)
• 40,616 unsourced people

The last two are also found above in the Tree Health Score section. But under Quick Wins, you can click these problem types and go to a new page filled with the exact details.

Click a type of error to see complete details about what you need to correct. Then export the full list as a spreadsheet and get busy.

• When you click to see your data errors in detail, the new page gives you the option of seeing:
  • All data errors
  • Date issues only
  • Age issues only
  • Relationship problems only (for me, these were all mothers who were too young)
  • Duplicate Facts only (for me, most of these are cases where I have two very different death records for people, so I recorded both)
  • Quality issues only (this would be key missing facts; I have none!)
• When you click to see your missing places or unsourced people errors in detail, the new page gives you the option of seeing:
  • All missing items
  • Line Origins only (these are the people you're stuck on—you can't ID their parents)
  • Missing Dates only
  • Missing Places only
  • Unsourced people only
  • People with no spouse (if we knew the spouse, they'd be in there, right?)
  • Missing Deaths only

Best of all, after you scroll to the bottom of a long list and click Show All, you can scroll back up and choose Export CSV. This gives you a spreadsheet to use to complete your fixes. You can tackle them one-by-one and delete them from the spreadsheet or mark them done.

I won't export my list of unsourced people since I'm already working on that. But when I'm finished with that project, I can use GEDminer again to see who slipped through the cracks.

While you're on that detail page, look close to the top of the page for four links:

• Suggestions
• Errors
• Vital Sharpener
• Tree Structure

Now:

• Click Vital Sharpener to see all the incomplete dates in your family tree. Sometimes we can't do anything about these because no records are available. But if the people are from the 1900s or later, try a new search on a site you don't use all the time.
• Now click Tree Structure right next to Vital Sharpener. These results have different categories to view:
  • Hidden Cousins tries to group together people with the same last name. That doesn't work well for my tree. Welcome to small towns in Italy.
  • Unlinked Individuals shows you the unattached people floating in your family tree. I have 184 people with zero connection to me. But they're in there on purpose. If more vital records ever become available, I may be able to connect them.
  • Duplicate Finder says I have 409 people with the same (or almost the same) name and birth year. I don't have enough information to be sure some are the same person. I'll review them and see if I can find a few that I should merge. You'll see that the list ranges in match-i-ness from 100% on down. My lowest duplicate is a 57% match, but they're worth looking into. They have the same name, same hometown, same father's name, and very close birth years.

The bonus facts this free tool displays about your family tree can be real eye-openers. And it's all interactive. Click around!

Still Not Sure? Here's the Old Way.

Before I found GEDminer, I planned to show you how you can use Family Tree Analyzer to find these errors. I'm so impressed with GEDminer, but you know I appreciate the heck out of Family Tree Analyzer. So here's what to click. You won't get your score, but you will get lists of what needs your attention. Get your GEDCOM file and open it in Family Tree Analyzer.

To find data errors, click the Errors/Fixes tab and under Data Errors select:

• Birth before father aged 13 and mother aged 13
• Birth after father aged 90+ and mother aged 60+
• Birth after mother's death and more than 9m after father's death
• Marriage before aged 13 and spouse aged 13
• Marriage after death and after spouse's death
• Facts dated before birth
• Birth after death/burial
• Birth after baptism/christening
• Facts dated after death
• Burial/cremation before death
• Child born too soon after sibling
• Child likely born too soon after sibling
• Male Wifes and Female Husbands
• Duplicate Fact
• Possible Duplicate Fact

One way to find duplicate people in your family tree is to go to the Errors/Fixes tab, choose Duplicates? then sort by Birth Date.

To find unlinked individuals, click the Main Lists tab. In the Relation column of the Individuals table, filter to select "Unknown".

Here's the report I used to make a spreadsheet of all my people who had zero source citations. Go to the Main Lists tab and find the Num Sources column in the Individuals table. Click the down arrow for that column and Sort A to Z. Filtering doesn't work, although it should. I exported the full list, then deleted everyone who didn't have zero source citations.

I hope you find this breakdown of problems inspiring and not discouraging. After you've made a good amount of corrections, go back and see the improvement in your family tree.

Taking the Next Step in Family Tree Analysis

Last week I showed you how to use a spreadsheet to gain insight into your family tree. If you're a Mac user, be sure to see the useful comments beneath that article from Mac user Mick.

In the article I challenged myself to tackle a bigger project. I wanted to use Microsoft Power BI Desktop software to further dissect the data and look for trends. I've always been a frustrated programmer, meaning I want to be good at it, but I get so frustrated! This time I got clear step-by-step Power BI instructions from Microsoft Copilot—what a lifesaver.

Working with the Data from Your Family Tree

The first step was to import my spreadsheet of everyone in my family tree into the program. The spreadsheet I exported from MyHeritage Family Tree Builder last week had problems. It wasn't possible to use that file because several rows didn't follow the format. So I exported my people from Family Tree Analyzer (old reliable). Once I imported the spreadsheet, I could see all the category names in Power BI Desktop. These include ID, LastName, FirstName, BirthDate, BirthLocation, etc.

How many ways can you think of to analyze your family tree?

Next, in Power BI Desktop's Report view, I created a table to hold all the data. I gave it some visual formatting to make it easier for me to understand:

• Bold column headers with a color background.
• Alternating white and light green rows like some ancient, pleated computer printout paper.

Note: I'm using the town of Colle Sannita in these examples because it's so complete in my family tree. About 95% of the available vital records are in my tree. The other 5% are records of people from out of town or who I can't identify.

Then I used the Filters column to the right of my table and added one data field: BirthLocation. I chose Advanced filtering, not Basic filtering. This let me filter down to any birth location that contains a certain town name, like Colle Sannita. When I click Apply filter, I can see that it's working. Hurray!

But I want to see how many people that filter includes. How many people in my family tree have I documented as being born in Colle Sannita?

I consulted Copilot to find out how I can do this. First I had to add a new function to my data fields to count the rows. The Copilot guidance used the generic title of RowCount for this. Next, to show the row count, I had to add a "card" to display it on. I did that and formatted it until I got what I wanted: a whole number with a comma to show thousands. My total count before applying a filter is 85,362 (bigger than it was last week). To make it more straightforward, I changed the function's name from RowCount to People. Now my card says 85,362 People.

Let's put it to use!

• When I filter BirthLocation to contain Colle Sannita, I have 25,120 People.
• When I filter BirthLocation to contain Baselice, I have 17,335 People.
• When I filter BirthLocation to contain New York, I have 902 People.
• When I filter BirthLocation to contain Bronx, I have 293 People.

I can do this with MarriageLocation and DeathLocation. I can do it for last names. I'll clear out my filter and drag LastName into the Filter section. I'll type my name, Iamarino, in the search box, and I see right there that I have 815 people with that last name. When I click Apply filter, the main screen shows the filtered list of people and the card says 815 People.

Getting More Specific

Now let's try two filters at once. I know there was an earthquake in Colle Sannita in 1805 that killed many people. I'm going to drag both DeathLocation and DeathDate into the Filters area. Using Advanced filtering, I'll choose:

• DeathLocations that contain Colle Sannita, and
• DeathDates that contain 1805.

Combining these filters leaves me with 54 people. I know the earthquake happened on 26 Jul 1805, thanks to Colle Sannita expert, Dr. Fabio Paolucci. I see people in this list who died well before the earthquake. I'm going to change my DeathDate filter to "contains 26 Jul 1805" or "contains 27 Jul 1805". This brings the list down to 28 people. (I can't add more than two dates, but a visual scan of the dates showed that all the victims seemed to die on these two dates.)

I created another filter to find years with very high or low death counts. I added a filter for DeathLocation that contains Colle Sannita, and one for DeathDate. I can keep changing the year and clicking Apply filter to see how many deaths there were. Here are a few results:

• 1810 had 113 deaths
• 1811 had 165 deaths
• 1812 had 145 deaths
• 1813 had 88 deaths
• 1860 had 126 deaths

I wanted to find a way to export or graph these numbers, but FRUSTRATION! My only choice would be to keep changing the filter and jot down the results in another spreadsheet. (Any programmers reading this are laughing their heads off.) I tried creating a dashboard that could show the results of various filters, but it didn't work. If I do make a separate spreadsheet, I can use Excel to turn the data into line graphs and bar charts. I have started doing this. See the image below.

It didn't take long to enter facts into a new spreadsheet to make these line graphs.

Going Deeper

Next let's try a 3-part filter. I'm wondering if the girl babies outnumbered the boy babies in my ancestral hometowns. I'll create a filter that contains a BirthLocation of Colle Sannita and a BirthDate of 1810. I'll include Gender, which shows me the Female/Male split without my having to touch it. Then I'll keep changing the year.

• In 1810 there were 199 births: 103 female and 96 male. Girls win.
• In 1820 there were 170 births: 79 female, 91 male. Boys win.
• In 1830 there were 177 births: 93 female, 84 male. Girls win.
• In 1840 there were 139 births: 71 female, 68 male. Girls win, but it's a close one.
• In 1850 there were 210 births: 114 female, 96 male. Girls win.
• In 1860 there were 206 births: 113 female, 93 male. Girls win.
• In 1870, 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910 the boys win. Change in the water?

Now let's take a quick look at the marriages I've documented in Colle Sannita. There are two main churches, but the one in the heart of town is much older. I'll filter the MarriageLocation to those containing the older church: San Giorgio Martire. Wow! I've got 4,119 people who I know married there. I'll change the filter to show the location of the newer church in the area called Decorata. I've got 245 people who married there.

How are these both odd numbers? My guess is because of people who had more than one marriage. Only the preferred marriage appears in this database.

One more filter for the road. Italians have a tremendous reverence for the Virgin Mary, so they use the name Maria a LOT. Even the boys got Maria for a middle name. So, how many people in my family tree from Colle Sannita have a first name that contains Maria? 21,491 people!

I'd love to hear your suggestions for other ways to dissect the facts in my family tree.

12 Genealogy Projects to Put on the Calendar

Because I have so many big genealogy projects going on at the same time, I can't seem to follow my own advice. Sometimes I re-read my old blog posts and think, "I need to do this project." But I never find the time.

My massive source citation project could take another two years to finish! Meanwhile, I've been ignoring all these smaller genealogy projects. But here's an idea. What if I commit to one of these 12 projects a month in 2026? I can complete some of these projects in a couple of days. Then I can get back to my source citations.

That's what I'll do. Early each month in 2026, I'm going to devote time to one overlooked project. Projects that I've recommended to you! Which genealogy projects should you add to your calendar?

Want to get those genealogy projects done? Commit to one project a month and stick to the schedule.

January 2026: Crop document images

I wrote about this project in "How to Improve Your Digital Genealogy Documents". I had tons of document images that I downloaded from Ancestry. Almost all had a big black border around them, and a large file size. For a while I pushed myself hard on this project, and I almost finished it.

All that's left to crop are city directory images. There are less than 100 of them, so I know I can complete this project in 2 or 3 sittings.

February 2026: Look for father's death date

In "5 Details to Review for a Richer Family Tree" I told you how some Italian birth records say the baby's father is dead. In most cases, the death record is not available online. Then I realized that sometimes the father's date of death is there at the bottom of the baby's birth record.

When I enter a birth date in my tree for a child born to a dead father, I make a note of it in the birth date's description field. I always use the same wording, which means I can search my GEDCOM file for every instance of those words. Then I can double-check the birth record to see if it includes the missing date of death.

March 2026: Add to your life story

I wrote about an easy way to start writing your autobiography in "4 Steps to Writing Your Own Life Story". I haven't added to my life story Word document in a while. Now that I have a new daughter-in-law and grandson, it's overdue. I'm not sure I added my first daughter-in-law to the story yet!

April 2026: Add more war casualties

I have access to lots of military records for Italians who died in World War I. Italy lost major battles in that war that cost thousands of lives. I've downloaded many records, which I talk about in "Free Italian Military Records for WWI and WWII". But I have many more to download and add.

Can't access military records for your people? Find the draft registrations cards for men of the right age.

May 2026: Find ship images

In "Your Immigrant Ancestor's Ship Has a Story to Tell", I showed how to dig into your ancestor's immigration. That reminded me of something. I've always wanted to find more photographs of the ships that brought my people to America.

Years ago on Ancestry, when you searched for an immigration record, they had a column with a link to the ship's image. I don't see that anymore, and I'd only saved a few. I'll spend a few days in May searching for images of the ships that carried my closer relatives to America.

June 2026: Digitize more pages

I told you about HandwritingOCR in "Finally! A Great Tool to Transcribe Handwritten Documents". I used it to digitize a few books and handwritten pages. I digitized Italian books, dropped the text into Google Translate, and saved it in English.

HandwritingOCR performed very well on my handwritten notebook of ship manifest entries. This notebook dates back to my earliest days of family tree-building. Now that it's digitized, I can make sure I've followed up on every lead.

My task for June is to find other texts to digitize and put them to good use.

July 2026: Find new details in family photos

Last July in "How to Use AI to Analyze Family Photos", I used AI to analyze and date old family photos for:

• clothing styles
• military uniforms
• locations
• automobiles

There's so much more I can explore! This July I'm going to dig through my photos and see how much more I can learn.

August 2026: Look into local social conditions

The immigrants in your family tree always left home for a reason. In "Why Did Your Ancestor Leave Home?" I wrote about the reasons so many people left their countries.

When I visited Italy, I wondered why my ancestors left such a beautiful place. What we need to do is research the history of their location at the time they left. We're bound to find stories of oppression, poverty, unemployment, and disasters.

Pick a few ancestors and look into the social conditions at home when they emigrated. These historic facts will be a great addition to your family tree.

September 2026: Solve more DNA matches

In general, I've gotten all I can out of my DNA matches. But you never know when a new one will break open another branch of the family tree. In "5 Steps to Making a Cousin Connection" I explained my process for solving DNA matches.

This month, I'll spend a few days solving new DNA matches.

October 2026: Find more immigrants

All my roots are in Italy, so I spend most of my time looking at Italian vital records. Often the only way I find out which Italians came to America is by spotting them in a DNA match's family tree.

I'll spend time this month following my own advice in "Use a Wide Search to Find New Connections". I'll dig into the records and find more cousins who came here. That'll tie up a lot of loose ends.

November 2026: Find out-of-town marriages

In "How I Found My 8th Great Grandparents" I described how I found my ancestors' names in another town. They were born too early to be in their hometown's vital records. But their grandson married for the 3rd time in another town at age 83—which was a huge break for me!

I'm going to look for missing marriage dates in my family tree. I'll research the marriages that could have taken place in another town and see what new facts I can learn.

December 2026: Research the boarders

In "That's No Stranger in Your Relative's House" I wrote about researching a man living in my uncle's home. His true identity was a wonderful surprise!

On many census forms in my family tree, I made note of the fact that a boarder, roomer, or lodger was also in the home. I also noted when my relative was a boarder in someone else's home. I'll search for those notations in my GEDCOM file and research the unknown people. They could very well be cousins who belong in my family tree.

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I've created a calendar reminder for each of these monthly tasks to make sure they get done. Many won't take much time, and January's project starts today. It's going to be a very productive year!

P.S. I wrote this article on Sunday—finished my January project on Monday!

How Reliable Is Your Family Tree?

When we're new to building a family tree, many of us start entering details known to our closest relatives. Many of those names, dates, and places may be correct. But if you don't have any documents to back up your information, then it's all hearsay. Why should your newfound 3rd cousin believe your tree?

I want each of us to make our family tree as professional as possible. I want your tree to be your legacy. "Oh, she was the cousin who did all that family history research. She did an amazing job!" That's what the relatives will say about you.

These tips will help you make your glorious family tree an ultra-reliable thing of beauty.

My family tree at the moment has a staggering 84,675 people. Are they all my blood relatives? Heck no. But all my ancestors came from small, neighboring towns in Italy. So the connections are endless. For centuries, people in these little towns married someone from their town or the next town. My whopper of a tree pulls these towns together—as far together as the available records allow.

My family tree gives hints to distant cousins and unrelated people who have roots in the same towns as me. I'm thrilled when a stranger finds their relatives in my family tree. But I understand my responsibility, and I take it seriously.

We all have a responsibility to publish verified facts if we have our tree anywhere online. That's why I'm STILL working through the list of people in my tree who need source citations. (See how you can "Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations".) After more than a year, I've cut my list of completely unsourced people in half. I don't know if I should be happy or start crying.

Here are a few past articles to inspire you to give "cred" to the people and facts in your family tree.

Provide the Proof and Change Their Minds

As this genealogy hobby grows and spreads, so does misinformation. Find out how these errors get started, what to do about them, and how to avoid making them yourself.

How to Be a Family Tree Myth Buster

In the 1970s my brother was writing a college paper on our family history. Grandpa said his father became an evangelical minister in Italy. That had to be unusual. The only way I was able to confirm this story was in person.

When I visited the children of Grandpa's younger sister in Italy, they told me the story and showed me the chapel. It still exists!

There's no available documentation about my great grandfather's church. But there were documents to prove another bit of family lore—and disprove yet another.

3 Ways to Best Use Family Tree Hints

Online family tree hints can be a big help. But a hint that links to someone else's family tree, and not to any documents, is not a source. It's nothing more than a clue to guide your research.

To make your family tree produce valuable hints for others, be sure you're using hints the right way. These examples will take your research to the next level.

How to Tell if a Hint is Any Good

When you do find those hints, you may see that some are worth pursuing. And if you have enough evidence to know the hint is correct, be ready to expand that search. Find out how to harvest that good hint for all it's worth.

5 Tips to Use When Genealogy Documents Disagree

As you work to provide proof for your facts, you're bound to find "facts" that disagree. These 5 tips will help you make sense of a jumble of data. What can you do if the document that would provide 100% proof is not available? Follow the logic and see which document is the most reliable.

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It's time to get busy. But don't worry. If your family tree isn't massive like mine, this worthwhile project won't take you forever.

How to Create Your Origins Chart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Divide and Color

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Use Your Origins Chart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 Details to Review for a Richer Family Tree

You know the old phrase, "If I'd only known then what I know now"? It relates to genealogy very well because we build our family trees over a long period of time. Over the years I've learned so much about building a family tree. I'm sure you have, too.

As I continue to add source citations to my family tree, I revisit my early inexperienced work. Now that I know what I didn't know then, I can see past my incorrect conclusions and make breakthroughs.

Take a fresh look at your early genealogy work with these details in mind.

My "newbie" errors fall under a few categories. Here are 5 details you can review to enrich your family tree.

1. Not Assuming a Country of Origin

Years ago I documented all the available vital records from my grandfather's hometown. When I entered people with no birth record available into my family tree, I left their place of birth blank. I decided not to assume they came from the same town, or even the same country, where they later lived.

Tens of thousands of documents later, I know it was uncommon for people in this place to leave home. My roots are in small, remote, rural towns. Evidence shows people stayed in place unless they moved to the next town to marry.

Historic events in your ancestors' country may have led to a lot of migration at different times. But in my family tree, people were rarely uprooted. So even though I don't have proof of a person's town of birth, I can assume a couple of things:

• If they lived in a town where their last name was common, I'll assume they were born there. No harm done.
• If their last name is not found in their town, I'll assume they were born in Italy. This way they won't show up in a report as missing their 1870 U.S. Federal Census. (See "How to Find Location Errors in Your Family Tree".)

But let's say you're researching people in a country that saw a lot of immigration (the United States, Brazil, Australia, Canada, etc.). You shouldn't assume anyone was born in that country. You're going to need to find other documents to narrow down their place of birth.

2. Missing Certain Annotations

I looked at a ton of vital records before I realized certain important clues could be hiding there. Now that I'm hunting down source citations, I get a second chance to scan those records for clues like these:

• If a baby is born after their father died, check the birth record for a note about the his date and place of death.
• If a child is born and the father doesn't report the birth, there may be an explanation why. You may see that he was ill, the weather was terrible, he was dead, or he was somewhere else working. I have a lot of records in my family tree that say the father was in America when the baby was born. This is a good prompt to search for his immigration records.
• On Italian vital records, you may overlook the fact that a baby was stillborn. Look for the words "nato morto" (stillborn), "senza vita" (without life), or a death date in the column of a birth record. It's important to notice this because of the next item to review.

3. Not Recognizing Human Error

A town clerk is the person who creates these old vital records. And being human means there's a possibility of human error.

Some marriage records confused me long ago because the dates didn't line up. Here's what was happening. To get married in Italy, the bride and groom had to show a copy of their birth record. It's not like today. You didn't have your birth certificate in a strongbox at home. You had to request that a town clerk find the original record and hand-write a copy of it. (No Xerox machines, either.)

I found cases where the clerk copied the birth record of the bride or groom's dead older sibling with the same name. Since I have access to the birth records, I can see that this was human error. But there's another wrong-person error that can lead to big problems for your family tree.

Aside from their own birth records, the bride and groom needed their parents' consent to marry. If their mother was dead, they needed a copy of her death record. If their father was dead, they needed his death record. And if their father's father was dead, they needed a copy of his death record. Grandpa may have died many decades ago. If the town clerk didn't have the right details, he might copy the death record of a different man with the same name. And they all had the same name, didn't they?

Not recognizing this error may lead you two merge two very different people in your family tree. If the details seem off, try to search for the man who fits this stray death record.

4. Overlooking Marriage Clues

Early on I made this mistake over and over. If a couple posted marriage banns, but there was no marriage record to go with it, I assumed they never married.

Sometimes that is the case. (See "When Is a Marriage Not a Marriage?") But then I learned two important facts. In Italy, if a bride and groom came from two different towns:

• they had to post marriage banns in both towns
• they almost always married in the bride's town, even if they were going to live in the groom's town.

A couple's second marriage banns should tell you if one of them was born in another town. (See where to look in "How to Read Italian Marriage Records REVISED".) If she was born somewhere else, you can expect they married there. Now I'm making sure I check the other town for marriage records. And I'll find the original birth record of the out-of-towner.

5. Not Expanding the Search

Building on that last point, the original vital record is always better to have. The town clerk is less likely to misspell a name that's common in his town. If marriage records tell me the groom's father died in another town, I'll get the original record in that town. Then I use the original document for the source citation.

In the past I was more likely to stay within my ancestral hometown and not chase down the out-of-towners. But the purpose of my family tree is to help countless other family tree researchers. If I can cite the original birth record of my third great uncle's second wife from another town, why not do it? I won't build her entire family tree, but I want to put together enough facts to make that possible for someone else.

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It took a huge source citations project to get me to review everyone in my tree. But it's so worthwhile. I've made discoveries, added new people, and enriched my family tree. Find a way to give your family tree a thorough review. What big discoveries will you make?