One Question Leads to Rich Family Tree History

In January I committed to working on 12 genealogy projects in 2026. Before this year, I put off these projects because my source citations project takes up all my time. But each one is something I want to work on; something I want to complete. Putting them on the calendar makes me commit a bit of time to each project. And I have finished some of them 100 percent.

This month's task is "Find new details in family photos". A year ago I used Microsoft Copilot to analyze a few old photos. AI can identify time and place using clothing style, automobiles, landmarks, and more.

Choose a Mysterious Photo

I looked through my Family Tree/photos folder. I found a portrait of my first cousin five times removed, Francesco Saverio Basile, born in 1832. I have his portrait because he was infamous. He was a brigand. Definition? A member of a gang that ambushes and robs people in forests and mountains.

See how you can take a mysterious photo from your family tree and turn it into a rich piece of history.

But he wasn't hiding beside the road robbing wealthy passersby like Robin Hood. He was part of a large group of Southern Italian men who used violence to oppose the 1861 unification of Italy.

Copilot's Analysis

I dropped his portrait into Copilot and asked one question. "What can you tell me about this photo of Francesco Saverio Basile? He was born in Colle Sannita, Benevento, Italy in 1832. In 1861 he was killed by the Piedmontese Army as a brigand."

Whenever you use AI to learn about something, follow the sources. What you'll see is a helpful summary, but follow the sources to learn more.

Copilot confirmed this is a mid-19th-century Italian studio portrait. It pointed me to a website that talks about Francesco Saverio Basile. His nickname was Pilorusso because of his red hair. (I know that is true.) Based in a forest, he led guerilla actions against the new Italian authorities in 1861.

I knew about Pilorusso because a man from my grandfather's hometown wrote a book on the brigands in 2022. When I saw a post about Francesco by this author, Antonio Bianco, I used vital records to see if I have a connection to this man. And I do.

The best source Copilot showed me happens to be an essay written by Antonio Bianco. Reading the essay led me to ask Copilot several follow-up questions. Here's the gist of what I learned as background to this one photograph.

• I knew Napoleon's rule is the reason we have civil records for Italy from about 1809 to 1815. Now I've learned that Napoleon put his brother and then his brother-in-law on the throne in Naples. He must have been busy conquering elsewhere.
• After Napoleon's defeat, things changed. The House of Bourbon (aka the French) ruled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1816 to 1860. Italy at the time consisted of a few kingdoms, states, and duchies, many under foreign rule.
• This part's a real surprise. The Bourbons' investments made the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies prosperous before unification. I'm surprised because I know the south was not prosperous after unification.
• A pie chart shows that before the 1861 unification of Italy, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies held 66% of Italy's wealth. This explains why a band of rebels, or brigands, were so opposed to unification and loyal to the Bourbons.
• My cousin Francesco led a series of assaults on local institutions, based in his hideout in a forest.
• The governor of Benevento asked for help, and the military set out to destroy the brigands. By late 1861, my cousin is missing. Historians say the military captured and shot him.
• Another man, Michele Caruso, becomes the leader of the brigands after Francesco's death. His second in command, Antonio Secola, is also in my family tree. They captured and shot Caruso in 1863. Secola surrendered in June 1864.
• I can add to my family tree that Antonio Secola died in prison on the island of Elba in 21 Apr 1885. (I created a source citation for Antonio Bianco's essay and the website.) More research helped me find the prison. It's in what is now a beautiful resort town with stunning views of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

As a test, I tried the same exercise on three other AI platforms.

1. Claude AI

Claude AI impressed me. Here's what it did with the photo and a brief statement:

• It provided a summary of facts, citing another article by Antonio Bianco as its source.
• It led me to another source that says the military executed Francesco by a firing squad. This source contains photographs and paintings depicting the lives of the brigands.
• Claude pointed me to a Wikipedia page that says Francesco was a former officer of the Bourbon Army.

As a follow-up question, I asked for details about Antonio Secola. I learned his marriage date, which is great because it is not found in the 1856 marriages for his hometown. His marriage banns are available, but not the marriage. Antonio's story has some fascinating tidbits. For instance, he went to jail for theft, but since he had helped build the courthouse, he managed to escape. He went home for three years!

2. NotebookLM

Using NotebookLM, I uploaded the portrait and got a response before asking anything. The photo's metadata identifies him as Francesco Saverio Basile. NotebookLM provided a very detailed description of the man and his clothing. It dated the photo in the mid-to-late 19th century.

I added the note I have with Francesco in my family tree. It says: Francesco Saverio Basile was a "briganti" known as Pelorosso (Pilèrusscè in dialect) because he had red hair. At dawn on 10 August 1861, the Piedmontese Army broke up his band of brigands, consisting of about 1,000 men. He may have died on that date.

As a response, NotebookLM:

• went into even more detail about his facial hair
• said his clothing is consistent with the rural brigand style of the mid-19th century in the Italian south
• said, "His ability to lead a band of 1,000 men highlights his significant role during the period of social and political upheaval following the unification of Italy. This image serves as a rare visual record of a figure who participated in the intense resistance against the new Italian state."

It didn't cite any sources, which isn't helpful, but it suggested follow-up questions.

3. ChatGPT

The only other time I tried ChatGPT I hated it. It made up everything. This time I got more details about Francesco Saverio Basile's historical context. It mentions that brigands could be:

1. former soldiers of the Army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (which I now know is Francesco's case)
2. supporters of the deposed House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies
3. peasants resisting new taxes or conscription
4. local outlaws
5. people motivated by political, economic, and personal reasons.

Every analysis of his portrait mentions his tilted hat. It seems wearing it that way was typical of rural southern Italians at the time. That's an amazing little detail I wouldn't have suspected.

Your Turn

Time to go through your family tree photo collection. Which ones hold mysteries for you? Are there any where clothing styles or automobiles may help narrow down the time and place? You owe it to yourself to see what you can learn.

How to Find and Fix Family Tree Inconsistencies

As I continue adding the missing source citations to my family tree, there's a nice side-effect. I get to review how I've recorded people's facts.

There's one type of fact I want to fix, but I need to be able to see the big picture first. Most of the 85,000+ people in my family tree lived in Italy. Between about 1815 and 1865, their birth record can include their baptism details.

I always record the baptism when it's available. But I didn't always put in the name and address of the church. I didn't think of it until I visited some of those Italian churches. I need a way to find all the baptism facts in my tree that are missing the church's name and address.

How can you find everyone in your family tree with inconsistent details? It's easy!

Family Tree Analyzer makes it very easy to get the big picture I need. I opened my latest GEDCOM file in FTA and clicked the Facts tab. I selected only the Baptism fact and all the relationship types. Then I clicked the button with wording that seems confusing*, but it's the right one. It says, "Show only the selected Facts for Individuals who don't have any of the excluded Fact Types".

*The button's wording confused me because I wasn't excluding any Fact Types.

This opened a new window with the results. I have 24,910 people with a baptism fact in my family tree. Since that's such a long list, I exported the results to a spreadsheet. Then I sorted the spreadsheet by the Location column. Now it's easy to see the locations that are town names, not church names.

Here's an example of what I see. Ten people have a baptism location of Apice (Apice, Benevento, Campania, Italy). A few other people have the full address of the church of San Nicola in Apice. A ton more use the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Apice. I need to:

• revisit the birth records of those 10 people
• see if their baptism happened in San Nicola or Santa Maria Assunta
• fix the address.

Why You'd Want to Do This

This exercise is all about consistency and thoroughness. I've been preaching consistency ever since I began this blog in 2017. That's because doing a task with consistency adds quality to the results. And if your family tree is important to you, you'll want its quality level to be high.

Never overlook consistency:

• Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree
• How to Batch Process Your Genealogy Documents
• Organize Your Genealogy Research By Choosing Your Style

To begin, I'm deleting the spreadsheet lines with duplicate church addresses. Instead of 100 lines showing me the location of the church in Pietrelcina, Italy, I'll keep only one line. This will be my reference for any Pietrelcina baptisms that don't name the church. I have 12 of those, so I'll go to each of them in my family tree and make the correction.

With the duplicate church names removed, my spreadsheet has 6,484 lines. Several are references to remind me of the church name in that town. I see that a TON of lines are from four towns whose source citations I haven't added yet. I'll be working on them soon.

Like every other big project I do, I'll chip away at the smaller groups of people first. I'll pick off the 10 from Apice, the five from Alberona, the 13 from Pago Veiano, and so on.

The first town I addressed is the one whose source citations I completed on Friday. It's called Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, and it's a bit sprawled out. While the population is small, the town has a bunch of hamlets, each with its own church. The spreadsheet showed me that I didn't have a street address for two of the churches I've been entering. I used Google Maps to see exactly where they are and made all my updates.

Next I need to find all the marriages that are missing the name and address of the church!

Need Another Option?

If you don't want to use Family Tree Analyzer, you have a few software options. These include:

• Family Historian (this is the best alternative option)
• Gramps (I didn't find an export-to-spreadsheet option)
• RootsMagic (not the free version, as far as I can tell)
• Legacy Family Tree
• Reunion

Think about your family tree. Is there a type of fact you're better at recording now than you were at first? Wouldn't you like to get it right? Export a spreadsheet and tease out the inconsistencies you'd like to fix.

The Ancestor Map of My Dreams for Free

Two weeks ago I searched for a website that would show all my ancestors plotted on a map. The best I found was a site called Genomelink with its Your Roots Map feature. But I wasn't satisfied with it at all.

On Saturday I found everything I wanted and much more. TreeLab is a free GEDCOM analyzer with extraordinary mapping features. Much like GEDminer, which I reviewed in March, TreeLab does a deep analysis of your family tree. And it does so in a split second! There's so much to explore with TreeLab, but let's focus on the mapping features today.

Using the TreeLab Maps

First drop your GEDCOM file onto the main TreeLab page. You aren't uploading it anywhere. The analysis takes place in the web browser on your computer in the blink of an eye. (Once again I'm in awe of computer programmers.) Click the Maps tab and then the Ancestor Map button. Identify yourself or whomever you want to analyze. I chose "showing up to 15G" because I could see at the bottom of the page that this plotted all my direct ancestors.

My quest to find the ancestor map I've been dreaming of is finally fulfilled.

The map shows my 4 U.S. ancestors (my parents and grandmothers) and my 413 Italian ancestors. Click the Filters button above the map to understand the colors. Different colored dots on the map tell you the level of ancestor. For example, 6th great grandparents have a purple dot. Larger dots mean more people. For example, one large dot on the town of Colle Sannita represents 132 of my ancestors. Hover over any dot for details. Click the dot for far more detail.

I love this visual. It's everything I hoped to find in my search two weeks ago.

Identifying Missing Places

Here's a project I need to do, and TreeLab is a great tool to help get it done. I have too many people in my family tree with no birth or death location. If you're going to analyze your GEDCOM, it helps to put everyone somewhere on the map.

I've been putting at least the country in blank locations as I come across them. But I have close to 9,000 more people like this. TreeLab to the rescue!

This free surname map is a tremendous genealogy tool.

When I click the Maps tab and the Surname Map button in TreeLab, I see the most common last names from my family tree. Each name shows how many people in my tree have that name. When I click my maiden name, Iamarino, I see all 816 people plotted on a world map. When I scroll below the map, there's a full list of 816 people in chronological order by birth. The details include each person's:

• full name
• year born
• year died
• birth place

This list makes it easy to see who has no birth place recorded at all. They're the ones I want to fix. You can click the Excel button at the top of the list to export these facts to a spreadsheet. When I do so, the Excel file also includes each person's sex and death place.

If your tree doesn't have 85,664 people, you can view these lists without downloading anything. My list of 396 people with the surname Gentile has only 5 people with no birth place. I can correct them without a download.

When I do download a surname, I can filter the spreadsheet to show everyone with an empty birth place.

Note: On TreeLab's Research tab, when I click Research Gaps I see that 77,408 out of 85,664 of my people have a birth place. That means 8,256 people need my attention. My score on death places is much worse.

Why This Matters

In 2008 I learned I could view Italian vital records on microfilm at a Family History Center. Four years later, before these records came online, I added 15,000 people to my family tree. And they all came from ONE TOWN—Baselice. (Here's what that process looked like.)

At the time, I didn't want to assume everyone was born in Baselice. I didn't even want to assume they were born in Italy! Now I know better, and I want my family tree to have better data.

Here's a good example. My 3rd great grandfather, Giuseppe Leone, died in Baselice in 1830. His death record names his parents and says he was born in Baselice. But when I entered his parents into my tree, I left their birth locations blank. After documenting thousands of 19th century Italians, I know they stayed put. No one came to those tiny, remote towns from another country.

Plus, I realized two important facts about Italian death records:

1. When the death record names the deceased's parents, it often says they were "conjugi di detto Terra". That means they were "spouses of the same town". Well, if they married in Baselice, and their child died in Baselice, it's safe to say that child was born in Baselice.
2. If someone died in the town but came from another town, the death record mentions their original town. More modern death records that have a placeholder for the deceased's birth place. On earlier records, it's common to state where the person came from.
   
   Here's an example. My 7th great grandfather's 1749 death record calls him "Domenico Mascia di Campolattaro". Domenico Mascia died in Colle Sannita, Italy, and had seven children there. But his death record states he came from the town of Campolattaro, about 11 miles away.

I'm going to pay extra attention to my direct ancestors who are missing places or using "Italy". A review of their documents may have clues I missed before.

For lots more help with understanding Italian death records, see How to Read an Italian Death Record REVISED.

Let me know if you agree TreeLab has more to offer than GEDminer. I plan to write about TreeLab's other features soon.

4 Steps to Make Your Digital Photos More Valuable

In January I wrote about "12 Genealogy Projects to Put on the Calendar". I'm tackling each job in turn, and I'm so glad to get them done. I rearranged a few of the months, and I had to change one project.

That project was to "Digitize more pages" using HandwritingOCR. It turns your document images into text files. I've done this with a few books written in different languages:

• I photographed the pages with my iPhone or scanner.
• I converted them into text with HandwritingOCR, saving the result in a text file.
• I translated the text with Google Translate, saving that result in the same text file.

But I have nothing left to digitize. So I changed my May 2026 task to "Download and categorize my Google Photos". I hadn't done that since March 2023!

Take these 4 steps to add tons of value to photos and genealogy document images.

Years ago my iPhone ran out of room to store new photos. I'd heard about Google Photos and started using it in 2013. A free account gives you 15 GB of storage, and 13 years of my photos take up one third of that. Since Google Photos is always backing up my photos for me, I can remove them from my iPhone if I want. My current phone has plenty of storage, but I'd rather streamline what's on there.

Keep in mind, anything you store on Google Photos is accessible via an app on your phone or the website. So all your photos are still portable.

I created several albums on Google Photos and assigned every photo to one of them. My albums have names like House, Woofie, Family, Cars, Maine 2021, and more. Then I went through the albums and downloaded everything newer than March 2023. But there's much more to do.

Let's concentrate on the genealogy-related photos today. I have lots of family photos and old photos sent to me by my cousins in texts:

• A typical downloaded photo saved from a text has a file name like 20200406_171047_1648666454076_001.jpg. You can see it begins with a date, but the rest isn't helpful.
• Other photos have names like IMG_3806.JPG. That's useless other than keeping photos in chronological order.
• Still other photos have names like 2592.heic. HEIC?

I found out HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Compression. These don't open on my computer the way JPGs do. For me, they launch Photoshop. I downloaded a free HEIC Viewer from the Microsoft Store, but it keeps asking me to rate it. While it can convert the HEIC files to JPGs, that capability isn't free. So I'm going to use Photoshop to do the conversion.

There are four steps we all need to take with our digital photos:

• Rename your photos to something meaningful. I can identify "DiAnn and Chris Summer 1992" a lot easier than "20211215_115628_1639588924940_001.jpg". I'd know which photo it was without seeing a thumbnail.
• Crop and enhance your photos as needed. Some of my photos from texts are screenshots that a cousin sent. I can crop out the surroundings. And if it's an old damaged photo, I can clean it up.
• Give your photos metadata. Metadata is information you enter into the photo's properties. This information stays with the photo file. It can include a title, tags, a comment, date taken, and more.
• File your photos to make finding them more intuitive. Since I categorized my Google Photos into albums, they're already in good folders. But I can make sub-folders. Then I can keep all the family photos from Bella's 2025 graduation party together.

Let's take a look at these four steps.

1. Rename your photos to something meaningful

I have four photos of my husband Paul and my late cousin Carmine, taken at my cousin Paula's birthday party in 2023. They're all in the HEIC format that iPhones use. My first step is to rename them to include the subjects. I'm keeping it simple: Paul Ohama and Carmine Mollica 1, 2, 3, and 4.

2. Crop and enhance your photos as needed

Opening the photos in Photoshop, I see the color is a bit yellow. When I clicked Image > Auto Color for each one, they looked much better. There's unnecessary space above their heads, so I can crop that out.

With these adjustments, I can save each image in JPG format with its new name. I'll delete the HEIC versions, knowing they're still out there on Google Photos.

3. Give your photos metadata

For years I've been adding metadata to my genealogy document images. I give them a title which carries over to Family Tree Maker when I drop them there. And I add comments that include the source citation.

Not long ago I learned something new about metadata from a video by Thomas MacEntee. You can add metadata to several files at once, as long as they're all getting the same metadata. So I will:

• Select these 4 photos
• Right-click and choose Properties
• Click the Details tab
• Fill in a shared title, the tag "family", a comment about where I took the photos, and the date I took the photos.
• Click Apply to save this metadata to all four files at once.

Having added family as a tag, I can now go to Windows File Explorer (or Finder on a Mac), and type tags:family in the search box. The four photos of Paul and Carmine are at the top of the results list. I'm new to using tags, so I'm keeping it simple for now.

4. File your photos to make finding them more intuitive

These are the only photos I took at cousin Paula's birthday party, so I won't put them in a sub-folder. But I have several photos from cousin Bella's graduation party. I'll give them their own sub-folder. Most of those photos are group shots. I can identify key people in the file name, and identify everyone in the Comments section of the metadata.

I have a lot of work to do, and the plan was to complete this project in May! I'll try to plow through the photos in a few long sessions or commit to an hour or two a day. Then it's on to my June 2026 project (I started it yesterday). That project, "Add more war casualties", was my April project until I reshuffled the deck.

Here's what's involved in the war casualties project. I have a spreadsheet of the men from my ancestral Italian hometowns who died in World War I. The province of Benevento has their actual military records online for download. I'll check to see which military records I haven't downloaded yet for men who are in my family tree. Then I'll add the record and its source citation to my tree.

Which family tree projects have you been putting off? Why not jump into one now and get the ball rolling?

5 Efficiency Techniques That Fortify Your Family Tree

With so many responsibilities to juggle, your time is precious. When you do find time to work on your family tree, you don't want to waste a second.

That's why you need to focus on your efficiency. Efficiency helps you get more done in less time. Here are 5 different ways for you to reap the benefits of efficiency in your genealogy work. They boil down to: (a) focusing on one thing at a time and (b) not reinventing the wheel.

Efficiency techniques give you a higher quality product: your family tree.

1: One Task at a Time

When you do find time to work on your family tree, don't waste a second. Make your own version of this task list (see "How to Run Your Genealogy Research Like Clockwork"). Then choose whichever one you're in the mood for and get right to it.

Your task list should include a mixture of things you know you need to do and things you want to do. For more ideas of things to add to your task list, see "Work in Batches to Strengthen Your Family Tree".

2: One Process at a Time

When I find a census page that contains a large family from my family tree, I need to go through a whole process. I have to:

• Download the census sheet image.
• Give it a name that follows my chosen file-naming pattern.
• Crop and enhance the image in Photoshop.
• Add metadata to the image.
• Attach it to the head of household in my family tree and share it with each member of the household.
• Add facts from this census to each member of the family.
• Create a source citation and attach it to all those facts.
• File away the original image, or keep it in my holding pen until file backup day. (See "This 3-Step Backup Routine Protects Your Family Tree".)

Did you realize you're following a process? Does it have a lot of steps? Think them through and make sure nothing got overlooked.

You'll find it's more efficient to complete the entire process in one sitting. Don't go through the steps for the head of household and worry about the rest of the family later. That's so inefficient. Instead, "Get into a Groove to Fortify Your Family Tree".

3: One Record Type at a Time

Last month I completed a task I thought of long ago. I wanted to find images of the ships my ancestors took from the old country to the new one. Somehow I never got around to doing it. Then I made it a priority. I spent part of two days working on nothing but the ship images. Now, after so much procrastination, it's done!

But most days I spend my genealogy time on one thing: Italian vital records. My ongoing project is to add all the missing source citations to my family tree. The bulk of them are citations for the Italian vital records in my tree.

Focusing on that one task makes me very efficient. If you have missing source citations, you'll be more efficient if you tackle one record type at a time. It could be ship manifests, census records, vital records, or anything else you need. To make your source citations shine, see "Add Consistency to Your Source Citations".

4: One Whole Family at a Time

While working on my missing Italian source citations, I've tried different techniques. I needed to see which is most efficient. First of all, it's by far more efficient to work on one town at a time. My missing source citations come from several different towns. By working on one town at a time:

• I save typing. All my source citations are going to use the same town.
• I stay in one section of the Antenati portal (where they keep the vital records). That means I don't have to navigate to another part of the website.
• I avoid picking the wrong town while adding the citation to Family Tree Maker.

But I did try an experiment. I opened the 1812 birth records for this one town. I went through them page-by-page, looking up the people in my family tree. (They're ALL in there.) I added each missing citation to my tree. I did this all the way through the 1819 births. It was nice that I didn't have to do anything in my web browser but turn the page. But I found that I had to move around in my tree so much that I accomplished less in a day.

What's more efficient is to work through an entire family of siblings at a time. There's no moving around in my tree. I can see them all on one screen in Family Tree Maker.

I have a copy of all the vital records on my computer. It's very efficient for me to:

• search for all the siblings at once using their father's name.
• open each set of Antenati records in a new browser tab.
• customize my source citation template for each sibling.

That's how I complete so many in a day. See "How to Become a Genealogy Efficiency Expert".

5: Use Templates

Why waste time retyping something long and complicated from scratch? Let's say you're creating source citations for a specific type of document. You have tons of these documents to cite, and it'd be nice if they all followed the same style.

No problem! Give some thought to how you want these similar citations to look. Then type out and save a template in a text file. I crank out more than 100 source citations a day for my Italian relatives' vital records. I'm sure not going to type each one out in full each time. That's not efficient. Instead, I start from a citation template and make a few changes to match the record. See the Efficiency section of "2 Keys to Tackling a Big Family Tree Project".

I keep a handful of specialized templates in my text file. These ensure consistency while saving time.

Are you using efficiency techniques to maximize your precious genealogy time?

Create a Gorgeous, Custom Family Tree Chart in Minutes

Inspired by a genealogy friend, I tried something the other day that I must share with you. It's an easy way to create a stunning, one-of-a-kind family tree chart. I did it in two steps.

One platform did a beautiful job. Another invented an entire family.

Step #1: Print an Ancestor Chart as a PDF or Image

Decide which person you want to be the subject of your custom family tree chart. For this exercise, I'm choosing my grandfather, Adamo Leone. Here are the steps to follow:

• In your family tree software, select the person you want.
• Depending on your software, choose to create an ancestor or pedigree chart.
• Customize the chart as needed, but keep it simple. The websites we'll be using tend to make typos. You may choose to include:
  • name and lifespan
  • 3 generations of ancestors
  • their spouse
• When you're satisfied with the chart, print it as a PDF or an image.

If you can't generate an ancestor or pedigree chart from your family tree, you can create it as a text file. Here's a text format you can follow:

Generation 1: Your Subject's Name (dates) married Spouse's Name (dates)
Generation 2: Your Subject's Father (dates) married Mother (dates)
Generation 3: Your Subject's Paternal Grandparents; Maternal Grandparents
Generation 4: Your Subject's Paternal Great Grandparents (both sets); Maternal Great Grandparents (both sets)

Mine looks like this:

Generation 1: Adamo Leone (1891-1987) married Maria Carmina Sarracino (1899-1992)
Generation 2: Giovannangelo Leone (1850-1942) married Marianna Iammucci (1856-1929)
Generation 3: Nicola Domenico Leone (1796-) married Caterina Pisciotti (1819-); Antonio Luigi Maria Iammucci (1814-) married Annamaria Bozza (1815-)
Generation 4: Giuseppe Leone (1772-1830) married Maria Zarrelli (1772-1804); Giovanni Pisciotti (1793-1842) married Dorodea Petruccelli (1792-); Leonardo Iammucci (1783-1835) married Mariangela Palumbo (1784-1823); Antonio Bozza (1784-) married Angela Cece (1779-1850)

Now you're ready to generate your work of art.

These were my first attempts in NotebookLM, and I adore them.

Step #2: Ask for What You Want

Go to your platform of choice and drop the ancestor chart you created into the conversation. I'm using NotebookLM from Google because I've had good results.

Here's an example of what you can request. Tailor it to meets your needs. You may want to add a photo of your own to use as a background (although this didn't quite work in NotebookLM). Be sure to describe what you want in detail. And tell it what you want the title at the top of the chart to be. I didn't think to do that.

Based on this PDF, create a family tree diagram for Adamo Leone that uses the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag. Use the photograph named baselice.jpg as a background image.

Give the website a bit of time to create your masterpiece.

After a couple of tries, I got a beautiful chart with no typos that looked the way I wanted. It never used the photo I supplied, but it did create something that matches the feeling of my photograph.

Try Out Other Platforms

Let's see how this works on a platform other than NotebookLM.

1. ChatGPT. I went to ChatGPT for the first time ever. I gave it the same PDF and photograph. I used the exact same prompt. IT MADE UP EVERYTHING. It used my photograph, so that's one good thing. But it made Adamo Leone the ancestor of a bunch of made-up people who are not in my family tree. It used the wrong dates for my grandfather. It said everyone in the chart died in Youngstown, Ohio. That's weird because Youngstown does appear in my family tree, but not for this side of my family.

Since ChatGPT offered me the option to correct the image, I typed in this:

In the PDF I supplied, Adamo Leone (1891-1987) is the descendant, but you made him the ancestor of a lot of people who do not exist. Can you make this an ancestor chart that matches the facts I provided?

More hallucinations. Who are these people? Well, that was the first and LAST time I'm going to use ChatGPT.

2. Copilot. I went to the AI platform I always use: Copilot from Microsoft. I've had sessions with Copilot where I asked a question and learned a lot about a topic. I've also asked Copilot to analyze photos for me, with great results.

I dropped the ancestor chart PDF and the photograph into the chat window and used the same prompt as before:

Based on this PDF, create a family tree diagram for Adamo Leone that uses the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag. Use the photograph named baselice.jpg as a background image.

It asked me which format I want the result in, and if I want to add portraits to the chart. It said it would use a vertical format, so I asked it to use landscape. There was a button I had to click to get it to run this task.

After several minutes, it looked as if I could click to download the file, but there was nothing there. I asked Copilot, "Where's the PDF?" It asked me for the two input files again, my PDF and photograph. Then it said it was working on it. It listed the four steps it was going to follow. I stepped away and had breakfast. Copilot appeared to have quit after finishing the first step. I asked it what happened, and it told me it was ready to continue with steps 2–4.

I must say, Copilot doesn't usually give me such a hassle, but this is the hardest thing I've asked it to do. OK, steps 2–4 are complete. It's generating files for me to download.

It did what I asked, but I don't like it. The background image is very dark. It put in generation labels and a key that are making things look crowded. And I see at least one incorrect date.

The output does include an SVG file that I could edit if I had the right software. Even if I did, it seems like a lot of work when NotebookLM did such a beautiful job for me.

3. Claude. Now I'll have to try one more platform I was planning to avoid for the rest of my life: Claude. When I tried to create a chart without creating a free account, things did not go well. It created a chart using Courier font and ignoring the lifespan dates. It told me it can't use my photo as a background. But it complemented me on the choice of a photo that shows the Campania region of Italy.

Each AI platform has its strengths. I didn't find Claude's strengths.

I created a free account to see if it would treat me better. It did. Like Copilot, Claude made my background photo very dark. And it put each person's information in white text on a black background. It was all too hard to read.

I asked it to do three things:

1. fade the background instead of making it dark
2. remove the generation labels that were cluttering things up
3. put people's info in black text with a white background.

It did all that in no time. The output is an HTML file—a webpage that resizes as you change the size of your browser. There's a slight shadow that appears when you hover over any person.

I have more edits I'd like. The fonts are hard to read, the image is too faded, and it's upside-down for an ancestor chart. That's when I must have run into a free-account limit. It told me I'd have to start a new chat to do what I wanted. I started over and give it all the specific instructions I wanted it to follow. But it balked and said I gave it too many instructions. Because that's what computers say???

Instead of the text-based chart I wanted to test, I gave Claude the PDF version of the tree and the photograph. I said:

I want to generate a family tree chart from this PDF using this photo, as is, as a background. Do not include generation labels or a footer.

The progress report it was giving me was funny. It said things like "Planting family roots" and "Branching out generations". But it had a problem with the photograph this time, and it couldn't make all the ancestors fit on the page. It was a bust.

Farewell, Claude. We hardly knew ye.

Stick with the Winner

NotebookLM is the clear winner for this family tree project. But a free account limits you to generating three of these charts (which it calls infographics) a day. I wanted to test it using the text-based ancestor chart instead of a PDF, but I hit the daily limit. The next day I did use the text-based ancestor chart to create the image at the top of this article. Love it!

To make sure my text-based chart format is good, I asked NotebookLM to create a table based on the text. Is it OK to separate ancestor couples in the same generation with a semi-colon? It is. The table turned out correct.

I hope you'll have fun with this project. Give careful thought to what you want it to look like, and be specific in your request. Don't try to add to many generations. When you come up with a winning format, copy and save your request so you can use it for other family charts tomorrow.

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.