How to Master the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

I remember how the first group of people in my family tree became disconnected. My mom wanted to know how her cousin Jean was her cousin.

Jean and Mom lived in the same Bronx neighborhood and knew each other as cousins. Jean's maiden name was Saviano, and that was Mom's grandmother's maiden name.

As I pieced together Jean's paternal branch, everything seemed fine. When I realized I didn't know who her 3rd great grandfather was, the connection fell apart. And without available records from their hometown in Italy, I had no way to find our true connection.

Some of my other disconnected groups are families built on speculation. I believe I can find their connection some day, and I want to hold onto what I've learned.

Today's project is an easy way to identify every person in your family tree who is not related to you. We'll find them, tag them, justify them, and make them easy to find again with a click.

The best way to identify your unrelated people is with the free program Family Tree Analyzer. Here's what to do:

• Export your latest GEDCOM file and open it in Family Tree Analyzer.
• Click the Main Lists tab to see a table of everyone in your tree.
• Scroll over to the right to the Relation column.
• Click the little arrow next to the word Relation. Then choose to display only the UNKNOWN relationships.
• Scroll left to the Surname column.
• Click the little arrow next to the word Surname and choose to Sort A to Z.

FTA finds every disconnected person in your family tree. In a few steps, you can totally own them.

I'm starting out with 242 unrelated people in my 45,684-person family tree. I know that 25 people named Saviano are in this list because of cousin Jean, and I want to keep them. A lot of Saviano's came to America from their tiny Italian hamlet of Pastene. They are cousins for sure. It's a lack of vital records from Pastene that's keeping me from finding our common ancestors.

What I want to do today is:

• Make sure I want to keep all these hangers-on. It's possible I can let some of them go.
• Identify them visually in my Family Tree Maker file. I'll use my "No Relationship Established" profile picture and a red color-code. That way I'll see the moment a marriage record turns a group of stragglers into relatives.
• Create a filter in Family Tree Maker so I can easily see only my unrelated people.
• Add a note to explain why I'm keeping them. I'll use a few standard notes:
  • Related to Saviano branch (This is important for spouses and parents not named Saviano.)
  • Related to Sarracino branch (This is my great grandfather's name, from the same tiny hamlet.)
  • Related to Muollo branch (Same hamlet/same story!)
  • Expect to find connection (That's based on my current mega-project.)
  • "Colle Sannita nel 1742" (This is a priceless book detailing every family in Grandpa's hometown that year. I hope to connect to everyone in the book.)

Borrow this!

I've made a habit of putting important notes like this in the description field of a person's birth fact. It's always right there for me to see when I view a person in Family Tree Maker. That's where I'll put the notes I listed above.

If you build your tree online, use tagging and filtering options to reach this goal.

With my "unrelated" filter in place, I can turn my attention to this group of people at any time. I can spend a day searching for U.S. documents that may solve the problem of missing Italian documents.

There was one extended family from my Pastene with no connection to anyone else. When I put them in my tree, I must have thought they had a connection, and it fell apart, too. I'm going to delete this group from my family tree. There were a few others who had no place in my tree either.

The results?

• Now I have 201 people in my family tree with no documented relationship to me.
• They're all there for a reason, and now those reasons are in plain sight.
• I can use my new Family Tree Maker "Unrelated" filter at any time to focus on this group of people and try to connect them.
• Anyone seeing my family tree on Ancestry will know that I don't know my connection to these people.

With this profile image and a red color-code, I'll know the moment an unrelated branch becomes connected in my family tree.

To create my new "Unrelated" filter, I had my Family Tree Analyzer list of unrelated people on one screen, and Family Tree Maker on the other. I included everyone from the list in the filter.

It's a big improvement for me to be able to identify my stragglers so easily. It's plain to see that most of them are relatives from one town, the only town throwing up brick walls for me. The rest are people I hope to connect. They're on my radar as I go through every available vital record from my ancestral hometowns.

This project is a one-time investment of your time that can pay off for you again and again.

How to Fix Bad or Missing Source Citations

Regular spot-checks are a great way to see where your family tree needs your attention. Today I checked one type of source citation in my family tree to see what needs improvement.

I randomly chose the source title "New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943." (That's the database title on Ancestry.com.)

The value of thorough source citations is clear. Each one you create properly is a victory.

I used to create a generic source citation for many types of documents. For example, each U.S. Census year, NY naturalization records, ship manifests, and so on. Then I'd attach the generic citation to every fact that came from that source. But that didn't help to prove the facts.

Now that I know better, I like to do it right and make individual citations with all the specific facts.

The only way to turn these generic source citations into proper citations is one at a time. I have 30 NY naturalization citations, and 23 of them are generic. Here's what I'll do for each one:

As I view my source citations, I'll go to the person attached to a generic citation.

I'll check the document image to see if I've saved the specific details about this source. If I did save the facts, I can use them to build the new source citation. If I didn't save the facts, I need to search for this person's naturalization record online again.

Storing details in the document image notes is a terrific genealogy practice.

These days I make a habit of storing all the citation details with the associated image. But I didn't always do it that way. This first image has:

• a caption beginning with the year
• a date from the document
• a document category
• some facts about the image, including its image number, database name, and URL.

That's a good start. I can return to that saved URL and view its source information. What I want to add to this image is this:

Source Citation:
National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, DC; NAI Title: Index to Petitions for Naturalizations Filed in Federal, State, and Local Courts in New York City, 1792-1906; NAI Number: 5700802; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21

Description: Vol 022 3 May-6 July 1905

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

Now I have everything I need to make a customized source citation for the facts tied to this document. I'll work my way through the list, updating and customizing the generic citations.

When you first began this obsessive hobby, I'll bet you weren't as careful as you are today. There will always be citations we can improve. For me, fixing citations mostly means customizing generic citations. But there will be plenty of places where there's no citation at all.

Start by:

• Picking a category, like naturalization
• Viewing your document images
• Checking the person attached to each image.

Do their source citations show your best work?

Fully detailed source citations that include the document image in question are highly valuable.

The key to any overwhelming task is to divide and conquer. I'm starting with NY Naturalizations because I don't have a ton of them. I tend to pick off smaller items so I can shorten my overall to-do list. I know I'm tricking myself, but it works for me.

You can also start with your closest relatives and fan out. Or tackle all your direct ancestors and then pick off entire families, one at a time.

Your family tree software or website should have source citation templates. Let these templates help you understand what you need to fill in. Wherever you found the document image, the source citation information should be there.

I like to add line numbers to my census form and ship manifest citations so I know exactly where to look. And so does anyone visiting my tree. The idea is to add enough detail that anyone can retrace your steps and find the same information.

My family tree is rapidly closing in on 45,000 people. Due to special circumstances (see How Do You Define Your Ultimate Genealogy Goal?), most of my people have no source citations. But following this method, I can clean up all the citations for my U.S.-born people.

It's all a matter of making it a priority and diving in!

And speaking of source citations:

• Make Smarter Progress on Your Family Tree
• Finding a Genealogy Victory in Defeat
• Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations

7 Days to a Better Family Tree

Each week I offer advice on how to fortify your family tree. But because my pet genealogy project is so massive and enjoyable, I rarely make the time to follow my own advice.

Today I'm offering a method that'll help us make noticeable progress on our family tree goals. The idea is simple. The next 7 days you decide to work on your family tree, pick one of these goals and work on only that one thing. No distractions allowed.

With any of these items, keep track of where you left off so you can return to complete the job.

Here are some of the tasks I've been ignoring for a while. What would you add to, or substitute in this list?

Day 1: Create charts to show you who's missing.

When I wanted to search for the eldest ancestors on any given line of my family tree, I created a fan chart. This showed me exactly which set of ancestors to focus on. See "Search the Treetops to Focus Your Genealogy Research."

Or make your Ahnentafel chart to see how many direct ancestors you've found, and who's missing. See "How to Visualize Your Ancestor-Finding Progress."

Spend a day trying to find those missing direct ancestors in your family tree.

And of course there's the priceless (and free) Family Tree Analyzer. See "How to Plug the Holes in Your Family Tree" and learn how to use FTA to focus on who and what your family tree is missing.

Day 2: Go after missing censuses.

When they released the 1950 U.S. census in April, I got busy. I searched for and downloaded documents for my closest relatives. Then I moved on to higher priority projects.

We can gather missing censuses more thoroughly if we stick to a plan. My plan hinges on my document tracker. It's a spreadsheet where I mark down every document image I've saved to my family tree. (Download a copy for yourself at the bottom of "Why Use a Genealogy Document Tracker?")

When your document tracker is ready, you can see which census years are missing. Scan your tracker to see which families you have in the 1940 census that you need to find in the 1950 census.

Still having trouble locating some families? See "Try This Tool to Find a Missing Census" and adjust for 1950.

Day 3: Digitize and organize your family photos.

I was doing a nice job of enhancing, labeling, and storing my digitized family photos. (See "It's Time to Tame Your Family Photos.") Then it got away from me.

We should all have digitized versions of our physical photographs. Scanners are not expensive, but you can do a decent job with your cellphone, too. But please take the photo out of its frame or sleeve so there's no reflection or glare. And take the photo straight-on, not at a distorted angle.

Read the steps I take with digitized photos in "How to Improve Old Photos and Genealogy Documents." Once your digitized files are in shape, "It's Time to Organize All Your Family Photos." Pick a storage strategy for both physical and digitized photos. Make sure they're safe, and that you can find the ones you want easily.

Day 4: Add well-crafted source citations.

My family tree is a beast. I have 44,000 people, most of whom are Italians from the 1700s and 1800s. Because I'm adding up to 300 Italians a day, I'm skipping their source citations. "Sacrilege!" you say. Not really. I know I can easily find my source for any facts on these people. I'll add them if someone is interested in a branch.

But that should not be true for anyone from the 1900s or later. In my tree, those are the Americans with a good amount of documentation. In "Taming a Tangle of Source Citations," I detailed my process for making high-quality source citations.

The best way to tackle this goal is one document type at a time. For example, I can view the media gallery in Family Tree Maker and choose to see only the census forms. Then I can see which ones need improvement and do the work.

Find the documents and facts in your family tree that need a proper source citation.

Day 5: Search for missing vital records.

One of my favorite new resources is a treasure for my Bronx-based family. The New York City Municipal Archives finally made their vital records available online. And it's free. My family settled in the Bronx in 1898 and stayed there. There's so much for me to harvest from the Archives' website.

I began downloading these records by searching my tree for the notes I'd made. When I know the document number for someone's vital record, I add it to the details of that fact. (Ancestry.com indexes often include the document number.)

Finding the document number, place, and year can lead you to the vital records you need.

To be thorough, I could start with my 2nd great grandfather, Antonio Saviano. He's my first immigrant ancestor. If I go through his descendants one-by-one, I'll see exactly who needs a document from the Archives' site.

Or I could scan the birth column of my document tracker. The Archives' site says they have:

• Bronx birth certificates ending in 1909
• Bronx death certificates through 1948
• Bronx marriage certificates ending in 1937.

The years vary for the different boroughs of NYC.

If I filter my document tracker to show people who fall into those years, I can find their certificates one at a time. For your family tree, there will be other resources to search. It's a matter of finding the people, and performing that search.

Day 6: Categorize your DNA matches.

DNA websites offer tools to help you label your DNA matches and add notes. On AncestryDNA, I created 6 categories I can add to any match:

• Both sides, because some matches are related to both my parents
• Father's side, for people connected only to Dad and me
• Mother's side, for people connected only to Mom and me
• Figured out, for matches I've identified
• Needs work, for matches I should be able to figure out, but somehow cannot
• Extremely low match, for people I wanted to preserve when Ancestry was cutting out matches below 9cMs or so.

Adding these categories and notes, helps me understand who I'm looking at. At any time, I can view particular categories. I like to regularly view only my unviewed matches to see who's new. I know exactly who one of them is, so I'll add him to Mother's side with a note. He's my 3C1R.

Day 7: Check your notes for unfollowed leads.

I'm sure everyone who works on their family tree keeps notes somewhere. A paper notebook, OneNote, a text file, or a pile of papers. Save day 7 to re-read your saved notes. Do some notes no longer apply? Throw them away. Can you complete other tasks because new document collections are available? Go do that!

What gem of a lead did you leave for yourself, and forget about? See "How Many Genealogy Gems Are You Sitting On?"

Now all that remains is to follow through and do this! Yes, I'm saying that to myself as much as to you.

Finding Fallen Soldiers in Your Family Tree

With more than 43,000 people in my family tree, I'm bound to have lots of loose ends. A lack of vital records is usually to blame.

Today I decided to find my Italian relatives who died in World War I. If you have Italians in your family tree, you can search for their name or hometown. Start at https://www.cadutigrandeguerra.it/CercaNome.aspx.

Before you click away, this article covers more than Italy!

I began with my grandfather's hometown of Colle Sannita since I've been doing a ton of research there. The town lost 96 of their men in World War I. The second man on the list is a perfect example of a loose end.

I knew that a man named Agostino Basile had married Orsola Marino in 1908 because her birth record says so. But I didn't know anything about him. This website led me to a page showing the details of Agostino's military service. It included his birth date, so my first step was to find that record and see who his parents were. His birth record also mentions his 1908 marriage to Orsola Marino.

The website tells me Agostino was in the 47th infantry. He died of his wounds in combat in an area called Carso. When I looked into that, I found it's a region on the border of Italy and today's Slovenia. Italy lost thousands of men in this general area during the war.

When vital records don't tell you the end of the story, military records may have the answer.

Agostino is no longer a loose end. Now I know he died 8 years after marrying Orsola, who is my 3rd cousin 3 times removed. Her birth record also says she married another man in 1923—seven years after her 1st husband died. I wonder if it was a long time before Orsola knew Agostino was dead.

There's also a website to help you find Italian soldiers who died in World War II. Scroll way down the page at https://dimenticatidistato.com/elenco-nazionale-caduti-per-comune-di-nascita to find a list of provinces. Click yours to open a PDF that's divided by town.

To find casualty lists from other parts of the world, go to the FamilySearch wiki and type "world war i casualty" into the search box. The search results include:

• The United States
• Hungary
• Bavaria
• Germany
• Czechia
• Poland
• East Prussia
• and a ton more, including individual counties in the U.S.

Follow the links on each page to see what types of documents and information are available.

One resource gives you access to tons of international military records.

Whichever resources are the best fit for your family tree, bookmark them right away. I have another 94 men to look into from the Colle Sannita casualty list alone. And I've got a bunch of ancestral hometowns I want to explore next.

And speaking of soldiers:

• Fallen Soldier Memorials Inspire a Research Project
• POW: My Grandfather's World War I Experience
• Appreciate the Veterans in Your Family Tree

3 Ways to Best Use Family Tree Hints

I've always done my family tree building in desktop software (Family Tree Maker). Then I synchronize it with my Ancestry family tree. I don't have "hints" turned on in my desktop software.

I didn't see much value to hints. They were usually wrong for my family. I never looked at them again.

Recently, I've been collaborating on several family trees, working directly on Ancestry. As a time-saver, I tested out the hints for these trees. I have no doubt that the technology behind Ancestry's hints has improved.

If you keep a few things firmly in mind, these hints can be a terrific benefit to your research. Very basically:

• Don't accept every hint you see.
• Don't believe someone else's unsourced family tree without investigation.
• Think of hints as a little voice in your head saying, "Maybe this is the answer."

That little voice can save you time and steer you in the right direction. But you still have to proceed with caution.

Before I continue with the best ways to use family tree hints, a quick word about unsourced family trees. My own 42,800-person family tree serves up tons of hints to people of Southern Italian descent. But much of my work is missing sources. What's my excuse? I'm working to connect everyone who lived in my ancestral hometowns. If I added the images and sources as I went, I might not live long enough to complete my project! I'm building this tree as a database, and eventually I will add more and more images and sources.

The family trees you see as hints may have facts without sources, too. Don't dismiss them right away! Those trees may represent a family's oral history. Or the builder may be doing what I'm doing—gathering facts from published vital records. Take these hints as what they are: HINTS.

Now let's look at the 3 ways to best use family tree hints.

1. Locate Many Documents at Once

Hints in themselves are a powerful search tool. Instead of sifting through all the search results for a person, you can see the best results in one step.

I finally see the value in Ancestry hints. Here's how to use them without getting into trouble.

As an example, let's look at my step-grandmother, Sadie. When I view her profile in my Ancestry family tree, I see 3 hints (you may see many more):

• Sadie in 3 other family trees
• Sadie's naturalization papers, complete with her photo
• Sadie's Social Security Death Index listing

Since I do the work myself, I already have Sadie's naturalization and SSDI. These 2 results are a quick way to add solid facts to your tree without the effort.

Don't accept the Ancestry member trees hint without giving it a lot of consideration. More on that next.

2. Find People From the Same Family

When you do look at the Ancestry member trees hint, there are a few things to consider:

• If they have different information than you, what is their source? Do they have something right that you have wrong?
• Why is your person in their family tree? Are they a relative?
  • In my 1st of 3 tree results, I've stumbled upon the great grand-nephew of my step-grandmother. I don't have much info on Sadie's nephew, so this is a way to see who his descendants are.
  • In my 2nd tree result, someone has pulled most of my family into his tree. When I went to send him a message asking why, I found that we'd already had a conversation about this long ago. We do have an extremely distant connection.
  • My 3rd tree result belongs to my friend and collaborator. Her husband is the nephew of my great aunt.

A family tree can be a valid hint, but don't accept it. Think of it as your homework assignment.

It's not uncommon for me to find family trees that have pulled facts and documents from my tree. I can look at these trees to find my connection to their family, and maybe discover a new branch. But these are not hints to simply accept and add to your tree.

Instead, explore each hinted tree to see what they've done. Then do the research yourself. For example, I will not pull in my step-grandmother's nephew's family. But I will use that tree as a suggestion to search for more documents on Sadie's nephew and his family.

3. See Who Other Researchers Believe to Be Ancestors

Some time ago, Ancestry added Potential Father/Potential Mother hints. These show up in your tree as bright green icons. Click a potential parent, then click Review Details to see the source of the hint. I found these hints for my uncle's grandmother. I had her last name, but not her first name.

Rarely do I believe a potential father/mother hint. But this family tree showed extensive genealogy research.

The hint for her potential father had a completely different last name. The hint for her potential mother showed the same family, but it had a document image as a source. This is worth reviewing. There isn't a direct way to get to the source tree, but if you click "Where is this information from?" you can see the name of the source tree and the owner. You can then do a Member Search for the owner and find the tree to review.

When I went to that tree, it was clear this person had done extensive research on my uncle's family. The last name I have for my uncle's grandmother may be wrong. I'm horrified to say that I have know idea of my source for that name.

This potential father/potential mother hint seems valid. But I won't simply accept the hints. Instead, I'll explore this person's tree and try to recreate her work.

The vital records for my uncle's hometown are available online now, but they weren't there a year ago when I last looked. This person seems to have found church records. I'll contact her and hopefully we'll collaborate. If she's right, I've opened up an enormous new branch for my uncle's family. This was a great hint.

One of the worst things you can do when building your family tree is click to accept every hint. They're called hints for a reason. They are suggestions of where to look.

Use hints as search shortcuts. Use hints to find distant relatives. Use hints to expand your tree. But do these things carefully to keep from going in the wrong direction.

And speaking of hints:

• 3 Ways to Tell If That Hint is No Good
• Spinning a Hint into Genealogy Gold

In response to the comment below, Blogger is being idiotic and will not let me reply. So, I updated the 2 articles explaining how to use Antenati. Getting a high-res image is way easier than it was before. See https://family-tree-advice.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-to-use-online-italian-genealogy.html and https://family-tree-advice.blogspot.com/2022/01/antenati-tips.html

Look Past the Misspellings to Find Your Ancestors

My second grade teacher taught us to read by making us "sound it out." I remember my class sounding out a sentence in one voice. "We went to the park" sounded like: wuh ee, we; wuh en t, went; tuh oo, to; thuh uh, the; puh arr k, park." It sounded weird, but it worked.

That lesson from too many decades ago helped me break down a family tree brick wall last week.

There's an Italian-American woman who wants to visit her ancestral hometowns. She wants to identify her ancestors so she might connect with people in the towns. One branch of her tree was giving me problems. I couldn't be sure where this particular husband and wife came from, and my searches were coming up empty.

Then she shared a family history that her ancestor wrote about this brick wall branch. The document had exact birth dates for the couple. It listed 2 or 3 hometowns for both the husband and wife. That was curious. Then again, it could mean that they were born in one town and their parents were born somewhere else.

I focused on the husband first. I checked a website that lists the names of every town in Italy. Of the 3 hometowns in the family history document, only one existed. I did not find him there.

The other 2 towns did not exist, and the spelling didn't look like proper Italian. I figured this was how the town sounded to the family history author when her ancestor said it. This was a phonetic spelling of the town.

Say It, Don't Spell It

With that in mind, I kept saying the 2 misspelled town names aloud, over and over again. I scanned the list of Italian towns as I repeated the sounds again and again. I didn't find them.

You may not know how to spell the name of your ancestor's town. What to do? Sound it out.

One of the best methods for finding a hometown is to find your ancestor on a ship manifest. I knew I wouldn't find the hometown on his ship manifest because he came to America too early. My ancestors were kind enough not to arrive before 1898, giving me a good look at the names of their hometowns.

The family history document had one more good clue about this couple. They got married in Manhattan in about 1888. I went straight to the search page for the New York City Municipal Archives. I knew I should find the marriage document there. I hoped it would have the bride and groom's parents' names. I did not expect it to list a hometown.

My searches failed. I couldn't find this couple, even when I included all the city's boroughs and expanded the years. Then I searched for a variation of the bride's last name. Experience tells me that an Italian last name ending in i usually ended in o at an earlier time. So I searched for her name ending in an o. This produced a long list of possibilities. I looked at the search results, hoping to find one with both her name and his.

That's when I found them. I never thought a clerk would misspell his very common last name. I swear, the NYC clerks in the late 1800s were illiterate. Who spells Italy Ytali? Someone who hears an Italian pronounce Italy and can't spell, that's who.

See How It Sounds

Now I had my couple's parents' names, even though the clerk mangled each one. (Saverio is a first name. Saviero is not.) Since the groom's mother's name was not common, I did an Ancestry search for her. The one search result made me gasp. (I guess I'm a gasper.) It was someone else's family tree that included my groom's entire family—but not him.

Everything about this unsourced tree made perfect sense to me. The parents matched the NYC marriage record. The family history mentioned the groom's sister and brothers, and here they were. I never accept someone's family tree as fact, but I was able to verify what they were showing.

The one thing that made me certain this was the right family was their hometown. Remember those misspelled town names? The ones I kept saying aloud to hear their sound? This tree had one of the town names. When I said it aloud, I knew for a fact it was the misspelled town from the document.

Keep sounding out that foreign town name as you search for something that matches the sound.

Now it was time to prove this person's tree right or wrong. I searched the properly spelled town for my groom's birth record. I found him in the year before the date from the family history. (Always assume early ancestors may not know their own birthday.) There he was with the same parents I'd found misspelled on his NYC marriage record.

Knowing the right town, I used vital records to take the groom's family back 4 generations!

Most people would see that other family tree and think, "That's not the town great grandpa used to talk about." But I saw the town name and said it aloud as an Italian would. I heard it as a match for the botched spelling in the family history document.

When you pronounce an R in Italian, it sounds like a D. My grandfather used to call my grandmother Mary something that sounded like Moddy. That wasn't a D sound. It was a rolled R. That's why the family history had the town name so wrong.

What Else Makes That Sound?

My second grade teacher's "sound it out" method is still working for me. Have you heard your ancestor's hometown spoken with a foreign accent but never saw it written? You may not know how to spell it at all.

I used this method in my own family tree once before. (See Case Study on "What If There's No There There?") My great grandmother used to talk about where she came from. Her granddaughter passed that along to me as a phonetic spelling: Pisqualamazza. That's not a town. So I searched passenger lists for anyone around her age with her last name. I looked at each search result to see the hometown. When I saw Pescolamazza, I knew that was it. And that's where I found her birth record. Now I can name her 3rd great grandparents.

If you can't locate your ancestral hometown, keep your mind and ears open. Sound it out as you try to mimic the right accent. If you heard your grandfather say it when you were a kid, try to remember exactly how it sounded. Then see what sounds the same.