Step-by-Step Source Citations for Your Family Tree

Any genealogy task is less daunting when you break down the steps.

You know more about genealogy research now than when you started. If you were finding your first census records today, you'd handle them better than you did way back when.

Why not double back and improve your early source citations? If that seems overwhelming, break it into logical chunks. Divide up the work by:

• Document type. Handle all your census records a year at a time. Or your ship manifests, a decade at a time.
• Family group. Who is your first-born immigrant ancestor? Work your way down their direct-line descendants.
• Direct lineage. Forget all the cousins for the moment. Climb your tree one direct ancestor at a time, improving their source citations as you go.

I used to recommend a very simple source citation method. But when my Family Tree Maker file got corrupted, it was an opportunity to do a much better job with my sources. I learned about a feature I hadn't understood before, and I wanted to use it.

My favorite source citations to do are for my thousands of Italian vital records. It's an easy process, and I can complete a lot of them in one sitting.

Develop and stick to a thorough routine when you add a new document image to your family tree.

Document-Handling Process

To make citing your source easier, stick to a multi-step process each time you find a new document. Here's my process:

1. Download the document to your computer and name it according to your style. My style is LastnameFirstnameTypeYear.jpg. My great grandfather's birth record is IamarinoFrancescoBirth1878.jpg. For a marriage record, I include both names: IamarinoFrancescoPillaLiberaMarriage1901.jpg.
2. Crop and enhance the image. If there is more than one document in the image, crop out the ones that aren't your family member. And I'll bet the document could use more contrast. I leave census sheets and ship manifests as is. But I enhanced and crop every vital record.
3. Add a title and comments to the image's file properties. This step is the key to making your source citations easy to create. If the title begins with a year, all document images appear in chronological order in your tree. "1878 birth record for Francesco Iamarino." The comments field includes the source of the image and its URL. My format is "From the [Italian Province] State Archives: [URL]."
4. Place the processed document image in your family tree, attached to the person(s) in the document.
5. File the image in the proper folder. I file documents by their type. Some of you may file by family name.
6. Make note of the image in a document tracker. This gives you a quick view of what you have and what you need for any given person.

When it comes to U.S. census sheets or ship manifests, I add quite a bit more to the image file's comments field. Most of my U.S. records come from Ancestry.com. I click the title of the document in the search results so I can copy the source citation and details from that page. Then I continue to the image for more details to record.

The source citation details you need are available when you find that document online.

Here's the comments field from my grandfather's 1920 ship manifest:

line 10; New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957; Roll - T715, 1897-1957 - 2001-3000 - Roll 2883; S.S. Lapland; image 308 of 627

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7488/NYT715_2883-0308?pid=4016695711

Source Citation:
Year: 1920; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 2883; Line: 10; Page Number: 161

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

And here's Grandpa's 1930 census:

lines 88-90; 1930 United States Federal Census; Ohio - Trumbull - Girard - District 0045; supervisor's district 8, enumeration district 78-45, ward of city 3, sheet 16B; image 32 of 36

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/6224/4661200_00206?pid=68966506

Source Citation:
Year: 1930; Census Place: Girard, Trumbull, Ohio; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 0045; FHL microfilm: 2341618

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

Source Citation Creation

Since my images have all this wonderful info attached to them, it's easy to build the source citation. Let's take Grandpa's 1920 ship manifest as an example. I'm using Family Tree Maker as my software.

1. Copy the document image's entire comments field to a temporary text file.
2. Click to add a new source citation for the immigration fact.
3. Select the document collection title from your list of existing sources. This one is "New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957." (If it isn't in your list, you'll need to create it now.)
4. Remember that temporary text file you created? Paste the Source Citation and Source Information text into the appropriate fields in the source template. Paste the URL in the Web address field.
5. Before saving your citation, you can add the document image to the citation itself. This was the feature I learned only recently that I like so much. Click the Media tab in the source template. Link to the document image you've already placed in your family tree.
6. Save and close your source template.

Did you record more than one fact from the same document? I have the date Grandpa's ship left Naples and the date it arrived in New York City as 2 facts. You can copy the source citation you created and paste it as a source for all the related facts.

Your family tree software does all it can to simplify the creation of source citations.

It's a big job, I know. A really big job. But here's how I see it. I do some genealogy work every single day. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that whole process of finding and processing a document. That's when I'll choose an easier task. Like renaming the files in my huge collection of Italian vital records. Or improving some sub-set of source citations. I like having tasks to choose from that need different levels of effort.

Choose how you'd like to divide and conquer this big task: by family group, by document type, by direct lineage. Then do it, because the benefits are worth it. Your well-sourced family tree is far more reliable than an unsourced tree. People "borrowing" relatives from other trees will choose your sourced facts every time. DNA matches who view your tree will see that your family tree is correct, and has the receipts to prove it.

I'll bet your well-crafted source citations will inspire you to push on and get the job done.

This Genealogy Research Log Boosts Your Efficiency

Keep track of potential finds as-you-go with this free research log.

Back in the olden days (before 2017), the vital records from my grandfather's hometown were not online. I had to spend long hours in my nearest Family History Center to view the documents on microfilm.

At first I was entering likely relatives right into Family Tree Maker on the laptop I brought with me. That took way too much time. I needed to capture as many vital records as possible or else I'd be visiting that darkened room forever!

I switched to a super-efficient information-gathering method instead. I entered a shorthand version of the information in every vital record into a text file on my computer. Then I could figure out where everyone belonged when I got home. (My "shorthand" was a format like this for birth records: "Maria Bianco b 12 Jan 1810 to Francesco di Giovanni and Angela Leone bap next.")

The sight of this notebook full of genealogy notes makes my hand cramp up.

Now I need a new system for logging the research I do online. Most of the time I'm doing very focused research. "Find this person's birth record. Find his parents' marriage and their birth records." When concentrating on one person, I can collect the documents one at a time and add them to Family Tree Maker. I prefer to do it that way and complete my whole process in one sitting:

• Save, crop, and rename the image file
• Add a title and description to the image file's properties
• Add the image file and all its facts to the person in Family Tree Maker
• Create the source citation and apply it to all the facts derived from that image file
• Make note of the document in my Document Tracker spreadsheet
• File away the image file

But if I'm researching for a client, or going off on a tangent on behalf of a cousin, I need a better way to track my findings.

This month I was researching a family from Perugia, Italy. The Family Search website has a limited range of records available for the town. I committed to combing through them all to figure out who belonged to this particular family.

I was searching for a short list of last names. I copied and pasted names, dates, and URLs for every record I found into a text file. I had problems with this method, like overlooking family members in the long list. I could imagine a lot of benefits I wanted to add to this research process.

I turned to an Excel spreadsheet for the solution. How did I not think of this from the start? I practically live in a spreadsheet. Well, spreadsheets and text-file lists.

I converted all my findings to a spreadsheet, using a careful cut and paste process. I discovered 2 relatives I'd overlooked before. A spreadsheet is infinitely better than a text file. And light-years better than handwritten notes. I can sort the information by any column and click the links I saved to go straight to the vital record online.

With a research log like this, you'll never have to worry about retracing your steps.

I decided to turn this test case into a research log template. From now on, when I'm researching someone else's family, I'll enter everything I find into a copy of this spreadsheet.

I can capture the important information quickly, and figure out who belongs in the family tree later.

Of course I'm going to share this research log template with you. Download your copy from my Dropbox folder. Remember that you can make any changes you may need. You can add or edit columns…whatever makes sense to you. Never lose track of your past discoveries again. Note: Need this in Google Sheets? Here's your link.

Want some more free research aids?

• A Roadmap for Your Genealogy Research
• 3 Things to Do with Ahnentafel Numbers
• Free 5-Generation Fill-in-the-Blanks Form
• Lots More Genealogy Forms

Finding Relatives Who Sailed to South America

There are online tools to help you identify family members who went to Argentina and Brazil. Recently we looked at Brazilian documents with photos of my Italian townspeople. Today we'll look at another resource to find family members who went to Argentina.

CEMLA is the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos (Center for Latin American Migratory Studies). Their website offers a simple search form where you can enter:

• Apellido (last name)
• Nombre (first name)
• A date range, Desde (from) and Hasta (until)

Type in the jumble of letters and numbers you see (to prove you're human) and click Buscar (search). (Tip: You may only have to enter the jumbled code the first time.)

The database:

• covers more than 75 years of immigration
• has more than 4.4 million names
• includes more than 200 countries.

But their website does not have the ship manifest images for us to see. That's disappointing, yes. But let's see what we can do with the information they do provide.

This simple search form can turn up a list of possible relatives for you.

I searched for immigrants with my maiden name, Iamarino, and got 19 results. All 19 Iamarinos arrived in Argentina between 1896 and 1954.

You can open Google Translator in another browser tab to translate the immigrants' professions. I used it to make sure "desconocido" in the Place of Birth column means unknown. And I found that C or S in the "Estado Civil" column means Married (Casado) or Single (Soltero).

Let's see what we can do with this table of search results.

Click on any column in the search results to sort by that value. I clicked the "Fecha de Arribo" (Arrival Date) column. You can also type a value in the "Filtrar resultados" box to filter your results. I can type the town name of Colle Sannita in the box to filter by my ancestral hometown.

That leaves me with 7 people who came from Grandpa Iamarino's hometown. The first one, Carmine Iamarino, was 29 years old in 1924. I can search for him in the towns' 1895 birth records. These are available on the Antenati website, and I've downloaded them to my computer.

There is a Carmine Iamarino born in 1895 to Pasquale Iamarino and Orsola Marino. Is he in my family tree? I searched my tree for him, and he isn't there. Yet. His parents are in my tree, and his father Pasquale is my 2nd cousin 4 times removed.

That means Carmine, whom I've just learned sailed to Argentina in 1924, is my 3rd cousin 3 times removed. Now I can enter Carmine into my family tree with his 1895 birth record and his 1924 immigration facts. I'll use the CEMLA website as my source and add all the facts I see:

• Carmine was a married man in 1924
• He was a laborer
• He arrived in Argentina on 31 December 1924
• He sailed out of Naples on the ship Belvedere

Let's try another one. Innocenzo Iamarino arrived in Argentina in 1935 at the age of 31. I searched my vital records for Innocenzo Iamarino born in 1904 and found him. He isn't in my family tree yet, either. But his parents are. And he's a closer relative than my first search.

Innocenzo's father, Giuseppantonio Iamarino, is my 2nd great uncle. He's the brother of my great grandfather Francesco. Innocenzo, who I'll be putting into my tree immediately, is my 1st cousin twice removed. (He's Grandpa's 1st cousin.)

Innocenzo's birth record tells me he married Rosa Paolucci in 1925. I searched the CEMLA site to see if she followed her husband to Argentina. It looks like she did not, so Innocenzo probably earned money in South America and returned to his wife in Italy. (Tip: There is no button to start a new search, so refresh the page in your web browser.)

Did Innocenzo sail to Argentina more than once? I removed the Colle Sannita filter from my search. There is another result for an Innocenzo born in 1904. He arrived in Argentina in 1926, married, listing his hometown as Benevento. Benevento is both a city and the name of the province to which Colle Sannita belongs. I'm fairly confident that this is my same 1st cousin twice removed.

The search screen offers many controls to help you find your relatives.

I'm eager to work through every Iamarino in this list. You can't use an asterisk or question mark in your search, but I know the usual misspellings of my maiden name. I search for Jamarino and found 10 more results, one of which lists Colle Sannita as their place of birth.

It's great to have this bit of information to add to the stories of my relatives. If you have family members who traveled to and from another country to work, try the CEMLA website. You, too, may find relatives who sailed to Argentina to support their families.

Attracting a New DNA Match

I received an Ancestry email for my dad's DNA test account. It says he has a new 2nd cousin once removed that he can find using ThruLines™. Dad's 2nd cousin once removed would be my 3rd cousin, so I took a look.

This new DNA match is the granddaughter of a cousin I identified some years ago. You see, when my paternal grandfather came to America in 1920, he went to join his uncle Antonio Pilla. Grandpa worked for a baker in Newton, a suburb of Boston. But he didn't stay long.

I researched Uncle Antonio's wife and kids in Newton found a living daughter. I wrote to her, but I didn't hear back. Unfortunately, she died in 2014. This new DNA match is her granddaughter.

Ancestry's ThruLines™ takes the guesswork out of your DNA match's identity.

Pay It Forward

I've got a ton of Uncle Antonio's ancestors in my family tree, but not for his wife Angelina Iarossi.

I thought it'd be good to build Angelina's branch as much as I can, and then reach out to my newfound 3rd cousin. What if she has photos of Uncle Antonio? If I offer her a ton of info on her grandmother's parents, she may be more likely to share photos.

To keep my enormous family tree from getting out of control, I made a policy a while ago. When it comes to in-laws, I'll record their facts and the names of their parents. That's it. I don't care about their siblings or their grandparents.

I made this decision after a few people contacted me, wondering why their grandfather was in my tree. I didn't have a great answer, and I didn't plan to investigate them any further. So out they went.

I will make an exception to the rule if a relative asks me to do the work. Two weekends ago I added an in-law's siblings and ancestors because my cousin asked me to.

Now I'm concentrating on my DNA 3rd cousin's great grandmother, Angelina Iarossi. She came to America at the age of 2 with her mother. The ship manifest says they came from Castelvetere in Val Fortore, Italy. That's a bit north of the 2 towns where my grandfathers were born.

I'm eager to climb Angelina Iarossi's tree and see what I can find. I know her last name exists in my maternal grandfather's hometown of Baselice. Is there any chance Angelina had roots there and a blood connection to me?

Researching their Family as an Incentive

My first choice for Italian genealogy research is the Antenati website. This government-run site offers free access to countless birth, marriage, and death records. Luckily, they have records for the town of Castelvetere in Val Fortore.

Her naturalization papers say Angelina was born on 6 February 1901. So I went straight to her birth record. It confirms that her parents were Pietro Iarossi and Maria Iarossi. They had the same last name.

A few quick document searches helped me climb my great uncle's wife's family tree.

I love it when a birth record includes one of the parent's father's name. Angelina's 1901 birth record told me that:

• Her paternal grandfather was Antonio Iarossi
• Her maternal grandfather was Costanzo Iarossi

I searched the indexes of several years (1872–1882) for the birth records of Pietro and Maria Iarossi. I found Maria Iarossi's 1879 birth record. It confirms her father's name of Costanzo, and adds her mother's name. She was Angela Maria Lupo, the daughter of Nicolangelo Lupo.

Could I climb another generation? I found an 1847 birth record for Costanzo Iarossi. I checked several surrounding years to make sure I didn't have the wrong Costanzo. His parents were Giovanni Iarossi and Catarine Forte.

I got that far while drinking my morning coffee. I'd like to get 3 or 4 solid generations of Angelina's ancestors. Then I'll contact my 3rd cousin DNA match. Her family tree on Ancestry is very small, so these findings may totally blow her away.

We all complain about DNA matches not answering us. But are we doing our best to attract them? You've got to put out the bait to score the information you want.

5+ Ways to Share Your Tree with Family

I know this much is true: I'll keep adding people and documents to my family tree for the rest of my productive life.

My tree grows each week. I keep my up-to-date family tree on Ancestry.com so distant cousins and DNA matches can keep on tapping into my work.

Ask yourself this: "How many people connected to my tree have any idea what I'm doing?" I know I haven't made many efforts to draw relatives in. I tend to share with those who ask questions.

When a relative wants to see what you've learned, how do you show them? Here are 5 ways you can share your family tree research with your family.

1. Grant them access to your online tree

Seeing the family tree laid out makes more sense than a list of who had which children. The visual format works much better for me. It's immediately clear.

If you can put your family tree on a site like Ancestry.com, you can invite your family to see it. They don't need a subscription to see your tree. I like having the Ancestry app on my phone, too, so I can show it to a cousin when we're together.

2. Print large documents at home

This is a project I began a long time ago. I had an accordion folder that expands and has a slot for each letter of the alphabet. I wanted to fill it with folded-up ship manifests, census sheets, and vital records.

Create a family-history-to-go collection of full-sized documents.

I began with my 2 grandfathers. I printed out ship manifests and census forms. At that time, I didn't have their Italian birth records or U.S. marriage or death records. I continued on to my maternal grandmother's parents. They also sailed from Italy to America. I printed their ship manifests and census sheets.

The best part of this project is that I didn't shrink the documents to fit onto a letter-sized sheet of paper. I used my printer to spread the image across several sheets of paper. There were 4 to 6 sheets of paper for each large document.

Then I trimmed the pages, taped them together on the back side, and had nice big documents. I folded the documents down to fit into my accordion folder. Then I gathered all the documents for one person and paper clipped them together. Finally, I put the batch into the slot with the first letter of their last name.

Now I can carry that accordion folder to any family gathering.

3. Order an oversized family tree

Years ago, my cousin Theresa encouraged me to share our Sarracino family tree.

I told her that branch was far from complete, but she urged me not to wait. So I used Family Tree Maker to make a chart of the descendants of the earliest Sarracino ancestor I had found.

I saved it as a PDF file with very large dimensions. Then I brought the file to a local print shop (Staples or the UPS Store can do the job). They used a plotter to print the tree on a sheet of paper 2 feet wide by 6 feet long.

At home, I laid them on my dining room table and folded them to fit into standard manila envelopes. I had copies for the heads of 40 families. I carried many of them to a Christmas family gathering and sent the rest out by mail.

Everyone was amazed. They'd never seen the whole clan laid out that way.

4. Create a book of life

My "Book of Life" article from March 2019 is still drawing lots of readers each week. I wrote about a one-of-a-kind binder I made for my mom's 1st cousin on her milestone birthday.

To create the book, I printed regular page-sized family trees and documents. I split some documents onto 2 pages to make them more legible, and I put them on facing pages in the binder. I slipped each item into a plastic sleeve (I had a few of these), making the pages easy to turn.

Use common stationery items to create a Book of Life.

I created "call-outs" by printing important facts on leftover yellow paper. I cut them down to size and placed them on top of images like ship manifests. This is helpful when a document is hard to read. You can use a call-out to make it clear who we're looking at.

The binder had an extra pocket inside its back cover. I slipped in an oversized document, folded down to fit. It also had a clear pocket on the front cover where I put a title page and photo.

5. Create a digital experience

This is one I still need to try. Picture any DVD you may own. The opening screen usually has an image from the movie and a menu of choices to select. What if the image were your ancestors and the menu had different family members to choose?

Each selection might lead to a photo of the ancestor, or their hometown, with some large text to read. That might lead to a view of their ship manifest with a photo of the ship and a closeup of their line(s) on the manifest. Next there might be a photo of their first home and a look at their family on the census. Your time and imagination are the only limits. Plus any learning curve for using various software.

You can distribute this work by CD or place it online for relatives to download. (Remember that most new computers don't have a CD drive.) Or you may want to create this just for yourself. What a great way to preserve your legacy!

Think outside the box to create something special out of your family tree.

There is also another way to share your work, and that's in a book you create. See "How to Share Your Family Tree Research with Relatives." Your book may be filled with small family trees, document images, stories, and life stories you write.

I'm grateful to my cousin Theresa who pushed me to print that large family tree so many years ago. Her daughter still has it and cherishes it. Another cousin (my Book of Life recipient) has hers up on a wall.

Which of these projects will you choose for sharing your family tree work with relatives? Start with the one that sounds the easiest and move up from there.

Combine DNA Tools to Calculate Unknown Relationships

The GEDmatch website has lots of intriguing tools for you to try. First you need to upload the raw DNA file you downloaded from your DNA testing site.

If your parents have the same general background, try the "Are your parents related?" link. It examines your DNA for segments you inherited from both your parents. On my chromosome 2 there's a 7.6 centiMorgan (cM) segment that seems to come from both my parents.

That's definitely my dumbed-down version of the calculation. But it says, "This analysis indicates that your parents may be distantly related."

GEDmatch showed my parents may be related. But how?

I discovered this quite a while ago, and I've since had both my parents submit a DNA test. Here and there I've been seeing DNA matches that they share. The most shocking one is my 1st cousin. He's my mother's sister's son, yet he's a DNA match to my dad!

Because of all this, I've been hoping to find an actual connection between my parents. Either a shared ancestor or an intermingled bloodline. Both their families came from a small area in Italy. All their ancestral towns neighbored one another. It's possible their entire relationship may be nothing but endogamy. That's what you get when a small population keeps intermarrying for hundreds of years.

But I keep searching for the answer.

There's another GEDmatch tool called the "One-to-one Autosomal DNA Comparison." I ran it to compare each of my parents' DNA kits to one another. The result was a table showing the 4 chromosomes where they shared 7 or more cMs.

The table doesn't make it terribly clear how many cMs my parents share, but there's a 2nd tool that's more helpful. I launched the DNA Painter website and logged in to my account. In the Tools menu I chose the Individual Match Filter at the bottom. Here you can paste in that results chart from GEDmatch to see the number of cMs these 2 people share.

The result was a very fast and clear 42 shared cMs. I can take that number and consult a consanguinity chart. That's a chart that tells you possible relationships based on the number of shared cMs.

After GEDmatch, you can use DNA Painter and a consanguinity chart for more analysis.

You may not find the exact number of cMs you're looking for on the chart. The closest numbers I see to 42 are 26.56 and 53.13. My target of 42 is a bit closer to the higher number. So I'll focus on 53.13 in the chart.

Here's what I see as possible relationships with 53.13 shared cMs.

Option 1: 1st cousins 4 times removed

My parents are the same generation and the same age. That makes it unlikely that they could have more than 1 or 2 "removals" in their relationship. Their parents and grandparents were all about the same age. I'm going to rule out the 1st cousins 4 times removed option.

Option 2: 2nd cousins 2 times removed

For this to be true, their shared ancestors would be 1st great grandparents of one and 3rd great grandparents of the other. This 2-generation span might work if you had very young parents in one branch and very old parents in another.

For instance, my grandfather was 20 years older than his sister. So his sister's children are around my age even though they're my dad's 1st cousins. But spanning 2 generations while being the same age also feels like too much of a stretch. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

Option 3: 3rd cousins

If my parents were 3rd cousins, they'd share a pair of 2nd great grandparents. I know that isn't true because I've identified all their 2nd great grandparents. But remember, they share a bit less than 53.13 cMs, so they may have something less than a 3rd cousin relationship. What if there's a marriage between a pair of their 2nd great grandparents' siblings?

That sounds like a good option. It's something that is possible since their hometowns were close to one another. And it isn't something I've been able to rule out.

Now I need a research plan.

• I can continue harvesting facts from my downloaded collection of Italian vital records.
• I can focus on finding the marriages of as many of those siblings as possible. This generation was born and married before the Italian government began keeping records. But if I can find their death records, I'll know who they married.
• I can start by finding dead ends on my family tree. For example, one set of mom's 2nd great grandparents is Antonio Bozza and Angela Cece. I know Angela's ancestors, but I found only 1 of her siblings. And all I know about Antonio is his father's name. If I work to identify more of their family members, maybe I'll find someone who's spouse is from one of dad's towns.
• My grandparent chart lists all their 2nd great grandparents (my 3rd great grandparents). I'll review these 16 couples to see which of their families need more sibling research.
• I'll continue investigating the couples, ruling out some, and narrowing down the list.

I'll use my grandparent chart and narrow down my search among their 2nd great grandparents' siblings.

I've been jumping around in my research a lot lately. It's all been fun. I spent Saturday adding 3 generations to my 2nd cousin once removed's tree at his request.

But I would like to exhaust all possibilities on my parents' DNA relationship.

Even if your parents aren't related, be sure to explore the tools on GEDmatch—and take advantage of DNA Painter—to see what else you can learn about your ancestry.

What Does Your Brick Wall Look Like?

Everyone who dabbles in family tree building has hit one or more brick walls.

After thinking about my own dead ends, I realized brick walls fall into a few main categories. I've named 4 of them below. Each type has several potential brick wall-busting documents. Have you found them all?

Focus on the type of brick wall, then think of all the documents than can break it down.

Brick Wall #1: What Was Her Maiden Name?

Can you imagine if women all around the world kept their maiden name for life? That's what women in Italy do. But I suppose if that were the case, our brick walls would be What Was Her Married Name?

If you have a female with a missing maiden name, and you can't find her death record, do all you can to find these documents:

• A marriage record under her married name.
• The death record for each of her children. One or more may have her maiden name.
• Social Security applications and pension records. I found a mangled version of my 2nd great grandmother's maiden name this way. It pointed me in the right direction.
• Obituaries for close family members. I haven't found an obit for any of my relatives beyond my parents' generation. But you may get lucky.

Brick Wall #2: Who Were Their Parents?

Let's say you've got this relative in the 1900 U.S. Census, but you don't know who their parents were. Maybe it's a woman with no maiden name available. Or a man with such a common name, you can't be sure which man is him.

Be sure to do an exhaustive search for all these documents:

• Their death record. Beware: the person who supplied the information on the death record may not have known the facts you want. (See 27 Key Facts to Extract From a Death Certificate.)
• Draft registration cards or other military records. I found the World War II missing flight record for my uncle who crashed and died. It lists the name and address of the nearest relative of all 10 crew members. (See Was Your Ancestor in the Military? It May Not Matter.)
• Every census record. Their parent may be living with them.
• Passport applications.
• Citizenship papers. Sometimes you'll find a lot of very specific family details on these documents.
• Immigration records. There's definitely a sweet spot for immigration records. If they immigrated earlier than the late 1890s, you may not learn any more than which country they came from.

Brick Wall #3: Where Did They Come From?

Someone asked for my help with this type of brick wall recently. Their ancestor had a clearly made-up name and seemed to drop right out of the sky.

All we could do was search for the following types of records:

• Their immigration record. (He came here too early for details.)
• Citizenship papers.
• A marriage record. This may list only the person's country of origin, but sometimes it includes the town.
• Their death record. If you're lucky, the informant knew the deceased's parents' names.

Just as it takes many bricks to make a wall, it takes many facts and documents to tear down that wall.

Brick Wall #4: Where Did They Go?

This is the type of brick wall on my mind this week. Where did my grandfather's younger brother go? I have nothing but his birth record, so I started thinking about everything else I can search for:

• His marriage record. There isn't one available from his Italian hometown, but he may have married:
  
  • during a year with no marriage records available
  • in another town, or
  • not at all.
• His death record. There is no record of his death in his hometown in the years with available documents.
• An immigration record. My great uncle's name was Noé—that's Noah in English—Leone. There isn't a single record of any kind for any variation of his name anywhere. Only his Italian birth record. That finding rules out all other main genealogy documents for this uncle.
• Military records. I checked to see if my uncle died in Italy in World War I or World War II. He did not. There's a Benevento province website where I can look up all the Italian men with military service—which was all the men. Since Noé isn't listed there, it's very likely he died before he turned 20 years old. Unfortunately, his town's 1910–1915 death records are not available online. Someday I'll return to the Benevento Archives and search the death records in person.

Did my great uncle leave town forever? I don't know what became of him.

This may not be a complete list. But seeing brick walls boiled down to their basic types should help you know what your options are. If you can't retrieve the records you need on your own, consider seeking a professional's help. I hired a pair of researchers in Italy to gather church records from my ancestors' town. I've actually been to that church, but I wasn't able to access their records on my own.

People often comment that "not all genealogy records are online." I wish they were! Even when the world wasn't screeching to a halt, I wasn't able to travel anywhere at any time. I'd like to spend a few days researching in Hornell, New York. And a few days in Girard, Ohio. And months on end in several small towns in Italy. But I don't want my family tree work to wait for future research trips.

When Italian vital records came online 3 years ago, my tree blossomed in countless directions. It's my hope that Italy will digitize their parish records in my lifetime. But if that doesn't happen, I'm satisfied that I've done all I can to break through my brick walls. For now.

How to Identify Relatives in an Old Photo

Can acting like a detective unlock the mysteries of your old photos?

Two photographs in my late aunt's collection have Italian inscriptions on the back. These black and white photos seem to belong together because the handwriting looks the same.

How can I figure out who these mystery relatives are when there's no one alive to ask? Let's see how far I can get with logic.

Are there enough clues to figure out who these relatives may be?

First we have an elderly woman and man holding hands. They look very "old country" to me. Behind them is an old-fashioned TV set with 2 dials. The woman is leaning on an appliance that may be a short refrigerator. I can read "LANDIA 123" on its front. I had no luck finding a brand name ending in "landia".

The man has a handkerchief folded neatly in his suit jacket pocket. He's holding a cigarette European style: with the burning tip hidden in his palm.

I'd guess this black and white photo is from the early 1960s. That's based on the TV set, the woman's clothes, and the similarity to my own family photos of that era.

On the back it says, "ricordo di tua sorella e cognato; tua sorella di anni 74, tuo cognato di anni 77." That means "remember your sister and brother-in-law; your 74-year-old sister, your 77-year-old brother-in-law." If it were taken in 1962, the woman would have been born in 1888.

The other photo shows a well-dressed young man. His neck is too thick for a teenager. He may be about 24 years old. Someone who knows clothing styles may be able to date his distinctive shirt collar. He doesn't look like the older couple, but the handwriting on the back seems identical.

On the back it says, "questo e tuo nipote, Mariano." That means "this is your nephew, Mariano." Nipote is a funny word because it can mean nephew or grandchild. But he can't be the grandchild of one of my closest ancestors. So it's logical that he's the son of the sorella (sister) in the first photo. If she is my relative's sister, then her son is my relative's nephew. The math adds up if the young man's photo is from the early 1950s—earlier than the photo with the TV set.

Who were these photos sent to? Knowing the answer to that question would help me identify these people. Let's examine everyone who might have owned the photos that wound up in my aunt's collection:

Subject 1: My aunt Lillian Iamarino had no sister and was far too young. She was closer to Mariano's age.

Subject 2: My grandmother Lucy Iamarino had no sister. She was the eldest of 3 children born in New York between 1908 and 1914.

Subject 3: My grandfather Pietro Iamarino had three sisters. But two of them died under the age of 30, and I have photos of the other. It isn't her.

Grandpa Iamarino's parents stayed in Italy, so the photos were not written and sent to them. That leaves Grandma Lucy's parents. Their birth years are close to my assumed birth years for the couple in the photo.

Subject 4: My great grandmother Maria Rosa Caruso had lots of brothers, but no sisters.

That leaves one possibility.

Subject 5: My great grandfather Pasquale Iamarino had 2 sisters who were about the right age. One sister, Libera Maria Iamarino, came to America and married in Albany, New York. She died there, too. Pasquale would have been able to visit her by train anytime. He was a railroad employee who traveled for free. Libera Maria wouldn't have needed to say "remember your sister."

That leaves only Maria Giuseppa Iamarino born in 1878. There is no marriage mentioned on her birth record. That was a common thing to do at the time. I can't search for her marriage document because the possible years are not available.

Can I find any of her children's birth records? That would tell me she did live past childhood. But I don't know what her children's last name would be. I have to page through the town's birth records starting in 1896, with my eyes trained on the last name of the mother.

I thought I had her for a while. I found 2 babies born in 1899 and 1901 to Valentino Borromeo and Giuseppa Iamarino. There is no other Giuseppa Iamarino in the records besides my great aunt who's the right age. The name Borromeo is not from my Iamarino town, so I searched for his full name on FamilySearch.org. I discovered the family went to live in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. I learned that Valentino was born in the town of Circello in 1878. So I found his birth record and discovered he was an illegitimate baby. That's why no one in the area had the name Borromeo. Someone made it up.

Valentino's U.S. Passport application said Giovanni Basilone of Colle Sannita adopted him. That explains how he came to live in Colle Sannita.

His birth record gave me the clue I really wanted to find. In the column a clerk wrote that Valentino married in Colle Sannita on 2 March 1899. He married Giuseppina Addolorata Iamarino.

I chased down every possible document until I had the answer. Not her!

That's not my great aunt. There is no such woman born in Colle Sannita, according to my collection of vital records. I don't know who she is, but she isn't mine. And if it were her in the photo at age 74, the photo would be from 1952. That's too early. I finally looked at photos of old TV sets, and the style in the photo is more likely to be from the early 1970s.

If that's the right time frame, then the sorella was born around 1900. I don't know a female relative born at that time who lived to age 74!

Well, that was a wild ride. I don't like to write about something that didn't work for me. But this method is sound and worth trying.

The name on his photo piqued my interest. I know that name!

I found 3 more interesting portraits in my aunt's collection this past weekend. One shows a man in a suit, and it says D____ Basile on the back. (The glue from the photo album tore off some letters.) The other 2 show a woman alone, and the same woman with a little child.

I think the woman is my grandfather's sister Giovannangela Iamarino because she married a man named Donato Basile. I may never be able to prove it, but if I can't disprove it, that's going to remain my theory.

If you ever inherit an unlabelled collection of old family photos, that's great! Don't forget to use documents and all your research skills to unlock as many mysteries as you can.

And speaking of family photos:

• 1925 Death Photo Holds a Clue to My Ancestor's Life
• My Aunt's Photos Tell the Other Side of the Story
• Conjuring Up Memories of a Missing Relative

Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree

Run this program to clean up typos and boo-boos in your family tree.

I've been a webmaster or web content producer since 1997. I've always believed consistency makes a website a look professional.

When I started building my family tree, I realized consistency is critical there, too. I wanted my tree to be as professional as possible. That includes recording and documenting facts in a consistent way.

Once in a while, I like to use the free Family Tree Analyzer tool to give my tree a consistency checkup. There's a new version of the program out, so visit their website for the download.

You need to export a GEDCOM file from the latest version of your tree. Then launch Family Tree Analyzer and import your GEDCOM. Choose the Export menu at the top and select Facts to Excel. This generates a spreadsheet you can save. Now you can sort and filter the information as you wish.

Use Family Tree Analyzer to export your facts to a spreadsheet. Now inconsistencies are easy to find.

I want to check the consistency of the occupation and location facts in my family tree.

Consistent Treatment of Foreign Words

When it comes to Occupation facts, my family tree is full of Italian-language job titles. Two years ago, I used Find and Replace in Family Tree Maker to add the English translation to these Italian words. For example, I searched for "sartore" and replaced it with "sartore (tailor)". But I wonder if I overlooked any Italian job titles.

Let me find them in the Facts spreadsheet I created. I can either Sort or Filter the FactType column. (I prefer Excel's Filter function, but you can do what's comfortable for you.) Now I can scroll down the spreadsheet with my eyes on the FactComment column. I'm looking for Italian words that have no translation.

I see a few that are words I still can't translate. I also see one common word that I left untranslated by accident. It's contadino. That's the most common occupation in my family tree. It means farmer or peasant. The spreadsheet tells me this job title belongs to Francesco Iampietro. I'll go to him in my family tree and make the fix.

Paging Francesco Iampietro. Holy cow, look at this crowd!

It figures. I have 12 men in my tree with this same name! But this is an 1817 fact, so that narrows down the list a bit. After viewing the facts in my tree for almost every man with this name, I can't find this 1817 fact. The spreadsheet tells me his GEDCOM individual ID number is 12869. So I'll resort my spreadsheet to show more of Francesco's facts.

He turns out to be older than I thought, born in 1740 and died on the date in 1817. When I view his facts in Family Tree Maker, I can see that I updated his source citations, but I overlooked the missing translation of his job title. I'll fix it now.

The spreadsheet shows me one blank occupation fact. I had added a year and place, but no job title. I'll have to view the original document to find this person's missing occupation.

I may want to revisit the records with untranslatable job titles. I'll bet the documents have bad handwriting. I hope they'll make sense to me now because I have more experience.

Consistent Treatment of Place Names

Next I'll turn to place names. I like to include the word County in U.S. addresses. For example, Burgettstown, Washington County, Pennsylvania, USA. I find it makes some place names easier to understand. I can sort the Facts spreadsheet by the FactLocation column. Then I'll scroll down the list looking for places missing "County".

I quickly found a Brooklyn, New York, address missing the word County. It was the home of a family named Abbate. I can:

• go to the Abbate family in Family Tree Maker
• update the address, and
• choose to update every instance of the original address at once.

I'll continue checking for the missing word County. I'll also see if anything else looks like a possible typo. For example, if an address shows up many times, followed by a different spelling, I'd bet that lone address is wrong.

Family Tree Analyzer is a great tool for finding inconsistent place names.

I see one place name listed as Unknown. When I view that person in my tree, I see I forgot to add her address to the Residence fact for the 1940 census. Easily fixed.

It's a pretty quick process to find errors and inconsistencies in your tree's facts. Why not make this a regular checkup? How often you should perform a checkup depends on how often you work on your family tree. I find that I'm reminded to have a checkup each time Family Tree Analyzer releases a program update.

How's your consistency looking?

Try Quick Genealogy Tasks When You Can't Focus

Tackle some easier family tree tasks when your head is not in the game.

A lot of my genealogy friends are saying the same thing online. "I can't seem to concentrate. I thought I'd make a lot more progress on my family tree in quarantine."

I'm not having trouble concentrating. I've worked from home since 1991, and I'm as busy with work now as ever.

But I understand what my friends are feeling. Their routines are gone. There's so much to worry about. They'd like to make some real genealogy progress.

Sometimes I want to make genealogy progress, but I don't want to make a big commitment. I may feel tired or have limited time.

That's when I turn to my Quick Genealogy Task List. It's a list of simple family tree tasks that aren't too demanding.

This is my go-to genealogy task when I'm not ready to devote a lot of time.

When you're having trouble concentrating, start chipping away at a simple item. Something that doesn't take a lot of mental effort. You may find that once you get going, you'll be eager to knock off another task.

Here are some basic categories of tasks. As you read them, think about your genealogy research. What can you add to your list?

Clean-up Tasks

I'll bet there are a few things about your family tree you'd like to go back and clean up.

• Adding descriptions to your photos
• Standardizing place names
• Weeding out extra people
• Fixing your source citations

I like to think of family tree clean-up tasks as upgrades. I adopted a much better style of citing my sources, and it's a big upgrade. But my tree has more than 23,000 people, so I can't upgrade all my old sources at once.

Instead of fretting about them all, I concentrated on my direct ancestors first. I upgraded all the sources for my 290 direct ancestors.

And I didn't do it in one sitting. That's important when you're having trouble concentrating. Don't put any extra pressure on yourself. This is a project you can come back to at any time. Make note of where you leave off.

It was exciting to finish my direct ancestors' source citations. I felt inspired to start fanning out by working on the citations of all the children of a given set of ancestors.

Organization Tasks

Genealogist love having their stuff organized neatly. Stuff like certificates, family group sheets, binders, and digital files.

Are all your family photos digitized? Are the image files named in a standardized way? Are the filed in a logical way? Are they added to your family tree?

I've been working through hundreds of photos from my late aunt's collection. I'm scanning them and doing some retouching in Photoshop. I've been uploading them to a private Pinterest board that I'm sharing with relatives. I need their help in identifying some of the people and places in the old photos.

Can't concentrate for long? Divide your genealogy project into smaller increments.

Scanning may be the easiest, least brain-intensive part of this process. Then comes proper file naming and filing. Followed by archival-quality photo storage boxes for preserving the original photos. I have a plan for that.

Follow-up Tasks

Most of us have been plugging away at this hobby for a long time. Do you have leads that you haven't followed up on yet?

Have you interviewed a relative, but never typed up the transcript? I have. I recorded a conversation with my parents, asking them about their childhood. I still haven't transcribed that digital audio file, and that was 2 years ago.

I also have an old notebook filled with Ellis Island ship manifest entries. It's from my first days of family tree research. I want to follow up on each entry in that notebook. Are they a relative? Do they belong in my family tree? Did I ever put them in there?

And I have my brother's college genealogy paper. I need to completely scrub it for facts and anecdotes he got from Grandpa back in the 1970s.

Finally, I tend to add bookmarks to people in my family tree who have a problem to resolve. Trying to resolve one person's problem can take your mind of this whole doomsday scenario for a while.

Those are a few low-commitment task categories. I'll bet you can come up with more. Spend a few moments starting your list. Add to it whenever something comes to mind. Then turn to your list when time—or your concentration level—is short. And turn to it again and again even after we begin to get back to normal.