The Method to My Genealogy Madness

On Saturday morning I mentioned to my husband that my family tree had reached exactly 60,500 people. That afternoon I had 60,854. In May I had a mere 57,238 people. "What changed?" my husband asked.

It's just my usual project. I'm piecing together every family from my Grandpa Leone's hometown of Baselice. That town in southern Italy is where I began this journey more than 15 years ago. Back then, I ordered microfilmed vital records through the Family History Center. I soon realized I needed to document everyone, and fit all the families together. Otherwise, how would I know each Leone and Iammucci's relationship to me?

The available microfilmed records at the time ended with 1860. Now the rest of the records are online on the Italian Antenati website. I have access to the 1861–1915 birth records (with a few years missing) and the 1931–1942 marriage and death records.

I've had all the 1809–1860 people and facts in my family tree for years. But I haven't yet scoured the newer documents for relationships. That's what I'm doing now. And I've only gotten through 1861–1866 so far. (Note: Many of my recent tree additions come from another town that I'm harvesting at the same time.)

Immerse yourself in your ancestor's hometown vital records to unlock all the details they hold.

How to Identify Every Family in Town

When I began, I knew my grandfather's parents' names, and that's it! I found my great grandfather's birth record to learn his parents' names. Then I searched the surrounding years' birth records for any siblings. I did the same for my great grandmother's family.

I kept going back in time, finding the parents' marriage records to learn their parents' names, and looking for siblings. Then I came forward in time, seeing who all the siblings married and finding their children. Next, I built out the families of everyone who married into my bloodline. It was clear that 99% of the people in town had a relationship through blood or marriage. Those who didn't usually came from another town.

My method with the 1860s birth records is this:

• I check each birth record in a given year one at a time to see if:
  • I have the child in my family tree already, or
  • I have the parents.
• After adding the baby to my tree, I find every other baby born to the same couple throughout the years and add them. (I use a Windows program called Everything to instantly search all the records on my computer.)
  
• If a birth record mentions a marriage date and spouse, I add the spouse, look for the couple's children, and find the spouse's parents and siblings.
• When I've exhausted all paths, or my head is swimming and I've lost my place, I go on to the next birth record in the given year.

As I move on to the next year, I'll find that I've recently added many of the children because of the process above. (Of course I'm tracking all my finds in a spreadsheet.)

You can build out an entire family easily once you have all the basic facts.

I can do all that pretty easily because of the preparation I did in the past. I downloaded all the document images for the town to my computer. (Today you have to download document images one at a time. Here's how.) Then I reviewed each one and renamed it. For a birth or death record, I include the name of the father. That way, I can search my computer for every Iammucci born to Antonio, for example.

Renaming the files is a great way to get familiar with all the names in a town. That helps you overcome bad handwriting.

If I hadn't downloaded and renamed all the document images, I wouldn't be able to move back and forth in time so easily. And that's how it was when I was viewing microfilm in a Family History Center. What I did then was add the main facts from each document to a text file. For each birth, I recorded:

• the baby's name, birth and baptism dates
• parents' names, ages, and occupations
• any other family names or addresses mentioned.

When I got home from the Family History Center, I began entering everything into Family Tree Maker to show all the connections. That's when I saw how the whole town was related.

Can't download all the records? You can still document your entire ancestral hometown by taking simple notes about each document you view.

How to Get Around Missing Document Years

Since there are no available marriage records for my town from 1861–1930, things can get a bit tougher. How can I be sure who is a baby's father when so many people in town have the same name?

But I know the ins and outs of the available documents. I know, for instance, that from 1866–1873, birth records often have the name of the baby's two grandfathers. That helps me identify the right mother and father. And I know that the death records from 1931–1942 tend to be very accurate with the decedent's age. I can't say that for most records.

That means if I can't be sure which of many Maria Cece's had this baby in 1865, I have to first look for all her other babies. Finding a record that includes Maria's father's name can set her apart from the others. And if I'm lucky enough to find a death record for someone I wasn't quite sure of, the names of their parents and spouse can seal the deal.

Last week I did some research for a woman with ancestors from northern Italy. World War I must have destroyed a ton of records up north. These towns are challenging, with huge chunks of years missing from the documentation.

But I managed to push the family lines back another generation. How? I searched death records to find all the relatives' whose birth and marriage records were destroyed. How thrilling it was to find the death record of the eldest-known relative with the family name. Now I had his parents' names. I got very lucky when I found his 1811 birth record as confirmation of the names. And learned the name of his grandfather, taking the tree back to about 1746.

Get familiar with your town's records and exhaust all possibilities. Then there's no limit to how far you can expand your family tree.

And speaking of vital records:

• Following the Documents from Marriage to Marriage
• Solve Genealogy Mysteries Step-by-Step
• Why My Family Tree is Exploding in Size

What Good Are Distant DNA Matches?

I've recently added more than a thousand people to my family tree from one town—Pesco Sannita, Italy. And I've barely begun to harvest the vital records. I'm eager to use the new families in my tree to connect to my unsolved DNA matches.

That's the exercise for today. I went to my DNA match list on Ancestry and searched for people with the name Pennucci in their trees. I chose that name because it's common in the town and my 3rd great grandmother was a Pennucci. I selected the first match who wasn't my father or someone from his 1st cousin's family.

I've looked at this match's tree before. It's a good one—46,234 people. But checking how his ethnicity compares to mine, I see that he's only a quarter Italian. That means a big chunk of his family tree has no connection to me.

My jumping-in point in his family tree is his great grandmother Immacolata. I recognize my match's last name (it's also his great grandfather's name), but it doesn't come from my target town. His grandmother falls into the sweet spot. Her 1902 Pesco Sannita birth record is available on the Italian ancestry website, Antenati. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.")

I pulled up Immacolata's birth record and discovered she's in my tree already. She and I don't have a blood relationship. Immacolata (who's mother was a Pennucci) is the 1st great grand niece of the wife of my 4th great uncle. I've already built Immacolata's family tree back 5 or 6 generations. What more can I do to establish a true relationship to this DNA match?

I realized Immacolata is in my tree because of a previous attempt to connect to this DNA match. Now I need to search the vital records for her siblings, aunts, and uncles to see where it takes me.

I get the impression some people think the only way to use the Antenati website is to search for a name. Not true. Not every record is searchable. You need to navigate to your town and to each year's index pages to scour them for the name you want.

But I'm the lunatic who downloaded entire towns when it was possible. Then I renamed each document image on my computer to make them truly searchable. For me, it's easy to search the vital records for someone's siblings, and their parents' siblings.

Swimming in the Same Gene Pool

I built out several families related directly to Immacolata with no breakthrough. Then I looked at our original relationship: 1st great grand niece of the wife of my 4th great uncle. Immacolata's 2nd great aunt Agnese married my 4th great uncle Giuseppe. That's something like "crossing the streams" in the Ghostbuster movies. Their marriage created people who carry DNA like mine and like my match's.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that this DNA match, the great grandson of Immacolata, is in my 5th–8th cousin range. We share only one segment of 17 cM. Our shared roots are in a remote town where families intermarried for centuries. There's a very good chance that instead of a pair of shared ancestors, we have DNA from the same community pool.

I've been thinking about this notion for a long time. I haven't put it out there because it seems evasive and hard to put into words. It started taking shape when tests showed that my parents share DNA—37 cM across 4 segments. They could be 3rd to 5th cousins. But they aren't. I can name their ancestors and they're all different. (See "When DNA Says You're Related, You Determine How.")

Here's what I think. My documented ancestors, going back to the late 1600s, lived in neighboring towns, laid out like links in a chain. Each town is small, and even with modern roads, it can be hard to get from one to the next. (I know from personal experience.) That led to centuries of intermarriage within the towns or between close towns.

Doesn't it make sense that deep roots in a small geographical area result in shared DNA?

All those neighboring towns produced generation after generation of people with shared DNA. You know how the big DNA companies compare your DNA sample to a reference panel? The panel consists of DNA from people with roots in one place for several hundred years. Well, that's me! Until my recent ancestors came to America, my people were tied to one spot for centuries.

Studies show that the characteristics of a place exist in its people's teeth and bones. Is that why you can "feel it in your bones" when you arrive at the place your ancestors came from? I believe my parents and I, and many of our distant DNA matches, share the characteristics of the place we come from. That's why we carry some identical DNA.

We've been simmering in the same pot for centuries!

My DNA match, great grandson of Immacolata, has DNA from a mixture of Pesco Sannita and a town 9 miles away—Molinara. I get all my DNA from a mixture of at least 7 towns in the same area. We have the very soil in common.

Adding Up Your Ancestral Roots

I took a tally of the birth places of my 1st through 3rd great grandparents—all 42 of them. Here's my percentage of roots in each town. (The 7th town, Circello, doesn't appear until a pair of my 4th great grandparents.)

• Colle Sannita 40.48%
• Baselice 23.81%
• Pastene 21.43%
• Pesco Sannita 7.14%
• Santa Paolina 4.76%
• Apice 2.38%

Seeing this list in order justifies the extensive research I've done. I've completely harvested the vital records of Colle Sannita and Baselice. I've worked everyone possible into my family tree. I've harvested Pastene's limited records, too. Now I'm working my way through Pesco Sannita. Obviously Santa Paolina and Apice will be next, then Circello.

This type of relationship to my distant DNA matches changes how I view them. I don't expect to find a common ancestor with most of them. But I do search their family trees for marriages without documentation. Immacolata and her family are in my tree, but there's no documentation of her marriage to a man from Molinara. It's my match's tree that holds that detail.

If your family tree has no non-parental events and few missing ancestors, you may ignore your DNA matches. I encourage you to review matches with decent-sized family trees. What are they good for? They may contain the marriage that brought your great aunt to a new country. They may help explain a great uncle who seemed to disappear from his hometown. They can extend your tree's dead ends.

Do Your DNA Ethnicity Results Make No Sense?

Two people contacted me lately about an odd ethnicity in their DNA results. The three of us share ancestry in my grandfather's hometown, so they wondered if I'm seeing what they're seeing. I'm not, but I have a few curious results, too.

That's why I was excited to join another Diahan Southard webinar titled "DNA Ethnicity Estimates: How to Actually Use Them!" One of the most important things I learned was, basically:

If your results show less than 5% of an unexpected ethnicity, it's probably not reliable.

Dig deeper into tiny, unexpected ethnicity results.

Here's how to get a better idea of its reliability. I'll use AncestryDNA as an example, but most DNA websites have similar tools.

• Click on the unexpected ethnicity in your results. I chose my mother's unexpected 2% Portugal.
• This opens a panel that tells you a bit more, such as "Primarily located in Portugal; Also found in Spain." Their map tells me this ethnicity may cover Spain's whole west side.
• Now look at your percentage. In this case, it says 2% Portugal, but beneath that it says it "can range from 0% to 5%." That's right. It's as low as 0%.

I've documented my mother's ancestors in a small area of Southern Italy going back to the very early 1700s. Could someone have come from Spain or Portugal before that? Sure. And since FamilytreeDNA tells me I have 6% Iberian Peninsula, there probably is some ancient connection.

But that doesn't matter to my family tree, does it? I'll never make a documented connection to a centuries-old ancestor from Spain or Portugal.

My father's results have a laughable result of less than 1% Norway. Less than 1%! When I click it I see that his estimate is 0%, but it can range from 0% to 1%. That sounds like we can disregard it, don't you think? He has no Norway on MyHeritage.

In fact, all Mom and Dad's ethnicities but Southern Italy and Northern Italy could be as low as 0%. The same is true for me, with one exception. Even my Northern Italy could be as low as 0%.

AncestryDNA says the DNA samples they test you against "divide the world into 84 overlapping regions and groups." I can see that what they're calling Southern Italy and Northern Italy overlap close to the area we come from. Taken together, this makes me confident we are Southern Italy, going back at least as far as the paper records go.

But, if you *don't* know where all your people came from for the last 300+ years, pay attention to your unexpected results. They may be the clue you need.

A Range of Ethnicity Results

Why would AncestryDNA tell me my Northern Italy is 8% but it may range from 0 to 39%? This is from their website:

"We compare your DNA to a reference panel made up of DNA from groups of people who have deep roots in one region. We look at 1,001 sections of your DNA and assign each section to the ethnicity region it looks most like."

They look at 1,001 different sections of your DNA! Your DNA isn't one homogeneous strand. Each section can show a different percentage of an ethnicity. That means that my 1,001 test results for Northern Italian DNA ranged from none to a high of 39%. The average of all the tests was 8%.

Where the Action Is

For a long time my AncestryDNA results didn't show any of what they call Communities. Now I have three that either touch or overlap one another. And they are 100% true to my documented, massive family tree.

From Mom's side:

• Avellino & Southwest Foggia Provinces
• South Benevento & North Avellino Provinces

From Dad's side:

• Campobasso & East Isernia Provinces

I can prove that our documented ancestors are from the Benevento & Avellino Provinces. AncestryDNA bases these communities on the family trees of DNA matches. And they're very accurate, according to DNA expert Diahan Southard.

My husband's AncestryDNA test has a disappointingly low number of DNA matches. But I love his community! It fits everything we know about his ancestors: "Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka, Olta & Kumamoto." Here's what Ancestry says about how they determined this as his community:

"You, and all the members of this community, are linked through shared ancestors. You probably have family who lived in this area for years—and maybe still do."

I'll leave you with another great tip from Southard. Say you're trying to trace a close ancestor—a 2nd great grandparent or closer. And you have no idea where on earth they came from.

Do you have a DNA ethnicity that doesn't match what you know about your ancestry? Check your mystery DNA matches' ethnicities. (On AncestryDNA, Ethnicity is a tab, like Shared Matches.) Do any of these matches have a decent amount of that one unexpected ethnicity? Check their family tree and Shared Matches to see if their information that can help you.

Also, take a look at which ethnicities you actually share with your decent DNA matches. If they don't have small amounts of something you have, then that ethnicity has no bearing on your connection.

Don't lose any sleep over tiny, unexpected DNA ethnicities.

What's the bottom line with all these ethnicities?

• Be sure to check out the range of percentages. If it says it's as low as zero, it's may be too little to matter.
• If the average is below 5%, don't expect to find a documented ancestor from that part of the world.
• Check to see how your DNA matches' ethnic percentages compare to yours.

If some of your DNA ethnicity results simply don't make sense, give them a closer look. If you can see they're not worth pursuing, don't worry about them.

Here's a good way to look at it in mathematical terms:

• Each of your parents gave you 50% of your DNA.
• Each of your grandparents gave you 25% of your DNA.
• Each of your great grandparents gave you 12½% of your DNA.
• Each of your 2nd great grandparents gave you 6¼% of your DNA.

A tiny percentage is either a statistical error or a very distant ancestor.

I know exactly where all my 3rd great grandparents came from, as well as 55 of my 64 4th great grandparents. It's crazy to imagine that one of my nine missing 4th great grandparents walked to Southern Italy from Norway or Portugal! That gives me the confidence to ignore those trace ethnicities.

How about you?

And speaking of DNA:

• Making Sense of Your DNA Results
• Delving Deep into Your Genealogy with DNA
• The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About

How to Use a Foreign-Language Book for Family Tree Research

Last week I mentioned that I own the definitive book on the history of one of my ancestral hometowns. It's called "Storia di Pesco Sannita," by Mario D'Agostino, and of course it's written in Italian.

I have plans to translate parts of it using the Google Translate app on my phone, but it's a lot of pages. So first, I'll pick out facts that add interesting details about the lives of some people in my family tree. UPDATE! By far the better option for instantly transcribing text from an image is Handwriting OCR. Use that, then paste the results into Google Translate.

I often see people saying they can't make any use of documents or books in another language. If I could, I'd grab every one of those people by the shoulders and shake them really hard.

You don't have to read or translate every single word to get meaning out of foreign text. All you have to do is:

• Look for names. The language doesn't matter if you know some of the names you're looking for.
• Pay attention to dates. If they aren't written in numerals, like 1852, they'll be in longhand. The FamilySearch Research Wiki has all kinds of help for this. Go to their website, choose your country of interest, and look for the Genealogical Word List. You'll find numbers, months, and common words on vital records.
• Use a translator app for context. If you're translating a neatly printed text, like in book, get the Google Translate app for your phone. You can select the camera within the app, point it at a page, and you'll see it change to English. Pretty amazing.

If the one and only book about your ancestral hometown is in another language, there's so much you can learn from it!

Here's a sample of the details I'm finding in my Pesco Sannita book that aren't in the vital records:

• The town had 461 inhabitants in 1697, rising steadily to 2,460 inhabitants in 1857. (There were only 1,925 in 2020.)
• Lorenzo Maria Pennucci, born in 1763, was the town mayor in 1811. I confirmed this by opening a few 1811 birth records to see his signature at the bottom. It isn't something I would have noticed otherwise.
• Town doctor Paolo Emilio Pennucci, 1800–1846, was too sick to help his patients during an 1846 epidemic of typhus. He likely died of the disease himself.
• The town made Benito Mussolini an honorary citizen in 1924. Uh oh.

You can harvest the goods from a foreign-language book.

I discovered these tidbits by:

• skimming the text for names
• locating the person in my family tree, and
• using the translation app for context.

Before this book, I bought another Italian language book about the town of Colle Sannita. My friend, Doctor Fabio Paolucci, compiled this book from the 1742 tax census of the town. It lists more than 560 households with names, ages, and relationships.

You'd better believe I wasn't going to let language slow me down. I knew I had some very early ancestors waiting for me in those pages. All I had to translate (until I memorized them) were the words for each household's belongs: sheep, oxen, pigs, mules, vineyards, vegetable gardens, houses, etc.

With so much technology at your fingertips, how can you pass up a foreign-language book about your ancestors?

If you have the chance to get your hands on a book about your ancestral hometown, take the book! You can pull facts out of it pretty easily. And there will be goodies in there you can't get anywhere else.

And speaking of reading foreign languages:

• Step Out of Your Genealogy Comfort Zone
• How to Deal with the Worst Document Handwriting
• The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: 'Wedding Packets'

Discovering Life and Death Trends in Your Ancestral Hometown

As I looked at my past article about how to use the Italian Ancestry website, one reader comment stood out. She wanted to know why on earth anyone should download all the vital records from their town. Her thought was, "Why spend all that effort when I only need my grandfather's birth record?"

This past week I've been using my downloaded records from one town to add more than 1,300 people to my family tree. In the past, I had only gathered my great grandmother's closest family. Now it's time to connect everyone—as I've done with my two grandfathers' towns.

For at least several hundred years, my ancestors lived in a few rural Southern Italian towns. Being there for so long, there was a lot of intermarrying. As a result, entire towns have a connection through blood or marriage.

The mission of my family tree (current population: 58,553) is to find all the connections.

While working on the town of Pesco Sannita (formerly Pescolamazza), I spotted a terrible trend. This is something I would never have known without reviewing *all* the vital records.

Not only is this infant mortality rate horrifying, but the 1st man's 1st wife had 2 stillborn babies before she died at age 29.

Pesco Sannita had a horrifying infant mortality rate in the first half of the 1800s. It was so shocking that a typical woman was giving birth to 10 babies, and only one or two lived long enough to marry.

The alarming death rate made me realize what a miracle it was for my ancestors to have lived to adulthood.

Here are some examples of what I discovered going through the vital records:

• My 3rd great grandparents, Giuseppe Caruso and Maria Luigia Pennucci, had 7 children between 1829 and 1848. Only 3 lived to marry.
• My 4th great uncle Francesco Saverio Pennucci and his wife Antonia had 8 children between 1824 and 1844. Only 4 made it past infancy.
• Distant relatives Filippo Girardi and Caterina Gentile had 9 children between 1827 and 1844. Only 2 grew up.
• My 5th great aunt Maria Luigia Girardi and her husband had 6 children between 1816 and 1827. Only 1 made it into her 20s before dying.

Because I've studied the neighboring towns, I know this infant mortality rate is unique. My goodness—what was going on in this town at the time? The town's website says Pescolamazza fought for independence from its feudal lord in 1817. The legal proceedings dragged into into the 1850s.

There is one definitive book on the subject that isn't online. It's called "Storia di [History of] Pesco Sannita" by Mario d'Agostino. Suddenly I remembered that a distant cousin gave me a book about the town years ago. When I found it on my bookshelf, I saw it is the very book I couldn't find online! And it mentions a lot of names that I can tie to vital records. I started translating the book years ago, but I didn't get far. Uh oh. Another genealogy project for me.

A much appreciated genealogy gift from a cousin I met online is helping me understand the sad, deadly history of my great grandmother's town.

I used the Google Translate app on my phone for a quick-and-dirty translation of a few pages. It seems as if the town became isolated once they severed ties to their feudal lord. They were unable to take their goods to market. They had a real problem to overcome.

They needed to build a new bridge, at great cost to many, including the townspeople. By today's standards, it took an eternity to build that bridge and restore financial security to the townspeople. This happened in about 1861.

The mortality rate was much better in the second half of the 1800s. In an 1892 newspaper advertisement, the town is looking to hire a doctor. The ad ran several times in the Corriere Sanitario—the Healthcare Courier—way up north in Milano. I suspect the high infant mortality rate was due to poverty, malnutrition, and a lack of medical care.

Visiting Southern Italy today, it's hard to imagine the extreme poverty and lack of opportunity our ancestors faced. All we see is the sublime landscape and ancient architecture.

It took a deep dive into the town's vital records to realize the daily threat to my ancestors' lives. The next time you wonder why I'm piecing together my ancestral towns, remember that's what it took to notice a deadly pattern.

And speaking of piecing towns together:

• How to 'Attack' Your Ancestor's Small Town Vital Records
• How to Use Your Personal Genealogy Database
• Laying the Foundation for a Solid Family Tree

Inspiration Leads to a Family Tree Growth Spurt

When your family tree is always on your mind, inspiration waits around every corner. This week I found 3 sources of inspiration while going about my usual activities. That led to a whirlwind of activity, and I added 339 people to my family tree. In one day!

Your own family tree notes and photos can be the inspiration you need now.

Inspiration Source #1

I spent years working as a corporate website manager. I've brought those skills to this blog and my personal website, forthecousins.com. While looking at my sites' statistics, I started scrolling through a page on my personal site. It has cemetery photos I took in one of my ancestral hometowns.

My great grandmother Maria Rosa Caruso came from a small town called Pescolamazza. Today it's called Pesco Sannita. On my two visits there, I took photographs in the cemetery, mostly of graves with the names Caruso and Girardi. But I never added the people from these photos to my family tree.

I had very few Carusos in my tree—only my closest relatives. I need a lot more generations of cousins to figure out where the people from the cemetery belong.

I have thousands of Italian vital records on my computer that I renamed to make them searchable. That makes it easy to find people and piece their families together. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.") The 339 new people I added are the tip of the iceberg. I know I can fit everyone from my little towns together through blood or marriage. It's all a matter of time.

I'm eager to add Pesco Sannita relatives to my tree, but I stumbled across another discovery.

Inspiration Source #2

Once in a while I upload a new copy of my family tree's GEDCOM file to Geneanet.org, updating my tree there. I happened to notice, for the first time, that I can upload my DNA results there, too. It's another free resource for international DNA matches. (See "These DNA Sites Expand Your Tree in New Directions.")

I looked through my 95 new DNA matches, viewing the family tree of those who had one. Many of my matches are French. That makes sense, since Geneanet's headquarters are in Paris. But I have no French roots and my French-named matches have no Italian names in their trees.

Still, I did find one terrific match. I recognized his last name, and all the last names in his tree, as coming from one of my ancestral hometowns: Circello.

Keep your eyes open for genealogy research inspiration. It could be anywhere!

I have a 3rd great grandfather named Francesco Saverio Liguori from Circello. It's another beautiful little town that I enjoyed visiting. That gives me a definite interest in the town. In fact, I've downloaded all the available vital records for Circello. When I get a little bored with one of my other genealogy projects, I always turn to Circello. I've been renaming the town's records to make them searchable. I have 26 years' worth of document images to go.

On Geneanet, I'm looking at a distant cousin's very impressive Circello family tree. We share very little DNA, but to be honest, I'm more excited by his family tree than by him. His tree will be helpful in showing me the big picture as I comb through individual documents.

I see at least one couple from my family tree in his tree. (The wife in this couple has my maiden name of Iamarino.) His information takes these people back an extra generation to the late 1600s. This guy has done his homework. A kindred spirit.

Inspiration Source #3

I belong to Facebook groups for a few of my ancestral Italian hometowns. Sometimes I see posts from people trying to research their roots in that town. The other day I helped out 2 such people with roots in Baselice. I gave them names and dates from the town's vital records. Then I made sure those names are also in my family tree.

There are still tons of people from the post-1860 vital records of Baselice who need to be fit into my tree. One of my ongoing projects is to make sure everyone from the town finds their place in my tree. These online encounters inspired me to do some more of that work.

With so much inspiration all around, how can anyone get tired of their family tree research? Instead of getting frustrated by a brick wall, follow through on that inspiration. Expand your family and expand your history. I try to offer fun and unusual projects to you through this blog. Why not try one of these popular ones?

• How to Share Your Family Tree Research with Relatives
• 5 Steps to Writing Your Ancestor's Life Story
• 7 Days to a Better Family Tree

These DNA Sites Expand Your Tree in New Directions

Ten years ago I asked my parents to take a DNA test. I told them it would help me see whether my matches were on mom's side or dad's side. I even uploaded our 3 DNA tests (plus my husband's) to other DNA websites.

I must admit I've spent very little time looking at their DNA matches. Instead, I've analyzed the daylights out of my matches. I've categorized them, added notes, and grouped them with colorful dots.

Then on Friday, DNA expert Diahan Southard gave another insightful webinar. She recommended two things I've overlooked:

1. My parents are one generation closer to their ancestors than I am. So they will have some matches I don't have.
2. AncestryDNA has the most tests by far, but they ship to a limited number of countries. (See the full list.) Other websites, like MyHeritage, have a more global collection of DNA testers.

After hearing that second point, I was eager to see our matches on MyHeritage. Sure enough, I'm seeing matches that aren't on AncestryDNA. They're from:

• Italy
• Brazil
• Australia
• United Kingdom
• Venezuela
• Slovakia
• New Zealand
• plus the USA and Canada

I didn't realize how AncestryDNA limits my international pool of matches.

You can do this for free, same as I did. Create a free account on www.myheritage.com, go to the DNA menu, and choose Upload DNA data. (See your testing site for instructions on how to download your DNA data file.)

I'll bet you'll have much better matches than I do. For some reason, my number of matches is very low compared to other people. On AncestryDNA, I have 5,554 matches. I've seen other people with 50,000 matches. What the heck? On MyHeritage, I have 554 matches—but 90% of them are people not on AncestryDNA.

I spent a whole day looking at the family trees of DNA matches for my parents and myself on MyHeritage. The most exciting result is that many of them are from my mother's ancestral hometowns in Italy. Those towns have almost no matches on AncestryDNA!

Don't overlook the free resource that offers you a host of new international DNA matches.

I recognize most of the last names in these matches' family trees. I dug through my downloaded collection of vital records from the towns. I built out families and placed my new DNA matches in my family tree. Sometimes our connection was an in-law connection, not a cousin connection. That means I need to piece together more ancestors.

While my number of international DNA matches is low, they give me a lot more families to explore. I'm excited to have a new project on my list. Yes, I'm still winding up a cleanup project to add source citations to some document images in my family tree. But I can wrap that up in three solid days. And I'm still working through my maternal grandfather's hometown, adding people to my tree. And I'm even still renaming lots of my downloaded vital records to make them searchable.

But that doesn't mean I'm not excited by the next big project! Thanks to my international DNA matches, I can expand my reach into my "underserved" towns:

• Sant'Angelo a Cupolo
• Apice
• Pescolamazza
• Santa Paolina
• Tufo

I'm also revisiting the DNA kit I uploaded to familytreedna.com. That match list (only 321 people) has even more names I haven't seen on AncestryDNA. Very few of them have uploaded a tree, so I may not get very much out of this list. But again, I'll bet you will.

I'm eager to add as many people from my underserved towns as possible. My family tree is full to the brim with ancestors from my grandfathers' hometowns. But my grandmothers' lines need work. Now I can expand their families further!

If your family hasn't been in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand for several hundred years, don't ignore the power of MyHeritage. And if you're managing DNA kits for your close relatives, explore their unique matches. Go ahead. Dip your toes in the international gene pool.

Make a To-Do List with FTM's Media Usage Report

When I told you I'd finished cleaning up all the source citations in my family tree, I left something out. I didn't want to get into it because it may not apply to many people. But there is something I should share with you.

I wound up with about 2,000 vital records attached to people but not to a source citation. Let's say Angelo Bianco has a birth record attached to him in my family tree. He has his name, birth and baptism dates, and his parents' names and ages. But somehow, there is no citation. All the information I need is there, but the last step remains undone. I don't know how this happened.

I started to fix them by paging through all the vital records in the Media tab of Family Tree Maker. I have 8,533 vital records! I was looking for those attached to a person but missing a citation. When I found one, I'd go to the person and create the source citation. But I had no clue how many of these there were.

After doing that for a couple of days, I wondered if there was a better way. There is. It's called the Media Usage Report. To find it in Family Tree Maker, go to the Publish tab and choose Media Reports under Publication Types. You'll see the Media Usage Report. Click the Create Report button and you'll see a bunch of options you can change.

FTM's Media Usage Report helped me find and fix a long list of missing citations in my family tree.

By the way, I opened my tree in RootsMagic 8, complete with media items, and it has nothing like this report. You can view media items one at a time, but you can't even double click to go to the person or citation attached to it. I'd never looked at FTM's Media Usage Report before, and it turns out to have some great uses.

In my case, all the images missing a citation use an obsolete URL from the Antenati website. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.") I wanted to be able to see the description for each image because it contains the obsolete URL. Here's what I did to create my Media Usage Report:

• Select All individuals in the Individuals to include section.
• Select Show description in the Items to include section.
• Select Show person media in the Filter media by section.

To save a report, click the Share button in the top right corner of FTM and export to the format of your choice. I chose to export to CSV to create a spreadsheet. That way, I can simply delete each entry once it's fixed. And now I can do a search in Excel to count how many obsolete Antenati URLs I need to update. I can see my progress and estimate how long it'll take me to finish.

Here are some other Media Usage Report options that may suit your needs.

Options in the "Items to include" section:

• To include media items you've marked private, be sure to select Include private media. I made all my photographs private to keep them off of Ancestry.com. They won't show up in my report unless I make this selection.
• To find media that's missing a date, select Show date. I always put the date of the document in the image's details. If I forget, I'll see the file's creation timestamp instead of a proper date.
• To find media that's missing a category, select Show categories. It's helpful to assign a category to your media so you can find the one you need fast. FTM comes with several built-in categories, but you can create your own, too.
• If you keep details in the image's Notes field (not the Description field), select Show notes to see them.

Options in the "Filter media by" section:

• Once upon a time, I was attaching media to a fact, rather than to the citation attached to a fact. I thought that was what I needed to do. Selecting Show fact media lets me find those and fix them. (See the image to better understand.)
  

  

  When I discovered I could add a media item directly to a fact, I did. But attaching them to the citation is much better.

• Show person media displays all the media in your family tree that's attached to anyone. This is the most important choice to make.
• To find media that isn't attached to anyone, select Show unlinked media. If you save this report, you can work through them and either attach or delete them from your family tree.

For me, choosing to show source, citation, and relationship media shows nothing. Try them and see if you have any results.

Before closing my FTM file, I exported a GEDCOM file with media links. I opened that file in Family Tree Analyzer, and I didn't see any report that makes use of media. But I did find an unusual error in my tree. When I looked at a list of all the occupations in my tree, I found 11 blank occupations. That meant I'd created an occupation fact, but forgot to enter the occupation itself. I fixed them one-by-one in my tree. Three of them were actually death dates recorded as occupation facts. What happened there?

You never know what you'll find while doing quality assurance on your family tree. That's why you've go to do it!

Who Did You Inherit Your Traits From?

Can you inherit your bright-eyed optimism from your ancestors? Popular shows like "Finding Your Roots" and "Who Do You Think You Are?" tell stories about celebrities learning their ancestor shared their personality traits. But are you really a musician because your 3rd great grandfather was?

Science says you can inherit a personality trait *if* there's a physical component to it. You can inherit perfect pitch because it's a physical trait—a physical ability. You can inherit your optimism because it's tied to the oxytocin receptors in your brain.

You may be familiar with how DNA works, but have you examined which traits and features you inherited from whom?

You can also inherit traits you saw your family members modelling. I tend to react to another driver cutting me off in exactly the same way as my father. I think that's more about watching him drive than inheriting a gene. But you didn't see your 3rd great grandfather modelling his musical skills.

The Science of Inheritance

I remember learning about trait inheritance in 9th grade biology class. We all have 2 genes for each physical trait, and we pass only one to each child. If dad's genes carry both the dominant brown-eyed trait and the recessive blue-eyed trait, and mom's genes carry only the recessive blue-eyed trait, what are the chances they'll have a blue-eyed child? Do the math to see there's a 50% chance.

Let's take my blue-eyed Mom as an example. Her mother had brown eyes and her father had blue eyes. But she and her 2 siblings did not get brown eyes. That means Grandma passed down the recessive gene she inherited from her blue-eyed father.

It would be nice to think that my entrepreneurial son Chris inherited his skills from his 2nd great grandfather, Giovanni. Giovanni came to America without any type of skilled trade. But somehow, he quickly became the owner of a building with 4 apartments and retail space.

This equation shows how slim the chances were for my sons to be anything but blonde-haired and blue-eyed.

In reality, Chris probably observed his father's attempts to be an entrepreneur, and my years of working as a successful independent contractor. Chris was always determined to never work for someone else. And he's stubborn enough to make it a reality.

My other son, Joe, has long been my clone. He has a strong gene for laziness that I don't have, but he's smart enough to overcome it. He prefers to work alone without asking for help, which is something my father and I share. Many times I see Joe expressing exactly my thoughts on a range of topics. I tend to think that's from his upbringing.

Inheritance in Your Family Tree

Here's an exercise that can be a fun way to raise your family's interest in genealogy. Certain physical traits are dominant while others are recessive, like the brown eyes and blue eyes mentioned above. How many of your family members inherited recessive genes? Who do you think those genes came from?

Trait	Dominant	Recessive
Earlobes	Unattached	Attached
Tongue rolling	Can do it	Can't do it
Dimples	Have them	Don't have them
Handedness	Right-handed	Left-handed
Hair	Curly	Straight
Freckles	Have them	Don't have them
Toe length	2nd toe longest	Big toe longest
Nose width	Broad	Narrow
Lip width	Broad	Thin
Eyelashes	Long	Short

In my case, I inherited a lot of recessive genes and one big dominant one for my curly hair. I don't know which ancestor gave me my left-handedness, but not long ago people discouraged that trait. Ringo Starr's grandmother forced him to act like he was right-handed, but he isn't. He says that's why his style of drumming is so unique. He's playing backwards!

Where do you think your physical traits came from? How about your personality traits?

Want to learn more? See:

• Gregor Mendel and the Principles of Inheritance
• 27 Surprising Things You Never Realized You Inherited from Your Parents
• Dominant and Recessive Traits List

Add Consistency to Your Source Citations

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

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

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

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

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

How to Make Your Citations Shine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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