Make an Easy Ancestral Map for the Cousins

I love when I'm at a family gathering and I hear one of my cousins say, "Ask DiAnn. She knows all about our family history." At a recent get-together, 2 cousins approached me separately, asking for the same basic thing.

"We need a visual," my 1st cousin said. "Give us a map that shows which ancestors were born where."

That sent my mind racing. This sounds like a great gift idea for any genealogist to make. I'd already plotted my direct ancestors on a map. The result was a highly concentrated cluster of pinpoints in a very small section of Southern Italy. My homogeneity is like having all your ancestors come from one county in America…at least as far back as the 1600s.

It's easy to create this highly customized map to show all your cousins their ancestral roots.

While my ancestral map is exactly the same as my brother's, it's only partly the same as any of my cousins'. However, I do know that most of the aunts, uncles, and cousins who aren't my blood relatives came from the same general area. "They stayed within their tribe," as my godmother Rae put it.

Other than one town in Sicily and another up north, I can cover all my own and my cousins' ancestors in one thin horizontal slice of Italy. It begins south of Rome and ends south of Naples.

How to Create Your Family's Ancestral Map

Part One of Two: Create a list of immigrant ancestors and their hometowns. If you've already researched the immediate families of your closest cousins, you should have all these names and places handy in your family tree. Here's how to start:

• Make a list with yourself and your siblings on line 1.
• Add a line for each set of 1st cousin siblings.
• Add a line for each set of 2nd cousin siblings.

I could include some of my 3rd cousins, but the map would get very busy.

Let me explain that the people I call "the cousins" fall into 2 main groups, both somewhat small:

1. On Dad's side, I have only a brother-sister pair of 1st cousins. We've had a close relationship our whole lives. There are 2nd cousins, but since they're in Ohio, I've never known them.
2. On Mom's side, we all descend from 5 Bronx-born siblings whose parents came from Italy. It's this clan that has been a constant presence throughout my life. I have three 1st cousins and 14 2nd cousins in my generation. We're compact because no one had more than 4 kids and some had only one.

For my list, I started with myself, then listed the kids of each of Mom's 1st cousins as a group. (Trust me, this is an efficient way to do it.) I added a last line for my paternal 1st cousins. Then I spelled out the immigrant ancestors' names and towns.

Here's my list of the whole family's immigrant ancestors and their hometowns. (I shrunk the text because it's a long list.)

• Me:
  • Adamo Leone from Baselice
  • Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Pietro Iamarino from Colle Sannita
  • Maria Rosa Caruso from Pesco Sannita
  • Pasquale Iamarino from Colle Sannita
• S's kids:
  • shared Adamo Leone from Baselice
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Nicola Petriella from Circello
  • Raffaele Cocca from Colle Sannita
  • Nicolina Barone from Circello
• E's kids:
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Arturo Vallone from Esperia
  • Salvatore Mollica from Floridia in Sicily
  • Domenico Velotto from Barra in Naples
  • Filomena Carmina Picciocchi from Baiano
• L's kids:
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • shared Arturo Vallone from Esperia
  • Lorenzo Avallone and Maria Cristina Romagnano from Postiglione
• A's kids:
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Egidio Eufemio and Antoinette Trevignia from Castelmezzano
• R's kids:
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Carmine Sarracino and Maria Rosa dell'Aquila from Pastene
  • father's side from Germany and Ireland. Not in scope for this project.
• J's kids:
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Matteo Rignanese and Angela Maria Frattaruolo from Monte Sant'Angelo
• B's kids:
  • shared Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano from Pastene
  • Mario Maleri and Ida Mattioli from Pesaro
• My paternal 1st cousins:
  • shared Pietro Iamarino from Colle Sannita
  • shared Maria Rosa Caruso from Pesco Sannita
  • shared Pasquale Iamarino from Colle Sannita
  • Silvio Tagliamonte from Ponza

Whew! That's what years of research can do for you.

Part Two of Two. Begin plotting your map. You can use Google Maps for this project, but you'll probably need to have or create a free Google account to save it.

• Go to google.com/maps and clicked Saved in the left column. This should work even if you've never saved anything.
• Click Maps near the top-right, then click CREATE MAP at the bottom.
• To give your map a name, like Cousins' Roots Map, click the words Untitled Map. I also renamed the Untitled Layer to Ancestors. You could choose to create different layers for different sets of cousins.
• Consulting your list, search for an immigrant ancestor's hometown on the map.
• When you find a town, hover over its name in the left-side control panel and click the + sign that appears. This opens up a detail box. At the bottom of the box, look for and click the pencil so you can make an edit. I'm changing my saved places from just the place name to Ancestor's Name, Place Name. For instance, Pietro Iamarino, Colle Sannita. Click Save when you're done.

Go through these 4 steps to begin creating your unique ancestral family tree map.

Open up the Base map section at the bottom of the control panel. Try out different map styles to see which you like best. I chose the Light Landmass map to help my map pins and labels stand out. But I switched back to the first option when I needed to see street names or more detail.

Now click the words Uniform style in the control panel. Change Set labels from description to name. This puts your Ancestor Name, Place Name labels on the map.

When I clicked Uniform style again, I chose to Group place by name. Suddenly all my map pins had different colors, which is very nice.

Since I have multiple people from the same town, I couldn't see some of their names. Only the last one I entered in a town showed. To get around this problem, I chose different locations in town for my people who came from one town. I can click a different part of town for each person and add them there. It took me a couple of tries to make sure the names were far enough apart not to overlap one another. I also combined married couples from the same small town into one pin.

When you're happy with your map, click Share in the control panel. Be sure to click Anyone with this link can view. At the bottom you'll find a link you can copy and give to your cousins.

Click around to find different options to customize your ancestral family tree map.

See what your cousins think, but you can make the map labels simpler by using the person's name only—not their town. The map itself will tell you their town. Also, if it works for you, you could use only a last name as the label.

I like that this map is interactive. You can zoom in and out and get a good idea how close or far apart your ancestors lived. My cousins want us to take a group trip to the places where our map pins are so densely clustered.

Wouldn't it be nice to print this map to a PDF file and give it to your cousins? You can! Here's how:

• Zoom in or out on the map to make all your pins visible.
• Click the 3 vertical dots to the right of your map name in the control panel and choose Print map.
• Select PDF and click Print. Play around with how much of a zoom gives you the best results.

The resulting PDF includes all the map pins you created in a list on the left, and the map on the right. If you create a separate layer for each group of cousins, you can easily print a unique gift for each set of cousins. Have fun!

Bonus! At the last second, I discovered you're a click away from exploring your map in the intensity of Google Earth. Click the 3 vertical dots to the right of your map name in the control panel and choose View in Google Earth.

4 Must-Have Resources for Your Italian Family Tree

Once in a while you'll find a document for your family tree with a new last name or place name you can't quite read. When that happens to me, I know exactly which free websites to go to.

Here are the 4 Italian genealogy bookmarks I use to solve a mysterious last name or place name. Two can help you decipher a last name and two can help you find a place on the map.

One quick note about using these websites. You'll usually see a pop-up ad before you can proceed. To dismiss the ad, click the button that says "Chiudi" (Close).

1. Map of Italian Last Names

Use the "Cognomix" website at https://www.cognomix.it/mappe-dei-cognomi-italiani to confirm the spelling of a last name. The site's main purpose is to show you all the places in Italy where you'll find any given last name.

That's very handy when you want to see if a last name is still found in a certain town. But another important use of the site is to check the spelling of a last name. I have one ancestor who came from a different town, but raised her family and died in one of my ancestral hometowns. Her last name was hard to decipher. I found it on more than one document, but that didn't help me. It looked a little different each time.

To figure out the right spelling, I went to the Cognomix site to try out different spellings. To use the site, scroll down a bit until you see a black bar that says "Mappe dei cognomi italiani." Beneath the bar is a blank box with the heading "Cognome," Italian for surname or last name. Type a name in the box and click the "Cerca" (Search) button.

First you'll see a map of Italy showing you how many families have that name and in which regions. Click any region to see how many families have that name in different provinces. Click any province to see the number of families with that name in different towns.

But—before you click the Cerca button, see if any suggested names pop up below the box where you're typing. If there are no suggestions, you're likely to find no results when you click Cerca. And you may find a better suggestion.

Can't read that Italian last name? Bookmark these free websites and solve the problem.

I used Cognomix to figure out the ancestor whose name was new to me. The first writing of her name looked like Gajdia. (Note that sometimes in Italian words you'll see a j instead of an i.) When I type Gajdia in the Cognomix box, there are no suggestions. When I change it to Gaidia, there are still no suggestions. But one time, her name looked like Gasdia. When I type that into the box, Gasdia comes up as a suggestion. Now I can click Cerca to see where the name Gasdia comes from. I expect her to come from a town very close to where she lived after her marriage.

I discovered this uncommon name comes mostly from the Campania and Campobasso regions. That works for my family. By clicking a region and then a province, I can narrow down her likely place of birth. There's a good chance she came from either the city of Campobasso or the town of Fragneto Monforte.

My ancestor was born too early to find in vital records. If she'd been born later, I could try to track her records down in one of these two towns.

2. The Italian White Pages

The Pagine Bianche at https://www.paginebianche.it shows you exactly where to find a last name in Italy today. Look for a search area front and center on the website. Click the "Privati" button to search for a person by name (the default is to search for businesses). Then put the last name you want in the box that says "Nome, Cognome." In the second box, you can enter the town or province you want or make it blank (the default seems to be Roma).

If you get no results for a name, you may be spelling it wrong. When I put in Gasdia, I get 16 listings. One is in Campobasso and one is in Fragneto l'Abate, which borders Fragneto Monforte.

You can use the Italian White Pages to see if anyone with your last name still lives in your ancestral hometown. I find 3 people with my maiden name still living in my grandfather's hometown. I know exactly who they are. But there's another man with my maiden name in a neighboring town who I'd like to meet.

3. List of Italian Cities

The website at http://en.comuni-italiani.it/alfa is very important to my family tree research. Let's say I'm looking at marriage records from one of my ancestral hometowns. I see that the groom comes from another town, but I can't quite read the name of it. I think it starts with Mont and ends in an o.

The List of Italian Cities page divides all the country's towns into 98 groups (if I counted right). You do need to make an educated guess about the first letter of the town name. Then you can click the right group to get started.

I'll click the MONT–MONZ group to look for towns that begin with Mont and end in o. Once you click the group, scan the alphabetical list of town names to see if any seem like a possibility. You can click each possibility to see where it is on the map. That may help you rule out some towns because they're too far away.

Can't understand that Italian town name? Bookmark these free websites and find that place on the map.

When you find a town that seems like the right one, compare its spelling to the original handwriting. Do you feel confident in your choice?

This website has come through for me time and time again.

4. The Parishes in Italy

If I have a baptism record for someone from another town, I like to add the address of the church to my family tree. But what if I can't quite read the church name?

That's when you need the list of Italian parishes at https://italia.indettaglio.it/eng/parrocchie/parrocchie.html. The main page of the website divides the country into regions. Click a region to find a search form with 3 categories:

• Province
• Town
• Village

Use the most specific of the 3 that you can. For instance, I'd like to find the parish name for a town in the Avellino province called Santa Paolina. I can choose Santa Paolina from the Town list and click the Search button.

The results page tells me that Santa Paolina Vergine is the parish for this town. It evens tells me how many people belong to the parish. And it gives me the address, Piazza Novembre IV, that I can use in my family tree for baptisms and marriages. If I enter that address in Bing Maps or Google Maps, I can see the church for myself!

You may want to create a folder of bookmarks just for Italian genealogy, as I've done. That way they're handy when you need them. As you work on your family tree, turn to these 4 tools to help you figure out a hard-to-read last name or place name.

Free Italian Military Records for WWI and WWII

Don't miss the May 2025 companion to this article, "Key Facts on Your Ancestor's Italian Military Record".

In 2018 I walked into the state archives building in Benevento, Italy. I armed myself with a couple of sentences in Italian stating what I wanted. I had the exact book and record number for my grandfather's military record, and that's what I wanted to see.

This was the highlight of that particular trip to Italy. A woman brought me to a big room filled with tables and chairs. She asked me to fill out a request form for the record. While I filled out the form, my back to the room, someone brought in the book and placed it on a table.

The woman then pointed me to the book. I was ecstatic! I quickly turned to the right page and scanned the details. I found exactly what I'd hoped to find: the name of the prisoner-of-war camp where the enemy held him for a year. In my previous research, I narrowed down the possible camps to two places in Austria. One of them was correct! They held him at Mauthausen in northern Austria, a long way from the fighting near the Italian border.

The Italian prisoners from World War I were largely starved to death. My grandfather once mentioned eating rats to survive. A larger version of Mauthausen also served as a concentration camp in World War II. Seeing the 2018 movie "The Photographer of Mauthausen" left me shaken and sobbing knowing my grandfather had been there earlier.

At the archives in 2018, I took photos of my grandfather's detailed military record to study later. While I was doing this, a young man brought me another book. It was the 1891 birth register, which he'd opened to my grandfather's record. I'd seen this image online, but seeing it in person made me very emotional. The size of the book was quite a surprise. We see these little images online and try to make out the small handwriting. But the book was huge! I would guess it was 15 inches wide and 25 inches high.

You have two main choices for viewing your relative's Italian military record. You can visit the archives in Italy or find the record online. Don't expect the record to be online if your relative lived through the war. But you can still find useful information.

Your Italian ancestor's military record holds a tremendous amount of details.

Method 1. Visit the Archives

This isn't an option for everyone, I know. But if you do get to visit Italy, you'll need to go to the appropriate provincial archives. My ancestors all came from either the Benevento province or the Avellino province. If you know your ancestor's hometown, look it up to see which province contains their town. To find the address of your provincial archives, go to the Antenati website and click your province name. You'll find a map and a link to the archive's website for more information.

Another option is to search Google for one of these phrases, filling in the blank with the province name you want. The quotation marks will help you get better results.

• "indice onomastico di ____"
• "ruoli matricolari di ____"
• "liste di leva di ____"

You'll have an easier time getting your ancestor's military record if you know their book and record number plus the year they were born. This makes it very easy for a worker at the archives to retrieve the right book of records.

Check your province's archives website for a link called "Ruoli matricolari" or "Indice onomastico" or "Liste di leva". Many of the archives websites don't have this information, but you're sure to find something of interest. If you can't find military record information, be sure to see Method 2 in this article and the Resource List.

On the Benevento archives website it's easy to enter your ancestor's last name (cognome), first name (nome), town of birth (Luogo di nascita), and year of birth (classe). The fields are not all required.

When I search for my grandfather (Leone, Adamo, Baselice, 1891), the results screen includes two new bits of information:

• Registro 67 (book number 67)
• Matricola 21728 (record number 21728)

I gave these numbers and my grandfather's name and birth year to a clerk at the Archivio di Stato di Benevento.

If you can't find your person's book and record number online, it will be helpful to have their full name, hometown and year of birth.

Method 2. Find the Record Online

On the Benevento website it's easy to enter your ancestor's last name (cognome), first name (nome), town of birth (Luogo di nascita), and year of birth (classe). The fields are not all required.

To find Italian soldiers who died in World War I:

• Go to https://www.cadutigrandeguerra.it/CercaNome.aspx (The link I had here before is no longer working.)
  
• You don't have to fill in all the fields. I recommend putting that URL into Google Translate so you can see what's required. Click the CERCA button and give it a try.
  

When I enter my maiden name of Iamarino in the box, I find that only one man with that name, Alfonso Iamarino, died in the war. The search result tells me Alfonso's date and town of birth, and his father's first name. There's a blue button next to the results that says Apri (open). Clicking that shows only a brief listing about the soldier. Here's what it tells me about Alfonso Iamarino:

• Alfonso Iamarino is the son of Pasquale.
• He served as a soldier in the 156th infantry.
• He was born on 15 Feb 1892 in Colle Sannita.
• He died on 10 Apr 1917 in Mira (near Venice) of illness.

That's a lot of information from a two-line entry on a page in a book. Since Alfonso came from Benevento, I can search for him on the Ricerca caduti (search for fallen soldiers) page of the archives website. The results page gives me only a little more information:

• That he died in a military hospital.
• The book and record numbers for his military record.

But there's also a link to a PDF, and this is the military record itself!

The military record has his mother's full maiden name and his detailed physical description. In the main body of the page there's a list of dates and a description of what happened. Some examples:

• On 9 Sep 1912, Alfonso answered the call to arms (chiamato alle armi); on the 19th he joined the 42nd infantry regiment.
• He got his younger brother Carmine to take his place, delaying his own service.
• On 15 Jan 1915, Italy was in a state of war, and Alfonso could no longer delay his service.
• On 1 Jun 1916, he joined the 156th infantry regiment.
• On 10 Apr 1917, he died of illness in a military stage hospital in Mira.

My grandfather's military record fills the page completely. He answered the call to arms many times, and there's a note that he didn't report for duty in 1914 because he was in New York. I learned from his record that:

• The Army promoted him to corporal on 1 Jan 1917.
• He became a prisoner and wound up at Mauthausen on 6 Nov 1917.
• They freed him on 6 Nov 1918 (a whole year!).
• The Italian Army gave him unlimited leave on 21 Aug 1919.
• He returned to New York on 2 Apr 1920. (Lucky for me.)

Military service was mandatory starting in 1865 for Italian men beginning at age 20. (This wasn't abolished until 2005.) The lack of any record for my grandfather's brother leads me to believe he died in his teens. Some day I hope his death record will be available.

Resource List

I don't know if any of the provincial archives websites are as useful as Benevento. (Again, lucky for me.) But here are several great resources for you to try. If you put these URLs into Google Translate, you can see a translated version of the page. Sometimes these Italian websites are unreachable. If that happens to you, try again later.

• Italian World War I casualty search form (don't worry—not many fields are required): https://www.cadutigrandeguerra.it/CercaNome.aspx
• Italian World War I casualty search form (a last-name-only form): https://www.difesa.it/Il_Ministro/CadutiInGuerra/Pagine/AlbodOro.aspx
• Italian World War II casualties by province (scroll down to list of provincia): https://dimenticatidistato.wordpress.com/elenco-nazionale-caduti-per-comune-di-nascita
• Links to all provincial archives for more information: https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/esplora-gli-archivi
• Lists of soldiers from the Alessandria province born between 1913 and 1939 with their record numbers: http://www.archiviodistatoalessandria.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/247/distretto-militare-di-alessandria-con-casale-e-tortona
• Italian soldiers from the Benevento province who died in World War I: https://asbn.cultura.gov.it/caduti-grande-guerra
  
• Basic details on every soldier from the Benevento province, born between 1869 and 1932: https://asbn.cultura.gov.it/ruoli-matricolari
• Lists of soldiers from the Gorizia province with their book and record numbers: https://archiviodistatogorizia.cultura.gov.it/ruoli-matricolari
• Lists of soldiers from the Salerno province with their book and record numbers: https://assa.beniculturali.it/vistadb/listeleva.php
• Lists of soldiers from the Siracusa province: https://archiviodistatosiracusa.cultura.gov.it/patrimonio/documentazione-militare

Let me know if you find any other Italian military record resources to add to this list. I find it very helpful to be able to learn what became of some young men from my ancestral towns. Many had wives and small children when they died. At least now I know what happened.

How Can You Build Your Family Tree? We're Talking Practice!

While visiting my mom last June, I had some time to pass one afternoon. I pulled out my laptop to work on one of my genealogy projects. I was renaming a few downloaded Italian birth records to make them searchable. My format for renaming these files is:

• the document number
• the child's full name
• the word "di" (that's "of" in Italian)
• the father's first name.

For example: 1 Emiddio Pennucci di Nicola

With this format, I can easily search for every child of Nicola Pennucci. It's very powerful.

Spend time with lots of vital records from your ancestral hometown to become a pro at reading them and gathering the facts you need.

I gave my mom a peek a my computer screen. These were not the neatest vital records, but they weren't giving me any trouble. I showed her a birth record and pointed out the key facts. "Here's the baby's name and the day they were born. Here's the father's name and age, and over here is the mother's name and age. This column has the baptism date, and this part is their home address."

Her mouth dropped open. "How can you read that?"

"I learned," I told her. "It's all about practice."

Learn By Doing, Over and Over

The amount I've learned purely through practice hit home a couple of weeks ago. I was doing a document-by-document review of vital records from Grandpa Leone's hometown. Most of the people in these records were already in my family tree. I reviewed them all to see who I'd missed.

I found a few mistakes I'd made many years ago when I had my first look at this town's vital records. I thought they were silly mistakes. They were a little embarrassing. But I was completely new to Italian records back then, and viewing them on bad microfilm. I was lucky to make out any of the details.

Some of my earliest work included misspellings of names that are second-nature to me now. When I first learned Italian numbers, there were a couple that took me longer to memorize. (Numbers are important because they wrote dates and years in longhand.) So sometimes I got a date wrong.

Don't Miss Out on the Adventure!

Here's a hard truth. You can't join a Facebook genealogy group, say your family names, and expect someone to hand you your family tree. I see these requests every single day! No details. Just, "Here are my grandparents' names. Can anyone tell me about them?"

So here's my question for those who haven't done any research, and those who ask for a translation of every document they find. Why aren't you putting in the effort? You can—and will—learn so much by doing the work.

Family-tree building is a journey. Genealogy research is an intellectual exercise that will teach you many things. Isn't it better to walk the path and experience wonders along the way than to be dropped at the destination and sent straight home?

Take the First Step

If you don't know exactly where your ancestors came from, finding out is your first task. Putting your ancestors' names out there and hoping to find a relative with all the answers is folly. When you discover their hometown, you can search for vital records to help you understand their lives.

If you don't know their hometown, and you've already asked your entire family if they know, you can:

• Search for your ancestor's paper-trail of documents. For an immigrant, a ship manifest or naturalization papers may say where they came from. A census will almost never have the answer, but draft cards and applications may.
• Take a DNA test and see where your closest matches' roots are.
• Search Ancestry or FamilySearch for your ancestor's last name and see where others with that name came from.

I'm lucky that both my grandfathers told us where they came from. When a cousin-in-law told me how my 2nd great grandmother pronounced her hometown, I used a favorite trick to figure it out. She had a common last name, Caruso, that comes from many places in Italy.

I searched Ancestry passenger lists for any Caruso arriving in America in the early 1900s. Then I scanned the results for their hometowns. When I spotted the right one, I said it aloud. I had no doubt I'd found her hometown!

When her hometown's vital records appeared on the Antenati website, I found my 2nd great grandmother's birth record. I discovered she was a twin, but her twin brother died immediately. Now knowing her parents' names, I searched for and found all her brothers. Then her aunts and uncles. And their families. And generations of ancestors.

Her hometown was the key to EVERYTHING.

Learn Enough of a Language to Get the Goods

Don't let the sight of a foreign vital record overwhelm you. You don't need to translate every single word on the document. Have you ever filled in a standard form? Do you need to read every single word or do you just start entering your name and address?

Vital records are like a form-letter where there's a bunch of standard wording. It's the unique facts that you want. Who cares who they mayor was when your ancestor was born? You want to know baby's name, the date, the place, the parents' names and ages, and maybe check out the witnesses.

The FamilySearch Wiki gives you the genealogy keywords to look for on vital records in tons of languages. Thanks to the Wiki, I can read Latin records, but I keep that Wiki bookmark handy.

Ancestor's birth record in another language? Relax. You don't have to read every word.

Last week I translated the important parts of an Italian vital record for a stranger on Facebook. The handwriting was quite neat. When I gave her the translation, she asked, "How did you do that?" The answer is practice.

I spend so much time looking at Italian vital records from my ancestral hometowns that:

• I know the town's names so well I can overcome bad handwriting.
• I literally dream of translating documents. That's why I like to say I can translate the records in my sleep.

There's no reason you can't learn what you need to translate your ancestors' vital records. Sure, some documents are notoriously hard to read. When that happens, maybe you'll want to reach out to the genealogy community for help. Or maybe you'll figure it out for yourself.

One time I discovered a new ancestor who came from another town. Her unique last name was impossible to read. But I had a few options, and I did figure out her name.

Now you've got to ask yourself what you want. Do you want a stranger to hand you a family tree that may or may not be yours? Or do you want do actively discover your ancestors? You. Can. Do. This.

Here's more help with Italian vital records:

• How to Read an Italian Birth Record
• How to Read an Italian Death Record
• How to Read Italian Marriage Records

How to Use DNA Matches to Go Beyond Vital Records

As I've explained to death, I'm fitting every vital record from my hometowns into one huge family tree. (See "Why Your Half 4th Cousin Once Removed Matters.") But the vital records have limitations. In my towns, there are no civil records before 1809, deaths and marriages end in 1860, and births end in 1915. Then there's a brief hurrah from 1931–1942 with death and marriage records only.

That means I have tons of people who become a loose end. If they married from 1861–1930, and it isn't written on their birth record, I don't know who they married. I don't know what became of them.

This simple technique can lead you to research that ties up loose ends in your family tree.

That's where DNA matches come in. Because of my obsessive research, I've never found a DNA match who can help me get back further in my family tree. But they can bring me forward! They know who their grandparent married.

Today I'm going to seek out a DNA match who can tie up loose ends for me. I'm looking through my dad's DNA matches for anyone with a decent-sized family tree.

I look at a match's direct ancestors in the tree preview Ancestry shows on the match page. Which last names do I recognize? I found a match where I recognize a few names on her maternal side. On this branch I see 4 last names I know, and they're all from the town my maiden name comes from—Colle Sannita:

• Finelli
• Mascia
• Basilone
• Galasso

I found both of this DNA match's maternal grandparents in my family tree already. But I had no way of knowing they married one another. Her grandfather Angelo is my 5C2R (5th cousin twice removed). Her grandmother Maria Grazia is my 4C3R. The combination of my 5C2R marrying my 4C3R may be making this match look like a closer relative than she is.

She's categorized in my dad's 4th–6th cousin range because they share 36cM. But those 36cM come from 4 different segments. Their longest segment is only 10cM. They may be as distant as 7th cousins. (Now that this DNA match is in my family tree, I can see she's my dad's 6th cousin. That relationship is not among the possibilities listed on Ancestry. It's far more distant.)

Her family tree says Angelo married Maria Grazia and they had a child in New York. With that hint, I can research the couple in America for proof of their relationship. Here's what I found:

• Angelo's draft registration card confirms his birth date (I have the Italian birth record). It says his wife is Grace (an Anglicized Grazia).
• Grace's U.S. naturalization record confirms her maiden name and town of birth. Her birthday is the same as on her Italian birth record, but the year is off by one. The document lists her 5 children with their birth dates. I love when that happens. One of the kids is the DNA match's mother.
• The 1920 U.S. census shows Angelo and Grace living with their children and Angelo's parents. Angelo's birth record confirms his parents' names.
• The NYC Municipal Archives website has their 1908 marriage certificate. (How cool is it that they lived a few doors away from my grandmother?) Their parents' names are on the certificate, removing any possible remaining doubt.

It bothers me so much that the vital records for my towns have so many limitations. What became of all those 1880s babies? Who did they marry? When did they die?

Now that I've shown how a match's family tree can provide the right clues, I know I can tie up more and more loose ends.

Set Yourself Up for Success

To tie up loose ends in your family tree using your DNA matches:

• Filter your DNA match list to those with a linked public family tree. Make sure the tree has more than 10 people in it.
• Choose a match and scan their direct ancestors for familiar last names.
• Check to see if one of their people is in, or can fit into, your family tree.

Choose the best candidates among your DNA matches to find the answers that were out of your reach.

Don't stop there. Unless your match has sources and documents in their family tree, treat their data as hints. Do the research yourself and find the proof you need. In the end, you'll know exactly how you're related to your DNA match.

But better than that, you'll start tying up those loose ends.

Why Your Half 4th Cousin Once Removed Matters

I've just finished the second of my most ambitious genealogy research projects. I created inventories of available vital records from my ancestral hometowns. Then I reviewed each document, placing about 95% of the people into my family tree.

First I did my Grandpa Iamarino's town of Colle Sannita. Now I've wrapped up my Grandpa Leone's neighboring town of Baselice. I've shared 5 inventory spreadsheets on my www.forthecousins.com website. And I'll have another town ready soon (Circello).

No matter how distant the relationship, there's value to every connection in your ancestral hometown.

The reason 95% of the people from the documents can fit in my family tree is that the towns are remote. They were even more isolated before automobiles. Everyone in town was likely to marry a neighbor. The 5% of people I can't fit into my tree are:

• out-of-towners or
• members of noble families who married other aristocrats.

Why Spend All That Time?

The benefits of this time-consuming project include:

• Gaining familiarity with all the last names in town.
• Overcoming bad handwriting because of that familiarity.
• Finding connections to DNA matches because their people are in your tree.
• Knowing exactly who everyone in town was and their relationship to you.

The first step in such a project is making your inventory. View the town's documents online (find Italian vital records on Antenati or FamilySearch). Then make a brief entry in a spreadsheet for each image. My preferred format is: document number name of subject "di" father's name. (The word "di" is Italian for of, and that's how these documents denote the father's name: di Giovanni, di Antonio, etc.)

An example is: 82 Adamo Leone di Giovanni & 83 Antonia Maria Colucci di Leonardo. That's a single document image showing 2 birth records. Document #82 is my grandfather's 1891 birth record. He is the subject of the document and his father is Giovanni. Also in the image is document #83 for Antonia Maria Colucci, daughter of Leonardo.

The towns of Colle Sannita and Baselice each had under 3,000 inhabitants in he 1800s. The vital records have added at least 30,000 people to my family tree. I have a complete inventory for the town of Pesco Sannita ready and waiting for my review. I'll go through the same process with Pesco as I did for Colle and Baselice:

• View each vital record to see if the subject, their parents, or their spouse are already in my family tree.
• When I can find where this person fits, add the facts from the document, including dates, places, and the names of family members.
• If I can't find a place for this person in my tree, I highlight that line in the spreadsheet in yellow. It's very possible that their connection will show up after I review more documents. I'll make a second pass through the spreadsheet later to see if they can fit.

I've listed the benefits of this project and explained my process. But you may still be wondering why it's worth such a huge commitment of time. Three reasons spring to mind:

1. Connection. Familiarity with the people from my hometowns gives me a strong connection to these places. They aren't merely the quaint and beautiful towns I've visited a few times. They are me! I love knowing how deep my roots go in each town.
2. Knowledge. Often I see people on Facebook asking how they can learn more about their ancestors' day-to-day lives. If you come from a remote town and you're not descended from nobility, you're not going to find their journal tucked away in some archive. They were likely illiterate and living a life of hard work. You may find some general writings about life in that area at a certain time. A history of your ancestral town may provide those types of clues. Otherwise, all you can learn about your ancestor is that they came from this family, married this person, had this job, had these children, and died. Those family names and dates are what you can discover in the town's vital records.
3. DNA Matches. Because I've studied my ancestral hometowns' documents, I can quickly recognize my entry point into a DNA match's family tree. If you're only looking at a match's tree for your last name, you're missing out on that entry point.

The title of this article mentions a half 4th cousin once removed. I chose someone from my family tree randomly. This cousin is a descendant of my 4th great grandfather Gennaro Pilla and his second wife. Gennaro had 2 children with my 4th great grandmother, and 5 children with his 2nd wife. That's 5 threads I'd have missed if I paid attention only to my direct line. And this particular half 4C1R led me to his son, my half 5th cousin John, who introduced me to a ton of relatives in Canada. I met lots of people with my maiden name on that trip to Canada. That's a rarity.

I love being able to encompass entire towns with my family tree. If you're staying on the straight-and-narrow, gathering information about your direct ancestors only, you're missing out on so many connections!

Finding and Fixing an Awkward Typo in Your Family Tree

I spent too many months fixing errors in my family tree to tolerate any more. I knew my previous lemon of a computer was the main source of the errors. Tons of duplicate source citations were born of failed syncs between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com. (See "Take the Time to Improve the Sources in Your Family Tree.")

Recently, I keep seeing another type of error. I'll notice a person with a male name marked as a female. I wondered if it was a typo I kept making. When I add a new name, my fingers are so fast on the keyboard that I sometimes press F for female before I realize it. I've caught myself doing it, and then I can fix it before moving on.

How many of these typos are in my huge family tree? How many men did I mark female? How many women did I mark male? How can I find them all?

Is this type of error hiding in your family tree?

Don't read anything snarky or political into this subject matter because it isn't there. There's one very important reason to make sure you've used the right gender. If you wind up with a wife labeled male, the couple's children will get her last name. Is that how names work in your culture?

The less important reason for fixing this error is you don't want to look like you don't know what you're doing. If you're recording history, you've got to strive for accuracy. I record each person by the name on their birth certificate, even if they went by another name in life. So I'm going to record their sex, too.

Looking for an Easy Way to Spot the Error

Since I use Family Tree Maker to build my tree, I wondered if a filter might help. I created a filter of all people in the tree with a sex of female. That cut my 66,000-person family tree list of names about in half. But that's too many names to scroll through and spot the out-of-place names.

I thought of Family Tree Analyzer because I knew I could sort the data like a spreadsheet. I opened my latest GEDCOM file and went to the Main Lists / Individuals tab. I sorted the Forenames column from A to Z (an important first step). Then I filtered the Sex column to display only F for female.

If you only keep your family tree online and do your work there, download a GEDCOM from the website. Open the file on your computer with Family Tree Analyzer, and make all the corrections one by one.

My list was still long, of course, but it didn't take too long to scan. With the first names in alphabetical order, I could scroll quickly past everyone named Maria, for instance. I acted on 4 types of first names:

1. Clearly male names. If you have lots of names based in another language, understand the rules of that language. Most of my Italian first names ending in the letter a will be female, but there are exceptions. Nicola, Mattia, Andrea, Giambattista, Zaccaria, etc.
2. Possibly male names. Among my Italian ancestors, the first name Felice could belong to either a male or a female. In English, think of a name like Dana or Chris.
3. Typos that stood out in the alphabetical list. I saw Antona instead of Antonia.
4. A last name as a first name. A name like Viola may be a first name, but in my tree it's also a last name. I need to see this person's full name. Italian names are often written last-name-first on vital records, so I may have absentmindedly entered a name backwards.

Of all the females, there were 92 I needed to review in my family tree and a much smaller number to change to male. When I finished, I changed my filter in Family Tree Analyzer to display only people with an M in the sex column. I scanned the long list for any female names, questionable names, or typos. I didn't count them, but there were at least 10 I changed to male.

If you're working on your family tree, a wrong-sex error is very visible when you find one. The person's name may be in a field of pink instead of blue, or they're on the left side when you expected them to be on the right.

I don't know how each of these errors happened. Now that it's top-of-mind, I'm hopeful I won't keep making the wrong choice out of muscle memory.

This Number is Crucial to Your DNA Match Research

Another day, another look at my mom's DNA match list. This time I wanted to find the first still-unknown person in her list worth researching. A video by DNA expert Diahan Southard encouraged me to research a match who shared a long segment of DNA with Mom. That means looking past the total number of shared cM to see the longest "segment" of shared cM.

You can find the longest segment length by clicking the amount of shared cM to see more details. This is true on most if not all DNA websites.

Researching a DNA match led me to 5 more children of my 3rd great uncle. They were born in another town.

Increase Your Odds of Success

I began this exercise by looking only at matches who showed a family tree. A quick look at a few trees told me who they were. "Oh, that's my 3rd cousin through Immacolata Leone. Noted."

The match I chose to research has my great grandmother's maiden name in her family tree. Saviano. I'm always interested in finding another Saviano. And they've been hard to find.

This match shares with Mom a longest segment of 27 cM. Diahan Southard didn't specify a longest-segment range worth researching, but her example showed 32 cM. So 27 cM is pretty close.

Do the Research Yourself

First I had to figure out my connection to her ancestor, Giuseppe Saviano. This match supplied an exact birth and death date for him in her family tree, but no locations. I knew the dates would be a big help.

A search on Ancestry told me Giuseppe came to America and lived in Cleveland, Ohio. I know lots of relatives who wound up in Cleveland, including my father. I found Giuseppe in someone else's Ancestry tree. He had the right dates, Cleveland as his place of death, and San Nicola, Salerno, Italy, as his place of birth.

My absolute first thought was, "I wonder if he was really born in San Nicola Manfredi." (That's in Benevento, not Salerno.) Why would I think that? Because that town borders the town where my Saviano ancestors were born. I know there was a decent cross-over between the two towns. And I have all the San Nicola Manfredi vital records at my disposal. I've found many familiar last names in the San Nicola Manfredi vital records.

So, was Giuseppe Saviano actually born in San Nicola Manfredi on 1 Jan 1889? Check the documents—yes! Here he is. And Giuseppe's U.S. World War II draft registration card confirms he was born in San Nicola Manfredi on 1 Jan 1889.

But the true brick-wall busting moment came from the other facts on that birth record. Giuseppe's parents were Giovanni Saviano and Giuseppa Sarracino. I know that couple! They're in my family tree!

In my tree I saw Giovanni was my 3rd great uncle. He's one of only two siblings I've found for my 2nd great grandfather, Antonio Saviano. They come from a little hamlet called Pastene in a town called Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. The town was part of the Papal States, so they didn't keep civil records before 1861. Don't get me started on that. I could cry at the dead ends that causes me.

I'd already found 6 children for Giovanni and Giuseppa. They were all born in Pastene or in greater Sant'Angelo a Cupolo. One of their daughters came to America in 1898 with my 2GG Antonio Saviano and his family. She died in 1901. But I don't know anything else about the other children.

Expand Your Search Area

Thanks to this DNA match and a hunch, I now know Giovanni Saviano and Giuseppa Sarracino moved to neighboring San Nicola Manfredi. Or maybe the borderline moved and they stayed put. Either way, they had 2 more sons in San Nicola Manfredi in 1889 and 1890. I went through the birth records year-by-year looking for more. What I found tells me that Giuseppa died and Giovanni remarried and had 3 more children.

I wish the last 3 were born at the same address as the previous 2, but they weren't. I do know this Giovanni Saviano is the only one around who's having children during these years. And, like his brother (my 2GG), his occupation changes all the time:

• 1875–1880: farmer
• 1882–1885: merchant
• 1889: shopkeeper
• 1890–1896: industrialist
• 1898: farmer again
• 1901: shopkeeper again

The best thing about this discovery is that I've found Saviano cousins with roots in Ohio.

Lessons Learned

What lessons have I learned from this research?

1. Don't frustrate yourself with DNA matches who show no family tree. Unless their shared matches have a story to tell, you may get nowhere.
2. You may not find your connection to a DNA match with a short "longest segment." I don't know where the cutoff is, but you've got a better chance of success if their longest segment is about 30 cM or more.
3. When your DNA match's family tree has sparse details, research their ancestor yourself. You may be more interested in genealogy research than they are. Or they may prefer to limit how much information they put out there.
4. Spend time with online maps. Know the names of the towns surrounding your ancestor's town. Take a peek at records for neighboring towns to see if any last names are familiar to you.

I'm thrilled to make some kind of progress on my mother's dead-end branch. While I can't see vital records from their town before 1861, I may find traces of my family in neighboring towns.

Overlooked Website Finds Immigrant Ancestors

I'll bet we all do it. We save notes or bookmarks to remind us of a genealogy find we need to explore. And then we forget all about it. I found a web address and single sentence on line 420 of my constantly updated text file named Notebook.txt. It says this:

http://www.ciseionline.it/portomondo
Search for family names; based on dates and ship names, piece together families.

Search 5 countries at once on this free website to see where your cousins disappeared to.

This free-access Italian website belongs to CISEI, an organization that translates to the International Center for Italian Emigration Studies. The site provides a simple search form that lets you find Italian relatives who emigrated to:

• Brazil
• The United States
• Argentina
• Canada
• Australia

And you can search all 5 locations at once.

The key benefits of this site, which does not show you the actual ship manifests, are:

• Italians compiled much of the information. They're less likely to mangle the spelling of an Italian name.
• You'll get each key detail from a manifest typed out clearly and with great care.
• You'll get details about the ship, a photo*, migration statistics, and links to more information.
  * The photo may not be the actual ship, but it will say so.
• You'll see a map of the long migration path across the ocean.
• It's free!

Start Your Search with a Name

Remember, you can copy the site's URL into Google Translate and click the result to see the site in your language.

To use the search form:

• Enter a last name in the first box. This is mandatory. Wild characters like * and ? do not work. Incomplete names do not work.
• Enter a first name if you choose. This can be helpful if you would otherwise get too many results.
• Choose a destination country, or keep the Everyone/Tutti selection, to search all available ports at once.
• Click the button to submit your search.

To test this search engine, I searched for a record I know very well. It's my 2nd great grandfather's 1898 trip back to America with his whole family. He'd been to New York 2 or 3 times before this, and the last time, he left his eldest son in the Bronx to await the whole family.

When you find the result you want, click the icon in the column on the right. You'll see a full transcript of this line from the ship manifest. I was happy to see that the results were all correct. I already knew the ship name (California). I knew my relatives were heading to 149th Street in the Bronx, New York. I knew they were joining the eldest son in the family, Simplicio Saviano.

A second search for only the last name Saviano let me find the rest of the family. I already saw that the arrival date was 8 June 1898 (written here as 08/06/1898), so they were easy to spot.

With a few more clicks, I found:

• 13 people named Saviano who emigrated to Brazil
• 6 who went to Argentina
• 8 who went to Australia
• 122 who came to the USA.

I can check my family tree and vital records to try to identify cousins in these lists.

The immigration path looks daunting, doesn't it? Find out more about your ancestor's journey.

Be on the Lookout

The main page tells you which years this database includes for which ports. There's such a variety that I won't list them here. But if you don't find your person, check to see if the database covers their year of arrival.

I didn't find my great grandparents' arrival in July 1899, and the website says it should be there. I didn't find either of my grandfathers' arrivals, either. Still, I'm excited by what I can learn from this very concentrated database of emigrants. I'm especially interested in family members who went to Australia, Argentina, and Brazil. They could help tie up some loose ends.

I noticed a few name abbreviations that tell me that's how the manifest shows the name. For instance, I found one Francesco Iamarino listed as "FCO." complete with the period at the end. Another Francesco is "FRANCO" on his manifest. Yet another, this one a Francesco Saverio, is "FRANO.SAVO." These people will be harder to find, so you should leave the first name blank on the search form and try again.

Once you've done a search or two, you shouldn't need Google Translate to get the facts you want. Some headings on the pages are images, so Google can't translate them for you. But, with the Google Translate app on your phone, you can aim your phone at the screen to see a translation. (If you're doing the search on your phone, you may need to borrow a second phone!)

Hurray! Another genealogy project! How late can you stay up tonight?

And speaking of immigration:

• 5 Ellis Island Videos Dispel Immigration Myths
• Who Was Your First Immigrant Ancestor?
• 6 Key Genealogy Facts on a Ship Manifest

Visualization Tool Highlights a Family Tree Surprise

During RootsTech 2021 I typed and saved this note: Go to learnforeverlearn.com/ancestors to visualize endogamy. I know I tried it in 2021. Yet this time, it had a dramatic revelation for me.

All you do is go to the website linked above and upload a GEDCOM file exported from your family tree. You'll see the results in seconds. If your tree has pedigree collapse—ancestors with more than one direct ancestral relationship to you—you'll see pairs of lines that don't go straight up. They'll be horizontal or diagonal. (See The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About.)

Wait a minute. I have TWO sets of double ancestors? This free tool doesn't lie.

The website will show each direct ancestor in your family tree as a pink or blue dot. (Pink for maternal, blue for paternal.) Hover over any dot to see:

• The ancestor's name and lifespan
• Their birthplace
• How much DNA they contributed to you (by percentage)
• Their relationship(s) to you—the root person of the family tree.

When I hover over the pink dot at the apex of one of my horizontal lines, I see Cristina Iapozzuto. Under relationship it says she's my 4th great grandmother "twice." And I knew this. Cristina Iapozzuto married Francesco Iamarino. Two of their sons were Giuseppantonio and Pasquale. Giuseppantonio's great grandson is my paternal grandfather, Pietro Iamarino. Pasquale's great granddaughter is my paternal grandmother, Lucy Iamarino. I learned in 2007 that Pietro and Lucy were 3rd cousins. I'll forever wonder why no one in my family knew this—especially when they had the same last name.

Since Cristina Iapozzuto and Francesco Iamarino are my 4th great grandparents twice, they each have two different Ahnentafel numbers. Ahnentafel is a numbering system that gives a unique number to each of your direct ancestors. (See A Roadmap for Your Genealogy Research.) If they're double ancestors, they get 2 different Ahnentafel numbers. So Cristina gets Ahnentafel #65 and #81. I list my double ancestors twice in my Ahnentafel spreadsheet, once for each number. I use a special color of orange to highlight them.

An Unexpected Double Relationship

But the second example of endogamy in my family tree had escaped me until now. Salvatore Piacquadio (born 1716) and Donata diRuccia (born 1718) are my 6th great grandparents AND my 7th great grandparents. Their son Giorgio is my 6th great grandfather, an ancestor of my grandmother Lucy Iamarino. Their son Pietro is my 5th great grandfather, also an ancestor of my grandmother Lucy Iamarino.

My huge family tree has tons of multiple relationships. That's thanks to countless marriages within small towns. (See The Method to My Genealogy Madness.) Because it's so big, I'd overlooked the uniqueness of this particular family unit.

Family Tree Maker knew they were my double ancestors. But it took another tool to make me see it.

The signs were there in my Family Tree Maker file, but I'd missed them. The easiest sign to spot required only one thing: I needed to lay eyes on this family. If I had, I'd have seen that 2 of Salvatore and Donata's children had the yellow arrow that says they're my direct ancestor. But I didn't see it. That's why this online endogamy tool is such a gift. A free gift.

If your family tree has a good number of generations, I urge you to try this online endogamy tool. The tool has many functions. You can read about them at http://familytreeviz.blogspot.com/2015/09/features-of-family-tree-visualization.html.