2 Keys to Tackling a Big Family Tree Project

Five weeks. That's how long I've been grinding away on one huge family tree project. I wrote about my missing source citations project 5 weeks ago and have been working on it ever since.

How did I get into this mess of missing citations? I forged ahead with my goal of connecting everyone from my ancestral hometowns. I skipped the citations because all the vital record images are on my computer. And I spent time renaming the images to make them searchable.

Parallel genealogy tasks get you to the goal while keeping things interesting.

Since I can find any document again in a snap, I postponed citations in favor of family building. But I went too far.

Using Family Tree Analyzer, I generated a list of 70,000 people with zero source citations. OMG! My entire tree has 80,867 people and 70,000 of them have no citations?

I designed a process that let's me make measurable progress each day. First I made a change to the spreadsheet I created with Family Tree Analyzer. I sorted it by 2 fields:

• Relation to Root. This lets me work on closest relatives first. I have tons of people with very distant relationships to me.
• Surname. This groups siblings together so I can work on an entire family without moving around in my family tree a lot. That saves time. I search for one name and work through the whole family.

But I still have more than 69,000 people left to address! After 5 weeks!!

The sheer volume is why I had to put two things in place to make me efficient and keep my sanity.

Efficiency

I'm very good about adding citations the moment I find documentation on Ancestry.com. It's the tons and tons of Italian vital records I've let slide. About 99% of these documents come from the Antenati Portale. Their missing citations will all follow the same pattern.

That means I can use a single template and make a few edits for each fact. I'm a big believer in templates. Think of a source citation template as a stencil. A stencil makes it easy to repeat a perfect pattern or make uniform letters time after time.

This is my template for Italian vital records:

From the PROVINCE State Archives, YEAR TYPE, TOWN, document xx, image xx of xx at URL; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg

I change the variables to match the document:

• PROVINCE becomes the province in Italy. In my family tree, the province is usually Benevento, Avellino, Campobasso, or Foggia.
• YEAR becomes the year of the book in which you can find the document.
• TYPE can be birth, death, marriage, marriage banns, and a couple of other types. I like to use the Italian words: nati, morti, matrimoni, matrimoni pubblicazione.
• TOWN is the town in Italy. They store Italian vital records by town.
• The xx's become the record number on the document, the image number and number of images in the book. For example, document 20, image 12 of 25.
• URL is the link for the exact document on the Antenati portal. (Sometimes the link goes to FamilySearch.org.)
  
• The next piece, https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg, is a fabulous trick. It links to a high-resolution version of any image on Antenati. Every document URL on Antenati ends in a 7-character code—a combination of numbers and letters. If you replace the word TARGET in the URL above with that code, you can go to the high-res image and save it.

Here's an example. I edit the template and the source citation for the 1818 marriage of Antonio Maria Teresa becomes:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1818 matrimoni, Baselice, document 20, image 12 of 25 at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua757297/0AR6Jg3; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/0AR6Jg3/full/full/0/default.jpg

Go ahead and click those 2 links. You'll see the book version and high-resolution version of the marriage record.

Because I know each citation takes only a minute or two to complete, I keep pushing. One more family before I take a break from my desk. Another family before I take a sanity break.

Sanity

Some days I finish as many as 110 source citations. But it gets tedious after a few hours. That's when I need to save my sanity while still making progress.

When I start losing motivation, I switch to a parallel task. A parallel task is another goal I'm working on that adds a new name or date to my family tree. That new detail needs a source citation. And while I'm there, I check their immediate family. I make sure they all get their source citations.

One parallel task is finding the birth record of an out-of-towner who married into my family tree. I sort everyone in my family tree by birth date and hunt down those with an incomplete birth date. I've been having great success, so it's a gratifying project.

Another parallel task is adding cousins from a town I haven't explored fully. The other day I brought one ancestor's family forward a few generations. Then I found one of these cousin's granddaughters in my DNA matches. Now I know this cousin came to America. And my brother used to live in his hometown.

This combination of efficiency and sanity are how I tackle even the most tedious tasks. It's been my mental trick since I was a kid. I may follow an unusual pattern, but I get the job done.

Do you have an ambitious family tree project to tackle? How can you chop it up, mix it up, and keep things interesting as you make progress?

Which Numbers Help Solve a DNA Match?

Trying to solve a mystery DNA match? An extensive family tree is more important than the centiMorgans (cMs) you share. Often it's only when you place a match in your family tree that you see your true relationship.

When you look at the different values assigned to your DNA matches, which number matters most? My answer isn't what you'd expect.

When I want to figure out a new DNA match, I consult the Shared cM Project tool created by Blaine T. Bettinger. You can find it on the DNA Painter website. The tool can suggest your likely relationship to a DNA match based on the number of cMs you share. The chart itself tells you:

• the average number of cMs you might share with a type of relative
• a likely range of cMs you can expect to see for each type of relative.

My family tree has tons of cousins with more than one relationship to me. Our roots are so deep in one little town that we're related to everyone who lived there. I want to see how all the intermarriage in my little towns might affect my DNA numbers.

Seeing How Your DNA Matches Score

For this exercise, I copied Bettinger's Shared cM chart into a spreadsheet so I can add cM values for my DNA matches. (This copy is available for you to download.) For each match that I added to the chart (in red ink), I included the hometown(s) of our shared ancestors. The town name showed that I have a higher number of shared cMs with cousins connected to Pastene, Italy.

One reason for this higher amount of DNA may be the small size of this hamlet. It's basically one street! Families were intermarrying there for hundreds of years. My great grandparents Giovanni and Maria Rosa came from Pastene. Some of their descendants and their siblings' descendants have tested with AncestryDNA.

I must say I expected to see lots of DNA matches with cMs that went far above the range in the Shared cM Project tool. Since I have multiple relationships with so many people, I thought the cMs would stack up higher. In reality, I found only one match who went above the cM range—a 6th cousin twice removed.

This DNA match (A.S.) shares 58 cM with me when the average for our relationship is 13 cM and the range is 0 to 45 cM. Here's why our shared cMs are high. A.S. and I share:

• my 5th great grandparents Innocenzo and Anna (that's the 6C2R relationship)
• my double 6th great grandparents Giuseppe and Maria (that makes A.S. my 7C1R)
• my 7th great grandparents Pasquale and Maria (that makes A.S. my 8C1R)
• my 7th great grandfather Giancamillo (that makes A.S. my 8C2R)

It seems shared cMs alone can't predict complex relationships every time.

This chart shows a higher concentration of shared DNA coming from one of my ancestral hometowns. What will yours show?

Exploring Another Variable

"Unweighted shared DNA" is a factor when you have deep roots in the same place or ethnicity.

If you have an AncestryDNA account, you can view this value for any DNA match in your list. Click the blue, linked description beneath their relationship label. For instance, for my 3rd cousin, I see "82 cM | 1% shared DNA."

Looking at my DNA match A.S., I see that we:

• share 58 cM across 3 segments
• have a longest segment of 30 cM
• have 60 cM of unweighted shared DNA—2 cM more than the 58 cM of shared DNA.

You may be as curious about the unweighted shared DNA as I am. Here's AncestryDNA's definition:

Unweighted shared DNA is the total amount of identical DNA two people share, including DNA that is shared for reasons other than a recent common ancestor, such as being from the same ethnicity or community. Because of that, unweighted shared DNA will almost always be larger than shared DNA for distant relationships that share 90 cM or less.

So that's why so many DNA matches appear to be closer than they are. I knew there was some extra DNA just from having deep roots in the same soil, but this puts a value on it.

To test this out, I looked at the DNA breakdown for lots of my identified DNA matches. In general, the unweighted shared DNA for my 3rd cousins or closer was exactly the same as their shared DNA. Many of my more-distant cousins had from 1 to 5 cM more unweighted shared DNA than shared DNA. But some of the distant cousins didn't have any extra unweighted shared DNA at all.

Searching for the Magic Number

Unweighted shared DNA isn't enough to help us understand our relationship to a DNA match. So I looked at the third value: longest segment length. DNA experts say you should be able to identify a match with a longest segment of 50 cM or more. But I have only 40 matches with numbers that high.

Here's a small sampling of the under-50 shared cM DNA matches I've identified and placed in my family tree. These are not people I know or grew up with. Most have a very small family tree online. But thanks to my family tree, I found their grandparents or great grandparents.

• 5C1R, 48 cM, longest segment 10 cM
• 9C, 27 cM, longest segment 12 cM
• 5C2R, 41 cM, longest segment 13 cM
• 7C, 30 cM, longest segment 14 cM
• 6C, 26 cM, longest segment 15 cM
• 3C1R, 39 cM, longest segment 16 cM
• 5C1R, 24 cM, longest segment 18 cM
• 5C, 26 cM, longest segment 20 cM

Notice we share from 24–48 cM, and our longest shared segments range from 10–20 cM. AncestryDNA categorizes these matches as 4th–6th cousins or 5th–8th cousins. I was able to get so much more specific despite those short longest segments.

Well would you look at that? Here I am, yet again, hyping the value of a gigantic family tree. I like to crack new DNA matches to see what happened after the Italian vital records end. Who came to America? Who went to Canada, England, or Australia? Do people with roots in my Italian towns live near me today?

In the end, the best way to crack DNA matches is with your extensive, full-blown family tree.

And speaking of cracking DNA matches:

• Genealogy Skills Make You a Keen Detective
• 4 Best Ways to Learn from Your DNA Matches
• 4 Practical Methods for Identifying a DNA Match
• Follow Up on Genealogy Clues and Leads

A 15% discount for readers of Fortify Your Family Tree!

5 Reasons to Search Beyond Your Direct Ancestors

When you find your ancestor's birth record, don't overlook the other gems in those vital records.

Sometimes I dream I'm searching through old Italian vital records. I spend so much time knee-deep in vital records that it's only natural I would dream about them. The countless hours spent with these records have removed the foreign-language barrier completely.

You should explore all the vital records available from your ancestral hometowns, too. Here are 5 reasons why you should search for more than your direct ancestors in those records. Click each of the 5 titles to get the full story.

1. Don't Miss Out on Your Ancestors' Culture

I cringed when I learned my 2nd great grandmother Caterina was 23 years younger than her husband. Then I did a bit more digging. I found out Caterina was my 2nd great grandfather's second wife. And she was the same age as Nicola's eldest child from his 1st marriage!

Spending more time with this town's vital records, I realized a few things that hold true in all my towns:

• A widow or widower usually remarried in a hurry. Sometimes as soon as 2 months after their spouse died.
• A man's second wife was more likely to be much younger than him.
• When a bride and groom came from different towns, they usually married in her town and lived in his town.
• Each town registered a few abandoned babies each year. Someone might find a baby on a doorstep or on the side of the road. There was a special church window where you could leave a baby and no one would see you. These babies may have been born out of wedlock, but sometimes a woman chose to keep her baby.
• It was the mayor's job to name these foundlings. Their last name might:
  • show the baby's status (Esposito, Abbandonato, etc.)
  • refer to a local place name, like that of a river
  • reflect their physical characteristic (Russo for a red-cheeked baby)
  • or it may be a last name already found in the town.

I didn't fully understand these abandoned babies until I read a lot of their birth records. At first I thought my 60-year-old 5th great grandfather had another baby in 1809. Actually, he was about to step outside his home when he found the baby girl on his doorstep. That exact detail is noted on the birth record.

2. Discovering Life and Death Trends in Your Ancestral Hometown

I discovered a sad fact about my great grandmother Maria Rosa's hometown. Vital records showed a higher than usual infant mortality rate. How did I know it was higher than usual? Because I'd already reviewed the records from neighboring towns. A typical mid-1800s family in this town had 10 babies, but only 2 lived to adulthood.

That bit of information made it obvious why Maria Rosa and her siblings came to America. They all made a better life for themselves in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

3. What Do the Records Say About Your Ancestor's Town?

My 2nd great grandmother Colomba's hometown records told a very different story. While reviewing vital records, I realized that most marriage records included one out-of-towner. Colomba's husband (my 2nd great grandfather) came from a neighboring town to marry her. Colomba's own mother came from yet another town.

This led me to a second discovery. In my other ancestral hometowns, most men were farmers or laborers. But in Colomba's hometown, most men were merchants, notaries, and doctors. While this town is notable for its vineyards, it seemed to attract a more educated population.

So why did my 2nd great grandparents leave? It's possible Colomba's brothers inherited the family's land and property. Or her husband had his own ambitions.

4. Why All Siblings Are Critical to Your Family Tree

If you know when and where your 2nd great grandparents were born, you need to find all their siblings. Those siblings and their descendants will help you connect to many of your DNA matches.

I've found that one sibling's vital record can hold more clues than the others. No matter where your ancestor came from, vital records will vary depending on the year.

In some of my ancestral hometowns, birth records from 1866 to 1874 hold extra hints. For each of the baby's parents, you can find their full name, age, and their father's first name. That extra detail can help take your family tree back another generation.

5. Searching for Family in a New Town Takes Practice

I'm so familiar with the last names in my ancestral hometowns that I can see past the worst handwriting. But when I discovered my 3rd great grandmother in a new-to-me town, it was like starting from scratch.

This town's early records (starting in 1809) feature incredibly bad handwriting. I had to do a few things to feel confident about how to spell these new names. I started a spreadsheet to keep track of the last names I was seeing, then, for each name in the list I:

• Checked the Cognomix website for last name distribution in Italy. I made note of whether the name is still found in the town. If not, I noted the closest town that still has that name.
• Used a green highlight to show which names have high confidence in their spelling.
• Noted any alternative spellings. For example, sometimes a family uses the name Capua, but other times it's written as Capoa.

When I review this town's vital records, I check my spreadsheet to figure out what I'm looking at. Does that say Casassa? Oh, no, it's Casazza, and that's already in my list. Only by reviewing all the documents can I get comfortable with these new last names in my family tree.

Each of your ancestor's life stories depends in part on their family members. If you want to know your family history, be sure to broaden your search to the whole family and then some.

8 Topics to Make You a Better Genealogist

Six months ago I thought of a way my weekly blog articles could do more for you. I wanted each article to give you the big picture on any single genealogy topic. Most of my articles since then give you several ways to:

• solve a problem
• improve your family tree
• use new tools to your advantage
• advance your research.

Get a comprehensive view of 8 topics designed to make you a better genealogist.

These articles are like one-stop shopping for genealogy best practices.

Here are the 8 articles that received the most attention so far. Have you missed any?

21 Genealogy Tools I Can't Live Without

Years ago I found out my husband's cousin was working on her family tree using only a spreadsheet. That meant it held nothing but names and dates. Any family tree software, whether it's on your desktop or online, offers you so much more than that.

Take advantage of the different tools available to you—many for free. When I took a look at my most important tools, I found that I'm using 21 of them on a regular basis. Find out what you may be missing.

7 Free Genealogy Map Projects

It seems anyone who's passionate about their family history has a fondness for maps. As a kid, I thought it was amazing that my parents grew up a block apart. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. All my branches have intersecting locations, both in New York City and in a small section of Italy.

Here are 7 different ways you can use maps to illustrate, understand, and enhance your family tree.

5 Free, Easy-to-Use Family Tree Charts

I rarely print anything out on paper. But certain forms are terrific to bring with you when visiting an archive or library. And when I research an unrelated family, my custom spreadsheet is exactly what I need.

Here are 5 different PDFs and spreadsheets that I created or adapted and want to share with you.

3 Key Signs a Family Tree is Wrong

If you think that family tree hints are the only way to build your family tree, I'm here to tell you you're doing it wrong. Hints alone can lead to countless errors. Besides, the joy is in the research and in knowing you've found your people.

Before you believe anyone's online family tree, find out how to tell when their tree is wrong.

These 3 key signs don't include a lack of source citations. And that's my own guilt showing. I've spent the last couple of weeks putting in tons of source citations I'd postponed creating. I have a long way to go, but I'm doing it because it will show that my family tree is based on facts.

4 Ways to Safeguard Your Digital Family Tree

How many hours have you put into your family tree? Countless hours, right? That's why your top priority needs to be safeguarding and securing your files.

It isn't hard to do, and you must make it a regular habit. I use:

• cloud storage
• backups on internal and external hard drives
• online storage on family tree websites
• and I always export a new GEDCOM file after a long day of genealogy research.

Find out your options, make your choices, and stick to a plan. If you work on your family tree every day like I do, daily backups are so important.

8 Tips for Researching Your Immigrant Ancestor

I'm lucky to have recent immigrants in my family tree. None of my people came to America before 1890, and the majority passed through Ellis Island. (Funny how 1890 is recent to a genealogist.) That means I have ship manifests with the ability to unlock generations of ancestors.

For many people ship manifests are our first look at our old-country origins. But it's up to you soak every bit of information out of that manifest. These 8 tips will help you get more mileage out of each ancestor's passage.

4 Keys to Italian Genealogy

Too many people think they can't build their family tree because they don't speak Italian. To them I say:

• Can you learn a handful of words if they're shown to you?
• Can you pick out a name among the words on a page?

These 4 keys will de-mystify Italian vital records and help your find your ancestors. I started reviewing these records without knowing anything. Now nothing about them slows me down.

Top 5 Uses for the Free Family Tree Analyzer

Any genealogy researcher can get carried away with the excitement of a new discovery. Those moments of excitement open the door for human error. No matter how careful we are, we're going to have mistakes in our family trees. That's a big part of the value of Family Tree Analyzer (FTA).

Years ago I struggled to improve my coding skills so I could write a program that did an ounce of what FTA can do. FTA's author, Alexander Bisset, has created something far beyond my imagination. The moment I found his software, I quit coding.

If you want your family tree to be your legacy, to be accurate and reflect your work, you need to use FTA. Here are 5 very important ways to use it to improve your family tree.

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If you have a topic you'd like me to cover in this blog, let me know. There will be some topics outside my experience, but I'm eager to know what you'd like to know.

A Deep Dive into Your Family's Last Names

Ever since I began exploring my family origins, the last names of my ancestors have fascinated me. You see, with all my roots planted deep in rural southern Italy, names are all I can find. My ancestors were not educated. Only a few could sign their name to a document, rather than making an X.

My people are not found in newspapers. Their exploits are not recorded in books. They were illiterate farmers or artisans living in remote hill towns. Their names are all I have to show for my effort. They are names recorded in their towns' birth, marriage, and death records. And I treasure those names.

Look closer at the last names in your family tree. Each one cements your connection to the places that make up your genealogy.

Unlike other cultures, Italian last names come in enormous numbers. According to an article in Italy Magazine, "Italy has the highest number of last names in Europe: 350,000." Some last names in my family tree are specific to their region or town. Others, such as Leone and Caruso, appear in every part of Italy.

I've used Italian vital records to identify 410 of my direct ancestors. That list of people contains 115 last names. One hundred fifteen! Only 9 of the 115 appear more than 10 times in my ancestry. The bottom line is that I identify with a lot of last names, not only the 3 names of my 4 grandparents (you read that right).

I admit it. I am a passionate collector of names and dates. I celebrate the many marriages that united entire towns in my family tree. For me, "Genealogy is the Joy of Names." Every family tree builder should take pride in "Where Your Last Name Came From." You should take a deep dive and "Explore Your Last Name Concentration."

In fact, here are:

• "3 Reasons to Do Your Own One-Name Study"
• "4 Rules for the Names in Your Family Tree"
• and here's "How to Keep Track of All Your Surnames"
• and "How to Crunch the Numbers on Your Family's Names"

Dive into any of the examples and projects linked in this article. You'll fall in love with your family names, too.

These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable

My extended family tree of more than 80,000 people keeps on helping my very distant cousins. They get so many hints from my tree that many feel compelled to write to me. Helping them discover their roots is my goal.

But my project to connect all the families from my towns makes me skip most source citations. I know, "Shame, shame!" That's why I spent this past week adding tons of missing source citations. If you find your ancestor in my family tree, I want you to find the links to their vital records, too.

A well-sourced family tree shows the world that you've done your homework. Your tree is valid and worth exploration.

Without source citations, why should anyone believe your family tree? Follow the genealogy rules and show your work.

Getting a Handle on Missing Source Citations

After writing "5 Ways to Find Loose Ends in Your Family Tree," I worked my way through people with a missing birth date. I found many of their vital records on the Italian Antenati website. For the sake of speed, instead of a source citation, I added a note to each person that looked like this:

His birth record: https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua971481/03dOqgV

It's easy to find those notes when I open my family tree's latest GEDCOM file in a text editor. I search for "His birth record:" and follow the link. Then I create the source citation. This example becomes:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1824 nati, Pago Veiano, document 70, image 43 of 51 at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua971481/03dOqgV; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/03dOqgV/full/full/0/default.jpg

If you're curious, the first link goes to the document in the book of birth records. The second link goes to a high-resolution copy of the vital record. It's perfect for downloading.

If this were your ancestor and you found him in my tree, you'd be able to follow the link and see his birth record. That's the real value I want to provide for anyone with a connection to my family tree. I still have hundreds more of these notes to cite. Then I'll run an Undocumented Fact report in Family Tree Maker and start whittling away.

If your family tree software doesn't have an undocumented facts report, use Family Tree Analyzer:

1. Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree and open it with Family Tree Analyzer.
2. Go to the Main Lists tab and scroll all the way to the right.
3. Find the Num Sources column, click the down arrow by the column title, and choose Sort A to Z.

All the zeroes will be at the top of the list, showing you all the people with no source citations.

I don't know about you, but I never include a source citation for someone's sex. It seems ridiculous to say, "Yeah, the census says Maria was a girl, so that's my source." I just don't think it's necessary or of value. So my undocumented facts report is going to include the sex of all 80,491 people. I have to skip all those entries.

Last Saturday, from about 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., all I did was create source citations for those "His birth record:" notes. I completed only 86 of them, so the remaining 447 or more of these notes will take many days to finish. (There are also lots of Her birth record, His and Her death record, and Their marriage record notes.)

Then I'm left with the thousands of people whose vital records are sitting on my computer. I put off their source citations because my priority was getting families into my tree. I knew I could go back and create the citations whenever I wanted. And now I want to.

If you have an overwhelming family tree task like this to do, start close to home. Begin with your closest relatives and fan out. (See "Overwhelming Clean-up Task? Start With Direct Ancestors."). If you use Family Tree Analyzer for this task, sort the list by Source Num and Relation to Root. First you must view the Main Lists tab and choose Export (from the menu at the top of the screen) > Individuals to Excel. Then you can use your spreadsheet software to sort by both Sources and Relation to Root.

Doing that, I see that I have more than 100 direct ancestors who have no source citations. (I'm horrified!) That's where I'll start.

Your Task Won't Be as Huge as Mine

Do you have 80,000 people in your family tree? Did you postpone adding sources in favor of expanding your tree as quickly as possible? If not, then you shouldn't have thousands of missing citations.

I have enough Italian vital records available to add one or two hundred people a day to my family tree for a long time. But for now, I'm putting those additions on the back burner. I want anyone who finds my family tree online to see that I have the documents to back up my facts.

An unsourced family tree lacks credibility. With all the work you've done, do you want your tree to look unreliable?

If you're proud of the family tree you've built, show it! Retrace your steps to find the documents you used to add someone to your tree. Then add each document's source citation to prove you're a thoughtful, careful genealogist. (See "6 Easy Steps to Valuable Source Citations" for help with this task.)

Need help creating your source citations? Don't stress out about it.

• Develop strong habits for creating source citations as you go: "Step-by-Step Source Citations for Your Family Tree"
• Decide which types of sources make your family tree more reliable: "Choosing and Using the Most Reliable Sources"
• Follow a pattern when building your citations: "Add Consistency to Your Source Citations"

Take these steps and show the world that there's solid research behind your family tree.

Follow Up on Genealogy Clues and Leads

I love when someone contacts me about my family tree. Some tell me they're getting tons of hints from my family tree. Others say their ancestor is in my tree and they're wondering how we're related.

Each contact, DNA match, and hint from another family tree is worth investigation. Find out what they have to offer to your family tree.

When a Possible Cousin Writes to You

Whenever I get these messages, I drop everything to get them the answers they're looking for. Last weekend a man in Australia contacted me, and in no time I figured out I'm related to his wife in 3 different ways. Then he mentioned he couldn't get far on his own Italian ancestors. So I sent him links to documents for his grandparents and great grandparents. I also gave him a link to my published index of all the vital records from his wife's and my ancestral hometown.

You owe it to yourself to follow up on genealogy leads. Any one could be the key to growing your family tree.

One DNA match wrote to me about the family name Capozza. I knew that name came from my 2nd great grandmother's hometown in Italy. So I began building out my match's tree within my own. With enough research, her big branch connected to me and beefed up my tree in the process. It was a worthwhile exercise. See "Let a DNA Match Guide Your Research for a While."

When You Make First Contact

I don't always wait for people to contact me. It can be a lot of fun to choose a DNA match, build their branch out, and present it to them. Plus it benefits your family tree. Of course you can do this work and still have them ghost you. That was the case with my 4th cousin once removed. I did the work and presented him his branch, but I don't know what he did with that information. He never wrote back to me.

Still another DNA match led me to dig into my 2nd great grandmother's Girardi ancestors. This match has since passed away, but she was grateful for the branch I gave her. She was going to share it with her sister-in-law, the family researcher. (See "Help Your DNA Match Expand their Family Tree.") In the end, the research helped my family tree. It had taken me a while to discover the Girardi name in my family tree. I was happy to chase down this match's family because it helped me flesh out my own.

Another time I figured out that a DNA match was my 3rd cousin. We share a set of 2nd great grandparents. I built out her family tree and sent her a link to it. She was very grateful and excited to learn more. See "Attracting a New DNA Match."

A 15% discount for readers of Fortify Your Family Tree!

Other Types of Leads

Three years ago 3 different genealogy challenges fell into my lap at once. You should always think of these challenges as a way to expand your family tree. (See "Genealogy Challenge Accepted!") First, my dad noticed an Ohio obituary for a man with our last name. He asked me to figure out if this Iamarino was our relative. He was! My research shows that the man was my dad's 7th cousin. The 2 of them were born 2 years apart and had once lived in the same town. It was fun to find the answer to such a random question.

The 2nd challenge was to help an adoptee figure out her family tree. She came to me through a friend. With access to her DNA matches, I was able to identify some close cousins for her contact. The 3rd challenge was my own. Someone posted a photo on Facebook of a man who died in my grandfather's hometown back in 1974. People were saying such lovely things about this man that I wanted to find a connection to him. In the end, I placed him in my family tree as my 1st cousin 3 times removed.

Whichever DNA test you took, check out any matches with a family tree. (Not all DNA websites include people's family trees.) See what each one's tree has to offer you. Do more research than they've done, and you'll fortify your family tree.

And speaking of DNA:

• This Number is Crucial to Your DNA Match Research
• Do Your DNA Ethnicity Results Make No Sense?
• What Good Are Distant DNA Matches?

4 Practical Methods for Identifying a DNA Match

It's important to have a handful of DNA tools available so can you choose the best one for each situation. Here are 4 methods for identifying a DNA match that you may not have tried yet. I recommend you consider each one and put them to good use.

1. DNA Painter

You can "paint" your DNA matches onto your chromosome map to see how they may relate to one another. To do this, you can use a free DNA Painter account, but you must also have an account with one of the following:

• GEDmatch
• ftDNA
• 23andme
• MyHeritage

I used DNA Painter's chromosome map to visualize the fact that my parents share some DNA. I discovered that another match overlaps my Mom's position on Dad's 9th chromosome. That makes the other match worth investigating, and I learned that only because of this tool.

Learn how to use the chromosome map painter in your DNA research: "How to Find Your Strongest DNA Matches."

Use 1 or more of these 4 genealogy methods to crack your DNA matches and fit them into your family tree.

2. Use a Spreadsheet to Identify the Right Branch

This spreadsheet is perfect if your family tree has pedigree collapse or endogamy. I have pedigree collapse because my paternal grandparents were 3rd cousins. My 4th great grandparents are direct ancestors of both Grandpa and Grandma. It's pedigree collapse because you could say I'm missing a pair of 4th great grandparents.

I also have endogamy in my family tree. My ancestors all came from small, somewhat isolated neighboring towns. Almost everyone married a neighbor, generation after generation. (See "The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About.") As a result, I'm related to people in my tree in many ways.

This spreadsheet helps root out DNA matches who match me only because we have roots in the same town. We're not related. The idea for this spreadsheet comes from DNA expert Kelli Bergheimer.

Be sure to see the section titled Are Your Matches Really in Your Family Tree? when you read "This Spreadsheet Sorts DNA Matches By Branch."

3. The Leeds Method

I discovered back in 2018 that my parents share a little DNA. All these years later, it seems they must be no closer than 5th to 7th cousins. There are no vital records that can take my family tree back that far. If the right towns' church records ever become available, I may be able to make progress. But chances are, I'll never find my parents' common ancestor.

But that's my story, not yours. For you, Dana Leeds' "Leeds Method" may be exactly what you need to see where each DNA match belongs in your family tree. That is, which of your 4 grandparents is your connection to a DNA match. I recommend you give it a try. To find out how, read "The Leeds Method May Have Solved a Big Family Puzzle."

A 15% discount for readers of Fortify Your Family Tree!

4. Good Old-Fashioned Family Tree Building

Last weekend I decided to do some genealogy research to fit a celebrity into my family tree. When Tony Danza was on an episode of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "Finding Your Roots," I was watching closely. When I found out he was the guest, I wondered if his name was originally Iadanza. That's a name I have in my family tree.

It turns out Iadanza is his ancestors' name and they came from a town I know. Pietrelcina (hometown of the famed Padre Pio) borders my 2nd great grandmother's hometown. Many people from Pietrelcina married people from a few of my ancestral hometowns.

A TV screenshot helped me find the birth records of Tony Danza's grandparents. I worked my way through the Pietrelcina vital records to build out their family tree. After a while, I saw that the parents of Danza's 4th great grandfather were already in my family tree!

So is Tony Danza my cousin? Nah. He and I have 18 different relationships at this point, but each one is by marriage.

I had fun with this exercise and it illustrates an important point. Digging through records and doing the research, you can place that DNA match in your family tree. See how in "Don't Rely on Your DNA Match to Do the Work" and "Don't Give Up When Your DNA Match Has a Puny Little Family Tree."

Piecing together families through vital records is what I live for! It's fun, challenging, and leads to tangible results in my family tree. Don't expect quick answers because you bought a DNA test. Your DNA matches are another tool to use in building your family tree. See if these 4 DNA methods can help you crack more of your DNA matches.

Free Website Compares Photos to See Who's Who

Note: This article originally discussed 2 websites, but, sadly, FaceShape has shut down.

How many times have you wondered if the person in two different photos is the same person? Let's say you have a photo of your great grandfather as an old man. Then you find a photo that may or may not be him as a young man. How can you be reasonably sure the 2 photos show the same person?

I've seen people post photos like this on Facebook and let strangers weigh in. Are the eyebrows the same shape? Is the jawline dramatically different? Logic may help you figure out who the person is, but now we can do better.

Why not let a bit of artificial intelligence give you a scientific analysis of the 2 faces? I found 2 free websites that can help you decide who it is you're looking at. (If the photo is in bad shape, consider doing some photo restoration techniques before you use the comparison tool.)

2 free tools compare faces in different photos for similarities. Find out if that old photo really belongs in your family tree with these helpful genealogy tools.

Face Comparison

Go to https://facecomparison.toolpie.com to upload 2 photos from your collection. A message on the page says, "The model will delete the photo after the comparison is completed, so it is safe and reliable to use."

I uploaded 2 photos of my Grandma Lucy, taken several years apart, to see what would happen. Face Comparison says the 2 images of Lucy are 80% similar, so it's the same person. In fact, 80% is the threshold the site uses. Anything less than 80% is not considered to be the same person.

When I uploaded 2 photos of myself from 1986 and 2019, it was 100% sure they were the same person. So it's true when an old friend says you haven't changed a bit!

Then I threw it a curve ball. I uploaded college graduation photos of my 2 sons. Face Comparison says the boys are 78% similar, and they're not the same person. I'm sure they would agree.

FaceShape (This site had to shut down in 2025!)

Go to https://www.faceshape.com/face-compare to try the FaceShape comparison tool. FaceShape warns that it may keep your photos for machine-learning purposes. I imagine some people won't like that idea and would prefer not to submit their photos.

FaceShape says the 2 photos of my grandmother are 100% similar, so they are the same person. Since they are both, in fact, Grandma Lucy, I'm liking FaceShape better than Face Comparison.

It's also 100% sure the 2 photos of me are the same person. In one photo, I'm young with brown hair and firm skin, and in the other, I have white hair and not-so-firm skin. When it compares the 2 photos of my sons, it says they are 98.45% similar. I really got a kick out of that because when son #2 was born, he was identical to newborn son #1.

One odd feature about this site is that it identifies each photo as male or female and gives an approximate age. That's great in theory, but it thought Grandma was a man, and that I was 62 years old when I was actually 27! It identified my sons, both 21 at the time, as male, 43, and female, 40. Both boys had very long hair, but the one with the thin beard and mustache got the female label. It's best to ignore that aspect of the tool.

On FaceShape, if you upload a photo with more than one face, you can choose which face to compare. That doesn't work with Face Comparison. FaceShape also shows you both photos while Face Comparison never displays your photos.

For more fun, be sure to click the "Explore more tools" button. You'll find a host of other facial recognition tools. These include celebrity lookalike, face morph, face editor, and more.

Can you recognize your old grandmother in her childhood photo? These 2 free tools can do it scientifically.

Giving Them Both a Real Test

I'm lucky to have my late aunt's photo collection, many of which were actually my Grandma Lucy's photos. (See My Aunt's Photos Tell the Other Side of the Story.) I have some photos I assume are Grandpa, but what do these face comparison tools think?

The old photo in question is from the 1920s and Grandpa was born in 1902. I decided to compare that young face to Grandpa at age 86. FaceShape finds an 82.30% similarity between the two. Face Comparison has to have only one person in the photo, so I cropped my photos and tried again. Unfortunately, this tool sees only a 58% similarity between the young man and Grandpa.

To make things easier, I compared the 1920s face to a photo I know is Grandpa in his 30s. Face Comparison found only a 78% similarity, but FaceShape says they're 100% similar. One hundred percent!

Based on my 4 tests, I prefer the FaceShape tool. I can overlook the fact that almost all of its gender and age labels were laughably wrong.

Take a look through your photo collection. Then use Face Comparison's AI tools to confirm that someone is who you suspect they are. Or see just how much you take after your ancestor.

2 Free Tools Can Read Document Images for You

UPDATE! I've found a far superior online tool for transcribing handwriting from images. It makes Google Docs look like a joke. Read about Handwriting OCR and give it a try!

Genealogist Lisa Alzo uses a website called Transkribus for recognizing text within images. It's a process that's been around for decades: Optical Character Recognition or OCR. I looked into Transkribus, but it isn’t free. So I searched for free OCR options we can all use.

It turns out a tool you may already be using has this capability. It’s OneNote!

I can think of 2 key reasons to use OCR in genealogy research:

1. To pull text from images so you don't have to re-type it.
2. To translate a large amount of text from another language.

Last June I wrote about a book that tells the history of one of my ancestral hometowns. (See "How to Use a Foreign-Language Book for Family Tree Research.") A distant cousin sent me the Italian-language book years ago. I began using Google translate and saving the results in a Word document. It’s tedious work, though. I have to type the Italian into Google Translate so it can generate the English translation.

You're probably already using 2 free tools that can do more for your family tree than you know. They can extract text from a genealogy document image.

Extract Text from a Photo and Translate

Using OneNote, you can:

• Photograph (or scan) the pages of the book.
• Drop the images into a OneNote file.
• Extract the text by right-clicking an image and choosing Copy Text from Picture. This puts the text in memory.
• Paste what's in memory either below the image or in a new section.
• Translate that text by choosing Translate > Translate Page.

The translated text appears in a new section of your OneNote document. It's ready for you to format and look over for any errors. It’s hard to find OCR software that will format your text nicely, so there's always a little work to do. OneNote keeps the line breaks from the original, so you have to do some editing to make it more readable.

The translation uses British English even though U.S. English is set as my preferred language. I'll have to change words like favour, colour, and analysed for myself. And I have to look out for footnote numbers. You know how books use a small, raised number to point you to a footnote? They don't get extracted as a superscript number, so they tend to blend into the text.

I can imagine spending a day putting that book on my scanner, and capturing two pages at a time in an image file. Then I can drop a bunch of images into OneNote, extract and translate.

Turn Handwriting into Text

I did three tests with handwritten Italian documents. OneNote failed to extract the text from them. One of my tests was a 1942 death record with a fill-in-the-blanks format. OneNote extracted the typewritten parts of the form, and skipped over the handwriting!

Then I wrote a simple note in the nicest print I can manage. OneNote couldn't extract any text. If it could, that would be handy for capturing what's written on the back of a family photo.

Then I learned that Google Docs can extract text for you, too. The steps are as follows:

• Log into your free Google Drive account using a web browser or the app.
• Upload an image of the text you want to capture.
• Right-click that image and choose to "Open with" > "Google Docs."

The Doc file will contain the image and its extracted text.

This is an easy way to turn handwriting into text. I tested it on the note I printed, and it worked perfectly. I tested it on an old Italian death record and it didn't recognize anything. But it should be great for the backs of photos or old letters written by your ancestors.

And speaking of cool genealogy tools:

• 20 Genealogy Tools I Can't Live Without
• Family Tree Fun for Computer Geeks
• Keep These Genealogy Resources Always Within Reach