Your Family Tree Needs Your Ancestor's Passport Application

Did your immigrant ancestor travel back to the old country to visit his family? You may be able to find his U.S. passport application—complete with passport photo.

The Robison family of Westchester County, New York, planned to visit England, France, Italy, Egypt and Palestine in 1924. Their passport photo includes the entire family. The application provides everyone's name, date of birth and birthplace. Plus it includes Mr. Robison's father's name and place of birth, and his wife's maiden name.

A single passport application provided important genealogy facts for eight people.

This single document provides key facts for eight people! That is a fantastic find for any genealogist.

Mr. and Mrs. Walter Smith traveled to the British Isles in 1922 to visit family, and apparently to help me find the needle in the Smith haystack. With their passport application information, I was able to find the right Smith family for my family tree.

Faces to go along with the names!

U.S. government-issued passports date back to 1789. Passports were required for foreign travel during the Civil War and World War I. The rules eased for a while, but the requirement became permanent once World War II began.

If your ancestor went back to the old country to visit his parents, he might not be allowed back into the United States without a passport.

The National Archives in Washington, DC, holds passport applications from 1795–1925. They are available to some extent on ancestry.com and elsewhere.

Finding your ancestor's passport application can give you many facts, including the applicant's:

• Birth date or age
• Birthplace
• Residence
• Father's and/or husband's:
  
  • name
  • birth date or age
  • birthplace
  • residence
• Wife's name
• Date and place of immigration to the U.S.
• Years of residence in the U.S.
• Naturalization date and place
• Occupation
• Physical characteristics
• Photograph—which may include other family members

Whichever resource you use, first check the description of the collection to see if it may include your ancestor.

Hopefully you'll find a thorough application with a photograph. That is certainly worth your ancestor's ticket price.

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• How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives
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• This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name

What To Do When Your Last Name Is So Common

All my direct ancestors had Italian last names. I'm lucky to know in exactly which small towns they were born. And the hometown is the key to everything.

My name of Iamarino is found in only 10 towns.

Some of my Italian last names (or cognomi, in Italian) are rare. They're specific in origin to a small geographical area. The name Iamarino barely existed outside of my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita.

But some of my Italian last names are about as rare as Smith or Brown in America. According to an Italian surname search site I like to use, you can find my family names of Leone and Caruso EVERYWHERE.

It would be impossible to identify my Leone or Caruso lines without knowing where my great grandparents were born.

There may not be a word strong enough to emphasize how important it is to know your ancestor's hometown. Critical. Crucial. Imperative. Nope—it's more important than that.

If your foreign ancestors emigrated to the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., etc., cross your fingers and hope they arrived at a good time. Early ship manifests didn't capture much information about the passengers.

My name of Leone comes from a couple more places.

If your ancestor arrived at Ellis Island, which was open to immigrants from 1892 to 1954, you're in luck. If you find your ancestor, you should be able to learn the name of their hometown.

I may tell you I'm from New York City, but that's because I'm pretty sure you've never heard of the exact town where I grew up. But my grandfathers never said they were from Naples. They let us know very strongly that they were not Napolitani.

They were very proud of their small towns of Basélice and Colle Sannita. Both towns are in the middle of nowhere, about a 90-minute drive from Naples.

So before you begin chasing the wrong family, you must nail down that hometown.

Find out how. Read about other ways of finding your ancestor's hometown in Where Did Grandpa Come From?

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• Searching for the Missing Link in Your Family Tree
• Who Are These People?
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Finding Your Ancestor's Lost Babies

When I began documenting my grandfather's Italian hometown—every single birth, marriage and death record between 1809 and 1860—one thing saddened me time and time again.

So many of the babies died within days, months, or a couple of years. I mourned for each one of them. It seemed even sadder that the next baby born was given the same name as the one who died.

Trying to be an optimistic genealogist, I focused on the upside. I was finding previously unknown children. Here's an example. I found that my great great grandparents Antonio and Colomba tried three times to name a child after Antonio's father: Raffaele.

My great uncle Raffaele was the third sibling named after his grandfather.

The first Raffaele died as a child, so none of my cousins were aware of him. Last night I found another baby! This time it was a girl they named Raffaella. She died, too, leaving that name to the great uncle we know: Raffaele Saviano.

When you're researching a family in the 1800s, expect to find a child born almost every year beginning a year after a marriage.

If an ancestor's family has several years between births, keep looking. There's a strong chance that other babies were born who didn't grow up.

My great great grandfather Nicoladomenico Leone married twice and fathered 12 children. About half of them survived to adulthood. See When I'm Sixty-Four I'll Still Have Only Two Children.

I don't know about you, but I want to know about and appreciate all the lost babies.

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• My 5th Great Grandfather: A Random Act of Kindness?
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• When Is a Marriage Not a Marriage?