4 Ways to Fit Genealogy into Your Busy Day

Don't stress about it. Do your
genealogy in stolen moments.

Does this sound familiar? You haven't worked on your genealogy in a while because you're busy at your new job. Or your kids had the flu. Or you haven't had a weekend to yourself in months.

It's easy to postpone your family history research, even though you love it so much. But if you put it off, your research plans are no longer fresh in your mind. It gets harder and harder to pick up where you left off. You can feel as if you're not getting anywhere.

You can break that cycle! By carving out even the smallest amount of time each day, or several days a week, you can keep your head in the game.

Here are 4 things you can do in a small block of time that will strengthen your family tree research.

1. Work on One Person

Choose one family member that's of great interest to you and look at their timeline of facts. What's missing? Do you need to find a birth record, death record, military record? Choose one type of record and do an online search. Important: Make note of where you searched and where you plan to search. Then you can pick up where you left off next time. (See Where Did Grandpa Come From?)

2. Stop Ignoring Sources

Take a look at your source citations. Are they good enough to be useful when someone has inherited your family tree research? Work your way through and improve them. If you tackle them alphabetically, it'll be easy to make a note of where you stopped so you can continue the next time. (See Trade Up to Better Family History Sources.)

3. Get Consistent

Are you consistent in the way you record facts? Would you rather record last names in all capital letters? Do you wish you'd started with a different date format (I like DD Mon YYYY)? Choose one item and work your way through correcting or changing them. This can be an enormous task if you have several thousand people in your tree. But won't the consistency make your work so much better? (See Organize Your Genealogy Research By Choosing Your Style.)

4. Add Value to Documents

Look at your media collection. You may have photos of people and lots of images of documents. Does each image, on its own, contain facts that make it more valuable? I've gone through each of my hundreds and hundreds of census images and annotated them. People borrow my images from my Ancestry.com tree all the time. They're getting a lot of information about where the image came from and which line numbers to look at. (See Who's Borrowing Your Family Tree?.)

These are tasks that don't demand you spend several uninterrupted hours. If you're disciplined and take research notes, you can make progress on the big picture each day. In small blocks of time.

So where will you find that small block of time? You could:

• wake up a few minutes earlier each day
• give up one TV show you don't care that much about
• bring your laptop or tablet with you when you're waiting to pick up the kids or see the doctor. Or while you get someone else to clear away the dinner dishes for a change.

Genealogy is a fascinating, time-consuming hobby that we love. But don't think of it as requiring six hours at a time.

With some planning, you can keep up your momentum and make progress. You only have to try.

How to Connect the Dots to Your Possible Relatives

You've got your DNA matches. You've got people who share a bunch of your last names. You've probably ID'd a lot of possible relatives.

How will you find your connection to them? How will you connect those dots and figure out if and how you're related?

I've got a handful of these challenges on my plate right now.

Your roots probably spill over to the next town. Don't overlook them!

All my ancestors came from a small area in Italy, not much bigger than my home county here in New York. So when someone has a family tree filled with last names I know well, we're probably distant cousins.

Discovering that one marriage from long ago that connects you to your leads will be tough. It'll take a lot of time. You'll need to examine a ton of documents.

That's why you must follow the first rule: Enjoy the search! If you're not pursuing this mystery because it gives you pleasure, you may as well skip it.

To work with my possible relatives, I ask for details at their grandparent and great grandparent level. What names and dates do they have?

Last year I downloaded every available vital record from my ancestors' four Italian towns. Now I'm branching out. I'm downloading a neighboring town and looking at still another.

With these document collections on my computer, I can try to find birth and marriage records for the names I know. Then I can look for their siblings' births.

I can piece together that family while checking familiar names against my own family tree. If I'm very lucky, I may find a set of marriage documents that includes death records.

In Italy in the 1800s, if a couple married and any of their four parents were dead, that death certificate was included in the marriage records. If either of their fathers was dead and their grandfathers were also dead, the documents include the grandfathers' death certificates. You know what's on their grandfathers' death certificates? Their grandfathers' parents names.

Think about that for a second. A couple's marriage records can give you the names of their great grandparents!

The wider you expand the family of your possible relative, the more likely you are to find a connection. There's a good chance you'll provide them with names and documents they don't have.

Right now I'm searching the documents from that neighboring town because:

• A contact with my great grandmother's last name has roots there.
• My first cousin, whose DNA matches him to BOTH of my parents, has roots there.
• A contact with my first cousin's last name (and ancestors with my maiden name) has roots there and in my grandfather's town.
• One branch of my father's tree has roots there.

There's a good chance I have some relationship to a big chunk of that neighboring town.

And the search does make me happy. I'm connecting myself to thousands of people across the world.

If you enjoy this hobby, cast a wide net. The genealogy community is a friendly, sharing, welcoming network of people. In the end, we've got more in common than meets the eye.

You may also enjoy:

• How I Tracked Down My 4th Great Grandmother's Parents
• When to Cut a Branch Off Your Family Tree
• Free DNA Analysis Finds Kissing Cousins

How to Turn a Hunch into Facts for Your Family Tree

I rarely come up with a hypothesis about my family tree. An idea that might be the truth. But this week I formed a logical theory.

A theory gives you some facts to work with when you have little or none. Then you can do the work to prove your theory true or false.

Here's an example for you. See if this can apply to your family tree research.

Work through the details of your theory to prove it true or false.

In 2008 I discovered the location of several of my third cousins outside Pittsburgh. Soon after my discovery, my husband and I were heading to Pittsburgh for his cousin's wedding. The stars aligned, and my newfound cousin invited me to her home on the day of a big family party.

One of my third cousins is very interested in genealogy. She and I worked together for weeks to build out her portion of the family tree. She gave me facts and photos, and I gave her an amazing tree to print out.

One fact she provided didn't sit right with me. It was her grandmother's name. The family knew her as Louise Villnaci deBellis.

Since she was born in Italy, I was sure her given name was Luisa, not Louise, but that's no big deal.

The part that bothered me was her middle name. Villnaci? That's not a proper Italian name. And it isn't a middle name. Something was wrong there.

Fast forward ten years. Now I have the Antenati (ancestors) website that offers Italian birth, marriage and death records dating back to 1809. I've downloaded every record for my ancestral hometowns.

One of my towns is Sant'Angelo a Cupolo in the province of Benevento and it's smaller hamlet of Pastene. That's where my grandmother's first cousin Giuseppe—Luisa's husband—came from. I began to notice in those records that deBellis was a bit common and Villanacci was a bit common.

Aha! Villanacci. That's a proper Italian name. Surely that's what "Villnaci" was supposed to be.

So I figured Luisa deBellis' "middle name" was Villanacci. That makes sense.

But the concept of a surname as a middle name doesn't fit this period in Italy. So where did Luisa's Villanacci come from?

Luisa was born in 1895, and of course that one year is missing from the Antenati records. Searching records around 1895, I found a baby born to Luigi deBellis and Luigia Villanacci.

Ooooh. Now that sounds like a theory! What if Luisa, who left her family to come to America, wanted to make sure her descendants didn't forget the Villanacci name? What if she was holding onto her mother's last name to preserve it?

Based on my theory that Luisa was the child of Luigi deBellis and Luigia Villanacci, I went through the records to find all their children:

• Maria Carmela, born 1881
• Assunta, born 1882
• Filomena, born 1884
• Saverio, born 1886
• Carmine Vincenzino, born 1888

I found no other children for this couple, but they could have had Luisa in 1895.

On most of her children's birth records, Luigia Villanacci's father's name is Angelantonio. Luigia was born around 1862, so I found her birth record on 14 February 1862. Her father was Angelantonio and her mother was Maria Maddalena Sarracino.

Bonus! Luisa's husband—my grandmother's first cousin—was also a Sarracino. It's a small town. I found one sister for Luigia Villanacci named Mariassunta, born in 1864, and their grandfather was Giuseppe Villanacci.

So that is my theory. That "Louise Villnaci deBellis" was Luisa deBellis, born to Luigi deBellis and Luigia Villanacci.

Now, to prove it. Without her birth record!

Where would you begin?

I've added the five children above, Luigi and Luigia, and Luigia's parents and sister to my tree. I included a note that this is a theory under investigation.

I did that yesterday, and today Ancestry.com gave me a hint. It's for Filomena deBellis, the possible sister of Luisa deBellis. Filomena came to America, married Vincent Ragognetti.

I know she's the right Filomena because her Social Security Application and Claims Index names her parents, Luigi de Bellis and Luigia Villanacci. And it calls her Filomena Ragognetti. In the 1925 New York Census, Filomena is in Manhattan with her husband Vincent and their three kids. In 1939 Filomena died in the Bronx.

This is how I will prove or disprove my theory. Now, I could buy Luisa's death or marriage record online and hope they give her parents' names.

But first, I can search for every possible fact about the five people I think are her siblings. Maybe one of them will have a document that ties them to my Luisa.

Luisa married Giuseppe Sarracino in Manhattan in 1918. Maybe she lived with one of her siblings before her marriage. Maybe her immigration record will mention her mother's name.

This is how you can turn a theory into facts.

Take a look at one of the dead-ends in your family tree. Someone for whom you have no parents, no immigration record, no siblings. Can you form a theory?

Maybe it's a theory based on facts from their hometown. Or maybe it's a theory based on where they lived and those who lived near them.

Pick your theory apart, fact by fact. Verify everything you can. Add to the puzzle. Prove or disprove parts of your theory.

Investigating everyone around your ancestor can unlock their mysteries.

You may also enjoy:

• How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives (the Antenati)
• Becoming Italian Was a Long, Hard Journey
• Start Your Rainy-Day Genealogy List