Genealogy is the Joy of Names

Yesterday I used a set of 1819 marriage records to make a big discovery. An acquaintance who I assumed is related to me is in fact my 6th cousin.

He and I share a set of 5th great grandparents. I know their names, their approximate years of birth, and some of their children's names. But that's all.

A word cloud of my closest relatives and the frequency of names.

My ancestors all came from little hilltop towns in rural Southern Italy. I visited their towns last month and got a better feel for these places. My ancestors lived simple lives that were basically undocumented and unexceptional.

That means I'm not going to find a letter from my ancestor to the king. My ancestor wasn't the mayor of the town or instrumental in a revolution. My ancestor's name and exploits weren't in the newspaper.

Without the possibility of a direct line of ancestors leading to the King of England, why do I do it?

Why do I spend countless hours gathering the documents that tie me to such distant cousins?

For me, it's the sheer joy of names. I adore all the names I find in my vast collection of birth, marriage and death records. They're repeated over and over because of the Italian tradition of naming children after their grandparents.

Although each of my ancestors' towns are close to one another as the crow flies, each town has a core set of surnames. For example, my maiden name barely exists in my grandfather's hometown anymore. But people in the town recognized it and responded to me warmly.

It's some of my closest last names that enable me to assume someone is my relative. If their name is Pozzuto, for example, and their ancestors came from the town of Colle Sannita, we've got to be cousins. It's an exciting challenge to try to find that exact relationship.

Some genealogists may look down on me as nothing more than a "name collector". But I love collecting those names. I've learned a little bit about life in my ancestral hometowns in centuries past. I can't expect to find much more.

My grandfather's one-page military record told me volumes.

Here are two specific things I learned about my ancestors' lives in Italy:

1. My grandfather told us he was a prisoner of war with the Italian Army during World War I. He had to eat rats to survive. Last month I photographed his military record at the archives in his home province.
   
   Now I know:
   
   • when he was captured
   • the name of the battle
   • where he was imprisoned
   • how long he was imprisoned.
   That's a lot of detail in a few lines on a page.
2. My great grandfather was rumored to be an Episcopal minister. An usual thing in a Roman Catholic country. It was only by visiting my cousins in Italy (his granddaughters) that I learned the story.
   
   This is not written anywhere. And even my cousins have never seen a photograph of their grandparents.
   
   My great grandfather Francesco and his brother-in-law were living and working in the Bronx, New York. It was one of Francesco's many trips to America to earn money. One day he passed by a church in the Bronx. He heard singing and loud voices, and he felt drawn to go inside.
   
   This was the type of church where people are so overwhelmed, so deeply moved by the presence of God, they begin speaking in tongues.
   
   Francesco brought his new faith back home to Colle Sannita and started his own church. His great grandchildren hold prayer services and follow Francesco's teachings to this day.

Those two stories won't get me on TV, but they're all I have so far.

Meanwhile, I'm more than happy to indulge my love of Italian names. I collect the siblings of my ancestors and their spouses and children. I love seeing the names get passed down. My 4th great grandfather was Francesco Iamarino. My great grandfather was Francesco Iamarino. My father is Frank Iamarino.

So call me a name collector. I am a name collector. These names "are" my ancestral hometowns, and I love them dearly.

You may also enjoy:

• Climbing Up, Down and Across Your Family Tree
• How to Keep Track of All Your Surnames
• Putting Yourself in Your Ancestor's Shoes...Historically

Trust But Verify Your Relative's Family Tree

"Trust, but verify" is a translation of an old Russian proverb that reminds you to find the truth for yourself. It's particularly useful when applied to genealogy.

Here are some situations where "trust, but verify" should pop into your head:

• A relative gives you their family tree with no sources.
• A stranger's online family tree seems like it may connect to yours.
• An elder tells you a bunch of family facts they remember from decades ago.

You may trust the relative or the elder, but you've got to verify their work.

How to Handle Unsourced Names and Dates

You can use an image to alert you to
unsourced facts in your family tree.

You welcome the new information. You're excited to have it. But take steps to mark this new set of names and dates as unsourced. Some options for marking this content are:

• Add a bookmark to each unsourced person in your family tree software.
• Add a profile image to each unsourced person, such as this graphic that says "No sources".
• Create a source citation using the name of the person who shared the information with you.
• Attach no source at all. Personally, I've been very diligent about attaching sources. If I find people in my tree without a source attached, I know someone handed those people to me.

This step to identify unverified information can save future-you a big headache.

The moment you receive a batch of new information, add it to your genealogy to-do list. You need to put some research time into proving or disproving these unsourced facts.

Think how satisfying it'll be when you can replace an individual's "no sources" graphic with an image of their birth record.

How to Figure Out the Facts

Eleven years ago a man named John saw my For the Cousins website and emailed me. He's part of a large group of Italian immigrants and their children in Niagara Falls, Canada. They all came from my paternal grandfather's hometown in Italy.

Four months later, my aunt and I flew up to meet this Italian enclave at their annual dinner party. I brought a big family tree printout with me. As I met and talked with many of the people, they shared lots of names and relationships with me. Together we added branches to my tree.

Eleven years is a long time, but now I have all the available vital records from my grandfather's hometown on my computer. This past weekend, while looking at my family tree for a new section to explore, and I found the Canadian branch.

Add a person's birth record as their photo so you know you have the proof.

I began with John from Canada's grandparents. I found birth records, parents' names, wedding dates, and death dates. I attached each document I discovered to the person in John's family tree. Now I had trusted, verified sources.

This 1887 birth record includes
names and dates for 2 marriages.

Here are a few pointers when working with someone else's tree:

• Expect some names to be slightly different. If your contact's tree comes from family sources, they may remember their "Uncle Antonio". But his birth record may show his given name was:
  
  • Michelantonio
  • Giovannantonio
  • Giuseppantonio or
  • Nicolantonio.
• Check a person's parent's names in the tree to decide if you've found the right birth record. If both mother and father match, you've probably found either the right person's birth record or that of a sibling. Is the birth year what you expected?
• Look for marriage data in the margin of birth records. This is more common on more modern birth records. It's less often found on very old records. Sometimes this annotation is exactly what you need to be sure you've found the right person.

The best surprise in this branch is that John from Canada is related to a set of my cousins through their father. I'm related to them through their mother.

But knowing this small town's high rate of intermarriage, I'm sure I'll find I'm related to John in half a dozen ways!

As I search for more connections, I'm gathering vital records and fortifying my family tree.

You may also enjoy:

• 4 Ways to Make Big Genealogy Progress When You Have Little Time
• How to Connect the Dots to Your Possible Relatives
• How to Turn a Hunch into Facts for Your Family Tree

How to Find Your Pre-Civil Records Ancestors

On yet another episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" a celebrity learned she's descended from a king. The 20-foot-long ancestor charts they unroll so dramatically on TV are likely to frustrate us mere mortals.

Other celebrities' ancestors were on the Mayflower, fought in the Revolutionary War, or were among the Founding Fathers. All have deep, traceable roots in America.

That can make an Italian-American like me feel like a newcomer and a nobody. Antonio was my first ancestor to arrive in New York City in 1890. I had no useful documentation for him other than his 1898 crossing when he was 55 years old and brought his wife and children to America.

So how does someone from Southern Italian peasant stock wind up with the names of a handful of her 9th great grandparents born in the early 1600s?

Here are 2 ways to learn the names of these early, low-profile ancestors.

Hire a Pro to Search Local Church Records

An 1821 marriage record I hired a professional genealogist to find.

One of my brick walls was my first immigrant ancestor, Antonio, born in 1843. I still don't know anything beyond the names of his parents.

I hired a pair of Italian genealogists to search church records from Antonio's tiny hometown. The town, Pastene, is basically one long street with a church in the middle and a cemetery at one end.

Unfortunately, it was not mandatory for this little hamlet to keep civil records. And my genealogists learned there wasn't even a church birth record for my Antonio. Thankfully, they focused on another of my Pastene ancestors. I'm absolutely thrilled with what they found for me on his family.

Find "Secondary" Vital Records within the Civil Records

A 1791 church death record found within 1848 marriage documents.

Shortly before I hired the professional genealogists, I wasn't sure where Antonio was born. But I knew he lived in Pastene in 1898 when he brought his family to America. Then a World War II draft registration card told me his eldest son was born in another town called Tufo.

I used my nearest Family History Center to view the Tufo civil records and learned that the family hadn't lived there for long. They came from nearby Santa Paolina, so I had to view those records.

In Antonio's 1871 Santa Paolina marriage documents, I learned:

• Antonio's wife Colomba was born in Santa Paolina.
• Colomba's parents were Semblicio and Rubina.
• Antonio was, in fact, born in Pastene on 7 July 1843.
• His parents were Raffaele and Grazia.

All 4 of Antonio and Colomba's parents were alive in 1871. If any had been dead, their death records would be in the marriage documents. And you know what's on the death records, don't you? The names of the deceased's parents.

In 19th century Italian marriages, if the bride or groom's father was dead, they needed their paternal grandfather's consent. If that grandfather was dead, guess what's included in the marriage documents? The grandfather's death record and his parents names!

But all 4 of Antonio and Colomba's parents were alive. (Darn?)

That's not the end of the trail. Pastene may not have civil records, but Santa Paolina has plenty. That's how I wound up learning that one of my 5th great grandfathers was Saverio Consolazio.

Here's how I got back that far:

• Colomba was born in 1845 to parents who were 27 and 29 years old. There had to be more children. I searched birth records for the surrounding years and found 3 of her siblings.
• I found marriage documents for two of her siblings and learned some more ancestors' names.
• I found birth records for some of her siblings' children and learned even more names.

Despite finding no death records, I found the names of Colomba's parents, all 4 grandparents, and one great grandparent, Saverio. Always look into your ancestor's siblings!

Remember what I wrote earlier about death records within the marriage documents? If the bride or groom's father and paternal grandfather are dead, that grandfather's death record could pre-date the town's civil records.

These early documents tend to be handwritten copies of church records that include:

• The name and age of the deceased.
• The date of death and burial.
• The name of their spouse (if it says they were a widow, you know that spouse died first).
• The names of their parents (if it says "fu" or "furono", you know one or both parents have died).

The church records within the marriage documents may include the names of your fifth great grandparents. I found the names of 68 of my 128 5th great grandparents using these two methods.

How many do you have? How many more can you find now?

You may also enjoy:

• The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: "Wedding Packets"
• How to Read Italian Marriage Records
• How To Read a Free-form Italian Death Record