Drawing Inspiration from the Genealogy Pros

Do high-profile genealogists inspire you to do better family tree research?

If this sounds like I'm writing a grade school assignment, stick with me.

The genealogy professional I find most inspiring is Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak. She's a key researcher behind my favorite genealogy shows, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and "Finding Your Roots". She's an author and the former Chief Family Historian at Ancestry.com.

Megan works to identify the living descendants of deceased military personnel. She helps get the remains of these service members back to their homes.

Ms. Smolenyak also solves the mysteries of unclaimed bodies in the morgue. Finding living descendants is hard! You can watch a well-produced video to get a feel for Megan's work.

Megan's work with fallen military personnel reminded me of a website in my Favorites list. It's a database of Italian soldiers who died in World War I. There's another site for soldiers who died in World War II.

Long ago I searched for any Italian soldier with my maiden name who died in the first world war. I found only one: Alfonso Iamarino, born in my grandfather's hometown of Colle Sannita on 15 Feb 1892.

Alfonso's birth record and military record led to a ton of names, and our relationship.

Finding living people is hard. But I should be able to identify this soldier's ancestors and siblings. My goal was to see where Alfonso fits in my family tree.

The fallen soldiers website tells me Alfonso's birth date and his father's name. The collection of the town's vital records sitting on my computer will make it easy to find his relatives.

But how will I find his relationship to me? Step by step.

Initial Facts

In 1892 when Alfonso was born, his father Pasquale was 30 years old. His mother Orsola Marino's age is not stated.

Since Pasquale was 30, I looked for and found his birth record in 1862. It even says at the bottom that he married Concetta Orsola Marino on 21 Dec 1889. I'll be sure to search for Alfonso's siblings later. But I want to go up his tree first.

Pasquale Iamarino's parents were Nicola Iamarino and Concetta Zeolla. The 1862 birth record said his parents were both 40 years old. But I couldn't find Nicola's birth record.

Don't know when a couple got married? Work your way back to their first baby.

Searching Sideways

Since I couldn't find Nicola's birth record around 1822, I needed more information. If Nicola and Concetta were 40 in 1862, they should have several older children.

I checked the index of births for each year, going backwards from 1861. Nicola and Concetta's ages were so inconsistent! I found these babies:

• Michele Arcangelo Iamarino, born 5 Apr 1859
• Francesco Saverio Iamarino, born 19 Jan 1857
• Giuseppantonio Iamarino, born 19 Feb 1852
• Antonio Iamarino, born 13 Nov 1850
• Angelantonio Iamarino, born 2 Apr 1849

I couldn't find any babies born before Angelantonio. It was time to search for Nicola and Concetta's marriage record.

I found them quickly. They married on 21 Feb 1848. The marriage records should include their birth records and their parents' names.

I found Concetta's 1824 birth record. But Nicola was different. Instead of the usual birth record, there's a 2-and-a-half-page document in hard-to-read handwriting. After staring at it for a while I was able to read it.

It says, in effect, "Oops! We can't find Nicola's birth record in the register. It isn't written there, and we don't know why. But we do know he was born in September 1819."

Family Tree Maker's color coding keeps me from overlooking these important relationships.

Making the Link

The unusual birth record for Nicola tells me who his parents were, as does his marriage record.

And that's where I found a lucky surprise. Nicola's parents were Angelo Iamarino and Anna Elena Pozzuto. Those names were familiar to me because I'd been looking at them about an hour earlier.

It turns out Nicola's sister Liberantonia was married the same day as he was. Their documents are listed one after the other in the 1948 marriage register. An hour before I found Nicola's marriage record, I discovered that Liberantonia's grandparents were my 5th great grandparents.

That makes Libera my 1st cousin 5 times removed. Her brother Nicola is also my 1st cousin 5 times removed.

Suddenly I realized Alfonso Iamarino, the only Iamarino to die in World War I, is my cousin. Alfonso's 2nd great grandparents are my 5th great grandparents. Poor Alfonso is my 3rd cousin 3 times removed.

Hey. I like this. I'm ready to choose another fallen soldier from my ancestral towns and figure out how we're related. For those of you who are of Italian descent, be sure to bookmark these sites:

• Search for fallen soldiers from World War I
  
• Search for fallen soldiers from World War II
  

How do your genealogy heroes inspire you?

And speaking of finding someone's ancestors:

• 3 Ways to Find Your Ancestors in a Huge Pile of Documents
• How to Find More Great Grandfathers for Father's Day
• How I Gained 2 More Generations in 1 Day

Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates

The duplicates in your family tree aren't as easy to find as that.

I've written about the free program Family Tree Analyzer many times. It's the work of programmer and genealogy fan Alexander Bissett. See the bottom of this article for links to other articles about this software.

Today I've installed the newest version of FTA, and I'm eager to find something else to explore.

I've looked at the many options on the Errors/Fixes tab before. But this time I'm focusing only on the Duplicate Fact and Possible Duplicate Fact options.

Be sure to try the Possible Duplicate Facts option in Family Tree Analyzer.

Hopefully your list of duplicate facts won't be too long. I have 7 duplicate facts and 65 possible duplicate facts in a tree of 21,001 people. That's a reasonable amount. I can look at each one and fix the error.

As I whittle down my list of duplicate fact errors, I'm finding they fall into these categories:

• Just plain forgetting that you already entered that fact.
• Accidentally choosing the wrong fact type, like Marriage instead of Marriage License.
• Adding the wrong date to a fact. This often happens to me with the 1940 U.S. census. It shows you someone's address on a date in 1940, but it also says if they were in the "same house" or "same place" in 1935. Sometimes I may paste in the 1940 date again instead of typing 1935.
• Attaching a fact to the wrong person. I have a married couple in 1800s Italy with the respectful titles of Don and Donna. I accidentally gave both titles to the husband!

The types of duplicates formed a distinct pattern.

And then there are some results that are not errors. Family Tree Analyzer does call them "Possible Duplicate Facts" after all. Here's where I'm seeing that happen:

• Duplicate marriage banns. In Italy, a couple might post marriage banns in the bride's hometown and the groom's hometown—on the same date. That looks like a mistake, but it isn't.
• The same type of fact with no date. There are cases where I entered 2 addresses for people, but I didn't add a date. I need to go back to the source and pin down a date.

I'm very satisfied with this exercise. These are the types of errors you'd never find on your own. It's great that Family Tree Analyzer can be another set of eyes for you.

Find out what else Family Tree Analyzer can do for you.

Here are some Family Tree Analyzer articles you may have missed:

• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree
• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree
• It's Time to Make Your Family Tree Clear and Consistent

Create a Genealogy Task List to Keep Track of Loose Ends

My 12-year-old task list is a big help to my genealogy research today.

As soon as I realize I can't find a document for a person in my family tree, I make a note. I want to document that fact that I searched for this record, but I couldn't find it.

If I add a note like this to someone in Family Tree Maker, I also add a bookmark to the person. The bookmark in the index of names is a sign that there's something about this person I haven't figured out.

An even better option is to add a task to this person in Family Tree Maker. Your task list is the first thing you see each time you open your family tree file.

Document those unfinished tasks and family mysteries. Some day you may find the answer.

If you don't use Family Tree Maker, look for similar options in your genealogy software. If all else fails, you can keep a text file of all the little family history mysteries you'd like to solve one day. You might want to list them alphabetically by the person's name, and add the date you recorded the note.

Let's look at one of my tasks and what I can do to solve it.

Teofilo Iamarino was my great grandfather's brother. The task I recorded for him 7 years ago is, "Did he stay in the US? Check for 1910, 1920 census." Let's see what I do know about my 2nd great uncle Teofilo:

• I have his Italian birth record from 1876.
• I have his Italian marriage record from 1896.
• I have his February 1909 ship manifest. He arrived in Boston, but headed to New York with my great grandfather and other relatives. My great grandfather came to America a handful of times, worked, and went back to Italy.
• I have Teofilo back in Italy for the October 1912 birth of his son. He has to have been in Italy since at least January 1912.
• I have his 1918 U.S. World War I draft registration card when he lived in Detroit, Michigan. The card says his nearest relative is his wife in Italy. I'm a little surprised that he had to register. He was a non-declarant alien who had no plans of becoming a U.S. citizen.
• I have him in Italy for the July 1923 birth of his daughter. He has to have been in Italy since at least October 1922.

Each document you find may be a clue that leads you to the next.

That timeline of known events tells me:

• He may have been in New York for the 1910 census.
• He may have been in Detroit for the 1920 census.

I'm not sure if I ever looked for Teofilo in Michigan, so I can check the U.S. census and include his Detroit address.

Nothing.

When I take out the Michigan address and hope to find Teofilo anywhere in 1910, I also get no results.

I can do a broad search for any documents I don't already have. I can leave off his last name and search for any Teofilo born in Italy in 1876.

Hurray, I found something new! I found Teofilo and 3 other men from his hometown arriving in New York in September 1913. According to the documents, he was in Italy in 1912. But he returned to New York for more work, leaving his wife to care for their young children.

In 1913 Teofilo returned to his brother Giuseppe's home in the Bronx. That's the same Giuseppe my great grandfather often returned to. It's the same Giuseppe my dad lived with as a toddler.

But wait! There's more. On the ship manifest, when asked if he had been in the U.S. before, Teofilo says yes, he was in New York from 1909–1911. That bit of information goes straight to the question I've been trying to answer: Was Teofilo in the United States for the 1910 census? If this ship manifest is right, then yes, Teofilo should have been in New York for the 1910 census.

I don't know why he's in Detroit, but now I know when he was in New York.

Teofilo's brother Giuseppe has no boarders living with him in the 1910 census. It's only Giuseppe, his wife and daughter. Is Teofilo in another household nearby?

I can return to Giuseppe's 1910 census online because I always note exactly where I found an image. I can go page-by-page looking for Teofilo.

I love paging through a Bronx neighborhood in the census. I recognize most of the last names. They're names from my ancestral hometowns, or they're names of my parents' friends and neighbors.

Unfortunately, Teofilo was not in that 56-page census collection. But I can look at other collections that are in the same general neighborhood. The important thing is, I now have reason to believe Teofilo is there.

Before I look for more documents, I want to check out the other townsmen with Teofilo on that ship in 1913. One of them, Francesco Pozzuto, is a good fit with someone in my family tree. He may be the father of a woman who is a critical DNA match. She and her son are DNA matches to both my father and my mother. I'm adding a note and a bookmark to him right now.

This example shows the value of creating these tasks or bookmarks. Years can go by. Without that note, I wouldn't have realized I needed to do more research on Teofilo Iamarino. There are literally 21,000 other people in my family tree.

But today I felt like looking at my task list in Family Tree Maker. And I wound up discovering a ship manifest for Teofilo with a very important clue.

Genealogy is a long game. Leave detailed notes for future-you whenever you can.