Searching for My Only Missing 3rd Great Grandparent

What can I do to find my closest unidentified ancestor?

It bothers me that I'm missing the name of only 1 of my 32 3rd great grandparents. It's amazing to have that column of my grandparent chart all filled in. But one of the spaces says "mother of Maria Luigia Muollo"—my 2nd great grandmother.

Come along with me as I try to find her.

My Muollo family comes from a tiny little hamlet called Pastene—part of a small town in southern Italy. Because the town is so small, it seemed to fly under the radar. It didn't start collecting civil records in 1809 like the rest of Italy.

All I can access on the indispensable Antenati website are:

• 1861–1915 birth records
• 1931–1942 death records
• 1931–1942 marriage records

Those gaps in the record collection are enough to make me cry. I even hired a pair of Italian genealogists to go to the local church for records. What they found was wonderful. But they also discovered a huge lack of records.

I know that my 2nd great grandmother's father was Antonio Muollo. He was born in about 1818. I don't know when he died.

I've been piecing together families from the records I have. I've found only one other Muollo who's father is an Antonio. Maria Saveria Muollo was born in 1859.

Could she be my 2nd great grandmother's younger sister? There's a 16-year age difference between them. That's common in Italian families of the 19th century. And my Antonio was only about 41 when Maria Saveria was born. I know that Maria Saveria married Orazio Sarracino.

This is a TINY town. My 2nd great grandparents were Maria Luigia Muollo and Giuseppe Sarracino. If this theory pans out, the 2 Muollo sisters each married a Sarracino.

How can I prove Maria Saveria's relationship to my 2nd great grandmother, Maria Luigia?

The first step is always to gather as many documents and pieces of evidence as you can about the person. Let's see what I can learn about Maria Saveria Muollo.

To find more clues about Maria Saveria, I gathered the birth records for her children.

Birth Records

I have the Pastene birth records for Maria Saveria's 9 children with Orazio Sarracino:

• Maria Giuseppa, 1880
• Maria Assunta, 1884
• Antonio, 1886 (who must have died before 1892)
• Antonia, 1889
• Antonio, 1892
• Francesco, 1894
• Carmine, 1896
• Rosaria, 1899
• Maria Luigia, 1903

The last birth record, dated 24 November 1903, says Orazio was not present. He was domiciliato all'estero—living abroad. Sure enough, I found Orazio's 1903 ship manifest.

Immigration Records

Orazio and his daughter Maria Assunta left for New York THREE DAYS before his 9th child was born. I already can't stand this guy. Ships left for New York often. He had to leave when his wife was 9 months pregnant? Sheesh.

Orazio never sent for his wife to join him. Maybe he planned to return to Italy. Maybe he did return to Italy. Orazio died between 1910 and 1920. I don't know where.

In 1920, Maria Saveria and her 2 youngest daughters boarded a ship. They went to the Bronx to join her son Francesco. I like to think of her saying, "Who needs you? I'm going to America anyway."

This lady made that difficult voyage to America at 61 years of age.

Census Records

Back in the 1910 U.S. census, Orazio and his son Antonio are living in the Bronx. They're in the home of Orazio's eldest daughter Maria Giuseppa and her husband.

In the 1915 New York State Census, Antonio Sarracino is still living in the Bronx. He is married and has one child. His father is not with him.

In the 1940 U.S. census, Maria Saveria is 80 years old. She's living with her daughter Rosaria and Rosaria's family. It's amazing to find her at age 80. I would guess she didn't live a whole lot longer.

Death Records

One death record shows up on Ancestry.com that's promising. If it's Maria Saveria, she died in the Bronx in 1944 at age 84. The same record on FamilySearch.org offers more information. It says that her husband was Orazio Sarracino and her father was Antonio Muollo. It's her, alright.

But it also has the most important piece of information I'd been hoping to find: her mother's name. There it is.

Is Giuseppina Torrico my 3rd great grandmother? Is she the only 3rd great grandparent whose name I'm missing?

A check of the vital records in Pastene shows no one with that last name. Was it transcribed incorrectly because it was hard to read? What names do I have from the town that are close?

I can't accept a stranger's transcription blindly. That is not quite the right name.

My best guess, without seeing the actual death certificate, is that her last name was Errico. Maybe the E was all fancy and hard to read. Errico is a fairly common name in Pastene. There used to be a neighborhood with that name in the 1860s.

After all that research, I'm left with a theory. A stronger theory than I had before. I'm still missing marriage and death certificates from Pastene, so I can't prove anything.

But perhaps—just perhaps—Maria Saveria Muollo is the younger sister of my 2nd great grandmother. And perhaps Giuseppina Errico is my missing 3rd great grandmother.

It's a good enough theory to record in my family tree.

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 1848 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