7 Steps to Perfect Family Tree Document Placement

Do it right the first time and you'll never need to come back and fix it!

I've written about how to add metadata to your genealogy document images. And I've written about how I name and file away my images.

Today let's break down my entire process for putting a document image into my family tree. I like to do it so thoroughly that everything is as perfect as I could ever want it to be.

It comes down to 7 steps. That sounds like a lot, but once you're used to it, it all feels like one step. Here we go:

Step 1: Save a copy of the document image to the proper folder on my computer

Within a Family Tree folder on my computer, I have a folder for each main genealogy document type. My "certificates" folder is enormous because it has all my vital records. I have access to more than a century of vital records from my ancestral Italian hometowns, so they add up fast.

Step 2: Rename the file appropriately

My format is LastnameFirstnameYear or LastnameFirstnameEventYear, depending on the event. If it's a marriage record, I include both groom and bride. If it's a census record, I use the head of household's name. I don't include the year in the file name of a World War I or II draft registration card. We know when the wars happened.

Having a system keeps all your genealogy documents easily accessible.

Step 3: Crop and enhance the image

I always crop my Italian vital records. Often there are 2 pages in the image and a big black border. If the image is too light or dark, I adjust the contrast to make it easier to read. I don't crop census images and ship manifests because they seem to wind up a larger file size than the original.

Step 4: Add metadata to the image file

I've always added details to an image within Family Tree Maker. Then I realized I can add those details to the image file itself. That way the source information always stays with the image. And it gets pulled into Family Tree Maker.

Plus, I can give the image a title, and it becomes the image's caption in Family Tree Maker. I always begin the title with the year. Then all the images for any one person display chronologically.

Meta data carries into Family Tree Maker, and stays with the image forever.

Step 5: Drag the image into Family Tree Maker

After I drag an image into Family Tree Maker, I double-click it. I enter the date that's on the document and choose the image category. (If you add a date in the metadata, it doesn't carry over into Family Tree Maker.)

I don't have photos of my ancestors who never left Italy. So I choose the earliest document I have for them and make it their profile picture.

Step 6: Enter individual facts in Family Tree Maker

Once you add a census image to your family tree software, for example, check it for facts. You might have:

• street address
• occupation
• number of years married
• place of birth
• immigration year
• citizenship information and more

Enter all the facts into your software for each person named on the document. And don't forget to give each fact a source.

Step 7: Add an entry in my document tracker

Once I finish everything in Family Tree Maker, I turn to my document tracker spreadsheet.

For a ship manifest, I enter the year and (doc.)—for document—in the immigration column for each person in the image. The (doc.) tells me I have the image. A year with no (doc.) means I found a mention of an immigration year (on a census sheet usually), but not the document. In that case, I'll add "immigration" to the Need to find column for this person.

For a marriage record, I enter the year and (cert.)—for certificate—in the marriage column for both bride and groom. The (cert.) tells me I have the image. A year with no (cert.) means I found a mention of a marriage year, but not the certificate. In that case, I'll add "marriage" to the Need to find column for both bride and groom.

You may think 7 steps is outrageous or too tedious. But I find it's well worth the effort. I'll never need to double back and fix any images. Or add missing information. And I'll always have a quick reference showing me what I've found and what's missing.

Making these 7 steps a habit means I'll never have to turn any of them into a big cleanup job.

Won't you join me and be a neat-freak, obsessive-compulsive genealogist, too? Imagine how great it would be if everyone with an online tree took this much care with their work!

Why Use a Genealogy Document Tracker?

Take a look behind the spreadsheet and see how it can help your research.

I've written many times about my document tracker. It's an Excel spreadsheet I created 12 years ago to help me build my family tree.

The spreadsheet shows each genealogy document I have for any given person in my family tree. Take my great grandfather, Giovanni Sarracino, for example.

• To see which of his census records I had, I'd open the census folder on my computer.
• To see if I had his draft registrations cards, I'd open the draft cards folder.
• For immigration records, I'd open my immigration folder.

I could also look at the media files attached to him in Family Tree Maker. I display the images chronologically, so I'd have to browse them all to find a particular type of document.

Wouldn't it be easier to have an inventory of all his documents in one row of a spreadsheet? (Spoiler alert: It's much easier.)

The spreadsheet has a column for a person's name and a column for each major document type:

• birth
• baptism
• immigration or travel
• marriage
• naturalization
• census
• draft registration
• death
• burial
• passport application
• city directory

You may not want to track all those documents. I actually have very few baptism or burial records. I arranged the document types in chronological order, mostly. Your document tracker can have the headings you prefer, in whatever order you like.

In 12 years, I haven't regretted this document tracker for a minute.

An important feature for me is the last column: Need to find. This is a list of missing documents for each person. Let's look at my 1st cousin twice removed, Michele Sarracino as an example.

I don't know a lot about Michele, but I have his 1899 birth record from Italy. I also found him in the Bronx, New York, census in 1905, 1915, 1920, and 1925. Then he disappeared.

So I added his missing documents and major facts to his Need to find column:

• 1904 immigration (according to his 1920 census)
• 1910 census
• 1930 census
• 1940 census
• WW1 draft registration card
• WW2 draft registration card
• marriage?
• death

I can track his family members, but I don't even know if Michele married.

The Need to find column is the quickest way to see what's missing for any given relative. Let's see if some research can move some items to their proper columns.

In a search on Ancestry I saw a World War I draft registration card. It had a different spelling for his last name (Saracena), but it had his exact birth date: 29 Nov 1899.

The card shows his 1918 address on East 150th Street in the Bronx. That's right where my family lived. It lists his mother as Josephine, which matches my facts. And his signature looks like Saracino, which is how my family began to spell it several years later.

Thanks to his Italian birth record and the exact birth date, I knew this was my cousin.

As a bit of icing on the cake, Michele's draft registration describes his blue eyes and blond hair. I was teased as a child for being too light to really be an Italian-American. My Southern Italian 1st cousin twice removed proves what nonsense that was.

Now I can add this document to my family tree. I'll also remove WW1 draft registration card from his Need to find list and put WW2 (doc.) in his Draft column.

My 1st cousin twice removed: 
Babe Ruth's double!

It was a surprise to find naturalization papers when Michele was a grown man. Michele arrived in the USA as a 4-year-old child. I didn't think he'd have to naturalize. But he become a U.S. citizen in 1945—at age 45. His naturalization papers have a photograph of my cousin. And damn if he doesn't look exactly like Babe Ruth.

That gives me some new clues. Michele lived at the same address in 1925 and 1945. He should be there with family members in 1930 and 1940. I found his siblings, but Michele wasn't there.

Next I found his Social Security Death Index from 1965.

I learned that in 1935 and 1941 Michele was not married. And he had moved up in the world: a junkman in 1918, a laundry helper in 1920, a chauffeur in 1925, and in 1935, proprietor at an automobile sales agency.

I like to use my document tracker to guide my research on days when I don't have a specific goal in mind.

Some tips: To distinguish between document images and undocumented facts, I use different wording:

• (cert.) after the year means I have an image of the birth, marriage, or death certificate
• (doc.) after the year means I have an image of the ship manifest
• WW1 (doc.) or WW2 (doc.) in the Draft column means I have an image of the draft registration card
• (index) after a birth, death, or marriage year means I saw the fact listed in a government index. But I did not see the document.
• A year, all by itself, means I have evidence of the year, but no document to back it up. For example, my 3rd great grandfather Antonio Sarracino was born in 1799. I know this because he was 4 years old on a record written in 1803 documenting the members of his household. But I don't have his birth record.
• Abt. before a year means it's an estimate.
• When a document is currently unavailable, but may be available in the future, in the Need to find column I add:
  
  • out of range: birth
  • out of range: marriage
  • out of range: death

I don't add (doc.) after a census year because if I have the document, the year is there. If I don't, it's in the Need to find column. Do whatever is logical to you.

It's helpful to include a birth year in the document tracker, even if there is no document.

Today my family tree has 22,846 people, but my document tracker has 2,827. That means I have 20,000 people in my tree with no documents at all. That's because I have incredibly distant relatives in my tree. I don't always take the time to process and add all their vital records as I find them.

Create your own document tracker or download the sample I made for you. It has the columns filled in and one person as an example. Let me know if you have any questions.

And speaking of the document tracker:

• Track Your Genealogy Finds and Your Searches
• How to Make Your Genealogy Research More Complete
• Haven't I Seen You Before?

3 Rules for Setting Your 2020 Genealogy Goals

Get ready to set genealogy goals that will make the most of your time.

It's just around the corner. Time to get serious about writing your 2020 Genealogy Goals. Over the past 2 years I've realized the secrets to being successful with your goals.

Forget those silly New Year's resolutions. You're going to craft the ideal genealogy goals list. Simply follow these 3 rules.

#1 Set Yourself Up for Success

Your goals need to be achievable. Instead of setting yourself up for failure, make sure it's possible to reach your goal within the year.

If your goal is to find and visit your cousins in the country where your ancestors were born, you may not be able to do that this year. Start smaller. Find out all you can about the relatives who stayed in the old country.

When I visited the cemetery in Italy where 2 of my great grandparents were born, I saw Vincenzo Sarracino's grave. Based on his name and age—and his photo on the grave—I thought he might be my grandmother's first cousin.

It was 3 years later that I learned I was right! I found and contacted Sarracino cousins several hours away from me in Pittsburgh. Luckily, my husband had a wedding to attend in Pittsburgh. So we visited my new relatives.

My family showed me lots of photos. I recognized Vincenzo Sarracino! These cousins gave me the background on the man I'd discovered in the cemetery 3 years earlier.

That goes to show you some goals take longer than a year. It's out of your control. Finding and visiting distant cousins is a wonderful goal. But it's not suitable for your 2020 list of genealogy goals. Try for something that's in your power.

If this were an annual goal, I'd have failed twice. Do what's in your power.

#2 Be Specific and Limited

If your goal is too vague, how will you work toward it? What steps will you take?

For example, if your goal is "Build my husband's family tree," how will you know when you're done? A family tree is never done! Maybe all you want to do is create a couple of generations' worth of his family tree for starters. You can take a broad goal like that and break it down into its parts:

• Find his parents' marriage record.
• Search for his parents and their families in every census year.
• Search for his grandparents' immigration records.

Think of a bigger, somewhat vague goal as a series of steps. Choose 1 or 2 of the steps and make them your goals.

Success keeps you going! Split that big genealogy project into manageable parts.

#3 Break Big Tasks into Modules

I have some lofty genealogy goals. I'd need to work on them full-time for a long time to get them done. But if you divide a big task into modules, chunks, or units, you can make measurable progress.

Here are my 2 really, really big projects and how I'm handling them.

Project A. Enter key facts from my collection of Italian vital records in a spreadsheet. The result will be a database that's easy to search and to share.

When I started entering facts from each vital record into a spreadsheet, it was wonderful. Those facts were now searchable. If I was looking for the birth of a Giovanni Pozzuto whose father was Giuseppe, I could search for that. But it takes a long time to create. I found ways to go faster, but it's still a huge task.

So, as a 2019 genealogy goal, I committed to a smaller goal: Log the first 5 years' worth of birth records from each of my towns into the spreadsheet.

I finished that by March! Having all those vital records in a searchable format is fabulous for my research. I want to get more ambitious this year. I'll go for 5 years of death records and 5 years of marriage records from each town.

And if I finish that early, I can tack on another 5 years of births. The key is to use small chunks you know you can finish.

Don't burden yourself with a huge task. Achieve your goal in steps.

Project B. Rename every document image in my collection of Italian vital records.

It dawned on me that I could have a searchable database even before I finish Project A. If I rename the image of a death record to include the deceased's name, that person is now searchable on my computer.

I started by renaming the marriage records for my grandfather's town of Colle Sannita. The file names get really long when an image shows 2 pages, 2 brides, 2 grooms. But they're searchable!

I was so happy with the results—and how fast it seemed to go—that I pushed further. I renamed the entire town's files. And I'm moving on to other towns. I have one little hamlet with a very limited number of vital records. I renamed them all within 90 minutes. Then I moved on to another town.

Getting more files renamed is going to be a top goal for me in 2020. I'll break it into chunks, like all birth records for one town. When that's done I'll move on to all births for another town. Every bit of that effort will pay off.

Make yourself and your family tree happy this coming year. Set a small number of 2020 Genealogy Goals you know you can get done.

And speaking of genealogy goal-setting:

• How to Set Realistic Genealogy Goals for 2019
• It's Mid-Year Genealogy Goals Checkup Time
• Why You Need to Set Genealogy Priorities