What to Do When Your Family Tree Is Stuck

See how working around your missing ancestors can lead to useful facts.

The sad truth of genealogy research is this: Sometimes the documents you need will not be there for you. A disaster destroyed the vital records for your town. Or they were never recorded. And there were no local newspapers when your townspeople were illiterate.

I'm facing this now as I try to help a client get further back in his family tree than his living ancestors can recall. I'm also facing it for myself. I have a branch from a town with missing records. I can't go as far back as I want to.

When the documents aren't there for you, what can you do?

Imagine you want to walk down a main path in New York's Central Park. But you can't go directly from where you are (the William Shakespeare statue) to your destination (the Bethesda Fountain). The path is blocked. What can you do? You can follow some of the other paths. It's a longer route, but eventually you'll get where you want to go.

When the straight path is not possible, take advantage of other avenues.

And that's how you can make progress in your family tree. When the documents you want are blocked, go around.

I want to learn the name of my 2nd great grandmother Maria Luigia Muollo's mother. Maria Luigia was born in about 1843. Her birth record is not available. I even sent a professional researcher to the town church, but they didn't have a lot of records. The town just shrugged it off, or so it seems.

But I have a plan to get around this blockage. I'm examining available records for everyone in town with her last name. It might help to find someone around her age who had the same father's name. It would be fantastic to find her death record. But I've discovered she was still alive in 1902 when she reported the birth of her grandchild (my grandmother's 1st cousin Vincenzo). Now I know she died during the years when no death records are available.

I'm continuing to look at everyone named Muollo in this little town. I'm piecing together their families. I'm hoping to find the connection between separate family units. It's a roundabout path, and I may get lost. But much like Central Park, I know the views will be worth it.

I found his grave before I knew who he was. Now his birth record gives me a big clue.

At the same time, I've got this client in mind. I can't seem to find records for his direct ancestors. But I'm hunting down every document for people with the right last names. One death record may be all I need to add another generation to his family tree.

Keep this in mind when you're frustrated by your brick wall. You can't seem to get through it after all your trying. But have you tried to go around it? Have you investigated what's near it? Try to fill in some of the surrounding blanks. You may get lucky after all.

What's in Your Genealogy Toolbox?

It's just you and WiFi for a week. Which genealogy tools are mandatory?

What are your must-have family tree-building tools? I'm talking about the indispensable items you'd have to have if you were cut off from everything else for a week.

Get ready to hit the road or run to the panic room. Grab your genealogy toolbox!

Here's what's in my genealogy toolbox.

When Visiting an Archive

I've visited the New York City Municipal Archives because the bulk of my family comes from the Bronx. I've visited the New York State Archives in Albany. And the archives for the province of Benevento in Italy. I spent 5 years viewing microfilm at my local Family History Centers.

The most important tools for those genealogy field trips were:

1. Blank forms

I wanted to view as many vital records as possible for my extended family. Before my visit to the NYC Municipal Archives, I created forms in Word for key facts from a vital record. I printed out a small stack of birth, marriage, and death forms to bring along. I filled in the blanks each time I found a relative's document. (This idea belongs to my research buddy Dawn Fulton.)

2. A USB flash drive

At the New York State Library and Archives, I wanted to look up an event from my childhood in the newspaper. When I found 2 articles about it, I was able to save the articles as PDFs. But I had to have a flash drive with me.

3. My iPhone's camera

While viewing microfilm at a Family History Center, I took some awful images with my iPhone. They were awful because (a) the microfilm viewer was a thousand years old, and (b) I couldn't avoid the iPhone's shadow. But they were better than nothing.

That camera is just the thing when visiting cemeteries. And I had it with me on my one-of-a-kind visit to see my grandfather's military record in Italy.

4. A laptop with a text editor

For 5 years I sat in dark rooms viewing microfilmed vital records. To make the most of my time there, I kept a laptop open in my lap beneath the table and typed everything I saw. For each document I used abbreviations to capture the facts. Man did I get fast at typing Italian names. Here's a sample:

-Rosaria Colucci b 16 jun 1815 to Michele di Giuseppe 30 and Mariarosa di Pietrantonio Izzo 25 bap 17 jun 1815

That means Rosaria Colucci was born on 16 Jun 1815. Her father Michele (son of Giuseppe) was 30 years old. Her mother Mariarosa Izzo (daughter of Pietrantonio Izzo) was 25 years old. The baby was baptized on 17 Jun 1815.

At first I was fitting people right into Family Tree Maker. But I could go dramatically faster by typing the basics there, and fitting families together at home.

When Visiting a Cemetery

In 2012 I visited the Bronx cemetery where practically my entire family is buried. It was my 1st visit, and I was with a cousin who knew exactly where to find our people. So cousin Joseph was indispensable that day.

When I returned in 2017, I found my grandparents using landmarks. They're close to a corner and a fence. But I couldn't find my great grandparents and their family. And I'd never found my other grandfather.

After searching for a while, I pulled out my iPhone and opened the Ancestry app. I remembered that after my 1st trip to this cemetery, I made a note of the section, range, and grave numbers. That did the trick! The Ancestry app was indispensable because I'd made note of the grave locations.

That day I also visited the cemetery office to ask where to find my grandfather. It was the first time I'd seen his grave since we buried him in 1992. Now I keep a text file on my phone with a list of family members' grave locations.

At My Desk

I have lived on a keyboard since 1983. It's second nature for me to do everything on my computer. This is where I have the bulk of my genealogy tools. Any decent research session will involve a few of these tools.

1. Family Tree Maker. It's the only family tree software I've ever used. No regrets.
2. Ancestry.com. This is where I keep my public tree, work with DNA matches, and do my searches.
3. My downloaded Italian vital records. These are not on Ancestry and some are not on FamilySearch. I downloaded my ancestral towns' records from the Italian Antenati (ancestors) website.
4. My document tracker. My most used spreadsheet is where I keep track of every document I add to my tree (download your own copy).
5. GetLinks. This image-downloading tool from a Portuguese-speaking programmer is a game changer. Without it, I'd still be downloading my Italian records, one at a time.
6. Photoshop. You can improve a lot of bad document images by adjusting their brightness and contrast. I like to crop out the excess, too.
7. Family Tree Analyzer. Once in a while your family tree needs a checkup. This free program has a host of tools for finding the mistakes you never knew you made.
8. My database of town records. I'm entering the basic facts from my vital record collection into a spreadsheet. It makes it so easy to find out if, for example, Francesco Bianco and Maria Caruso had another baby I didn't know about. Adding more records is always on my annual list of genealogy goals.
9. My grandparent chart. I open up this spreadsheet each time I learn another direct ancestor's name. My chart (download one for yourself) includes placeholders with each ancestor's Ahnentafel number. The chart is also color-coded for your 4 grandparents' different branches.
10. My surnames list. This spreadsheet is an alphabetized list of my direct ancestor's last names only. I've got 84 of them so far—all Italian.
11. My relationship calculator. I made this chart to help figure out the likely relationship of a DNA match. You can download your copy of this file, too.
12. My chart of Italian occupation translations. There was a page online long ago with a long list of Italian occupation words. Like, calzolaio means shoemaker. I grabbed those translations and added in several more that I know from my ancestral towns. It's handiest to me when I can't make out all the letters. I can scan my chart looking for a similar word.

Now I want you to add your comments at the bottom of this article. I'm sure you're using tools I haven't yet realized I need. And I'll bet you have tools for other types of research trips. Like, I have a digital audio recorder I can bring along to record conversations with my relatives. What are your favorite genealogy tools?

Make Smarter Progress on Your Family Tree

If you don't stop and look around, you may never complete that family.

You know the old phrase for when you can't make any progress? It's "1 step forward, 2 steps back." You never seem to get anywhere.

To make progress in your genealogy research, I recommend the opposite: "2 steps forward 1 step back." That's right! This more measured approach has you looking around instead of blindly forging ahead.

Here's how it works. Let's say a cousin sent you a digitized photo of your shared ancestor. It's brand new to you, and you're eager to place it in your family tree. That'd definitely be 1 step forward.

But while you're there in your ancestor's profile, take a step back. Look around. I'm sure you can find something else in her profile that needs your attention.

• Does each fact in her profile have a well-formed citation? My citations were all broken recently. So I'm eager to improve the citations for each ancestor whose profile I visit.
• Is every one of her document images annotated? I add the specifics to the image's notes. Say it's a ship manifest. I add the title of the collection (like "New York, Passenger and Crew Lists"), the line number where you'll find my ancestor, the image number in the collection (like "250 of 478"), a link to the document on Ancestry, and Ancestry's source citation.
• Does her timeline of facts have a gap? For instance, are you missing her 1930 census? Take the time to search for whatever is missing. You're here now. Don't miss this chance to get it done.

Once you make this a habit, you'll make more progress than if you added the new photo and moved on to something else.

Each time you add something to a person in your tree, take a moment to improve all their sources and search for what's missing. Fix up their immediate family, too.

Over the weekend I kept this idea in mind. I wanted to fix the citations for my direct ancestors. But it didn't make sense to fix my great grandfather's citations and ignore his siblings. They were a click away. Before moving on to my great great grandfather, I fixed the citations for my 2nd great uncles. Now that nuclear family is solid.

Here's a quick example. I have 6 document images for my 3rd great grandmother Angela Maria Franza. I have her 1820 birth record and 5 pages from her 1846 marriage documents.

That adds up to 7 facts in her profile, each needing a source citation:

• her name
• her birth date
• her baptism date
• her 1st marriage banns
• her 2nd marriage banns
• her marriage license
• her actual marriage

I'll give each fact a solid citation by following these steps:

1. I'll look at my notes on her birth record image and copy the URL of its original location.

My practice of making note of the original image URL is a lifesaver while I'm fixing source citations.

2. I'll paste that URL into the citation for her birth fact. I've got 1,000s of Italian vital records in my tree, and I've decided to use a simple citation detail: "From the [year] [type of document] records for [town]." The exact phrase for this birth fact, then, is "From the 1820 birth records for Colle Sannita, Benevento, Campania, Italy."

Unlike my old method, this citation will be specific to the facts on this one document.

3. I'll add the document image to the citation.

You can add one or more document images to a specific citation.

4. I'll copy this citation to the related facts. Her birth record is my primary source for her name, birth date, and baptism date. So each fact can use the same exact citation.

Before I move on I'll (a) see if I can find her death record (I can't), and (b) follow these same steps for her 3 siblings. That way, when I'm ready to work on her father (my 4th great grandfather), his entire family will be complete.

Take 1 step back and handle the entire nuclear family in one sitting.

This whole idea boils down to "While you're here…". While you're here, fix the citation for your 2nd great uncle's birth fact. While you're here, download that marriage record that you never added to the tree.

Don't let your genealogy research be a hit-and-run operation. Add a new fact or document (that's 1 step forward). Take a look at what else this person needs (that's 1 step back). Make this person's profile as complete as you can (that's a 2nd step forward).