Genealogy Skills Make You a Keen Detective

Sometimes my innocent genealogy detective work scares me. Using detective skills is an important part of genealogy research. We're always trying to find a family connection, or searching for important documents.

Many times we need to investigate living people. And that feels a lot like stalking. Our intentions are pure—we just want to figure out that connection! But it can get creepy when you realize how much you can learn.

This weekend I found myself looking once again at the DNA matches my parents have in common. One person in particular, let's call him JS, intrigued me. I always thought his face looked familiar. He looks like he could be my cousin.

When looking at my mom's DNA test, JS is her 4th–6th cousin on her paternal side. And I know her paternal side has its roots only in one town: Baselice, Italy. JS doesn't show up in my dad's DNA match list, but Mom and JS's shared matches are another story. They have 3 shared matches, not counting me:

1. WL is the descendant of my 3rd cousin 3 times removed, Donato Zerrillo. Donato came from my father's ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita. According to AncestryDNA, WL is my mom's 4th–6th cousin as well as my dad's, and mine, too!
2. MN has no family tree on Ancestry. AncestryDNA says he my mom's 4th–6th cousin, but he shows up as my dad's 2nd–3rd cousin and my 3rd–4th cousin.
3. PD is someone I've contacted before, but we can't figure out his connection to my mother. He has a possible Leone in his tree (my primary name from Baselice), but the connection isn't verified. The surprise is he has close ancestors from Dad's Colle Sannita. AncestryDNA says he is my mom's, my dad's, and my 4th–6th cousin, and I have the paper trail that says he's my dad's 4th cousin.

This brings me back to JS, the match who has a connection to all the people listed above. You can see the ethnicity estimates of your DNA matches. This tells me that JS has 23% Italian ethnicity and the rest is Germanic and Ireland. He should have an Italian grandparent or a couple of Italian great grandparents.

Since he has no tree on Ancestry, I began my detective work. I searched Ancestry for his name and found some public record indexes. These told me he had lived in 3 different U.S. states and that he's my age. I found his father's obituary easily. This told me JS's parents' names, his 2 uncles' names, and his 2 siblings' names as well as a sister-in-law. I found JS's father's family in several U.S. censuses and other documents. Then I found an Ancestry tree clearly owned by JS's sister-in-law.

If you know a lot about your DNA match, you just might be a detective.

I looked on Facebook and found JS using the same profile photo he uses on Ancestry (bless him for that!). I found his siblings, sister-in-law, and a cousin or two. But the main thing I noticed on Facebook and in the tree his sister-in-law built: ZERO Italian names. (And I'm only Italian.)

I now know which names provide JS's Germanic and Irish ancestry. But where is that 23% Italian hiding? The family tree of "S" ancestors goes back several generations, and all the names look German or Irish.

My only thought was Northern Italy. JS's ethnicity was 13% Southern Italian and 10% Northern Italian. What if one of his Germanic names was from the part of Italy that's so close to Switzerland that the lines blur? There are families in this part of Italy with Germanic names. I used to work for one; it was shocking to find out he was Italian.

I used an old favorite trick of mine to see which of JS's family names might be from Italy. I went to Ancestry and searched for passenger lists with only that last name. Then I looked at where people with the name came from.

I started with JS's own last name—a German-sounding name. I found a small number of people from Switzerland with that name. Ah, but a draft registration card told me JS's grandfather was born in New York City. I'd have to track down his ancestors. I discovered that even JS's "S" great grandfather was born in New York to parents who were born in New York. It's time to try another branch of JS's family tree. But his sister-in-law's family tree shows the mother's family was born in Germany. And his father's mother's family all came from Ireland!

While trying to figure out what to do next, I returned to the search results for JS's grandfather's name. I clicked a German birth and baptism record. It listed a birth place of Hirschthal and I thought, go ahead—see where that is. It turns out to be in Switzerland, but much further from Italy that I'd hoped.

Still, I may as well step out a bit further on this limb. I went to the Cognomix website where you can check for the location of family names throughout Italy. I put in JS's last name. The numbers are small, but that Germanic name does exist in Northern and Central Italy. But now I'm too far up in JS's family tree to account for his 23% Italian ancestry.

His DNA connection to my mom and me, and his connection to my dad's connections, has me so curious. I'm going to write to him on both Ancestry and Facebook and hope for the clue I need. Of course I can't mention all I've learned about him. I made that mistake once and scared off an interesting DNA match forever! I'll lead with "Who are our shared Italian ancestors?" That sounds both specific and un-stalkerlike.

Have you discovered more than you ever imagined about a potential cousin? Does it worry you? Try searching for yourself in various places. I searched Bing.com for myself under my maiden name. I found tons of these blog articles, photos I uploaded to memorial pages, and my comments about genealogy. On Ancestry, nothing came up, even though I know there's an index for my first marriage on there—that came up when I searched on Google.com. My favorite discovery is seeing all the times someone mentioned this blog that I never knew about.

How has genealogy improved your detective skills? Remember to always be a benevolent detective with genealogy as your only goal.

And speaking of DNA matches:

• Using Shared Matches and Genealogy to Solve a Mystery
• Your DNA Matches Hold Hidden Clues
• 3 Key Steps to Identify a DNA Match

How to Share Documents and Citations Within Your Family Tree

A Facebook group for Family Tree Maker Users explains every aspect of the software. But people still have questions, of course. I saw one the other day that was, basically, how do you share facts and media among family members?

I'm focusing on Family Tree Maker in this discussion, but the logic applies to online family trees, too.

When I began collecting census records for my family years ago, I:

• Named the image file for the head of household. I still do. (Example: SarracinoGiovanni1915.jpg.)
• Attached it to the head of household.
• Entered the address and occupation for that person only.
• Added a source citation to these facts.
• Added a line to my document tracker spreadsheet to show that I have that image for the head of household. (See "Which Genealogy Documents Are You Missing?")

I soon realized I needed to assign the image, address, and occupation facts to the rest of the family, too. But I knew it was wasteful to have so many copies of the same census sheet in my family tree. Each family needed to share one image.

Adding Efficiency to Your Family Tree

Let's take my great grandfather, Giovanni Sarracino, as an example. He and his wife came to America in 1899, and by 1915 they had 5 children. They're all listed in the 1915 New York State census. Now, you could drag and drop that 1915 census image onto each of the 7 members of the family. But the image file size may be big, and 7 copies of it will weigh down your family tree file.

Your family tree software or website is built for sharing documents and source citations across a family unit.

Instead, attach the image to the head of household. Then add his or her census facts to their profile, and create one source citation. You can and should attach the existing image to the source citation.

Next, go one at a time to each person in your family tree who's listed on that census. For each person:

• Add their facts from the census. This can include an address, year and place of birth, occupation, immigration year, and more. (The person asking the question in the Family Tree Maker Users group wanted to know how to share facts. Facts are individual items and you can't share them.)
• Copy the source citation from the head of household to paste onto facts for each person in the household.
• Connect the head of household's existing census image to each person in the household.
• Add a census notation to your document tracker for each member of the household to show that you have this item.

You've added only one image and one citation to your family tree. But each family member's individual profile shows it.

Key Points to Remember

The Benefits of Sharing

If you download a census image from a website, the image file may be as large as 3 megabytes or more. Think about all the families in your family tree with census images. Do you really want to bloat your tree's file size by 3 Mb times all the spouses and kids, times all the census years? It's inefficient and wasteful.

But there's an even bigger benefit to sharing, not duplicating, images and citations. When you need to correct a citation, or update the annotation on an image, you can do it in one place rather than 5 or 10 or 15.

I know I've gotten more thorough with my record keeping over the years. I didn't know from day one that I could add a date, category, and description to each saved image in FTM. I've revisited images to improve the descriptions or add a forgotten category. And I was glad to be able to make each edit in only one place.

Earlier this year I reviewed every source citation in my tree, bringing them up to my high standards. (See "How to Weed Out Those Unreliable Sources.") It would have been awful to have to make the same edit to tons of duplicated citations.

It can be painstaking work, but I've made it part of my routine. (See "How to Fully Process Your Census Documents.") Each time I find a census for a family in my tree, I complete the entire process. I make sure each member of the household has all their sourced facts and a connection to the census image.

Are you handling all your genealogy facts, documents, and citations efficiently?

Pinpoint Important Places in Your Family Tree

When I used the Maps menu in Family Tree Analyzer (FTA), I discovered something I needed to fix. Even though I can find many addresses from my tree on Google Maps or Bing Maps, they weren't recognized by FTA.

I opened my tree in Family Tree Maker, which uses Bing Maps for locations. I noticed it could be very imprecise, or just plain wrong, about some locations. I wanted to improve these results so I could do more with FTA's Maps menu. The solution was to add Latitude and Longitude coordinates. And it's easy to do.

If small-town locations in your family tree are hard to find IRL, these two numbers will bring you right to the front door.

Here's how to add these precise coordinates to your computer-based family tree software:

• Find the exact location on a map website. I like Google Maps for this because of its streetside view. I want to see that I've got the right place, and even find the front door.
• Right-click at a precise location to see the map coordinates. (You must exit Street View first.)
• Enter the Latitude and Longitude numbers in your family tree.

I use Family Tree Maker, but RootsMagic also has fields on the Places menu to enter map coordinates. I'm sure other desktop genealogy programs do, too.

Family Tree Maker tells me I have 5,323 places in my family tree, so I'm not going to do this for every location. My goal is to use Family Tree Analyzer to see how many people got baptized or married in a particular church. So for starters, I'm pinpointing the locations of different churches in my family tree.

Watch Your Results Get Better

Here's an example of the benefits of this project. Before I added map coordinates to one church in Benevento, Italy, Family Tree Maker had their pin a few miles south of the city. I have no idea why. Now, with the coordinates in place, FTM knows precisely where to find this church. And so do I, should the day come when I want to visit it. As I look at the map, I see that I've been within a few yards of this church, but I didn't know it!

How many people in your family tree were at this address? Family Tree Analyzer can tell you, but you may need to feed it a couple of numbers.

With a few churches pinpointed in my family tree, I'll export a new GEDCOM file to open with Family Tree Analyzer. I'd like to see how many births and baptisms I've associated with the church in Colle Sannita, Italy.

In Family Tree Analyzer, once you open your GEDCOM file, click the Maps menu and choose Show Places. Say No to the pop-up message about Geocode locations. Now choose a particular location.

I clicked through the list of places and drilled down to the church. Italy, Campania, Benevento, Colle Sannita, Chiesa di San Giorgio Martire. There's my answer. I've attached this location to 14,724 baptism or marriage facts. And because of the map coordinates, the location is very precise.

Recently I've been reviewing some of my early research work on the town of Baselice. I was brand new to Italian vital records when I recorded many of these facts. I remember I didn't want to assume each baby got baptized in the town church. Now I know better. And I can see that the church is in fact mentioned on the birth or baptism records. I'd like to correct those baptism facts and increase the number of uses of the church in Baselice.

Make Your Map Pins Portable

I'm excited to use these map coordinates the next time I visit my ancestral hometowns. Family Tree Analyzer can export all the places from your family tree to "Google My Maps." I gave this a try, and it saves a file to your computer in a text-based format. When I go to My Maps in Google, I see that I can import the file.

Sure enough, all 5,323 locations from my family tree are now on this one map! I've never been to my 2nd great grandmother's hometown of Santa Paolina, Avellino. But when I get there, I can use Google Maps to pull up the precise location of the town church and step inside!

Family Tree Analyzer can put every single location from your family tree on one map—complete with names and dates.

To get to Google My Maps, start at google.com/maps and click Saved in the left menu. Then click Maps and Open My Maps. I've created maps before, but uploading thousands of locations at once is fantastic! I can click any location to see who's associated with that place. There's also an option to open this map collection in Google Earth. This seems like the best way to see your places in living color, rather than basic map view.

Now I needed to turn my iPhone into my family tree navigator. I installed Google Earth and put Family Tree Analyzer's exported places file on my phone. In Google Earth, I chose Projects, then Open, then Import KML file. (That's the format of the FTA locations file.)

Now no matter where I am, I can open Google Earth and zoom out see which family tree locations are nearby. Then I can tap any map pin to see what happened there. Don't you want to have this on your phone?

And speaking of map projects:

• Which Global Map is Best for Genealogists?
• Your Ancestor's Location is Critically Important
• Prepare to Walk Along Your Ancestors' Streets