How Can You Build Your Family Tree? We're Talking Practice!

While visiting my mom last June, I had some time to pass one afternoon. I pulled out my laptop to work on one of my genealogy projects. I was renaming a few downloaded Italian birth records to make them searchable. My format for renaming these files is:

• the document number
• the child's full name
• the word "di" (that's "of" in Italian)
• the father's first name.

For example: 1 Emiddio Pennucci di Nicola

With this format, I can easily search for every child of Nicola Pennucci. It's very powerful.

Spend time with lots of vital records from your ancestral hometown to become a pro at reading them and gathering the facts you need.

I gave my mom a peek a my computer screen. These were not the neatest vital records, but they weren't giving me any trouble. I showed her a birth record and pointed out the key facts. "Here's the baby's name and the day they were born. Here's the father's name and age, and over here is the mother's name and age. This column has the baptism date, and this part is their home address."

Her mouth dropped open. "How can you read that?"

"I learned," I told her. "It's all about practice."

Learn By Doing, Over and Over

The amount I've learned purely through practice hit home a couple of weeks ago. I was doing a document-by-document review of vital records from Grandpa Leone's hometown. Most of the people in these records were already in my family tree. I reviewed them all to see who I'd missed.

I found a few mistakes I'd made many years ago when I had my first look at this town's vital records. I thought they were silly mistakes. They were a little embarrassing. But I was completely new to Italian records back then, and viewing them on bad microfilm. I was lucky to make out any of the details.

Some of my earliest work included misspellings of names that are second-nature to me now. When I first learned Italian numbers, there were a couple that took me longer to memorize. (Numbers are important because they wrote dates and years in longhand.) So sometimes I got a date wrong.

Don't Miss Out on the Adventure!

Here's a hard truth. You can't join a Facebook genealogy group, say your family names, and expect someone to hand you your family tree. I see these requests every single day! No details. Just, "Here are my grandparents' names. Can anyone tell me about them?"

So here's my question for those who haven't done any research, and those who ask for a translation of every document they find. Why aren't you putting in the effort? You can—and will—learn so much by doing the work.

Family-tree building is a journey. Genealogy research is an intellectual exercise that will teach you many things. Isn't it better to walk the path and experience wonders along the way than to be dropped at the destination and sent straight home?

Take the First Step

If you don't know exactly where your ancestors came from, finding out is your first task. Putting your ancestors' names out there and hoping to find a relative with all the answers is folly. When you discover their hometown, you can search for vital records to help you understand their lives.

If you don't know their hometown, and you've already asked your entire family if they know, you can:

• Search for your ancestor's paper-trail of documents. For an immigrant, a ship manifest or naturalization papers may say where they came from. A census will almost never have the answer, but draft cards and applications may.
• Take a DNA test and see where your closest matches' roots are.
• Search Ancestry or FamilySearch for your ancestor's last name and see where others with that name came from.

I'm lucky that both my grandfathers told us where they came from. When a cousin-in-law told me how my 2nd great grandmother pronounced her hometown, I used a favorite trick to figure it out. She had a common last name, Caruso, that comes from many places in Italy.

I searched Ancestry passenger lists for any Caruso arriving in America in the early 1900s. Then I scanned the results for their hometowns. When I spotted the right one, I said it aloud. I had no doubt I'd found her hometown!

When her hometown's vital records appeared on the Antenati website, I found my 2nd great grandmother's birth record. I discovered she was a twin, but her twin brother died immediately. Now knowing her parents' names, I searched for and found all her brothers. Then her aunts and uncles. And their families. And generations of ancestors.

Her hometown was the key to EVERYTHING.

Learn Enough of a Language to Get the Goods

Don't let the sight of a foreign vital record overwhelm you. You don't need to translate every single word on the document. Have you ever filled in a standard form? Do you need to read every single word or do you just start entering your name and address?

Vital records are like a form-letter where there's a bunch of standard wording. It's the unique facts that you want. Who cares who they mayor was when your ancestor was born? You want to know baby's name, the date, the place, the parents' names and ages, and maybe check out the witnesses.

The FamilySearch Wiki gives you the genealogy keywords to look for on vital records in tons of languages. Thanks to the Wiki, I can read Latin records, but I keep that Wiki bookmark handy.

Ancestor's birth record in another language? Relax. You don't have to read every word.

Last week I translated the important parts of an Italian vital record for a stranger on Facebook. The handwriting was quite neat. When I gave her the translation, she asked, "How did you do that?" The answer is practice.

I spend so much time looking at Italian vital records from my ancestral hometowns that:

• I know the town's names so well I can overcome bad handwriting.
• I literally dream of translating documents. That's why I like to say I can translate the records in my sleep.

There's no reason you can't learn what you need to translate your ancestors' vital records. Sure, some documents are notoriously hard to read. When that happens, maybe you'll want to reach out to the genealogy community for help. Or maybe you'll figure it out for yourself.

One time I discovered a new ancestor who came from another town. Her unique last name was impossible to read. But I had a few options, and I did figure out her name.

Now you've got to ask yourself what you want. Do you want a stranger to hand you a family tree that may or may not be yours? Or do you want do actively discover your ancestors? You. Can. Do. This.

Here's more help with Italian vital records:

• How to Read an Italian Birth Record
• How to Read an Italian Death Record
• How to Read Italian Marriage Records

How to Use DNA Matches to Go Beyond Vital Records

As I've explained to death, I'm fitting every vital record from my hometowns into one huge family tree. (See "Why Your Half 4th Cousin Once Removed Matters.") But the vital records have limitations. In my towns, there are no civil records before 1809, deaths and marriages end in 1860, and births end in 1915. Then there's a brief hurrah from 1931–1942 with death and marriage records only.

That means I have tons of people who become a loose end. If they married from 1861–1930, and it isn't written on their birth record, I don't know who they married. I don't know what became of them.

This simple technique can lead you to research that ties up loose ends in your family tree.

That's where DNA matches come in. Because of my obsessive research, I've never found a DNA match who can help me get back further in my family tree. But they can bring me forward! They know who their grandparent married.

Today I'm going to seek out a DNA match who can tie up loose ends for me. I'm looking through my dad's DNA matches for anyone with a decent-sized family tree.

I look at a match's direct ancestors in the tree preview Ancestry shows on the match page. Which last names do I recognize? I found a match where I recognize a few names on her maternal side. On this branch I see 4 last names I know, and they're all from the town my maiden name comes from—Colle Sannita:

• Finelli
• Mascia
• Basilone
• Galasso

I found both of this DNA match's maternal grandparents in my family tree already. But I had no way of knowing they married one another. Her grandfather Angelo is my 5C2R (5th cousin twice removed). Her grandmother Maria Grazia is my 4C3R. The combination of my 5C2R marrying my 4C3R may be making this match look like a closer relative than she is.

She's categorized in my dad's 4th–6th cousin range because they share 36cM. But those 36cM come from 4 different segments. Their longest segment is only 10cM. They may be as distant as 7th cousins. (Now that this DNA match is in my family tree, I can see she's my dad's 6th cousin. That relationship is not among the possibilities listed on Ancestry. It's far more distant.)

Her family tree says Angelo married Maria Grazia and they had a child in New York. With that hint, I can research the couple in America for proof of their relationship. Here's what I found:

• Angelo's draft registration card confirms his birth date (I have the Italian birth record). It says his wife is Grace (an Anglicized Grazia).
• Grace's U.S. naturalization record confirms her maiden name and town of birth. Her birthday is the same as on her Italian birth record, but the year is off by one. The document lists her 5 children with their birth dates. I love when that happens. One of the kids is the DNA match's mother.
• The 1920 U.S. census shows Angelo and Grace living with their children and Angelo's parents. Angelo's birth record confirms his parents' names.
• The NYC Municipal Archives website has their 1908 marriage certificate. (How cool is it that they lived a few doors away from my grandmother?) Their parents' names are on the certificate, removing any possible remaining doubt.

It bothers me so much that the vital records for my towns have so many limitations. What became of all those 1880s babies? Who did they marry? When did they die?

Now that I've shown how a match's family tree can provide the right clues, I know I can tie up more and more loose ends.

Set Yourself Up for Success

To tie up loose ends in your family tree using your DNA matches:

• Filter your DNA match list to those with a linked public family tree. Make sure the tree has more than 10 people in it.
• Choose a match and scan their direct ancestors for familiar last names.
• Check to see if one of their people is in, or can fit into, your family tree.

Choose the best candidates among your DNA matches to find the answers that were out of your reach.

Don't stop there. Unless your match has sources and documents in their family tree, treat their data as hints. Do the research yourself and find the proof you need. In the end, you'll know exactly how you're related to your DNA match.

But better than that, you'll start tying up those loose ends.

Why Your Half 4th Cousin Once Removed Matters

I've just finished the second of my most ambitious genealogy research projects. I created inventories of available vital records from my ancestral hometowns. Then I reviewed each document, placing about 95% of the people into my family tree.

First I did my Grandpa Iamarino's town of Colle Sannita. Now I've wrapped up my Grandpa Leone's neighboring town of Baselice. I've shared 5 inventory spreadsheets on my www.forthecousins.com website. And I'll have another town ready soon (Circello).

No matter how distant the relationship, there's value to every connection in your ancestral hometown.

The reason 95% of the people from the documents can fit in my family tree is that the towns are remote. They were even more isolated before automobiles. Everyone in town was likely to marry a neighbor. The 5% of people I can't fit into my tree are:

• out-of-towners or
• members of noble families who married other aristocrats.

Why Spend All That Time?

The benefits of this time-consuming project include:

• Gaining familiarity with all the last names in town.
• Overcoming bad handwriting because of that familiarity.
• Finding connections to DNA matches because their people are in your tree.
• Knowing exactly who everyone in town was and their relationship to you.

The first step in such a project is making your inventory. View the town's documents online (find Italian vital records on Antenati or FamilySearch). Then make a brief entry in a spreadsheet for each image. My preferred format is: document number name of subject "di" father's name. (The word "di" is Italian for of, and that's how these documents denote the father's name: di Giovanni, di Antonio, etc.)

An example is: 82 Adamo Leone di Giovanni & 83 Antonia Maria Colucci di Leonardo. That's a single document image showing 2 birth records. Document #82 is my grandfather's 1891 birth record. He is the subject of the document and his father is Giovanni. Also in the image is document #83 for Antonia Maria Colucci, daughter of Leonardo.

The towns of Colle Sannita and Baselice each had under 3,000 inhabitants in he 1800s. The vital records have added at least 30,000 people to my family tree. I have a complete inventory for the town of Pesco Sannita ready and waiting for my review. I'll go through the same process with Pesco as I did for Colle and Baselice:

• View each vital record to see if the subject, their parents, or their spouse are already in my family tree.
• When I can find where this person fits, add the facts from the document, including dates, places, and the names of family members.
• If I can't find a place for this person in my tree, I highlight that line in the spreadsheet in yellow. It's very possible that their connection will show up after I review more documents. I'll make a second pass through the spreadsheet later to see if they can fit.

I've listed the benefits of this project and explained my process. But you may still be wondering why it's worth such a huge commitment of time. Three reasons spring to mind:

1. Connection. Familiarity with the people from my hometowns gives me a strong connection to these places. They aren't merely the quaint and beautiful towns I've visited a few times. They are me! I love knowing how deep my roots go in each town.
2. Knowledge. Often I see people on Facebook asking how they can learn more about their ancestors' day-to-day lives. If you come from a remote town and you're not descended from nobility, you're not going to find their journal tucked away in some archive. They were likely illiterate and living a life of hard work. You may find some general writings about life in that area at a certain time. A history of your ancestral town may provide those types of clues. Otherwise, all you can learn about your ancestor is that they came from this family, married this person, had this job, had these children, and died. Those family names and dates are what you can discover in the town's vital records.
3. DNA Matches. Because I've studied my ancestral hometowns' documents, I can quickly recognize my entry point into a DNA match's family tree. If you're only looking at a match's tree for your last name, you're missing out on that entry point.

The title of this article mentions a half 4th cousin once removed. I chose someone from my family tree randomly. This cousin is a descendant of my 4th great grandfather Gennaro Pilla and his second wife. Gennaro had 2 children with my 4th great grandmother, and 5 children with his 2nd wife. That's 5 threads I'd have missed if I paid attention only to my direct line. And this particular half 4C1R led me to his son, my half 5th cousin John, who introduced me to a ton of relatives in Canada. I met lots of people with my maiden name on that trip to Canada. That's a rarity.

I love being able to encompass entire towns with my family tree. If you're staying on the straight-and-narrow, gathering information about your direct ancestors only, you're missing out on so many connections!