Semi-Automated Process for Downloading Antenati Images

Done in batches, this process lets you download as many Antenati vital record images as you want.

Remember the good old days when you could download an entire town's vital records from Antenati? I'm glad I grabbed all my main ancestral hometowns while I had the chance. But there are still more vital record collections I'd love to have at my fingertips.

Both the Italian Antenati website and FamilySearch block the use of mass-download programs. They may be trying to avoid taxing their web servers. But it could be in their contract with the localities that they prevent these activities. There's nothing we users can do about it.

While mass downloads are gone, we can do…let's call them "group downloads." I've heard from enough readers to know that the desire to collect these groups of files is there. That's why I want to share my semi-automated process for downloading Antenati files.

Granted, if the register book you want has tons of pages, this will be an ordeal. It may scare you away, or you may decide to tackle it over the course of a few days. But, if the book you want is small enough, you'll absolutely want to do this.

Some of my ancestors came from an Italian town with a handful of frazioni. A frazione is like a hamlet—a semi-independent part of a town. Think of a large city like Brooklyn, New York. It's many residential sections each have their own identity. There's Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Liberty Park. These sections are a lot like frazioni in Italy.

Some of the people in my family tree have birth records I'm missing because they came from a frazione of the town. I want to gather the records from the frazioni I'm missing.

Montorso is a frazione with 5 birth registers available on Antenati (1862–1866). In later years, they stored their vital records with the larger town. That's how some people born in Montorso made it into my family tree. The Montorso registers are very small, so I'm going to download all the files.

The 1866 birth register has 6 images, but only 3 contain birth records. The others are the book cover, title page, and a blank page at the end of the book. I want images 3, 4, and 5.

Let's Get Started

Here's the process, and it's the only way to get to the high-resolution images:

1. Go to each image you want to download and copy its URL to a text file on your computer. The URL changes the instant you click a new page, even if the image doesn't render right away.
   • In this case, the URLs are:
     • https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua2286280/02R93aK
     • https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua2286280/5gGRdap
     • https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua2286280/LPa47oY
2. The last 7 characters of each URL on Antenati, the part after the last /, is a code that's unique to that image. Your goal: Put that code in the following template, replacing the word TARGET: https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg
   
   The result is this:
   • https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/02R93aK/full/full/0/default.jpg
   • https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/5gGRdap/full/full/0/default.jpg
   • https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/LPa47oY/full/full/0/default.jpg
3. Click each new link (or paste it into a web browser), give it a moment to display, then right-click and save the image to your computer.

When you create a longer list of image URLs from the same register book, you can complete this task with a more automated process:

• In your text editor, Find & Replace everything before the unique 7-character code with https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/ (that's the first part of the template URL). You can do this to the entire list at once because each URL has the same beginning.
  
• Paste /full/full/0/default.jpg at the end of each line in your list (that's the end of the template URL). Take a look at the image at the top of this article to see the before and after text files.
  

There's no download button on Antenati, but here's a download process you can use over and over.

I use a free Windows text editor called Notepad++ (get it at https://notepad-plus-plus.org). As a retired website manager, I used to work in HTML code every day. I still HTML-code these blog articles and my own website. Notepad++ has always saved me tons of time and ensured my accuracy.

A big Notepad++ benefit for this project is that any URL in a text file is a clickable link. When you make a list of URLs, it's easy to click through them, go to the browser page, and right-click to save the file. Be sure to give each file you download a different name:

• First, create a folder for the town. In this case, Montorso.
• Then make a sub-folder for the year and type of document, such as 1866 births.
• When you right-click the high-resolution images in your web browser, save them as 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg. This keeps the files in the proper order for you.

Yes, this is tedious for a large town and nearly unthinkable for a big city. But if the town's vital records are important to your research, you'll be happy you went to the trouble. Be sure to take breaks or your mousing arm will get sore!

When I prepared to download the 1865 birth records for Montorso, I saw that the register has 21 images. But looking at the thumbnail images, I found that I needed to download only 12 of them. The rest were cover pages and blank pages. Keep an eye out for duplicate images, too. When this happens, you can decide which one is better and skip the other.

When you have a whole collection at your fingertips, you'll make new discoveries. Like, your 2nd great grandmother and her first cousin were born the same day. Or your great grandmother was a twin and you didn't know it! (That happened to me.)

If you have Italian ancestry and you're not using the Antenati website, you probably haven't gotten very far. Find out exactly how the use the Antenati with these articles:

• How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives
• How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website

2 Keys to Tackling a Big Family Tree Project

Parallel genealogy tasks get you to the goal while keeping things interesting.

Five weeks. That's how long I've been grinding away on one huge family tree project. I wrote about my missing source citations project 5 weeks ago and have been working on it ever since.

How did I get into this mess of missing citations? I forged ahead with my goal of connecting everyone from my ancestral hometowns. I skipped the citations because all the vital record images are on my computer. And I spent time renaming the images to make them searchable.

Since I can find any document again in a snap, I postponed citations in favor of family building. But I went too far.

Using Family Tree Analyzer, I generated a list of 70,000 people with zero source citations. OMG! My entire tree has 80,867 people and 70,000 of them have no citations?

I designed a process that let's me make measurable progress each day. First I made a change to the spreadsheet I created with Family Tree Analyzer. I sorted it by 2 fields:

• Relation to Root. This lets me work on closest relatives first. I have tons of people with very distant relationships to me.
• Surname. This groups siblings together so I can work on an entire family without moving around in my family tree a lot. That saves time. I search for one name and work through the whole family.

But I still have more than 69,000 people left to address! After 5 weeks!!

The sheer volume is why I had to put two things in place to make me efficient and keep my sanity.

Efficiency

I'm very good about adding citations the moment I find documentation on Ancestry.com. It's the tons and tons of Italian vital records I've let slide. About 99% of these documents come from the Antenati Portale. Their missing citations will all follow the same pattern.

That means I can use a single template and make a few edits for each fact. I'm a big believer in templates. Think of a source citation template as a stencil. A stencil makes it easy to repeat a perfect pattern or make uniform letters time after time.

This is my template for Italian vital records:

From the PROVINCE State Archives, YEAR TYPE, TOWN, document xx, image xx of xx at URL; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg

I change the variables to match the document:

• PROVINCE becomes the province in Italy. In my family tree, the province is usually Benevento, Avellino, Campobasso, or Foggia.
• YEAR becomes the year of the book in which you can find the document.
• TYPE can be birth, death, marriage, marriage banns, and a couple of other types. I like to use the Italian words: nati, morti, matrimoni, matrimoni pubblicazione.
• TOWN is the town in Italy. They store Italian vital records by town.
• The xx's become the record number on the document, the image number and number of images in the book. For example, document 20, image 12 of 25.
• URL is the link for the exact document on the Antenati portal. (Sometimes the link goes to FamilySearch.org.)
  
• The next piece, https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg, is a fabulous trick. It links to a high-resolution version of any image on Antenati. Every document URL on Antenati ends in a 7-character code—a combination of numbers and letters. If you replace the word TARGET in the URL above with that code, you can go to the high-res image and save it.

Here's an example. I edit the template and the source citation for the 1818 marriage of Antonio Maria Teresa becomes:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1818 matrimoni, Baselice, document 20, image 12 of 25 at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua757297/0AR6Jg3; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/0AR6Jg3/full/full/0/default.jpg

Go ahead and click those 2 links. You'll see the book version and high-resolution version of the marriage record.

Because I know each citation takes only a minute or two to complete, I keep pushing. One more family before I take a break from my desk. Another family before I take a sanity break.

Sanity

Some days I finish as many as 110 source citations. But it gets tedious after a few hours. That's when I need to save my sanity while still making progress.

When I start losing motivation, I switch to a parallel task. A parallel task is another goal I'm working on that adds a new name or date to my family tree. That new detail needs a source citation. And while I'm there, I check their immediate family. I make sure they all get their source citations.

One parallel task is finding the birth record of an out-of-towner who married into my family tree. I sort everyone in my family tree by birth date and hunt down those with an incomplete birth date. I've been having great success, so it's a gratifying project.

Another parallel task is adding cousins from a town I haven't explored fully. The other day I brought one ancestor's family forward a few generations. Then I found one of these cousin's granddaughters in my DNA matches. Now I know this cousin came to America. And my brother used to live in his hometown.

This combination of efficiency and sanity are how I tackle even the most tedious tasks. It's been my mental trick since I was a kid. I may follow an unusual pattern, but I get the job done.

Do you have an ambitious family tree project to tackle? How can you chop it up, mix it up, and keep things interesting as you make progress?

Which Numbers Help Solve a DNA Match?

Trying to solve a mystery DNA match? An extensive family tree is more important than the centiMorgans (cMs) you share. Often it's only when you place a match in your family tree that you see your true relationship.

When you look at the different values assigned to your DNA matches, which number matters most? My answer isn't what you'd expect.

When I want to figure out a new DNA match, I consult the Shared cM Project tool created by Blaine T. Bettinger. You can find it on the DNA Painter website. The tool can suggest your likely relationship to a DNA match based on the number of cMs you share. The chart itself tells you:

• the average number of cMs you might share with a type of relative
• a likely range of cMs you can expect to see for each type of relative.

My family tree has tons of cousins with more than one relationship to me. Our roots are so deep in one little town that we're related to everyone who lived there. I want to see how all the intermarriage in my little towns might affect my DNA numbers.

Seeing How Your DNA Matches Score

For this exercise, I copied Bettinger's Shared cM chart into a spreadsheet so I can add cM values for my DNA matches. (This copy is available for you to download.) For each match that I added to the chart (in red ink), I included the hometown(s) of our shared ancestors. The town name showed that I have a higher number of shared cMs with cousins connected to Pastene, Italy.

One reason for this higher amount of DNA may be the small size of this hamlet. It's basically one street! Families were intermarrying there for hundreds of years. My great grandparents Giovanni and Maria Rosa came from Pastene. Some of their descendants and their siblings' descendants have tested with AncestryDNA.

I must say I expected to see lots of DNA matches with cMs that went far above the range in the Shared cM Project tool. Since I have multiple relationships with so many people, I thought the cMs would stack up higher. In reality, I found only one match who went above the cM range—a 6th cousin twice removed.

This DNA match (A.S.) shares 58 cM with me when the average for our relationship is 13 cM and the range is 0 to 45 cM. Here's why our shared cMs are high. A.S. and I share:

• my 5th great grandparents Innocenzo and Anna (that's the 6C2R relationship)
• my double 6th great grandparents Giuseppe and Maria (that makes A.S. my 7C1R)
• my 7th great grandparents Pasquale and Maria (that makes A.S. my 8C1R)
• my 7th great grandfather Giancamillo (that makes A.S. my 8C2R)

It seems shared cMs alone can't predict complex relationships every time.

This chart shows a higher concentration of shared DNA coming from one of my ancestral hometowns. What will yours show?

Exploring Another Variable

"Unweighted shared DNA" is a factor when you have deep roots in the same place or ethnicity.

If you have an AncestryDNA account, you can view this value for any DNA match in your list. Click the blue, linked description beneath their relationship label. For instance, for my 3rd cousin, I see "82 cM | 1% shared DNA."

Looking at my DNA match A.S., I see that we:

• share 58 cM across 3 segments
• have a longest segment of 30 cM
• have 60 cM of unweighted shared DNA—2 cM more than the 58 cM of shared DNA.

You may be as curious about the unweighted shared DNA as I am. Here's AncestryDNA's definition:

Unweighted shared DNA is the total amount of identical DNA two people share, including DNA that is shared for reasons other than a recent common ancestor, such as being from the same ethnicity or community. Because of that, unweighted shared DNA will almost always be larger than shared DNA for distant relationships that share 90 cM or less.

So that's why so many DNA matches appear to be closer than they are. I knew there was some extra DNA just from having deep roots in the same soil, but this puts a value on it.

To test this out, I looked at the DNA breakdown for lots of my identified DNA matches. In general, the unweighted shared DNA for my 3rd cousins or closer was exactly the same as their shared DNA. Many of my more-distant cousins had from 1 to 5 cM more unweighted shared DNA than shared DNA. But some of the distant cousins didn't have any extra unweighted shared DNA at all.

Searching for the Magic Number

Unweighted shared DNA isn't enough to help us understand our relationship to a DNA match. So I looked at the third value: longest segment length. DNA experts say you should be able to identify a match with a longest segment of 50 cM or more. But I have only 40 matches with numbers that high.

Here's a small sampling of the under-50 shared cM DNA matches I've identified and placed in my family tree. These are not people I know or grew up with. Most have a very small family tree online. But thanks to my family tree, I found their grandparents or great grandparents.

• 5C1R, 48 cM, longest segment 10 cM
• 9C, 27 cM, longest segment 12 cM
• 5C2R, 41 cM, longest segment 13 cM
• 7C, 30 cM, longest segment 14 cM
• 6C, 26 cM, longest segment 15 cM
• 3C1R, 39 cM, longest segment 16 cM
• 5C1R, 24 cM, longest segment 18 cM
• 5C, 26 cM, longest segment 20 cM

Notice we share from 24–48 cM, and our longest shared segments range from 10–20 cM. AncestryDNA categorizes these matches as 4th–6th cousins or 5th–8th cousins. I was able to get so much more specific despite those short longest segments.

Well would you look at that? Here I am, yet again, hyping the value of a gigantic family tree. I like to crack new DNA matches to see what happened after the Italian vital records end. Who came to America? Who went to Canada, England, or Australia? Do people with roots in my Italian towns live near me today?

In the end, the best way to crack DNA matches is with your extensive, full-blown family tree.

And speaking of cracking DNA matches:

• Genealogy Skills Make You a Keen Detective
• 4 Best Ways to Learn from Your DNA Matches
• 4 Practical Methods for Identifying a DNA Match
• Follow Up on Genealogy Clues and Leads

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