Apply Your Genealogy Superpower to Other Families

Use your genealogy superpower in unexpected ways. I built a celebrity's family tree and discovered he fits into my tree!

Genealogy skills are a superpower. Researching your own family history teaches you how to go back another generation. Sometimes it's a lot of fun to flex your genealogy muscles on someone else's family tree. Inspiration for this type of project can come from anywhere.

In the past, I was inspired by memorials in my grandfathers' hometowns or questions posted in Facebook genealogy groups. TV has played an inspiring role, too.

An Old Movie Triggers a Question

I watched a 1952 Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis movie on TCM called "Sailor Beware." I knew James Dean was in one scene, and I spotted him before I had remembered to look for him. But I also noticed one sailor who was in a lot of scenes but may not have said a word. It was actor Vince Edwards in his second-ever movie role. Vince was in a TV show called "Ben Casey" when I was too young to remember watching.

I started to wonder about Vince, with my first thought being, "He looks so Italian. How can his name be Edwards?" So I looked him up and discovered he was the son of Italian immigrants living in Brooklyn, New York. With a little more digging, I found his real last name was Zoino.

Bells went off immediately. I know that name from a couple of Italian towns that were home to my maternal grandmother's ancestors. Today you can find that name in the city of Benevento.

To begin, I went to the 1930 census to find Vince as a two year old. Then I search Ancestry records for Vince's father Vincenzo Zoino. I had his birth date and place narrowed down to two men: one from Avellino and one from Benevento. A set of naturalization papers ruled out the man from Avellino.

I went to the Antenati portal to find the right Vincenzo's 1887 birth record from the city of Benevento. With a bit more digging, I found Vince's mother's Benevento birth record, too. Both her parents had last names I've seen often in my own research.

I texted my mom to tell her that "Ben Casey" was our paesan. Not a relative, but a close countryman.

"Finding Your Roots" Strikes a Chord

A couple of years ago an episode of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "Finding Your Roots" featured Tony Danza. The moment the show began, I wondered if his name used to be Iadanza—a name I know from my own research.

Sure enough, Tony Danza's grandfather was Antonio Iadanza. He came from exactly the town I thought he should: Pietrelcina. This town neighbors my great grandmother's town of Pesco Sannita in Benevento.

I went up to my TV and took a photo when they showed Tony's family tree. Now I knew who to search for. I'd already downloaded all the Pietrelcina vital records from the Antenati website. I knew the town had plenty of intermarriage with Pesco Sannita and I'd need those records sooner or later. Having them on my computer made it easier to piece together Tony's ancestors.

I got as far back as two pairs of Tony's 6th great grandparents born in the early 1700s.

A genealogy hunch became reality with good old-fashioned research. Now this celebrity's family tree fits within mine.

The fun part of this research is that Tony and his ancestors fit into my family tree. Are Tony and I cousins? No. But his grandmother, Giovanna Zarro, has 22 different connections to my family tree. Each one ties back to my ancestors from neighboring Pesco Sannita.

I think it's fun to have Tony Danza in my family tree. And he could very well share some "Identical By State" DNA with me. (For insight into "Identical By State" DNA, see "This Spreadsheet Sorts DNA Matches By Branch.")

Use Your Superpower for Good

Keep your eyes open for a genealogy challenge that means something to you. Anyone with Benevento or Avellino roots is going to grab my attention.

Does someone have a last name from your family? My Girardi ancestors led me to research Joe Girardi, former manager of the New York Yankees. It turns out his family is from Northern Italy, so there's no relation. I have a 3rd cousin I never met who was a child actor. When he was a regular on a TV show, I saw his last name and had to wonder—is he one of ours? Now I know he is!

Is there someone you admire whose roots make you curious? See what you can learn about them. You may need to find an article to learn their parents' or grandparents' names. Then use the census, ship manifests, draft cards, naturalization papers and more to dig deeper. Prove to yourself how accomplished you are at this genealogy hobby!

How to Become a Genealogy Efficiency Expert

A production line mentality is 1 of 4 concepts to make you a family tree efficiency expert.

I started this blog because my business approach to genealogy was somewhat unique. I build my family tree using as much discipline and efficiency as I used on the job. That approach made me more productive than my work colleagues. Now it's the reason why I make so much progress on my tree each day.

Family tree-building efficiency boils down to these 4 concepts.

1. Stay in One Place

I had a great time last month following "6 Steps to Finding Your Living Cousins." But there were times when I felt overwhelmed and had to take a break. I got bogged down in processing all the different types of documents, facts, and citations. If I started with one man born in Italy, and tried to find his living descendants, I had to find:

• His immigration record, extract the facts, and add the source citations.
• His census records, add new family members, addresses, dates, jobs, and give everyone their source citations.
• Vital records for each family member and add facts and source citations.
• Obituaries, search for any new names, gather more facts, and add source citations.

It could take all day to do this for one immigrant in my family tree. Having so many types of documents to find felt exhausting.

But, if you choose one type of resource, you'll spend less time moving around. You won't have to think as much because you're repeating the same few steps over and over.

Here's an example. What if you had a book filled with information that applies to certain people in your family tree. Instead of finding every document for those people, work through the book. You'll fall into an efficient pattern of work.

I own one such book (see "Imagine a Register of Your Entire Ancestral Hometown"). It's a detailed description of more than 500 households in my grandfather's hometown. As I worked through the households, it became easy to follow the same steps:

• Locate the right family.
• Go to the head of household and copy the book's description of his assets and family members to his notes.
• Create the source citation and copy it to each member of the household.
• Move on to the next household.

It's more efficient to cite one source for the whole family, than to find every document for the whole family. You'll get to them later.

Here's an example my fellow Italian genealogy researchers can relate to. I've gone back to my unfinished project of creating my missing source citations. (See "These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable"). The majority of these citations are for Italian vital records. I've been skipping the citations because the documents are on my computer, and I can find them in a snap.

But I want my online family tree to be a resource for anyone with roots in the same ancestral hometowns as mine. So I have to find the documents online (on the Antenati website) to get the URL and image number to add to my citation.

The most time-consuming part of the process was locating pre-1809* birth and death records. You can only find these documents in the priceless matrimoni processetti. (See "The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: 'Wedding Packets'").

*Italian civil records may exist as early as 1805, but for all my Italian towns, the records begin in mid-1809. One exception is a town that didn't start civil record keeping until 1861.

The only problem is, there are a lot of pages in each year's processetti, and they can be in no particular order. Finding the page I need to cite can take a while. I needed a way to simplify this process.

Here's what I did to save all that search time. This works well for me because every person in the town is in my family tree. I'm going through each page of a given year's processetti one-by-one. For every pre-1809 birth or death, I check the person in my tree to see if I need the citation. If yes, I create it immediately. If no, I move on.

Working through this one resource, eliminating the tedious searches, saves a lot of time. And on top of that, I save more time by using the next concept.

2. Reduce Keystrokes

In 1985 I worked for a printing company. I generated templates on a computer, printed them on a plotter, and cut and folded them to look like the finished product—a direct mail piece. These templates were a guideline for creating the piece's text and artwork.

Words can be a template, too. I keep a handful of source citation templates handy so my citations are consistent. They also reduce the amount of typing you have to do. Anything that reduces keystrokes can save time and avoid errors.

Here are 3 source citation templates I keep handy. For each one, I add the right numbers and replace CAPITALIZED words to keep a consistent format.

1. For New York City Municipal Archives vital records: New York City Municipal Archives; NYC Department of Records & Information Services; YEAR BOROUGH TYPE certificate #xx; URL
2. For a resource of fallen soldiers from the Benevento province of Italy: From the Benevento State Archives, military records, fallen soldiers; register #xx, record #xx, class #xx; page URL, PDF URL
3. For any vital record from Antenati: From the PROVINCE State Archives, YEAR TYPE, TOWN, document xx, image xx of xx at bookURL; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg

3. Form a Production Line

Factories use production lines to save time, increase efficiency, and ensure quality. To get through so many searches for living relatives, I used a production line mentality.

I knew I had to search for several documents:

• ship manifests
• naturalization papers
• censuses
• draft registration cards
• vital records
• obituaries.

Keeping one person as my focus, I went through each stop on the production line. I searched for each document. I added the facts to my tree, made the source citation, and copied facts and citations as needed.

I kept my eye on the production line to produce a complete, accurate, quality product each time. But you can bet production line workers get bored, so on to concept 4.

4. Keep Yourself Happy

Boredom can keep you from getting the job done. If you get bored with one task, pick a logical stopping point, and jump to another task that suits your mood.

When I'm working through those big matrimoni processetti collections, it can get overwhelming. When I finish one year, I may dread starting the next year. Of course I always want to make progress, so what's the answer? Jump to another task.

After finishing one year's processetti, I went back to my list of people missing citations. (Find out how to generate your list in "These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable"). Then I picked off people whose early birth records were already cited. All I had to do was track down their marriage and death records. That made me happy because the hard part was already done.

Reap the Benefits of Efficiency

If you're ever frustrated by your genealogy research, try adding these efficiency measures. Don't follow whims and bounce all around. It's inefficient! Focus on what you need to do to increase the value of your family tree. Always remember that your family tree is your legacy.

Pay attention to what you're doing and look for ways to save steps, reduce keystrokes, form a production line, and stay happy. Of course you're happy. You're doing genealogy! Best. Puzzle. Ever.

And speaking of efficiency:

• 4 Ways to Fit Genealogy into Your Busy Day
• This Genealogy Research Log Boosts Your Efficiency
• 4 Ways to Make Big Genealogy Progress When You Have Little Time

Time-Travel With Vintage Landmark Photos

Take a virtual trip back in time to see world-famous landmarks, cities, and your own hometown the way your ancestors saw them.

I was looking at an 1850 photo of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Then I looked at a similar photo I took in 2015. European landmarks don't change that much. If they survived wars, they're still there, looking as grand as ever.

America is different. It's all about change. We demolish our sports arenas every 30 years or so and rebuild. My mom's childhood home is long gone, replaced by a school sports field. Even our family churches are gone or repurposed.

I started my time travel adventure with a landmark church a few miles from my home. The Library of Congress website has a 1907 photo of Trinity Church. To compare that photo to more modern times, I used Google Street View and captured the same angle. The house next door and 3 tall monuments are the same. But the fence is gone, the large bell is new, and the telephone pole wires are really ugly.

Some of the more startling photos you'll find in this virtual time machine show famous landmarks with almost nothing around them. That's how they looked to your ancestors.

Here are six other websites where you can look at old photos of landmarks that mean something to you.

Redbook's "Vintage Photos of Cities Around the World"

This collection of 30 old photos covers many destinations you may have visited. Number 20, Québec City, looks exactly as it did when I visited in 2017. The end of town in the photo has a landmark hotel that, thankfully, still looks the same.

Condé Nast Traveler's "Vintage Photos of the World's Most Famous Landmarks"

Seeing the Golden Gate Bridge under construction looks like a modern-day disaster film. The photo of people hanging out of the Statue of Liberty's crown makes me dizzy. This collection has a lot of Italian landmarks I've visited. It's fun to see them pictured decades ago.

MSN's "Then and now: vintage photos"

This slide show let's you compare then and now. The before-and-after of Dubai is particularly jaw-dropping. The Times Square photos show what my immigrant ancestors saw when they arrived. The high-angle photos of the Arc de Triomphe point out one key change Paris made to this landmark.

BoredPanda's "31 Before-And-After Pics"

Several cities in this group changed so much, they've rewritten the book on city planning. The 1945 photo of Berlin is frightening because you can see so much destruction. But the "now" photo is from the 1990s. Some of the comments on this page are funny, too.

OldNYC

This interactive website lets you set a time range and zoom into the map. Pick any location with a dot to view photos. I found photos of The Dakota, where John and Yoko lived, with no other buildings around it in 1920. I'm not sure Central Park West was even paved. And I found a beautiful photo of New York's Plaza Hotel in 1908. It's more impressive than I remember.

One more.

Far & Wide's "Then and Now Pictures of Cities"

This page features a jam-packed photo of New York City in 1904 that I can't even imagine. Street cars, horses and wagons, early automobiles, and pedestrians, all on a collision course. It looks terrifying.

I've been tracking down DNA matches (see "How to Solve a DNA Match Using Shared Matches") and finding living relatives (see "6 Steps to Finding Your Living Cousins") for weeks. This week I'll get back to adding missing source citations (see "3 Important Tips for Great Genealogy Source Citations"). This then-and-now journey is both a nice break and a cool way to understand how your ancestors lived and what they saw.