The Dangerous Jobs Your Ancestors Endured

When you look at early 1900s ship manifests, one thing is very clear. Rich people didn't leave their homeland. They didn't need to leave. Anyone related to me arrived in New York City with a few dollars in their pockets and nothing more. They were lucky to have scraped together enough money for the ticket.

Fourteen-and-a-half million people came to the United States between 1890 and 1920. They came to earning a living and escape hardship. Their numbers are staggering:

• nearly 4 million Italians
• almost 3 million Eastern Europeans
• more than 2 million Germans
• close to 2 million from Austria-Hungary
• 1¼ million from the UK and Ireland
• just over 1 million from Mexico
• ½ million from Scandinavia
• less than ½ million from Canada
• almost 1½ million from other countries

Read about what was going on in their homeland when your ancestors emigrated. After visiting Italy, I couldn't imagine why my ancestors left such a beautiful place. But history was never kind to Southern Italy. My grandfathers and some of their ancestors needed employment. They heard about the availability of jobs in other countries, so they left home.

How does your life compare to your recent ancestors' lives? A little research adds eye-opening insight to your family tree.

Hard Work Was Their Only Option

When the 14½ million did arrive, were their lives better? Well, they were alive. They were able to secure jobs. They managed to start families and raise their children. But these immigrants often worked the most difficult, dirty, and downright dangerous jobs.

During these years, most men in my family tree worked for:

• railroads
• steel manufacturing plants
• coal mines

These jobs had long hours, low pay, and almost no safety oversight.

My great grandfather Pasquale's job was to clean the boiler in locomotive trains. He was scrubbing the caked-up coal residue off the walls of the boiler. Were there any safety precautions? No. Did he develop black lung disease? Yes, he did.

My grandfather Pietro worked in two steel mills before getting fed up with the work and leaving. (The second part sounds like me!) He wanted a job that wasn't as likely to kill or maim him. He moved his family to New York City and landed a job as a stone setter for a jewelry manufacturer. He sat at a workbench all day and used hand tools. My grandmother Lucy worked, as so many women in New York City did at the time, for a clothing manufacturer. Talk about specialization, her job was to snip off the extra bit of thread around button holes on shirts. Together they earned enough money to raise and educate their children. They were lucky.

Many of Pietro's friends from the old country went to work in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania. Every day they risked:

• collapsing cavern roofs
• gas explosions
• suffocation
• black lung disease
• serious physical harm.

In the steel mills, men worked near open furnaces, gigantic ladles of liquid metal, and coke ovens. It wasn't uncommon for them to suffer serious burns, amputation, heatstroke, and worse.

The labor conditions for shipyard workers weren't any better. Injuries, many fatal, were common. Think about the wives and children of these injured men. Imagine how difficult their lives became without their primary wage-earner. But at least child labor was plentiful. All the little kids in the family could earn a pathetic wage for dangerous, difficult work, too!

My grandfather Adamo fared much better because he had a trade. Trained as a shoemaker, he worked for shoe manufacturers, and even opened up his own shoe repair shop. He was lucky to have a trade to keep him out of the mines, railyards, and steel plants.

Death-defying work conditions led to workers' unions. Was anyone in your family tree an organizer?

Class Struggles Lead to Progress

Both immigrants and native-born Americans had hoped for better lives than this. Imagine risking life and limb for 12 hours a day, six days a week, and still struggling to feed your family. While the titans of industry became obscenely wealthy, their workers fought to survive.

It's no wonder these conditions led to the formation of unions. Before unionization, workers were faceless cogs in the machinery. They had to stand together to force corporations to treat them with any decency at all. What a rough time it was to make your way in America.

Many of today's U.S. immigrants work in farming, construction, manufacturing, and healthcare. They're also finding work in hotels, restaurants, and warehouses. There are more safeguards in place than our ancestors enjoyed. But many workplaces slip through the cracks of oversight and safety regulations.

It's fascinating to think of how conditions can change for one family over a few generations. My ancestors left behind abject poverty. They each found different ways to provide for their families. A boiler cleaner, a stone setter, a shoemaker, a tavern keeper. The stone setter's children became an insurance executive and an IBM manager. Their children became an insurance executive, a television producer, a college sports commissioner, and a website manager. And we all take work safety conditions for granted.

My family improved their lot over a couple of generations. But today is day one in another immigrant family's story. They're struggling now so their grandchildren can have a safe job and a good education. The cycle continues on and on. We all hope for a better life for our children.

Take a closer look at your ancestors' occupations on their census forms. It's one thing to know that an ancestor worked for the city department of sanitation. It's quite another thing to research the conditions of that job in that place and at that time. It makes you feel lucky to be alive.

Note that I used Microsoft Copilot to ask questions and get summaries and links to more information. Here are a few resources I found to get you started:

• "Labor Strife during the Development of Industry in America, 1890-1920" from Rutgers University.
• "America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894 to 1915" from the Library of Congress.
• "American Labor in the 20th Century" from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

How to Find Location Errors in Your Family Tree

I love how family tree software uses predictive typing to keep us consistent. Predictive typing is a software feature that suggests words or phrases as you type. It can save you keystrokes and avoid typos.

I take advantage of this feature when entering addresses in my family tree. Why type out the full church address (Chiesa di San Leonardo Abate, Via Roma, 6, Baselice, Benevento, Campania, Italy) when I can type is "chiesa di san l" and choose the matching result?

But I've been adding facts to my family tree since 2002. I'm sure I've made mistakes. The places in our family tree need us to review them.

Let's see how the free Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) can help us find mistakes and inconsistencies.

Make that genealogy map work for you! Use this tool to find inconsistent place names in your family tree.

Your first step when using FTA is to generate your tree's latest GEDCOM file. If you use desktop family tree software, you can export a GEDCOM file from your software. If you work on your family tree online, go to your tree and export a GEDCOM file from the website.

Now open your GEDCOM in FTA and give it a moment to load. Then click the Export menu and choose Locations to Excel. This will open a spreadsheet in the generic *.csv format on your computer. Since I have Excel software, I'm prompted to save it in the Excel format right away.

Because genealogists love maps:

• Collect Important Family Places to 'Tour' Anytime
• 3 Spring Cleaning Tasks for Your Family Tree
• Without Vital Records, What Can You Do?

Get Your Places in Order

If your spreadsheet software allows, sort the contents by Country, Region, Subregion, Address, and Place, in that order. Scroll through and scan your spreadsheet for anomalies. Look for anything that strikes you as being a possible mistake. Highlight the suspicious Places in yellow so you can find and act on them later.

Here's one surprising thing I found. Looking at the town of Santa Paolina, Italy, I noticed two different church addresses. I thought I knew which one of them was wrong. But when I went to Google Maps, I realized I'd been using the wrong church name and address for this town! The bad information comes from an Italian parishes website I use often. From now on I'll have to double check its facts on the map.

Did a bad address creep into your family tree? I had one that came from a "reliable" source!

I switched to Family Tree Maker and looked at the Places tab. When I located the now-wrong church information, I was ready to make the correction. Here it's easy to overwrite all uses of the wrong address at once. With a copy and paste, I changed them all to the correct church name and address. This eliminated the wrong church from my family tree file. That will prevent the wrong church from showing up in predictive typing, too.

If your family tree is online only, open your GEDCOM file in your favorite text editor. This is how you'll see where you used the bad address. Search the entire file for the street address in question.

If the place is part of a birth, baptism, death, or residence fact, scroll up until you see a line beginning with 1 NAME. This shows you the name of the person in your family tree who needs you to fix this address. But if the address is part of a shared fact, like a marriage, look just above it for a line beginning with 1 HUSB or 1 WIFE. Copy either of their ID numbers (e.g., @I30048@) and scroll to the top of your GEDCOM file. Now search for another instance of that ID. I found a line showing 0 @I30048@ INDI. The very next line gave me the name I needed, 1 NAME Rocco Enrico /Gambino/.

Focus on the Street Address

There's another way to sort the Locations spreadsheet that will be useful to you. Try a new A to Z sort on the Place column only. When I did this I noticed three entries for 210 Ridgewood Avenue. Each one was in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. But they all showed different towns: Bellevue, Pittsburgh, and West View. What's going on there?

Use this free genealogy tool to find location errors in your family tree. Fix them and improve your consistency.

I looked for the street address in Family Tree Maker's Places tab, but you can search your GEDCOM file, too. All three instances belong to one man. His 1930 and 1940 censuses say the address is in the West View Borough of Pittsburgh. His World War II draft registration card says it's in Bellevue. His 1950 veterans compensation application says it's in Pittsburgh.

On Bing Maps* and Google Maps, I found that 210 Ridgewood Avenue is part of the West View borough of Pittsburgh. The front window of the nearest U.S. post office (seen on Google Maps) says, "West View Branch, Pittsburgh, PA". I'll use 210 Ridgewood Avenue, West View, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA, as the location. This puts a very accurate pin in the map within Family Tree Maker. The pin is right at the front door.

* I love Google Maps for its Street View, but Bing Maps points out the county or province and gives you the full information.

But why does his draft registration card say Bellevue? They wrote his address as 210 Ridgewood Ave., Bellevue, Allegheny Co., Penna., twice. On Google Maps, I found another Pittsburgh borough of Bellevue. It's right near West View, but it doesn't have a Ridgewood Avenue.

The logical answer was on the back of the draft card. The local draft board itself was not located in tiny West View, but in tiny Bellevue. It may have been a clerical error, or else that's how they were recording everyone they registered.

Without Family Tree Analyzer, there's only one way I could have found this discrepancy. I'd have to be looking at this man's list of facts in my family tree. Since he's the father-in-law of my 3rd cousin, that might never have happened. I'm glad to be able to sort this out today so I can see this cute little house in Google Street View.

I'm eager to work with this spreadsheet and add consistency to all my addresses.

Have Your Genealogy Plan B Ready to Go

My missing source citations project has exciting side effects. Revisiting some people uncovers my past errors. And sometimes I can merge two people because I found solid evidence that they're the same person.

Imagine how upset I was when I couldn't work on this project for about a week. A programming error broke the website I need the most for gathering source citations!

I needed a Genealogy Plan B so I could stay productive. Sometimes I go to Plan B late in the day when I'm getting tired of source citations. My usual Plan B is renaming the entire set of vital records I downloaded for my 3rd great grandmother's hometown of Apice. I've made tremendous progress, but I've got a ways to go.

The only problem with that Plan B is it makes me feeling like I'm neglecting my family tree. I needed something else. A Genealogy Plan B+ or a Plan C.

Take advantage of your GEDCOM file to see exactly who needs more research.

I don't remember which train of thought led me to it, but here's what I did. And it was super productive and fulfilling.

Eighty-five people in my tree have a special note in their birth date description field. It says their father was in America when they were born. This note is on their Italian birth records because it was the father's duty to report the birth. If he was away, the midwife or a grandparent would report the birth. Since this isn't the norm, they included an explanation. The reasons I've seen include:

• the weather was too bad to bring a newborn into town
• the father was ill
• the father was dead (look for a date!)
• the father was working somewhere in the countryside
• the father was out of the country, often in America.

Whenever I see that the father was in America, I add a stock phrase to the birth date description field:

• Her father was in America when she was born, or
• His father was in America when he was born.

Last week, searching for these fathers this became my Genealogy Plan B. I opened my GEDCOM file in Notepad++. This software has a GEDCOM language filter that makes the huge file easier to understand. I searched for every instance of "was in America".

One by one, I found these people in my Family Tree Maker file and began researching their father. Almost all were men who I didn't know had gone to America. I found their immigration records first. Then I searched for more U.S. documents, like draft registration cards and censuses. Sometimes I learned that they brought over their family and stayed here.

Many of the U.S. documents led me to discover later generations for the first time. I found distant cousins I didn't know existed. In some cases they had lived close to me.

After a few days of following my Italian cousins to America, I was still eager to return to source citations. Each morning I checked the Antenati site. On July 18th the website worked again!

Getting back to Genealogy Plan A, I had 2 productive days of citing sources for more than 100 people per day.

Not everyone is as driven as I am to be productive every day. But if you have more than a casual interest in your family tree, consider working on projects. Choose projects that will improve your family tree with every step you take.

Here are some project suggestions you may want to use as your Genealogy Plan A, B, and C:

• Collect missing census records and cite them immediately.
• Search for immigration and naturalization records and cite them immediately.
• Gather draft registration cards for every eligible man and cite them immediately.
• Try to fill in missing dates and cite them immediately.
• Add those missing source citations!

If your family tree has more than a handful of people, you'll need help figuring out what's missing. My tree is so vast, I abandoned my Document Tracker, but it's a great tool for seeing what you have and what you need. I used it with great results when the 1940 U.S. census came online, and a bit for the 1950 census.

Use the free Family Tree Analyzer to find missing fact types and missing censuses in your family tree.

Family Tree Analyzer offers an efficient way to see who's missing their census data. Here's how:

• Use Family Tree Analyzer to open your GEDCOM file.
• Click the Census tab.
• Choose the Relationship Types you want to search. You could restrict the search to closer relatives or test the entire file.
• Choose a census year for the UK, US, or Canada.
• Click the button labeled Show Not Found on Census.

A new window shows you who should be in the census you selected, but is missing that census citation. You can download the results as a spreadsheet and work through them.

The report works very well except when you have no mention of a country for someone. I have some English people in my tree, so I wanted to see the report for who's missing the 1881 UK census. It included a bunch of Italians for whom I have no country entered. I need to give them Italy as a place of birth even if I don't know their town. That's another project that can add value to your family tree and mine.

As for missing or incomplete dates, you have two good options. Option 1: If you use any type of desktop family tree software, sort your index list by birth date. Now you can see who has no birth date (they'll be at the bottom of the list) and who has an incomplete or estimated birth date.

I always enter an estimated birth date if a document isn't available. My rule of thumb is this:

• If you know their spouse's year of birth, give them about the same year (e.g., Abt. 1886).
• If you know the year their eldest child was born, subtract 25 and make that their estimated year of birth. This will prevent you from confusing two people with the same name who were born many decades apart.

Option 2: If your family tree is online only, go to the website where you keep it and download your GEDCOM file. Then:

• Use Family Tree Analyzer to open your GEDCOM file.
• Click the Facts tab.
• Choose the Relationship Types you want to search. (Choose them all.)
• Next to the long list of fact types, click the button that has a right arrow on it. This opens up a second long list of fact types.
• Click to select Birth in the second list.
• Click the button above that list. It's labeled, Show all Facts for Individuals who are missing the selected excluded Fact Types.

I'm happy to see that no one in my 84,044-person family tree is missing a birth date. I try to check each day to make sure I didn't add someone and forget to enter their year of birth.

I hope you're feeling inspired to choose a project or two to fortify your family tree. Here are some other value-packed projects to try:

• Another Way to Find Errors in Your Family Tree
• How to Find Distant Cousins on Facebook
• Taking the Time to Take Care of Our Own
• Work in Sprints to Strengthen Your Family Tree