Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

I've written before about my indispensable Document Tracker (see Haven't I Seen You Before?). It's a spreadsheet that shows at a glance which facts or documents I've collected and which I'm missing.

I've also written about Family Tree Analyzer (see Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"). It's a program that does what I was struggling to write a program to do. And it does it so much better than I could have imagined. (Get the latest version.)

Now I'd like to show you how Family Tree Analyzer can quickly produce a document tracker for you.

Step 1: Export a GEDCOM

Export a standard GEDCOM file from whichever family tree software you're using. You may need to click File / Export in your family tree software. You can also download a GEDCOM from Ancestry.com if that's where you work on your tree.

Step 2: Open GEDCOM in Family Tree Analyzer

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your new GEDCOM file. Click the Individuals tab to view a grid of every single individual in your tree. My tree has 19,341 people at the moment, and that's not a problem. There is no delay at all in displaying the information.

The Individuals view in Family Tree Analyzer

Step 3: Export a Spreadsheet

Now click Export in the menu across the top and click the first option, Individuals to Excel. The program will ask you to name your file and pick a location for it.

Exporting your Individuals report

The file will be in CSV format. That stands for Comma Separated Values. You can open a CSV file with any spreadsheet software at all—not only Excel.

Step 4: Work with Your New Report

Now you have a spreadsheet of everyone in your tree and several basic facts about them. You can hide or delete the columns you don't want, and add some that you find more helpful.

Try some creative formatting: Find every cell with the word UNKNOWN and highlight it in yellow. Now you can spot these items quickly.

With all your people in one file, your imagination is the only limit.

I can review all the yellow-highlighted UNKNOWNs and work on filling in approximate birth, marriage and death dates. Entering an approximate birth date, such as Abt. 1900, makes it easier to distinguish people with similar names in your tree.

You can enter an approximate birth year for someone based on what else you know about them. For example, subtract 25 from the eldest child's birth year to approximate the parents' birth years. Or, if you have the mother's birth year as 1900 but not her husband's birth year, you can fill in Abt. 1900 for him.

Be sure to use the standard abbreviations of Abt. for about, Bef. for before, Aft. for after, and Bet. for between, if you're giving a range of years. (Note: Family Tree Analyzer prefers that you don't use a period—Abt instead of Abt.—but Family Tree Maker puts it in automatically. You can change this in Tools / Options on the Names/Dates/Places tab. Look for "Fact labels".)

How many ways will you use this Family Tree Analyzer report to fortify your family tree?

Find out what else you can do with this free software:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"
• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree
• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

Where to Find Free Historical City Directories and Newspapers

Have you ever subscribed to an online newspaper archive website? I've tried them twice, but I never found anything about my relatives.

Those sites may be worth the subscription fee if your ancestors were important businessmen or socialites. Or if they were involved in a crime or a train wreck. But I never found my folks.

This directory shows me when Antonio's
son James starting working.

I've had better luck with a free newspaper website (see Fulton History below). There I found some real estate transactions by my great grandfather and his brother-in-law. The information was sparse, but it helped me piece together some of his business dealings.

City directories, on the other hand, have been a great help in locating an ancestor in between census years. (See How To Squeeze Everything Out of the Census.) This can help you when you discover your ancestor is not living at the same address in 1930 as he was in 1920. The city directories between 1920 and 1930 can show you where he moved.

This directory tells me exactly when Antonio died!

Here are a few free websites (also see Free Genealogy Resources) where you can search for your ancestors. If you find them, you can add more data points to their timeline, giving you a more complete view of their lives.

Some of these free sites may have an unfriendly interface or have no search function. You get what you pay for.

Tip: When opening a city directory, look at the table of contents so you have a rough idea of which pages to view.

Free Newspaper Websites

• Fulton History. What began as "Old Fulton NY Post Cards" now contains over 39,328,000 historical newspaper pages from the United States and Canada. The site includes a good search feature and highlights your search terms on the resulting pages. This is where I found my great grandfather's business transactions.
• Internet Archive. Type newspaper in the search box, then narrow down your results in the left column. There is so much available on this website that I may devote an entire article to it soon.
• Library of Congress: Chronicling America. This website contains digitized newspapers from 1789 through 1924 in 13 languages. That's 2,234 newspapers. The search functionality is very helpful.

Free City Directory Websites

• Don's List of Directories, Almanacs, Businesses, Registers, Street Guides. Several states are available.
• Internet Archive. Type city directory in the search box, then narrow down your results in the left column.
• Do you need city directories for a specific state? Do an online search for that state's directories. Some state libraries make their state's directories available online.

This real estate directory tells me my great grandfather
owned one building and lived in another.

Subscribers to Ancestry.com have access to their city directories collection. I've used these to locate certain ancestors in between census years. A directory helped me figure out where my grandfather went to live and work upon entering the United States. Directories can show you when a grown son left his parents' household and moved nearby, possibly helping to estimate his marriage date.

A city directory may provide a missing piece to the puzzle for you.

Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research

I admit it. What I'm about to share with you is common knowledge.

But common knowledge is often forgotten knowledge.

Many of us sneak in some quick family tree research time here and there, whenever we can. We're not focused on it as if it were our full-time job. (I joke, of course. Who's concentrating on their jobs?)

Our research habits may have gotten a little sloppy. Maybe we need to get back to basics.

Notice there's no last name in this search.

With that in mind, today I decided to track down some census records I simply couldn't find in the past. I used a few tried-and-true techniques and started racking up the wins. (See How To Squeeze Everything Out of the Census.)

Now I'm psyched for more! How many missing census forms can I find in one sitting? And do I really have to go to work tomorrow?

Here's what I did. You can do the same.

My maiden name is not easy for anyone to pronounce or spell, so I never expect the transcription to say "Iamarino".

No problem. Here are three techniques that helped me successfully locate a census for two Iamarino families:

1. Do a wild card search. I tried *amarino and ?amarino to locate nearly correct spellings.
2. Search for a family member instead. When my search for the head of household didn't work, I tried searching for his son Bernard—not as common a name as Peter.
3. Remove the last name completely. This did the trick! I had a family of four named Peter, Marie, Joseph and Bernard. That combination, with no last name, brought up the long-missing 1940 census record. "Iamarino" had been transcribed as "Lamarine".

I found them! Cousin Bernie was the key.

I recommend looking at your family tree and starting close to yourself. Fan out until you identify a family that's missing some census years. Then go to your favorite census search engine, whether it's ancestry.com, familysearch.org, or anywhere else.

Try various combinations of the three techniques above to see if you can find that missing census form.

If you find one, you won't be able to stop. If you fail a couple of times, pick a different branch and try again.

Happy hunting!

How to Visit Your Ancestral Hometown at Your Desk

Have you ever seen a Google car driving around? I saw one, and it was goofy as can be.

I'm grateful for those cars! They've driven up and down the windy, narrow streets of my ancestral hometowns in Italy.

My ancestors, and maybe yours, left their homeland because of poverty and a lack of prospects. But today their sleepy little hill towns beckon to me with their beauty and serenity.

I use a combination of Bing maps and Google maps. In Bing I save collections of places. I have one collection of all the landmarks I can see from my mountaintop home in New York. In another collection, I have some of the current and past homes of my relatives in Italy.

The view from my grandfather Leone's first home in Basélice.

Bing offers a birdseye view, and sometimes a street-level view. But Google has sent that crazy car exactly where I want be, like the house where my grandfather was born in 1891.

I can sit here at my desk and "stand" in Italy. I'm right outside the rebuilt house in Basélice, Italy, of my grandfather Adamo Leone. I can see the amazing hilltop views I'll bet his family loved.

I can "stand" near my cousin Esterina's pink house in Colle Sannita, Italy, and see the giant windmills that lead to Basélice. On Esterina's property, partially buried in the ground, is an old doorstep. That's where my other grandfather Pietro Iamarino's house once stood.

The view from my grandfather Iamarino's one-time land in Colle Sannita.

If you're lucky enough to have a birth record for your ancestor, check it again for a street name, and maybe a house number.

Then give it a shot—put that address into Google maps and see if you can walk the streets where your roots still live.

Free Resource Provides Graphic Genealogy Research Basics

I'm happy to pay for my ancestry.com subscription. I have full access for less than a dollar a day.

But many genealogy fans prefer to go the all-for-free route.

Well, there's a newcomer to the genealogy resource field. MooseRoots is a completely free site that can help you find birth, death and marriage dates and places, and a lot more. (See also What To Do When You Have No Birth or Death Record.)

Results of a search for Grandma's birth record.

From their Genealogy Collections page, choose from a long list of categories, including:

• U.S. Census records
• State birth records
• State death records
• State marriage and divorce records (Australian records, too)
• Casualties from several wars

I began testing the site by looking for my grandmother's New York City birth record from 1899. I already have a copy of her birth record from the New York City Municipal Archives. The main fact I learned from her birth record was that her middle name was Carmina—and that's not what she told us it was.

The MooseRoots result was disappointing because it didn't include her parents' names. But it did include the certificate number. That would be enough for me to find the original on microfilm at the archives.

Next I searched the same collection for anyone with her last name to see if I would find her siblings. I found her two brothers, but the transcriptions of their first names were ridiculous. I found two misspelled Alfredos, and I wouldn't know which one was my great uncle if I hadn't already known his birthday.

But the lack of parents' names is based on the record collection, so I don't blame MooseRoots. I checked California birth records because I know they include the mother's maiden name. And those maiden names appeared in the results. But the California birth records did not include a certificate number.

Easily share various parts of the results page.

I was very impressed by MooseRoots' collection of Japanese-American Internment Camp records. Unfortunately, you can't search for a specific name or sort the results, so I didn't see the two last names of my in-laws. (See also Can Genealogy Research Be Painful?.)

I chose a random person named Tanaka (another family name in my husband's tree), and I was impressed with the results.

The website generates a narrative including lots of facts about Takanosu Tanaka: his year and place of birth, that he was widowed, the name of the "camp" where he was detained (Tule Lake), and much more.

As I scrolled down the page I found visualizations of Takanosu's facts. And this is the thing that makes MooseRoots unique: visualizations.

A company called Graphiq powers the site. Graphiq compiles facts into colorful graphs to make them easier to understand.

I believe MooseRoots has plans to become a much richer genealogy resource. When you click a person's name in your results list, you have the opportunity to add their photo once you create a free account. I hit a snag when I tried to register with my Facebook account. Instead, I chose the Google+ login option. That worked, but then the "Add or Edit Photos" button didn't do anything. So, they've got some kinks to iron out.

This video includes facts
unique to your ancestor.

Search results pages give you one-click access to an Ancestry search and a MyHeritage search if you're a subscriber. You can click a button to share any individual piece of the results.

The 1940 Census results included a nice surprise: a customized video that includes the census facts for the person you chose. There's also a scrollable list of other people on the same census sheet, with clickable names. (See also How To Squeeze Everything Out of the Census.)

When you're visiting the site, be sure to click the More menu at the top of the page to get an idea of which collections may be the most helpful to you.

Happy [moose] hunting.

The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: "Wedding Packets"

I've shown you how to dissect Italian birth records, Italian death records (twice, in fact), and Italian marriage records before.

But I promised to explain the treasure trove I call Italian "wedding packets". (Maybe these exist for other countries, too!)

If you're researching your Italian ancestors, and you're lucky enough to find your ancestral hometown's records in the Italian genealogy archives (Antenati), then you have access to the wedding packets.

On the Antenati site, you'll find different kinds of "matrimoni" documents for each year.

• First comes "Matrimoni, pubblicazioni" which includes the two times a couple had to publicly post their intention to marry. The first record may not tell you anything more than the names of the groom and bride and both sets of parents.
  

  

  First notification of intention to marry.

  The second record provides ages, occupations, places of birth and/or residence. If the bride or groom is widowed, you may also get the name of the deceased spouse.
  

  

  Second notification of intention to marry.

• Second is "Matrimoni" which adds the date on which they were approved for marriage (think of it as a marriage license date), and the date they were married in church. Sometimes you'll also find the names of the priest and witnesses.
• Third comes "Matrimoni, processetti"—my favorite! This wedding packet can contain many pages. It starts with a birth record for the bride and groom. If either is a widow, you get the deceased spouse's death record. Then there is a death record for any of their parents who have died. This, of course, can tell you the names of the bride or groom's grandparents. If the father of the bride or groom has died, and their grandfather is not alive to give his permission for the marriage, then you'll also see the grandfather's death record.
  

  

  Groom's first wife's death record.

Groom's father's death record—giving me the names of my 4th great grandparents.

The best-case scenario is an older couple, both widowed, and both with no living parents or grandparents. I've had wedding packets provide me with one or both spouse's great grandparents' names!

We're lucky because in the old days, no one stayed single. If their spouse died, they absolutely remarried—sometimes again and again. Life was too hard not to have a partner.