How to Spot and Fix a Big Mistake in Your Family Tree

The further back you go in your family history, the more branches you have to explore. And if you have a lot of branches, you probably have a bunch that need more research work.

At some point, your research may toss some new facts at you that make you realize the sad truth. You've got a big old mistake in your family tree.

What will you do when that happens?

How a Mistake Can Pop Up

I realized I'd swapped Rubina for
Rufina when I found her married
to the wrong man.

Let me give you a concrete example using one of my 16 third great grandmothers. (We're all entitled to 16 third great grandmothers and 16 third great grandfathers.)

One year ago I discovered that my 2nd great grandmother was born in the little town of Santa Paolina, Italy. I learned this important piece of information when I found the marriage records of 2 of her brothers.

Those records (from a neighboring town) said my 3rd great grandparents lived in Santa Paolina.

So I ordered a few films for Santa Paolina. This was days before the end of the FamilySearch microfilm program. Everything was going online. But at the time, the vital records for Santa Paolina's province were not online. And I didn't want to wait.

I spent a few hours going through the dark and fuzzy document images and found some pay dirt. I found my 2nd great grandparents' Santa Paolina marriage record. That led to my 2nd great grandmother's birth record and that of her first baby.

I found that my 3rd great grandfather's name was different on each document. He was:

• First name: Semblicio or Simblicio
• Middle name: Fiorintino or Fiorentino or Fiorinto or Florindo
• Last name: Consolazio

The first name makes sense because of my 2nd great uncle (his grandson) Semplicio. But I made a note that this man sometimes goes by a variation of Fiorintino.

There was more confusion with my 3rd great grandmother's name. It was Rufina Zullo, but I didn't see anyone else named Zullo in Santa Paolina. I saw Zuzolo and Cenzullo. When I found a Rubina Cenzullo, I started to think this was a spelling variation of Rufina Zullo. Eventually I convinced myself Cenzullo = Zullo.

Now the Santa Paolina and Tufo documents are available online. I downloaded all the Santa Paolina records to my computer, and a few select years of Tufo records. (See "How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives".) This past weekend I was going through the downloaded vital records for more facts and people.

My 3rd great grandparents' marriage record wasn't there. I began searching every logical year for it. When I didn't find it, I thought, "What if they married after their first child was born?"

That's when I found something that made me gasp. In 1844, after the first baby was born, I found a marriage record for Rubina Cenzullo…to another man! But she kept having babies with Simblicio Consolazio!

At that moment I realized she wasn't my 3rd great grandmother. I returned to my 2nd great grandmother's birth record and that of her sister Catarina. Both documents said their mother was Rufina Zullo. I'd gone off in the wrong direction!

Working to Fix the Error

How would I find the right woman? I searched every logical year of birth records and found no one in town named Zullo. So I had to find her death record.

I know she had a baby in 1856, so I started there. I search the death indexes of each year looking for Rufina Zullo or Simblicio Consolazio. I found Simblicio's death record in 1891. Rufina was still alive, so I kept searching.

I finally found her death record in 1898, and with it, the answer to the mystery. Rufina Zullo was born in another town called Apice—a new ancestral hometown for me!

Luckily, the Apice vital records are online. I found the real Rufina's 1816 birth record, so now I had the names of my real 4th great grandparents. Then I found Rufina's 1843 marriage to my 3rd great grandfather, named as Fiorintino.

Since they married in Apice, there should be marriage banns recorded in his hometown of Santa Paolina, too. And there are! I'd overlooked them because I'd checked only the index for 1843. They didn't marry there, so they aren't in the index.

Learning from Mistakes

Here are the specific lessons I learned:

1. Don't make assumptions without a lot of evidence to support them. Some document convinced me her last name was Cenzullo. But there was so much evidence saying it was Zullo. I don't know what I was thinking.

   

   Detaching a person from the wrong
   family in Family Tree Maker.

2. Search for all the major documents for your person and their immediate family. Notice when the facts on some documents contradict the facts on others. Then search for what's missing. Finding Simblicio's death record confirmed Rufina's name. Finding Rufina's death record confirmed why she was the only Zullo in town.
3. Look beyond the indexes. They are a tremendous help, but there are times when you won't find the document you want in the index—especially when it comes to marriages.

Now I had to fix this problem in my family tree. I had Rubina Cenzullo as the wife of Semblicio and the mother of his 8 children. I also had her parents, 2 grandparents and 2 siblings. In Family Tree Maker I selected Rubina. In the Person menu, I choose Attach/Detach Person and Detach Selected Person. I clicked the checkbox for Semblicio and the 8 kids and clicked OK.

Next I attached my No Relationship Established image to Rubina and her people. I'm hold onto them for now because Santa Paolina is so very small. There may be a relationship to her.

Finally, I added my Rufina as the wife of Simblicio and mother of his kids. I attached her parents to her.

At last! My great great grandmother's family is complete.

My Consolazio family, complete with the right mamma.

And speaking of fixing family tree boo-boos:

• Trust But Verify Your Relative's Family Tree
• How Is That Possible?
• Case Study On 'How Is That Possible?'

How to Decide Who to Cut from Your Family Tree

It's Time to Give a Whole New Meaning to 'Trimming the Tree'

In my newbie genealogy days it was a ton of fun to find people in the census. I'd trace a family through the years. I'd add names and facts and build out the family with glee.

Before long, I had 8 generations of my great uncle's wife's family. I don't know my great uncle's wife. I never met my great uncle! I had no plans to do any research for this family. And I had borrowed a lot of the people from other trees.

Why keep these hastily recorded people in my tree? I want my tree to be more professional than that.

I've written here before about lopping 600 or so people from my tree. Their only connection to me was my brother's wife. So I carefully separated them all out into their own tree for my sister-in-law.

Now it's time to prune more people who don't belong. This will improve the value of my family tree.

I deleted my great uncle's wife's ancestors one at a time. I checked first to see if they had a document image attached to them. If so, I detached the image, deleted it from Family Tree Maker's media collection and from my folders. Then I deleted the person, their spouse and children.

I did this carefully so I wouldn't leave any detached people floating in my family tree file.

That was a good family to delete. They had little or no documentation. I didn't know anything about them. They were not my people.

Here are some ways to decide who to cut from your family tree.

Where Did These People Come From?

Start by scanning your tree for a name you don't recognize. Can you find their connection to you? If the relationship is absurdly distant, maybe you should cut their branch.

Take a look at your source information for them. Did you find these facts yourself, or did they come from someone else's tree? Do you have good sources? No sources?

If the sourcing is unreliable or non-existent, maybe you should cut their branch . Give it some thought before cutting. Do you think you might ever be sorry about your decision?

The way I see it, if the names didn't have good documentation, they weren't worth much to my family tree anyway. If I did want to build out that branch, I'd rather start from scratch and do it based on evidence.

What Can These People Offer My Family Tree?

There are some very unofficial 
sources hiding in my tree.

With more than 19,000 people, my tree has tons of ridiculously distant relatives. Picking a person at random, I find she's the mother-in-law of the wife of the father-in-law of the husband of the sister-in-law of my 2nd great grandfather. In short, she's related to me through the 1st wife of my 2nd great grandfather.

She's not my relative, but I'm keeping her. I've met a few people online who are related to my great grandfathers 1st wife. Plus, my ancestors in their little Italian towns were basically all related by blood or marriage. That's kinda my thing. That's what my tree is all about: finding all the ties that bind these towns together.

Because that's my thing, I'm not deleting any of my 18th- and 19th-century Italians.

Look for Strange Sources

Looking at my long list of sources in my family tree software, I see a few unofficial sources. They're named for the family tree I looked at when adding people to my tree.

These days I avoid looking at other people's trees, but I used to follow leads.

One of these family tree sources is attached to 22 facts. This might be a branch I should cut.

I'll choose someone from the list of 22 facts and use Family Tree Maker's Relationship Tool to see their relationship to me. Of course. They're related to my 2nd great grandfather's 1st wife again! A couple of generations of the family are in my ancestral hometown, and then they came to New York state.

Family Tree Maker shows me every fact
associated with a particular source.

Instead of deleting this branch, I'm going to flag the descendant who was born in America. I want to replace as many "Somebody's Family Tree" sources as possible with official sources.

Round Up the Out-Laws

Have you put together a branch for your cousin's husband, only to have your cousin divorce her husband? Do you care about keeping that branch?

My new policy is to keep only the parents of in-laws. I have exceptions, of course. I've had fun building out my 1st cousin's wife's tree. (I'm a sucker for Italian ancestors!)

Here's what I'd suggest to you. Give some thought to what you want from your family tree. If you're doing this just for the fun of it, then set your own rules and have a blast!

If you're more like me, and you've found a true passion in your tree, focus on that. Are you working toward applying to the Sons or Daughters of the America Revolution? Are you trying to map out our ancestors' migration paths so you can follow in their footsteps? Are you trying to fill your living room wall with a cool display of your immediate ancestors?

Whatever you hope to achieve…

• cutting the fat
• improving the sources and
• deciding where to focus

will make your family tree stronger.

And speaking of trimming the fat:

• When to Cut a Branch Off Your Family Tree
• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree
• Who Are These People?

5 Clean-up Tasks to Improve Your Family Tree

Stop! Don't add another person to your family tree until you read this.

• How you ever looked at facts in your tree and not known where they came from?
• Have you seen hints that made no sense for your person at all?
• Did you ever need to find a document online again, but you couldn't because it was so hard the first time?

You can solve these problems and more. And you'll make your tree more professional and reliable at the same time.

These 5 clean-up tasks will improve your search results and fortify your family tree. And, in some cases, restore your sanity.

1. Add Approximate Birth Dates

In my family tree of 19,709 people, I have about 250 with a blank birth field. How can I expect a good search result if there's nothing to say which century they were born in?

For instance, in my tree there's a woman named Angelina Tedesco. But, was this Angelina born in 1920? 1840? 1780? That makes an enormous difference in a search.

Both parents are missing birth years. I'll subtract 25 years from their oldest child's birth year.

I follow these rules for adding an approximate birth year:

• If I have a birth year for the spouse (say, 1915), I give this spouse the same year (Abt. 1915—Abt. is short for About).
• If I have birth years for a set of parents, I give all their children an approximate birth year 25 after the younger parent's birth. For example, if a man was born in 1920 and his wife in 1930, I'll mark all their children as Abt. 1955.
• If I have a couple's marriage year, I'll mark their children as being born about the following year.

Granted, they weren't all born the same year, and I could easily be off by 10 or 15 years for some. But "Abt. 1955" will avoid any comparisons to someone born in the 1800s.

2. Fill in Probable Country of Birth/Death

I get tired of U.S. Federal Census hints for people I know never came to America. I can solve that by adding Italy as their country of birth and death even though I have no documented proof.

I'll be cautious about assuming everyone died in Italy. But if their children died in Italy, it's highly likely they did, too. And if I haven't added a source, I'll know this is an assumption.

3. Include Details for All Images

Lots of my relatives lived near one another in the Bronx, New York, from about 1900 to the 1960s. So, when one family is hard to find in the census, it pays to locate another family and keep turning the page.

But what happens when the family whose census you have was nearly impossible to find? Their name was so mangled and the transcription was awful. You can't even find them again!

You can avoid that hassle. Add notes to each document image when you find it. Make a note of how the name was transcribed (if it's dead wrong) and the URL where you found it.

Enough detail makes your documents retraceable.

Here's a great clean-up task—especially if you are sharing your family tree. Go back and add details to all the document images you've collected.

If you do one category at a time (census, ship manifest, draft registration cards, etc.), you'll be more consistent in how you annotate them.

Because my addresses are
consistent, I can see everyone
associated with any given address.

4. Make Place-names Consistent

When my ancestors were living in the Bronx, their streets had names like E. 150th St., Morris Ave., and Van Nest. I had so many families living nearby that many were on the same street or in the same apartment building.

Being consistent in how I type the addresses makes it easy to see when I have multiple families in the same building. Family Tree Maker starts suggesting places as I type. It makes suggestions based on what I've typed before.

If the program suggests the right address as soon as I type the house number, I know I have someone living else there. So I spell out each address consistently:

• 260 East 151st Street, Bronx, New York, USA
• 562 Morris Avenue, Bronx, New York, USA
• 234 Dearborn Street, Girard, Trumbull County, Ohio, USA
• Via Casale, 36, Colle Sannita, Benevento, Campania, Italy

5. Be Consistent with Sources

I admit it. Professional genealogists will tsk-tsk my sourcing style. But we can all agree you've got to include a source that allows someone to find a document or fact again and verify it.

I use a simple style for my sources. I don't want my Person view in Family Tree Maker cluttered up with 10 lines of text for each source. So the text that displays is brief:

• 1860 U.S. Federal Census
• 1861 Census of Canada
• 1861 England Census

Or I use the full, exact title of a database on Ancestry.com:

• New York, Naturalization Records, 1882-1944
• Ohio Births and Christenings Index, 1800-1962
• U.S., Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1914-1966

An example of a simple source note. This matches the database name on Ancestry.com.

But I add more detail in the Sources tab of Family Tree Maker. In the Citation detail field, I'll copy the citation details from Ancestry.com. For example, for that last Passenger and Crew Lists database, the citation detail is "Ancestry.com. U.S., Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1914-1966 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016."

In the Citation text field, I add a bit more info from Ancestry, like "Sources vary by state: http://search.ancestry.com/search/dbextra.aspx?dbid=60882".

I don't often use the Web address field. But if there is a single URL that's the best place to find a source, that's where it belongs.

Finally there's a Reference note field. This is where I put the brief text I want to see on the Person tab. It almost always matches the title I used, like "U.S., Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1914-1966".

I don't want to have a unique source for each document. I'd have 3,244 sources! That why I put the exact URL and details on the image document itself (see #3 above).

My source is more generic. My image is completely specific.

An example of a more complete source citation.

Today I'm tackling my people with no birth year. While I'm there, I'm also adding Italy as the birth and death place for my 19th century and earlier relatives. I've already annotated my 544 census documents, but I need to finish my ship manifests. Then I'll move on to draft registration cards and the rest. I'm already pretty confident in my place names and sources.

It's a lot of work, but aren't you doing this to find and preserve your history? Isn't it worth doing well?

These are 5 clean-up tasks you can tackle. Make a start on each one so you can develop your style and be consistent. The longer you put it off, the more of a chore it becomes.

And speaking of beefing up your facts:

• It's Time to Revisit & Improve Your Earliest Family Tree Research
• Find Your Happy Place in Your Favorite Genealogy Tasks
• Add Proof and a Breadcrumb to Family Tree Documents
• 4 Ways to Decide Where to Spend Your Family Tree Research Time

How to Make the Most of an Intriguing Genealogy Lead

How I turned a random lead into a documented relative.

I'm lucky to have such an uncommon maiden name. Nearly everyone named Iamarino can trace their roots back to the same small town in Italy.

Recently, an Iamarino from Brazil went to visit our Italian ancestral hometown. She visited 3 months after I did. I saw her photos on Facebook and recognized all the places I'd seen on my trip.

I've known about this particular Brazilian Italian cousin for 10 years. A mutual friend told me about her ancestry. Seeing her photos reminded me how much I want to learn about the Iamarinos who left Italy for Brazil.

That's why I'm diving into some Brazilian records on FamilySearch.org. I've chosen a database called "Brazil, São Paulo Immigration Cards, 1902–1980". I've entered only the last name Iamarino in the search area.

Document 1: Immigration Card

There's only 1 result, but it's intriguing to me. The photo of this 80-year-old widowed man, whose mother was named Iamarino, is calling to me.

A search for my maiden name brought up this man. What more can I learn about him?

I don't read Portuguese, but some things are clear. Miguel Basiloni is an illiterate farmer who was born in Colle Sannita (misspelled on the card) on 2 July 1895. His parents were Antonio Basiloni and Maria Iamarino.

My experience with Colle Sannita records tells me "Miguel's" real last name is Basilone, ending in an e. And I'm sure his given name is Michele, the Italian version of Miguel.

So I'm going to search my collection of Colle Sannita vital records and my family tree. Let's see what I can learn about this man.

Document 2: His Birth Record

The 1895 birth record of the man in the photo.

Michele Basilone was actually born on 1 July 1895 in Colle Sannita. His father Antonio was a 26-year-old farmer. His mother was Marianna (not Maria) Iamarino. Let's go find his parents' births, shall we?

I'll search the birth indexes for Antonio Basilone and Marianna Iamarino in and around 1869.

Document 3: His Father's Birth Record

There is no Antonio Basilone in the 1869 index, but there's a Libero Antonio Pasquale Basilone. I've got to take a look at him.

Michele's father's birth record includes his marriage to Michele's mother.

There's the proof I need in the column of his birth record. Libero Antonio Pasquale Basilone married Marianna Iamarino on 28 August 1890. Now I have his:

• Birth date: 15 May 1869
• Father's name: Michele, the son of the late Pietrangelo
• Mother's name: Andreana Paolucci, daughter of Giovanni

Document 4: His Mother's Birth Record

I didn't have to go far to find Marianna Iamarino's birth record in 1870. Finally I have a connection! Marianna's parents are already in my family tree. She is my 3rd cousin 3 times removed.

That makes Michele, the somber old man in the photo, my 4th cousin twice removed.

Michele's mother's side of the family was already in my family tree.

I'm a little worried because Marianna's birth record doesn't mention her marriage. So I'll keep checking the surrounding years. It's possible that the Marianna born in 1870 died, and another was born and married Libero Antonio.

My cousin who went to Brazil.

OK, there are no more Mariannas, so I believe I've got my gal. Marianna was not a common name in this town. Ironically, it was my great grandmother's name, but she's from a neighboring town.

More Documents

I'm sure I can find Michele's siblings by searching the birth records starting in 1891.

I may be able to find Michele's marriage record, but only if he married after 1930. There are marriage records available from 1931–1942.

Every evening, with the Yankees playing on the TV, I sit here at my computer. I pick a genealogy project for the evening. Michele was an unexpected project that I'm feeling really good about.

Michele Basilone looks very sturdy and solid for 80 years old. I'm happy to see his face and know that my first search in the Brazilian genealogy records gave me my 4th cousin twice removed. Olá, Miguel.

And speaking of following up on those leads:

• How the Scientific Method Can Help You With Your Family Tree
• Solving a Family History Mystery with an Unexpected Clue
• When DNA Says You're Related, You Determine How

6 Steps to Make Your Family Tree 10 Times Better

Ever wish you could look over another genealogist's shoulder to see how she does things?

Look at this. I've decided to do everything the right way from the get-go so I don't have to double back and fix or add facts. As I was methodically tackling one item on my genealogy to-do list this weekend, it struck me. There are so many steps to this process!

Does anyone else go to this much trouble? Let's find out. Take a look at what I was doing so thoroughly this weekend.

The Goal: Replace Several Bad Document Images with Good Ones

Years ago I viewed and transcribed every vital record (1809-1860) from my grandfather's Italian hometown. I used some poor-quality microfilm viewers at 2 Family History Centers.

At the first FHC, I used their computer to capture several of the images as jpg files. But they weren't very clear. At the second FHC I took iPhone pictures of some documents projected on the surface of the microfilm viewer. Terrible, ghastly quality.

Awful, pitiful old image vs. new, glorious image.

Now there are excellent, high-resolution images of those same documents available online. I downloaded the entire town (and others) to my computer to make my research easy. Now I can replace those crummy old images in my family tree with excellent ones.

But I'm also:

1. cropping the images in Photoshop
2. editing each image's properties to include a title and the source URL of the image
3. deleting the bad image from Family Tree Maker's media library
4. adding the new image and editing its date and category fields
   
   • the date is the date of the event
   • the category is Vital Records
5. recording each document in my document tracker spreadsheet.

The Steps

1. Identify a bad image. The Media tab in Family Tree Maker makes it pretty obvious which documents are the bad ones. So I can pick any one and dive in.

Hint: The bad images are dark and fuzzy looking.

Organize your digital files logically,
and things are easy to find.

2. Find the good image. I've got the Italian vital records carefully organized on my computer. My subject, Benedetta Pisciotti, was from Baselice. So I go straight to the Baselice town folder. She died in 1831, so I go to the 1831 deaths folder. I know the date and I can see the document number in the original. This makes it easy to find the image I want.

3. Crop the image and name it appropriately. If there's more than one document in the image or it's crooked, I crop it in Photoshop. I save it in the proper folder and name it in my usual style: LastnameFirstnameEventYear, so PisciottiBenedettaDeath1831.jpg.

Using Photoshop to crop out the other document and the huge black border.

4. Annotate the image's properties. In each of my folders of Italian documents I have a text file called "URL format". It contains the format of the URLs where these documents came from. For example: 007850713_00000.jpg. I simply replace the last 5 zeroes with the last 5 digits of the image's file name. Now I right-click the cropped image and choose Properties, then the Details tab. I edit the Title field ("1831 death record for Benedetta Pisciotti") and the Comments field ("From the Benevento State Archives" and the image's original URL).

These annotations stay with
your image file and are
pulled into your
family tree software.

5. Replace the image in Family Tree Maker. To remove the old image from Family Tree Maker's media library, I detach it from Benedetta and put it in the trash. Now I drag and drop the new image into Benedetta's Media tab. The image retains the title and comments I gave it in step 4. But I also want to enter the date of the event and select the Vital Records media category. When I synchronize, all these details are on Ancestry.com for potential cousins to see.

Check the boxes and click "Unlink Selected" in Family Tree Maker to remove the old image.

Don't skimp on the annotations.

6. Update tracking spreadsheet. Finally, I record Benedetta's death in my spreadsheet of all documents. I add a line for Benedetta and put "1831 (cert.)" in the Death column to show that I have a copy of the certificate of her death in 1831.

Updating my inventory at that moment is critical to being thorough.

Detailed, yes. But it's a process that becomes second nature.

The Result

When I complete this project, I'll be rid of those dark, fuzzy document images. And I'll have fully annotated images. They'll have a descriptive title, date, category, and source citation.

I think it's worth all the steps and the juggling of File Explorer, Photoshop, Family Tree Maker and Excel.

Don't you think your tree is worth this kind of effort?

And speaking of being wildly thorough:

• 6 Building Blocks of Genealogy Research, Part 1
• 6 Building Blocks of Genealogy Research, Part 2
• Your All-in-One Family Tree Clean-up List

3 Unique, Key Facts about Every U.S. Federal Census

Download this free diagram of U.S. census changes from 1790 to 1940.

Here's an infographic to show you the states or territories included in each U.S. Federal census, 1790–1940. Knowing these facts can save you from trying to find your ancestor in a state that didn't yet exist.

After the first census box for 1790, each year in the infographic shows:

• The new states and territories counted that year.
• New questions asked and facts recorded that year.

It's interesting to see the increasing detail gathered from census to census.

You can download this graphic as a PDF. I've also created a printer-friendly version in black and white for letter-size paper (8½" x 11").

Diagram of U.S. Census Changes from 1790 to 1940

And speaking of the census:

• How To Squeeze Everything Out of the Census
• Finding a Missing Person in Someone Else's Household
• Simplify Your Genealogy Info Gathering With This Form