Why You Need to Set Genealogy Priorities

Knowing what you want from your genealogy research can keep you on track.

Imagine a world…where time stands still and you can research your family tree for as long as you please.

Yeah. That's not gonna happen.

Since your genealogy research time is limited, you need to make the most of it. If you stick to your top priorities, you can make the most progress.

Let your priorities keep you on the path you want to take.

Here's an example of what I mean. There's a celebrity whose ancestors came from my grandfather's hometown in Italy. I'd known about her link to the town for years.

But a new lead gave me the names of the celebrity's great grandparents: Francesco diPaola and Libera Antonia Marino. And the fact that they emigrated to the USA.

It turns out her great grandparents were in my family tree! Better yet, her great grandfather was the grandson of my 4th great grandparents. If things worked out, and she and I shared this set of 4th great grandparents, we'd be 5th cousins.

That's what I needed to prove. I had to find a line from this immigrant couple to the celebrity. I turned to Ancestry.com for U.S. records. I found Francesco diPaola's 1903 immigration record. He was still single when he came here.

I pressed on. I went first to the family's 1940 census. I figured the celebrity's grandparent was most likely to be there as a child.

Logically, since the celebrity's maiden name is not diPaola, she should be the granddaughter of one of the diPaola girls. There were 2 girls in the family on this 1940 census. I picked one. I searched for any record that might show she married a man with the same last name as the celebrity.

And I found it. The elder diPaola daughter's U.S. Social Security Application and Claims Index shows her maiden name, diPaola, and her married name. It matches the name of the celebrity. Based on that alone, I attached the celebrity's father to this diPaola daughter. (I found his name on Wikipedia.)

That made the celebrity my 5th cousin.

But I kept going. I wanted to find the other documents for the family. I discovered that Libera, the celebrity's great grandmother, came to America in 1899 to join her father. Her father Giorgio Marino was in the same U.S. town Francesco diPaola went to in 1903.

That means this Italian couple, born in the same town, reconnected and married in Pennsylvania. The Marino family then joined the diPaola family and moved from Pennsylvania to Michigan.

Then I found that an older daughter, not in the 1940 census, had also married a man with the celebrity's maiden name. Maybe she was the celebrity's grandmother!

An obituary would help me decide which sister is the celebrity's grandmother. So far I haven't found one. I'd like to get it right, of course. But either way, I do know the celebrity is my 5th cousin. That was the game I was playing.

More than once during this genealogy session I had to rein myself in. Did I really want to spend so much time following Francesco and Libera's many, many children? Not really.

That's when I thought about my priorities. Focusing on my priorities, I decided to leave the descendants alone for now. I'd found almost every possible U.S. record for them. But the couple's siblings in Italy were more important to me.

My Priority One is always the 19th-century Italians from my ancestral hometowns. I want to strengthen that part of my family tree and make it as complete as possible. I have 1,000s of vital records from my towns sitting on my computer. Nearly every person in those documents is connected to me. My passion is to piece them all together.

Yes, it would be great to find out where all the Italian emigrants wound up later in life. But that's not my priority.

In a rare case of peeking at someone else's tree, I got the leg-up I needed.

So I returned to their ancestors. I knew the names of Francesco diPaola's parents, but I couldn't find their documents. A peek at someone else's family tree helped me narrow down their birth years. Eventually, I found them!

Now I'm looking through their family's facts. What am I missing? Where should I look for it? Can I add more generations?

My priorities set me back on the track that's most important to me.

What's your top priority? Is it to:

• document your closest family members?
• locate the living descendants of your ancestor's siblings?
• find your earliest recorded ancestor?
• figure out your connection to your DNA matches?
• spread your tree out as wide as you can?

Whatever is most important to you, let it guide you. When research time is limited, let your top priority set you on the path toward that goal.

Diversions can be really fun. I've gone way out on distant limbs of my family tree just because I could. But in the end, I want my family tree to be a rock-solid, well-documented snapshot of my ancestral hometowns.

Now it's time to get back to it.

More about Priorities and Genealogy Goals:

• What Are Your Genealogy Goals?
• How Are Your Genealogy Goals Coming Along?
• It's Crunch Time for Your Genealogy Goals

Where Did Your Last Name Come From?

Is there a hidden meaning behind the last names in your family tree?

You may know where your recent ancestors came from. You may even know where your much earlier ancestors came from. But do you know the origins of their last names?

You may call it a last name, a family name, or a surname. In Italian it's un cognome. In Spanish, un apellido.

Last names fall into a few different categories and can give you a clue about their background.

Are your last names tied to a particular place?

Do your ancestral last names fit into these categories?

• Monogenetic—A name that began with one family in one place. My grandfather's last name, for example, has its roots almost exclusively in one town in Italy. How lucky for me!
• Polygenetic—A name used at different times, in different places, by different families. My other grandfather's last name is ridiculously common and found in every part of Italy.

Those are general categories. Let's get more specific with these 4 types of last names:

1. Place names—Hill, Dale, Ford, Rivers, as well as specific names of rivers, mountains, and towns
2. Occupational names—Smith/Ferraro/Schmidt, Miller/Molinari/Mueller, Cooper/Bottaio, Weaver/Tessitore/Weber, Tailor/Sarti/Snyder, Shoemaker/Zapatero/Schumacher
3. Patronymics—These are names with a beginning or ending that says who was your daddy.
   
   • German: -sohn, -sen (Larsen, son of Lars)
   • Irish: Mc-, Mac-, O'- (McDonald, son of Donald)
   • Italian: d'-, di-, de-, li-, lo- (diFranco, son of Franco)
   • Russian: -ev, -evsky, -ov, -ovich, -ovsky (one of my favorite authors is Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; his middle name tells us his father was Mikhail)
   • Spanish: -ez, -es, -is, -iz (Gonzalez, son of Gonzalo)
4. Personal appearance and characteristic names. These include words for short, curly-haired, red-haired, fat, big, strong, kind. Animal names also fall into this category, such as Wolf/Lupo, Fox/Volpe.

There are also foundling names. These are the names given to babies usually born out of wedlock and abandoned to the care of the church.

• Spanish: Expósito, Iglesia, Cruz, Blanco
• Italian: Esposito, Proietti, Trovato, Casadio

Authorities might give a foundling baby boy the last name Esposito. But he will pass the name on to each of his children, and his sons will pass it on to their children. So don't assume each Esposito was a foundling.

Here's what it looks like when I apply these rules to some of my ancestors' last names.

• Caruso: A word meaning close-cropped hair, but also a term for a boy or young man.
• diPaola: A patronymic from the name Paolo (Paul), although in my family it's changed to Paola.
• Franza: From Franciscus, or someone who lives in France. We've got no French DNA, though.
• Iamarino: A patronymic from the name Giovanni Marino. The variation of Giammarino makes the Giovanni or Gianni clearer.
• Leone: The word for lion, but meaning the son of Leonardo.
• Petruccelli: A patronymic from the name Pietro (Peter).
• Pilla: Possibly from the Roman family name Pompilius. That'd be cool.
• Pisciotti: An occupational name from the word pesce, fish.
• Sarracino: From the Saracens—a non-Arab people living in the Arabian desert when it was a Roman province. Later, Saracen meant Muslim or Arabs.
• Saviano: From the Sabine people who lived in the Apennine Mountains of ancient Italy.
• Tedesco: The word for German.
• Valente: The word for talented.

The Saracens were an ancient people. Were my ancestors named for them?
Erhard Reuwich "Sarazenen", 1486, Public domain

I love that Saviano has ancient Italian roots. This is the last name of my 2nd great grandfather. He's my first ancestor to come to America. He made trips to New York and back in 1890, 1892, and 1895, then brought the rest of his family here in 1898.

In fact, my maternal grandmother's parents were a Sarracino (Saracen) and Saviano (Sabine). Their marriage may have been a union of two very ancient peoples. That could explain my mom's 100% Southern Italian DNA.

Learning their names and finding their hometowns is all I need to make me love genealogy. (See "Genealogy is the Joy of Names".)

How many last names do you descend from?

Is there more history and meaning hidden in your ancestors' last names? Here are some resources from "Behind the Name" to help you understand the names in your family tree:

• English
• Franch
• German
• Irish
• Italian
• Polish
• Spanish
• Welsh

For a lot more types of names, visit the Behind the Names website.

And speaking of last names:

• When Did Your Ancestors First Use a Last Name?
• How to Keep Track of All Your Surnames
• What to Do When Your Last Name Is So Common

How a Genealogy Hunch Made a Best Friend a Cousin

Building out a friend's family tree expanded my own tree in new directions.

Because of my family's origins, building my family tree to 1,000s and 1,000s of people is a given. It's just a matter of time.

You see, all my pre-1900 ancestors came from an area of Italy that's just over HALF the size of Rhode Island. And they stayed in one place for at least 500 years—and probably many more. I was able to download 1,000s of vital records from my handful of hometowns, giving me tons of data. On my computer, waiting in those birth, marriage, and death records, are tons of relatives.

I have a deep emotional attachment to these towns and each person's beautiful Italian name. I love and want them all for my family tree.

Because of how long my townspeople stayed put, I decided to follow up on a genealogy hunch.

What are the odds that these 2 best friends would be relatives? Where they grew up, the odds were good.

My parents grew up in the Bronx, New York, as children of Italian immigrants. My dad's best friend was his grade school classmate, Johnny. As they grew up, they played baseball together and shot a lot of pool together.

In 1954, my dad asked Johnny to be the Best Man at his wedding. Today, well into their 80s, dad and Johnny always call each other on their birthdays and catch up.

Here's where that hunch comes in. Johnny's last name is very common in my paternal grandfather's hometown.

So I thought…could Johnny be related to us?

Here are the steps I took to turn Best Man Johnny into Cousin Johnny.

Find Their Passage to America

I knew from Johnny's 1940 census that his mom was born in New York, but his dad came from Italy. And my dad knew he was from Grandpas' town of Colle Sannita. A quick search on Ancestry.com turned up Johnny's father Francesco's 1921 ship manifest and 1938 naturalization papers. Sadly, Francesco died one year after becoming a citizen.

Searching through Italian Records

Now it was time to trace Francesco-the-immigrant's family in my Italian document collection. Here's what I found:

• Francesco's birth record, giving me his parents' names and ages
• His parent's birth records, giving me their parents' names and ages
• Francesco's 3 siblings and the spouse of one of them
• His great grandparents, Serafino and Maria Raffaela, who turned into a gold mine. I found their 9 children and 5 of the children's weddings.

But as big as dad's friend Johnny's tree had grown, there was still no connection to us.

Looking Again at U.S. Records

When Johnny's father's tree didn't get me anywhere, I thought I'd investigate Johnny's mother. But I didn't even know her last name.

Luckily, the 1910 census and a single gravestone image told me everything I needed to know.

Johnny's mother had the same married name and maiden name! Her father came from our town of Colle Sannita, too.

Back to Italy We Go

I found the Italian birth record for Johnny's maternal grandfather. He was Raffaele, and his birth date helped me confirm the U.S. naturalization papers I found for him.

I only had to go back one more generation to make a big discovery. Our friend Johnny's maternal great grandfather and paternal great grandfather were brothers.

Think about that. Johnny's great grandfathers were brothers. That means his parents were 2nd cousins. This was getting really interesting!

You may have to climb several generations of a family tree to find the connection.

Breakthrough Time

It was the 1853 marriage records for Johnny's maternal great grandparents that blew this whole search mission wide open.

You see, the truly wonderful thing about Italian marriage records is all the vital records they include. You get:

• the bride and groom's birth records
• the death record for any of their deceased parents
• the death record for either of their deceased grandfathers, if their father is dead

The reason for this is you needed your father's permission to marry. And if your father was dead, you needed your grandfather's permission to marry. If both were dead, then OK, we'll accept your mom's approval.

When this couple married in 1853, the groom's father and grandfather were dead. (Yay!) Their death records were part of the marriage records.

Finding out your best friend is part of the family.

And that was the key. The groom's grandfather, Innocenzo, died in 1846. His 1846 death record shows his parents' names: Ignazio and Maddalena. They were already relatives in my family tree!

I attached the parents to Innocenzo. At that moment, the 50 people in our friend Johnny's family tree changed from "No direct relationship found" to actual relatives.

I texted my dad. "Your best man Johnny is the 5th cousin of your Aunt Susie's husband." Aunt Susie was the younger sister of my father's father.

While this is an in-law relationship, there's more to it. Aunt Susie's husband's brother, still alive and well, is a DNA match to my dad and me. We're in the neighborhood of 4th to 6th cousins.

"Johnny just got promoted from Best Man to relative." That's what my dad texted to me.

Acting on this hunch took less than 2 days—from finding Johnny's 2nd great aunts and uncles, to making him my grandfather's in-law.

Behold the power of adding unrelated people to your family tree!

And speaking of unrelated people:

• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree
• When Unrelated People Finally Fit Your Family Tree
• 2 Reasons to Add Unrelated People to Your Family Tree

When Unrelated People Finally Fit Your Family Tree

What do you do when that unattached branch takes root in your family tree?

Before 1900, all my ancestors came from small towns in Italy. In the 1800s there was very little moving around. Each person stayed in one town their entire life. Unless they arranged an inter-town marriage. And even then, the spouse was usually from a town or two away.

Because of all the intermarrying, I'm related to entire towns. By blood or marriage, I can find some relation to nearly everyone in each of my town's vital records. (Find out how to download vital records from your ancestor's Italian hometown.)

I found this out by recording every vital record for my grandfather's town. The documents ranged from 1809 to 1860 and included the names of more than 15,000 people.

As I added people to a separate Family Tree Maker file, I saw how they were all related. I connected more than 10,000 people to my grandfather. Then I imported them to my main tree.

That'll boost your family tree size!

Lately, as one of my 2019 genealogy goals, I've been adding a bunch of unrelated people to my family tree. I'm adding every baby born in my other grandfather's hometown who has the last name Pozzuto. (That name has some strong DNA matches.)

The idea is to figure out their relationship to me. I add a baby and its parents. I look for the baby's siblings and then for the parents' marriage. If I find the marriage, I can learn the baby's grandparents' names. I may even learn the great grandfathers' names. (Not sure why you'd want to add unrelated people to your tree? See "2 Reasons to Add Unrelated People to Your Family Tree".)

As I add each person to my tree, I:

• Compare their facts to anyone in my tree with a similar name.
• Attach my "No Relationship Established" image as their profile image. (Find out how to find the unrelated people in your family tree using Family Tree Analyzer.)

If I can't find my connection to that random Pozzuto baby's family, I move on to the next baby.

About 200 people in my family tree are sporting that "No Relationship Established" image. But there are magical moments that make it so worthwhile.

In Family Tree Maker, it's easy to see who's attached to any image.

I'll be building out a family. The bride was already in my tree, and now I know who the groom is. When I attach them to one another, boom! Suddenly the guy's description goes from "No direct relationship found" to something wild, like "Grand nephew of wife of 1st great-uncle of husband of paternal grandmother of husband of 1st great-aunt" of me!

Now the groom, his siblings, their spouses, his nieces and nephews, his parents and grandparents, are ALL related to me in some way.

But they still have that big blue "unrelated" image. That has got to go.

It's beyond tedious to view each newly related person and remove that image.

So I found a shortcut. While looking at the family in tree view in Family Tree Maker:

• Click each person and put a 1 at the beginning of their last name. Onofrio 1Pozzuto, Donato 1Pozzuto, Rosa 1Martuccio, and so on.
• Choose one person and click to see their Media tab.
• Select the "No Relationship Established" image and click the link icon.
• Click the checkbox for each person at the top of the list whose last name begins with a 1.
• Click the "Unlink Selected" button. If you select a lot of people, you may have to wait a minute for the process to finish.
• Remove the 1 from the beginning of each last name.

You'll love this tip when a big branch suddenly has a relationship to you.

I get such a rush out of this. I took a random baby and turned him into 50 new distant relatives.

I've visited my ancestral hometowns and felt a deep, strong connection. That's what inspired my endless, giddy pursuit of tons of relatives. My DNA is 96% from this Southern Italian region with just a touch of Greece. These towns ARE my DNA. They are me.

That's my inspiration, and it's why I'll be practicing genealogy until I can no longer use a computer.

I hope this tip will help you turn prospective relatives into deep-in-your-bones relatives.

You're the Scientist in Your Family Tree

Don't have a Bachelor of Science degree? You're still an honorary scientist.

There's a reason why genealogy has that "ology" at the end. An "ology" is any science or branch of knowledge. According to Dictionary.com, genealogy is the study of family ancestries and histories.

So doesn't that make us all scientists? We're amateur scientists, exploring and studying family ancestries and histories.

That's why we should approach our genealogy passion like a scientist. I wrote about this idea 2 years ago when I saw that being as disciplined as a scientist gets you better results.

My maternal grandmother's roots are here.

As an honorary scientist, I conduct experiments in my family tree. One of them involves the Muollo family of Pastene. Pastene is a little hamlet of the town of Sant'Angelo a Cupolo in the Bevento province in southern Italy.

My 2nd great grandmother, Maria Luigia Muollo, lived and died in Pastene. Vital records for Pastene are scarce:

• Births: 1861–1915, with no documents for 1872, 1895, and 1906–1908
• Marriages: 1931–1942, but 1937 is missing
• Deaths: 1931–1942, but 1937 is missing

Based on the births of 5 children, I know Maria Luigia Muollo was born in about 1843. I hired a pair of Italian genealogists to find church records for me. They found that Maria Luigia Muollo married Giuseppe Sarracino on 9 December 1864 in Pastene.

But even the researchers didn't find much. They told me this little hamlet had avoided keeping records. Like a little rebel town giving Napoleon the finger. And I want to learn her mother's name.

What would a scientist do in this situation? She'd be logical, methodical, and follow the evidence.

This is one reason why you must find all the children; not only your ancestor.

Let's look at the facts.

• Maria Luigia's birth record is not available. I found her age only on her son Biagio's 1879 birth record: 36. That's also the only record that say Maria Luigia's father is Antonio—and he's still alive in 1879.
• Maria Luigia's death record is not available.
• Maria Luigia's 1864 marriage record offers no information but the marriage date.
• A search for any much-younger siblings comes up empty. There are no Muollo babies born to an Antonio who's the right age in the 1860s.

But I may have gotten lucky.

A Muollo girl was born to a father named Antonio 2 years before the available birth records. She's 16 years younger than Maria Luigia, but that's not impossible. When you have a baby every other year from marriage to menopause, the kids span a lot of years. My first-born grandfather was 20 years older than his youngest sister.

This other Muollo girl was Maria Saveria. Like my 2nd great grandmother, she also married a Sarracino man from Pastene. I found birth records for 10 babies born to this couple between 1880 and 1903.

Maria Saveria is in my tree because of her husband. Is she my great aunt, too?

My break came when I found that members of this family came to America. Maria Saveria and her 2 youngest children came to New York City after her husband Orazio died. At least 2 of her other children were here in New York.

Maria Saveria died in New York City on 10 January 1944, and that's why I was able to see her death certificate. (Many thanks to the generous reader who gave me the document image.) Her death record gave me these facts:

• She was born on 24 May 1859
• She lived on Courtlandt Avenue in the Bronx for just about her entire time in America
• Her father was Antonio Muollo
• Her mother—and this is what I most wanted to find—was Giuseppina Torrico
• She's buried in the same place as nearly all my Bronx ancestors: St. Raymond's Cemetery

That gives me new data to analyze:

• I can continue to piece together the lives of Maria Saveria's children in New York.
• I can try to find out where her husband Orazio was living and if he died in America.
• I can investigate the name of her mother: Giuseppina Torrico.

Torrico feels like more of a Spanish name than an Italian one. There are plenty of records on Ancestry.com supporting that.

But it is an Italian name, too. I used the Cognomix website to check the name Torrico in Italy. It's not a common name, but there are a few families with that name in my part of Italy: Campania. In the province of Caserta, not far from my Benevento province, the Torrico name exists in 3 towns.

I checked out the town of Carinola because it has the most Torrico families. I needed birth records around 1834 and they are available.

Methodically, I checked the indexes for every birth year from 1821–1839. I was looking for a Giuseppa, Giuseppina, or Maria Giuseppa Torrico.

I found two:

• Giuseppa Torrico was born on 6 December 1828 to Felice (born 1797) and Anna Robbio (born 1798)
• Giuseppa Torrico was born on 15 April 1837 to Francesco (born 1972) and Anna diCioco (born 1797)

Next I checked the Carinola marriage records for Antonio Muollo and Giuseppa Torrico. It was a long-shot, so I gave up after checking the 4 most likely years.

So far, this experiment is a failure due to a lack of Italian documents. I don't know if Maria Saveria is the sister of my 2nd great grandmother. Or if Giuseppina Torrico is my 3rd great grandmother.

Someday I want to spend months at a time researching in Italy. Until then, I'll keep searching for U.S. documents for Maria Saveria and her family.

I hope you see how being scientific will keep you from going down the wrong path and making a mess of your family tree. I'd like you to choose one of your brick walls and lay out all the evidence. Where does it lead you?

It's Mid-Year Genealogy Goals Checkup Time

Half a year left. It isn't too late to start your genealogy goals!

I had such a wildly productive 4-day weekend of genealogy research. I want every day to be as filled with joy and accomplishment as that.

I had enough hours to bounce around, finishing off tasks that weren't even on my to-do list. Not officially. For example:

• Upgrade my unofficial sources to official sources. I researched facts that I'd borrowed from other distant relatives. I found documentation to prove or fix what they'd told me.
• Go through my old to-do list in Family Tree Maker. I followed up on several questions and answered a bunch of them.
• Find the family connection for branches that are floating loose in my family tree. I knew these people had to be related somehow. I figured out a bunch of them.

Then I realized we've just passed the halfway point of 2019. It's time to refocus on our 2019 genealogy goals. How are you doing with your list?

The bigger your family tree gets, the easier it is to get lost. Your goals can keep you on the right path.

Making Progress on Genealogy Goals

These are the realistic genealogy goals I planned for 2019 and their status:

• Enter the first five years' worth of birth records from each of my ancestral towns into a spreadsheet. DONE!
• Search for all missing census forms in my document tracker spreadsheet. DONE!
• Enter every "Pozzuto" birth and marriage from the town of Colle Sannita into my family tree. MAKING PROGRESS. I'm up to 1841 BIRTHS going forward, and 1852 marriages going backwards.
• Find Erie Railroad documents from the time my great grandfather worked there. TRIED and FAILED. There is a 1938 Erie Railroad magazine issue that includes my ancestor's name. Maybe the Hornell, New York, library has it.
• Figure out when my 2nd great uncle moved to Illinois. NARROWED DOWN to between 1906–1910.
• Search 1920–1925 New York City newspapers for the mutual aid society to which my 2nd great grandfather belonged. TRIED and FAILED.
• Enter every "Muollo" baby born in Sant'Angelo a Cupolo into my family tree. Find all available documents for the ones who emigrated to Pennsylvania. MAKING PROGRESS.

The first 2 items on the list took a pretty long time. They were tedious. But finishing them was such a rush.

All I can think about is the next step—my 2020 genealogy goals:

• I want to enter more vital records from my ancestral towns into that spreadsheet.
• I want to search for the missing draft registration cards for every American man in my document tracker.

It's like potato chips. Once you start, you just can't stop. (See "Plowing Through My 2019 Genealogy Goals".)

The more I add to this database of my ancestral towns, the more valuable it is.

Time to Get Busy

Now here's what I'd like you to do:

• If you never made a 2019 goals list, write a short, achievable list of goals.
• If you did make a 2019 list, see where you stand with each item.
• Figure out which goals you can make the biggest dent in beginning now.
• Think about which goals are better left for next year.

Never stop making progress in your family tree research. Anyone who enjoys this crazy-obsessive genealogy hobby knows the secret: Finding that next important fact is everything! That's what keeps us going. And loving every minute of it.