Finding Your Family's Fallen War Heroes

Once in a while I revisit my list of genealogy website bookmarks. When I saved each link, it either inspired me or seemed like a useful resource.

Today I decided to squeeze the value out of one of these bookmarks. It's a database of Italian war dead—both World War I and II. I'm sure we all have people in our family trees who disappeared from the records. If they were the right age at the right time, they may have died in the war.

An Italian Example

To explain how to use these databases of war dead, I'm going to focus on an Italian casualty website. But there are other databases below that may work better for you.

I know many of these fallen heroes belong, or are already in my family tree.

At the website www.cadutigrandeguerra.it:

• I clicked Richerche (research).
• This page has a form with a ton of boxes.
  • I filled in only one: Comune in Albo. Since the bulk of my relatives came from one town, I entered that town into the field: Colle Sannita.
  • Instead of a town, you can enter a name in the 1st box: Nominativo e paternità. Enter only a last name, or a full name, but last name first, like Russo Giovanni.
• My search produced a list of 96 men from the town who died in World War I.
• Almost every last name in the list is familiar to me, so I started down the list, searching for each man in my family tree.

It took a while to find one, but when I did, I knew he was the right man because:

• The database includes the name of each man's father, and that was a match.
• The database include each man's birth year, and that was a match.

I already knew that Giorgio Gentile, son of Innocenzo, was born in Colle Sannita on 4 September 1877. He married Maria Concetta Pilla on 2 June 1902, and they had a son, Innocenzo, on 13 April 1903. Now I've learned that:

• Giorgio died in 1918 at home in Colle Sannita from disease.
• He was a soldier in the 67th battalion.
• A link to a printed list of war dead confirms his birth date. (The link says Mostra Pagina—Show Page.)
• The linked page provides his exact death date: 13 December 1918. It also confirms his exact birth date.
• Giorgio was 41 years old and fulfilling his military service when he died.

Now I have all the vital information for Giorgio: birth, marriage, and death. I felt sure Giorgio and Maria Concetta had more than one child. So I searched the available vital records.

There are no birth records available for 1905 through 1909. But I found his children Paolo, born in 1910, and Lucia Rosa, born in 1915. Lucia Rosa's birth record has a note written later in the column. It says, "The father [of this child] died in the national war as per communication from the Ministry of War dated 1920."

Giorgio's records are as complete as they can be. That couldn't have happened without this database. I'll continue down this list of 96 war dead from my Grandpa's town. Then I'll search my handful of other towns.

With online databases of the war dead, I can identify the men named in their hometowns' monuments.

Search Other Countries

To search for your fallen family members, try these databases:

• British Commonwealth, World War I and II: https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead provides name, rank and, service number; unit, rank, and country of service; date of death and age; burial place; next of kin and their address; and a commemorative document.
• Germany, World War I: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2124 provides an image of the casualty lists, printed in German, with name, place of birth, and the date of the list.
• United States, World War II: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1102 provides rank, branch of service, burial place, and an image of their name in the "Roster of World War II Dead."
• United States, World War II: https://www.militaryindexes.com/worldwartwo provides access to many online resources. Look for "World War II Records by State" for lists of the dead and wounded.
• Various countries, World War I: http://www.greatwar.co.uk/research/military-records provides links to country-specific databases like the Italian one I'm using.
• Various countries, World War II: https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2 provides free access to many lists, photographs, maps, recordings, and more.

Need more? Search online for "database of world war dead," or make that more specific to what you'd like to find.

I'm sure you'll agree it's worthwhile to find out what became of some of the men in your family tree. Many towns in Italy have monuments to their fallen soldiers. I photographed the memorials in my ancestral hometowns. Now I should have enough information to tie names on the monuments to people in my tree.

And speaking of military records:

• POW: My Grandfather's World War I Experience
• Appreciate the Veterans in Your Family Tree
• Dates that Remind You of Your Military Ancestors

Why Did Your Ancestor Leave Home?

Someone asked me why our ancestors left Italy when it's so beautiful there. I knew the answer, but I remember when I thought the exact same thing.

Then I read a bit of the country's history. Southern Italians faced overwhelming poverty while those in the north fared much better. The young men from the south could have taken factory jobs in the north. But there was too much competition.

Many made their way to the United States of America after hearing that jobs were plentiful. They were hard jobs in steel mills, railroad yards, and coal mines. But it was steady work and decent pay. My grandfathers seized the opportunity and applied for citizenship as soon as possible.

Being an immigrant is not easy. Why did your ancestors choose to leave?

What was going on in your ancestral homeland when your ancestors emigrated? The FamilySearch website is a great place to begin your search. For instance:

• Germans left their country at many points in their history. The main reasons were poverty and religious persecution.
• Many early English emigrants went to America to improve their business prospects. Some were prisoners, sent to other countries. Some military personnel received land or money to stay in the place where they had served.
• The Irish fled famine and poverty. They were also suffering from religious persecution. Some sought political asylum, and others were prisoners sent to America.
• Italian emigration skyrocketed from 1870 to 1914. Young men sought the steady work they couldn't find at home.

A real-life library, or an online catalog search, can tell you why your ancestors moved. One thing is very clear. There has always been a ton of moving going on.

A table on Wikipedia shows the number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. by decade. Based on each census from 1850–2000, the table breaks down the numbers by country and region. (Note: The table is missing 1930 and 1940, and it ends a full 20 years ago.)

The table shows who was leaving their homeland in large numbers at certain times in history. One or more of these trends may apply to your ancestors. For instance:

• German immigration ranged from a half million and 2.7 million people each census year since 1850. It's never let up. In fact, the largest ethnicity in the USA is German at 14.7%*.
• The British Isles and Ireland ranged from nearly 1 million (1990 and 2000) to 4 million (in 1890) people. The English make up 7.8% of America, and the Irish are 10.6%.
• Italian immigration surged to 484,000 people in 1900, and a high of almost 1.8 million people in 1950. After that, quotas forced some of my relatives to go to Canada. Italians are 5.5% of Americans.
• French immigrants peaked at 153,000 in 1920. Relatively speaking, those are low numbers. In fact, the French comprise only 2.6% of Americans.
• Canada has ranged from almost 150,000 in 1850, to 1.3 million in 1950.
• The former Soviet Union hit its peak of more than 1 million people from 1910–1950.
• The former Czechoslovakia topped out at almost a half million people in 1950.

Some countries are seeing a dramatic rise in emigration:

• Mexico surged from 103,000 in 1950 to 9 million in 2000, with a big increase starting in 1980. Mexicans are 10.9% of Americans. That's now the 3rd highest percentage of Americans. First are Germans and second are non-Hispanic Blacks or African Americans.
• The Caribbean Islands began their surge in 1970 and reached almost 3 million strong in 2000.
• Chinese immigrants had many bans and restrictions in the 1800s. But they nearly doubled from 530,000 in 1990 to 989,000 in 2000. This ethnicity represents 1.2% of Americans.

Statistics paint a picture of nationalities fleeing oppression.

While I adore Italy, and I feel at home in my ancestral hometowns, I know it is not the Italy my ancestors left behind.

I encourage you to learn a bit of the history of your "old country". You'll discover a new-found appreciation for your immigrant ancestors' sacrifices.

*The percentages of ethnicities in the U.S. comes from a 2019 article on the WorldAtlas website.

And speaking of emigration/immigration:

• How Did Immigration Laws Guide Your Ancestors?
• Grandpa's Journeys Shed Light On My Own
• Celebrating My Peasant Ancestors

One Man's Big Impact on My Family Tree

Revisiting a clean-up project instantly added dozens of relatives to my family tree.

In July I recommended using Family Tree Analyzer to find the unsourced facts in your family tree. For the steps, see Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations.

My report seemed to have a lot of false positives. Many facts in the list actually had proper sources in my family tree. Discouraged, I tried another method. I ran the Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker. I exported the report as a massive Excel file. It's huge because I have 25,000 people in my family tree, and I don't add a source for a person's sex. So everyone made it into the report!

I spent time deleting lots of lines from that spreadsheet. Then I decided to revisit the report in Family Tree Analyzer. This time I excluded another fact type (Parental Info) before exporting it to Excel.

With a bit more fine-tuning, the report turned out great.

I realized I could cut out all the dates that I left unsourced on purpose. When I don't know someone's birth date, I give them an estimate. In your family tree software, you can type "About" or "Abt" when you're entering an approximate date.

If they are a parent, I make them 25 years older than their oldest child. If I know their spouse's birth year, I estimate they were born about the same year.

Since there can't be a source for my "About" dates, I don't need them in this report. I sorted the report by the Date of Birth column and removed every line where the date begins with "ABT" (for about). Now I'm down to about 114 lines in the spreadsheet. The Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker produced a 45,000-line spreadsheet!

Diving into the New Unsourced Facts Report

The first few lines are for my young cousin-in-law. I have no sources for him, but later I'll see what I can find online.

I'd prefer to work on my 19th century Italian relatives first. The first one in the list is Lorenzo Capozza. In my family tree I see he was born in 1828 in my great grandmother's town of Pescolamazza. He married my 3rd great aunt, Nicolina Caruso, on 19 Apr 1856 in that town.

I must have been rushing along when I found this marriage fact. I didn't save the marriage record to my tree. I didn't chase down Lorenzo's birth date or parents. And I didn't add my sources. Bad genealogist!

Lorenzo was 28 years old when he married my aunt in 1856, so he should have been born in 1828. The marriage record says he was born in the same town, but something's wrong. I have all the town's available vital records on my computer. He isn't in the birth records for 1826 through 1829. I can keep searching each year's birth index, or I can go to the detailed records in the 1856 marriage documents.

Before I do that, the marriage record says Lorenzo's parents are Pietro Capozza and Maria Emanuele Pennuccia. I looked for them in my family tree.

One Man Makes His Mark

They're in there, along with their son Antonio, 5 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren, and at least 12 2nd great grandchildren! I'd already pieced together a huge family for them from the vital records collection. But I never found Lorenzo.

Feel free to borrow this image.

But that's only part of the story. All the people related to Pietro Capozza and Maria Emanuele Pennuccia in my tree are UNRELATED to me. I've given them all my "No Relationship Established" graphic as a profile picture. (See How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree.)

The moment I make Lorenzo the son of Pietro and Maria, all those people will be my relatives. The relationship is through Lorenzo's wife, my 3rd great aunt.

Why did I put this enormous unrelated family in my tree, you ask? It was an out-of-control case of mistaken identity! When my great grandparents married in 1906, a couple from her hometown were the witnesses. The male witness was Nicola Capozza—same last name as our Lorenzo. But he was from a different branch of the family.

I realized too late that all those descendants of Pietro and Maria were an unrelated family.

Until now.

With Lorenzo attached to his parents, all those people are now relatives. I have to remove the "No Relationship Established" graphic from each one. How tedious.

But I have a method I'd like to share with you.

This trick simplifies an error-prone task.

Here's how I handle a big change like that. I have that graphic attached to a large number of people, so finding all the right people in a list wouldn't be easy. What I do is:

• Click everyone in the family who needs the graphic removed, one at a time.
• Change their last name to begin with a 1. Capozza becomes 1Capozza. That makes it easy to find the right people in the list of who's attached to that graphic.
• Go to one person with that graphic and click to detach it.
• This brings up a list of each person attached to the graphic. I can select everyone whose name begins with 1.
• Once I remove the image, I rename everyone in my family tree whose name begins with a 1.

That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's very helpful. I used to struggle with removing that graphic from the right person. A lot of the townspeople have identical names! I use a 1 so it's at the top of my index of all people—easy to find.

Now comes a much bigger challenge. All those new relatives need their vital records and sources!

Make the Most of Each Shiny Genealogy Object

I saw someone in an online genealogy group mention a book about building your family tree. The book said to research and build each of your 4 grandparents' lines one at a time. One at a time!

People in the group (including me) laughed at the idea. How do you choose where to start? How can you ignore information that falls into your lap about another grandparent?

I recommend a much less rigid approach. Genealogy is a hobby, not a requirement. If you're not having fun at it, you're doing it wrong.

When you start out, which branch to follow may depend on:

• Which documents are available
• Who's on your mind at the time
• Whatever you find that interests you.

After you've made some progress, follow your heart. I spent years (about 2008–2012) researching my mom's father's ancestry. Back then, his town's vital records weren't online. Research meant spending countless hours, and a little money, viewing microfilm in a church somewhere.

Those records were the biggest and shiniest genealogy object I could imagine. I set out to learn every possible name in my grandfather's family tree.

Then the Italian vital records started coming online. I jumped into my dad's father's ancestry. Why him? My 2 grandfathers left Italy to come to New York. My grandmothers were born in New York to Italian immigrants. I wanted to know about the families left behind.

You may wonder if you should stick to a plan and ignore the latest shiny genealogy object. Genealogy isn't a race to the finish. Yes, you want to learn about all your ancestry. But you need to have fun, too. It's the fun and joy of new discoveries that'll keep you going.

So, what's the next place for you to focus your attention? It depends.

Many times I launch Family Tree Maker without knowing what I'm going to do that day. This weekend I decided to search for missing documents. I opened my Document tracker spreadsheet and looked at the Need to Find column. I wanted to find missing records for my relatives who never left Italy.

Then one thing led to another. I was going through the spreadsheet alphabetically. I noticed I'd never researched Concetta Basile's husband, Giambattista Martuccio. I found his name written in the column of Concetta's birth record with their marriage date. And that was all I had.

Giambattista became my shiny object. I found his birth record and learned his parents' names. I found his mother's birth record and discovered her parents were already in my family tree.

I found Giambattista's father's birth record, and his parents' marriage records. Giambattista's grandmother was an Iamarino, like me. I found his grandparent's birth records and their parents' marriage records. I wound up taking Giambattista's family back to the early 1700s. Giambattista Martuccio, who started the day as a name, is now my 3rd cousin 3 times removed. He now has a very full family tree. His wife Concetta is also my 3rd cousin 3 times removed.

Following a shiny object sometimes leads to real treasure. It did this time.

That shiny object took up my whole afternoon. And it was totally worth it.

Strike a balance when you're playing with your family tree. Remember to keep things interesting. Here are some ideas that'll help you make progress and have fun:

• Check your progress to see which part of your family tree is lagging behind. Give that branch a little attention.
• Do any of your 4 main branches overlap? (My grandparents were 3rd cousins. My parents have a mystery DNA relationship.) Research that relationship.
• Make the most of a new set of documents you find. I've been giving more attention to my overlooked ancestral towns lately. I also have an awesome book detailing Grandpa Iamarino's townspeople in the year 1742. You can't ignore these things!
• Follow any leads you pick up from members of your family. I'm the one who found out exactly where my mom's mother's family came from. The family lore was a bit broad, but I built on it.
• Plug in the holes you weren't able to plug before. There may be new document collections available to you that weren't there before.

With all these possible priorities, and more, each genealogy session can be a spur-of-the-moment adventure. If it's a dead end, don't get frustrated. Follow a new shiny object and see where it leads.

Genealogy is my escape. My happy place. Balance your research priorities and keep things unstructured. It can be your happy place, too.

Here's Your Family Tree Progress Report

The world is a chaotic mess, so let's focus on something positive. How's your family tree coming along? How's your progress report looking?

Well, how can we measure our progress in piecing together the names that make us who we are?

I've been measuring my progress by keeping my grandparent chart up to date. I've had a lot of success finding more 6th great grandparents lately. I've focused hard on searching for their names. Each time I find one, I open my grandparent chart. I figure out their Ahnentafel number and add the new name in the proper place.

It's a manual process, for sure. Sometimes I'll count the blank spaces and note how many names are missing for a generation.

Today I found a fast and accurate way to see which ancestors I have and how many I'm missing. Never underestimate the power of Family Tree Analyzer. It's a free program I've written about several times, and it has a ton of useful features.

Family Tree Analyzer gives you an instant progress report.

First you need to export a new GEDCOM file from your family tree software or website. (A GEDCOM is a text file with all the facts in your family tree.) Open your GEDCOM with Family Tree Analyzer. (I just found out you can drag and drop your file onto the program window!) Then go to Reports on the top menu bar and choose How Many Directs Report. The report opens a table showing how many people you've found in each generation.

I have a total of 343 directs named in my family tree. I've got myself and my 2 sons, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and on and on. My report goes all the way up to 2 pairs of 9th great grandparents. At first I thought something was wrong with the count of 4th great grandparents. I know I'm missing 9 of the possible 64, but this report showed 11 missing. Then I remembered my paternal grandparents were 3rd cousins. I've got repeat ancestors!

As you view your report, keep these totals in mind. Here's how many ancestors everyone has:

• 4 grandparents
• 8 great grandparents
• 16 2nd great grandparents (I've found them all)
• 32 3rd great grandparents (I've found 31)
• 64 4th great grandparents (I've found 53)
• 128 5th great grandparents (I've found 84)
• 256 6th great grandparents (I've found 100)
• 512 7th great grandparents (I've found 31)
• 1024 8th great grandparents (I've found 7)
• 2048 9th great grandparents (I've found 4)
• 4096 10th great grandparents

The number of ancestors doubles each generation, and it really adds up! Click any line in the report to see a new chart with details about each person in that category. For example, I clicked the 6th great grandmother line. That showed me the names of the 50 6th great grandmothers I've identified. FIFTY!

In my case, it's easy to see which ancestral hometown is dominant in my ancestry.

I can see these women were born between about 1690 and the mid 1700s. That's way before the available vital records from Italy. I found their names in the marriage or death records of their children or grandchildren.

Sometimes there's no proof of an early ancestor's town of birth. I mark them as Italy. I'm sure of that. But once I get down to my 5th great grandparents, I can find proof. I know some were born in:

• Apice
• Baselice
• Circello
• Colle Sannita
• Pescolamazza
• Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, and
• Santa Paolina.

Click the BirthLocation column in your Family Tree Analyzer report to sort the list. You'll see how many ancestors came from the same town. In an earlier article I counted my ancestors by town and found that a third of my ancestry comes from one town. This report makes that so easy to see.

Each time I find another direct ancestor, they go right into my grandparent chart with their Ahnentafel number.

Your progress report can help focus your attention on a particular branch. I have a roadblock on half of my blue branch (my maternal grandmother). Apart from that, I want to press on finding those 5th and 6th great grandparents.

But first, I'll finish clearing out my genealogy closet. When you focus on one project, you can make tremendous progress.

Organize Your Genealogy Closet: A Challenge

I have a folder on my computer called "gen docs." When I find something that may belong in my family tree, but I'm short on time, I toss it in gen docs. The folder got so full, I added a sub-folders to categorize it all.

I always mean to go back and deal with these document images and photos. But it never happens.

That's why I'm issuing this genealogy clean-up challenge to me and to you. This week, make it a priority to deal with your own miscellaneous stash of genealogy items. They may be on your computer, in a physical file drawer, or in that Ancestry.com dustbin called the Shoebox.

Think of it like cleaning out your closet. You might sort your clothes items into:

• Trash
• Donate/Sell
• Keep

It's simpler for genealogy items. They're going to be either:

• Delete immediately or
• Place in family tree immediately

Last week I discovered I'd duplicated part of my gen docs folder by mistake. I found a smaller version of the folder in another part of my computer. Some of the items were duplicates, and others weren't.

It's time to straighten this out!

I randomly jumped in by opening a folder called passport applications. I found a 2-page document I'd labelled as no_relation_PillaMichele1922-p1.jpg and -p2.jpg. I thought maybe now I know whether or not he's a relative.

Page 1 of the application showed me Michele's exact birth date and town. So I checked my family tree. Surprise! Michele is my 4th cousin twice removed. And his passport application is already in my family tree, along with 12 other documents. Michele was born in my grandfather's hometown in Italy and came to live in the Bronx, New York. He left quite a paper trail.

I can delete the entire passport applications folder from my gen docs collection.

I'm horrified that I never added these treasures to my family tree. Now's the time.

Next I opened a census folder and found a sub-folder called "don't remember why." You know that isn't good. It means that when I categorized it all into sub-folders, I already didn't know why I had saved something.

One turned out to be a 1930 census that included my childhood dentist as a little boy. Why?? I hated that guy. He traumatized me for decades. That gets destroyed right now. The other mystery census is for an Italian family in western New York state. Their last name is vaguely familiar, but it isn't in my big family tree at all. Now it's trash.

There was another sub-folder called "Oliveri clues." The folder held a 1930 and 1940 census for a couple who may be the parents of my grandfather's cousin Lina's husband, Vincenzo Oliveri.

Sometime after I saved these files, I created an in-law rule for my family tree. I do not fully document the family of a distant in-law like this. I am interested in documenting cousin Lina's husband, Vincenzo Oliveri. But I won't go beyond his parents. And I won't do very much work on his parents.

I learned his parents' names from Vincenzo and Lina's 1919 marriage certificate. On closer inspection, these are 2 different families in 1930 and 1940. And it's unlikely they'd live in Brooklyn when their son lives in the Bronx.

Because of my in-law rule and the uncertainty, these saved documents are trash.

This is a one-of-a-kind document that was lost on my computer.

I'm continuing to examine saved documents and make judgment calls. My family tree has developed a lot since I saved many of these documents. My collection of Italian vital records has improved, too. I made them searchable by renaming each document image to include the name of the person in the document. That's helping me rule these gen docs in or out.

The point is to deal with these saved items right now. No more waiting. No more leaving them sitting there so long that you have no idea why you saved them.

I challenge you to spend a genealogy session or two dealing with your saved items. Take another look at the documents you stashed somewhere. If they belong in the "Place in family tree immediately" pile, do so! If they belong in the "Delete immediately" pile, then free up that space right away.

Past You definitely thought there was a reason to keep these things. Present You needs to follow through. You may find some gems in your genealogy closet.