Look Back to See How Your Genealogy Hobby Is Going

If you spend any time on social media, you've seen them. The before-and-after images with the words "how it started" and "how it's going." Usually the joke is that things are not going very well at all.

What if we apply the same idea to our family tree research? How it started for me was a 1989 conversation with my Grandma Leone and a hand-drawn tree of her family. How it's going is a family tree with 32,000 people from all my grandparents' hometowns.

Then I had a conversation with my Grandpa Iamarino. He told me a bit about his sisters. I'd known nothing about them! Now my family tree has his sisters, their children, and generations of their husbands' ancestors.

"How it started" was a 1989 conversation and a scrap of paper. "How it's going" is a treasure trove of documents and family history.

Fast-forward to 2002 when my husband-to-be and I were planning our honeymoon in Italy. I wanted to know more about where my ancestors came from. I started with the EllisIsland.org website. I found ship manifests for my two grandfathers. When I noticed that everyone named Iamarino came from one town (Colle Sannita), I took out a notebook. I filled tons of pages with facts about every Iamarino emigrating from Colle.

My husband bought me Family Tree Maker software with a subscription to Ancestry.com. He thought it was time I graduate from the slips of paper I was laying out on the floor to simulate a family tree.

"How it started" was a notebook filled with info from ship manifests. "How it's going" is a collection of 505 digital manifest images.

I did indeed graduate. I found my extended family in the census records. Not a single one of my ancestors had come to America before 1890. Our roots here are still so shallow.

My next how it started / how it's going began in about 2006. I learned I could visit a Family History Center at a local church to view microfilm of Italian vital records. For five years, I viewed and documented EVERY vital record (1809–1860) from my Grandpa Leone's hometown of Baselice. I chose his town because I knew almost nothing about his family.

I started this project by finding his parents' birth records in 1850 and 1856. Now I knew their parents' names.

The only way to know my relationship to other Leones in town was to piece together all the families. So I brought my laptop to the Family History Center and typed a line in a text file for each record. Here's an example:

• Pasquale Maria Cernese b 1 apr 1809 to Giovanni di Saverio 35 (bracciale) and Battista di Giovanni Colucci

That's a birth record for Pasquale Maria Cernese, born on 1 April 1809. His father was Giovanni Cernese, a 35-year-old laborer, and the son of Saverio Cernese. His mother was Battista Colucci, daughter of Giovanni Colucci.

"How it started" was viewing barely-legible vital records by appointment. "How it's going" is a family tree more than 32,000 strong.

With this type of shorthand, I created a text file that's 29,864 lines long. After each long session at the microfilm viewer, I'd go home and try to work everyone into a Family Tree Maker file. I found a connection to about 15,000 people from the town.

During the entire five-year process, I was yearning to do the same for my Grandpa Iamarino's town. But the visits to the center were a pain. Then, everything changed in 2017. The Italian government published digitized vital records for tons of towns online. Now I can see clear images of the vital records I'd struggled to read on crappy microfilm viewers. Plus, the records don't end in 1860. They go way, way beyond.

And Grandpa Iamarino's hometown vital records are online for me, too! As are my great grandmother Caruso's hometown records. My Grandma Leone's parents' town has very few records online, but they are helpful. And when I discovered two other towns where I have roots, I found their vital records online, too.

Much to my horror, the Italian website completely changed their format today, making it seemingly impossible to download a high-resolution image of your ancestor's document. This stinks! UPDATED: How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.

For my research, how it started is the five years of squinting at microfilm with a computer in my lap. How it's going is my searchable database of records from my Italian hometowns. And a family tree of more than 32,000 people that's been growing by almost 100 people a day lately.

Why so much growth? Because how it started was asking Grandma and Grandpa about their siblings. How it's going is piecing together the thousands of unions from my ancestors' towns. For instance, I can find the marriage records for my 3rd great grandparents. Then I can find the births of all their children, who their children married, and which kids they had. It adds up fast.

It helps my cause that all my people came from such a tiny footprint on the Italian map. In 2005 my cousins showed me the exact spot where Grandpa Iamarino's house once stood. They pointed out that I could see Grandpa Leone's town in the distance.

A man from one of my towns could meet and marry a woman from one of my other towns. In fact, my 3rd great grandfather Francesco Liguori did just that. He lived in Circello—my one real connection to that town. But he married a woman from the neighboring town of Colle Sannita. They had eight children in Colle, introducing his last name to the town. And that meant I had to explore Francesco's extended family in the Circello vital records.

How did your interest in your family tree start? Think back on your origin story and then ask yourself, "How's it going?"

4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer

Want to find mistakes you didn't know you made in your family tree? Launch the free software called Family Tree Analyzer. Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree software or the website where you keep your tree. Then open the GEDCOM in Family Tree Analyzer.

When your file is open and processed, you'll see a screen full of facts about your family tree. For instance, my tree has 326 sources, 31,775 people, and 11,494 families. Wow! Next comes a breakdown of everyone's relationship to me, the home person in the family tree:

• Direct Ancestors: 411. Uh oh. Last week I counted 403 direct ancestors. Did I miss eight, or are those my double ancestors? (My paternal grandparents were 3rd cousins with shared ancestors.)
• Descendants: 2. Hi, kids.
• Blood Relations: 4,802. That's a lot of blood.
• Married to Blood or Direct Relation: 1,877. These are the immediate in-laws.
• Related by Marriage: 19,283. Yup, my ancestral hometowns were full of intermarriage.
• Linked through Marriages: 5,225. I go off on a lot of tangents.
• Unknown relation: 175. I carry some unrelated people because I know there's a connection somewhere. But 175 seems high.

I had another reason for launching Family Tree Analyzer today. But right now I have two potential problems to investigate:

• The number of direct ancestors.
• The number of unknown relations.

To find out more about these issues, click the Main Lists tab to open the very useful Individuals table.

Problem 1: The Number of Direct Ancestors

As you scroll to the right in the Individuals table, you'll find a column labelled Relation to Root. Start with "2nd great grandfather." This takes a lot of scrolling in a big family tree. You'll find your 1st great grandparents under "great grandfather" and "great grandmother."

Even custom facts you create can be used and checked with Family Tree Analyzer.

In my case, I need to see if any of my great grandparents are missing their custom fact I called Ahnentafel. I use this custom fact in Family Tree Maker to view only my direct ancestors in the index. That's how I counted 403 of them.

To see if the extra people are my double ancestors, I'll look for missing Ahnentafel numbers. I realize this is specific to my tree because of the Ahnentafel field. You may want to scan the list for misidentified people.

And, in fact, I didn't miss any of my direct ancestors. The difference in the number of direct ancestors must be because of my double ancestors.

Problem 2: The Unknown Relations

Going back to the Individuals table, scroll to the right and click the top of the Relation column to sort the table. Scroll down to the bottom to find all the Unknowns. Then scroll to the left to see their names.

In my case, I recognize a ton of the Unknowns. (see "How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree.") They're related to a cousin Silvio whose exact relationship I can't determine. It's a dead end because of a lack of records from Silvio's hometown. So, here he sits in my tree, with a ton of direct relations, unrelated to me.

Next in the list I see a family group that I found in a 1742 census of my grandfather's hometown. But I never found their connection to me. I did a quick search of the tens of thousands of vital records on my computer for one member of this family. I found his death record! Now I can merge the two men named Gregorio Alderisio in my tree. His death record proves the connection by including the name of his wife and both parents, and his age at death.

That one death record converted 11 unrelated people in my family tree to distant cousins.

I found another family group that's unrelated to me, and I can't remember why I put them in my tree. I'll have to investigate further and decide if I should remove them. With Family Tree Analyzer, it's easy to find them when I'm ready to solve the problem.

Problem 3: Comments + Time = Discrepancies

The reason I wanted to see this report today is to find discrepancies in descriptions within my family tree. I'm thinking of how I type in different occupations for people.

Here's an unexpected way to find and fix inconsistencies in your family tree.

I'll sort the Individuals table by the Occupation column. My tree has tons of Italian job titles followed by an English translation in parentheses. Sometimes I see a multi-word job title that has an error. I want to find those in the list. Then I can see which people it's attached to, and go fix it in my family tree.

I found a few entries that must be what I call "Search and Replace victims." A long time ago, I decided to add an English translation to the Italian job titles. To do this, I used the search and replace function of Family Tree Maker. You have to be very careful with search and replace. You may wind up changing something you didn't want to change. And, of course, I'm scanning for typos in the English job titles.

Now I can go to these people in my tree and fix their occupation entries.

Problem 4: Unused Sources

Before we leave Family Tree Analyzer, there's one other thing to check. We've been looking at the Main Lists / Individuals table. Click Sources, two tabs to the right of Individuals. Now click to sort by the last column, FactCount. Do you have any sources in your family tree that are showing a zero fact count? I have five, so I want to investigate.

After taking a look at these sources in my family tree, I deleted four, but one actually had three uses. I don't know why it was in the list.

There's no end to the fixable problems you can discover using Family Tree Analyzer. Make it part of your routine to export a GEDCOM, say, once a quarter, and examine your tree with Family Tree Analyzer. It's a valuable safety net for your family history research.

And speaking of Family Tree Analyzer:

• How to Plug the Holes in Your Family Tree
• It's Time to Make Your Family Tree Clear and Consistent
• Run This Genealogy Report to Help Clean Up Your Dates

This 3-Step Backup Routine Protects Your Family Tree

Are you fairly active in your genealogy research? Here's one routine you must follow. Make it a habit, and all your digital documents will be safely stored and backed up.

Step 1. Start With a Working Folder

My backup routine got so much easier when I started using a working folder. This computer folder (literally named "working") is where I put files I'm actively working on.

Let's say I download a census image from Ancestry.com. I put it in my working folder and begin to process it:

• Crop the image in Photoshop and use the "Export As" function to reduce the file size. (My favorite new trick. See illustration in this article.)
• Right-click the image and choose Properties so I can add a title and description to the file.
  • The title begins with the year of the document. Like "1882 birth record for Pasquale Iamarino." That way, the documents arrange themselves chronologically in Family Tree Maker.
  • The description contains everything needed to make a solid source citation.
• Drag and drop the image into Family Tree Maker, attaching it to the right person.
• Create the source citation to use for each fact learned from the document. The I share the image, facts, and citation with anyone else mentioned (as on a census).
• Add a notation about the new file in my document tracker spreadsheet so I know what I have for this person.

Use a system like this to improve how you handle and safeguard your family tree image files.

Step 2. Move Files to a Holding Area

Now that I'm finished with this file, I no longer need it in my working folder. I can move it to a holding area (another folder) where it will sit until I backup all my files.

As you may know, I work with Italian vital records more than any other type of document. So I named my holding area folder "certificates." (As in birth, death, and marriage certificates.)

The idea is to hold your new documents in one place until you're ready to follow your backup routine. Once backed up, you can move the files to their final destination.

Here's how the process evolved for me. I have so many thousands of vital records that my certificates folder was hard to use. If I wanted to sort them by date, it took a long time to process.

If you use Photoshop for your family tree image files, this trick is an absolute game changer.

So I divided my certificates into eight batches:

A–C, D–H, I–L, M–O, Pa–Pi, Po–R, S–Y, and Z.

I name my files using a "LastnameFirstnameDocument-typeYear" pattern. I have a ton of family names that begin with P and Z. These breaks work out to be roughly even amounts of files in each folder.

That's when I realized a working folder would help me, so I created mine right in my certificates folder. But yours can be anywhere.

Finally, I added a folder to hold non-vital records until they are ready to backup. To make sure I didn't overlook this folder, I named it "DON'T FORGET TO BACK UP THESE."

Your folder names and locations can be whatever works best for you. You'll want (1) a folder to work in, and (2) a holding area for finished files.

Step 3. Stick to a Weekly Backup Routine

I don't know when I became such a big fan of routines, but I've been running my life like clockwork quite happily. One of my routines is Sunday morning bookkeeping and file backup.

My bookkeeping is obsessive, but it has served me well since I first moved out of my parents' home. Once that's done, I plug in my two external hard drives. One is set to automatically create a backup of new files from folders I selected. I added this step to cover me if my older external drive fails.

The other external drive uses a manual process. I drag and drop new files from a list of specific folders into matching folders on the external drive. These files include:

• PDF bills and statements
• QuickBooks files
• Microsoft Outlook files, and more.

Finally, it's time to back up all my family tree files. I drag and drop my Family Tree Maker files, which can take a while because of their size. Then I open my holding area folder ("certificates" for me) on my computer, and its mate on the external drive. I grab a few files and drag them to the appropriate sub-folder on my external drive, and then on my computer. This moves the files out of the holding area and into their final destination.

Then I go into my "DON'T FORGET TO BACK UP THESE" folder. I have to determine what each file is so I can drag them to the proper folder on my external drive and my computer. I'll drag and drop all the census files, then all the draft cards, all the ship manifests, etc.

When I'm done, my holding folder has no loose files in it. My files are stored on two external drives. Plus my family tree files get backed up to OneDrive automatically.

All housekeeping chores get harder if you wait too long. Even if you aren't a very active genealogy researcher, you have plenty of files you need to protect.

So tell me. Which day of the week works best for you?

Build a Rock-Solid Family Tree Foundation

A family tree needs a well-made foundation. But unlike other construction projects, your tree needs a solid base at the top.

With a solid foundation, you can add distant relatives like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Imagine if you knew the names of all your 6th great grandparents. Plus all their siblings. And everyone's spouses. Then you could attach younger generations to the right branch as you discover them.

That's what I'm doing with my pet project. I'm piecing together everyone from my grandfather's hometown of Colle Sannita, Italy. I'm lucky. All my ancestors came from a handful of neighboring towns where they lived for centuries. The towns were a bit isolated, so the number of intermarriages is astonishing.

Researching the earliest birth records can take you back several generations.

A Foundational Database

In 2017 I downloaded the town's vital records from the Italian website, Antenati. I have more than 38,000 document images arranged in separate folders. There's a unique birth, marriage, and death folder for each year. The years range from 1809–1942 with several gaps. It's a total of 225 folders. (Note that civil record keeping began in 1809 in most Italian towns.)

Next, I made the files easy to use. I renamed each one to include the name(s) of the document's subject(s). Along the way, I realized it'd be helpful to include the name of the subject's father in the file name.

For instance, "007853904_01008 Damiano d'Emilia di Teofilo.jpg" is more useful than "007853904_01008 Damiano d'Emilia.jpg." Why? Because now I can search my computer for every child born to Teofilo d'Emilia.

Two Reasons for This Naming Convention

Reason #1: Keeping the number (007853904_01008) in the file name makes it easy to cite the image's URL. To do this, I keep a special text file in each of the 225 folders. The file contains a template for each image's URL. The template for the folder of 1852 death records says this:

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Morti/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01006-01067)

To reconstruct the URL for this exact file, I change the 00000 in the template URL to 01008. Why keep the whole number when I need only the last 5 digits? Because the marriage files, and some other records, come from more than one location. There can be different sets of numbers within a year. The template for 1852 marriages looks like this:

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Matrimoni+pubblicazioni/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01086-01147) [These are the marriage banns.]

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Matrimoni+processetti/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01148-01502) [These are the birth and death records required for the marriage.]

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Colleoggi+Colle+Sannita/Matrimoni/1852/636/007853904_00000.jpg.html (01503-01536) [These are the marriage documents, often with a separate notation for civil and church wedding.]

The beginning of the file number (i.e., 007853904) plus the last 5 digits helps form the exact URL.

Reason #2: I use the Italian word "di" before the father's name in each file name (i.e., Damiano d'Emilia di Teofilo, or Maria Rosa Pilla di Nicola). "Di" means of, and it's a common way to show that someone is the son or daughter of a particular man. Italian records may use the word "fu" (meaning late or deceased). But to simplify my record searching, I use "di" in the file name even if the father is dead.

Understanding the Antenati URL structure helps you write the source citation.

Placing the Babies

The renamed vital records are easy to search on my computer. I use a Windows program called Everything, and it's a godsend. My plan is to fit as many babies from the town as possible into my published family tree. What an awesome resource my tree will be for anyone with Colle Sannita ancestry.

Here's the process:

1. View the document to find the baby's name, the father's name and age, and the mother's name and age. (Ages are not always included, but you can estimate.)
2. Check Family Tree Maker to see if the baby is already in there. If so, prepare the image (crop, enhance, add meta data) and add it to their profile with a source citation for each fact.
3. If the baby is not in the family tree, look for the father and mother. See if they're in the tree as husband and wife. If so, add this baby and the document.
4. If the baby and parents are not in the tree, search for:
   • The marriage of the grown-up baby. If there's a place for their spouse in the family tree, there's now a connection to this baby and their document.
   • The death of the mother or father. Their death records should include their parents' names. Check if they are already in the family tree.
   • The remarriage of one of the widowed parents. Does their new spouse fit into the tree?
   • Siblings for the original baby. One of them may have married someone who's already in the family tree.

That last idea was a game-changer. I revisited a dozen 1809 babies that I couldn't place in my family tree on the first try. Once I tracked down their siblings, I found the connection I needed and worked the whole family into my tree.

Reaching Higher Than the Foundation

The earliest documented babies have parents born around the 1780s or earlier. If I find their death records, I learn the names of their parents, born around the 1750s or earlier. And if I'm lucky enough to find that generation's parents' names, I can check my ultimate reference book. My friend from Colle Sannita, Dr. Fabio Paolucci, published a book detailing every family in Colle Sannita in the year 1742. When I connect someone from the book to my family tree, I can wind up with ancestors born in the 1600s!

If you have Italian ancestors, see if a similar book is available for your town. You won't regret the investment. Use the search box on https://abenapoli.it to look for your ancestral hometown. The book I bought is called "Colle Sannita nel 1742" ("nel" means in the). The book for another of my towns is called "Apice nel 1753." A search for "nel 17" brings up a long list of books detailing the residents of many towns in the 1700s.

This rock-solid foundation will help me place more and more townspeople in my family tree.

I connected all the 1809 babies, and I've already got 31,000+ people in my family tree. Thank goodness I retired last month, because this obsession is an absolute blast!

This New Template Charts 5 Generations

Even after finding the Family Tree Generator Excel template, I needed another template. You see, the Excel template works best when you already know the names of the eldest generation. But while researching, you often know only the youngest generation.

When I research someone else's family, I create an Excel chart to keep track of their ancestors as I find them.

It was confusing—and a hassle—to build that chart from scratch each time. So I made my own Ancestor Chart template in Excel. It starts with the main person at the bottom, center. (The center is way over in column AH.) It has "father" and "mother" placeholders for five generations of ancestors. It goes all the way back to the main person's 3rd great grandparents.

This new template is perfect for use while researching an unrelated family tree.

Each generation is color-coded. Plus, the first column always tells you which generation is which. As you're researching, replace "father" or "mother" with the full name of the ancestor you've found.

I do more than keep track of my research in a spreadsheet like this. I give the finished chart to my client so they can visualize their ancestry. It's so helpful when they're reviewing the documents, translations, and explanations I provide.

This template is very wide, but you can print it if you like. Set your printer to landscape mode and this tree will span six pages.

Imagine using this template to work up from your DNA match until you reach your own ancestor.

Keep in mind that the main person doesn't have to be living. Often it's my client's grandparent or great grandparent. You can use this template to visualize any particular branch of a family. You can duplicate the chart to make separate trees for a husband and wife.

Download your copy of the file from Dropbox and let me know how you've used it. If you don't have spreadsheet software, you can copy and use this Google Sheets version of the same template.

What You're Losing With Your Private Family Tree

My family tree software almost gave me a heart attack. I routinely make a backup of my Family Tree Maker file after working on it for a while. It's not uncommon for me to make 3 or 4 backups in a long day of research. Then I close and compact my file before I synchronize any changes with Ancestry.com.

Still, there's a feeling of dread when my file takes to long to respond. Last week the FTM program stopped dead. I'd opened my family tree file to make one change and output an updated family tree chart. I began clicking my way up the generations, trying to get to the eldest Ohama in my husband's family tree.

But I couldn't click anything! Nothing was responding. I decided to leave it alone and do something else for a while. But the program was still stuck. After an hour, I held my breath and killed it.

When I relaunched Family Tree Maker, I saw the expected error message. I clicked Continue. I was confident I'd made only one edit that day, so I restored my tree from the full backup I made the day before.

Everything was fine! I repeated the change I made earlier and output that family tree chart I wanted.

Why do I stick with Family Tree Maker when it can cause me so much worry? Because I can share my up-to-date, uneditable family tree with every member of Ancestry.com. I want people to find my research, but I don't want them to change it. The shared trees of Family Search, Geni, and elsewhere are horrifying to a control freak like me. Plus, Ancestry has the best interface for viewing a family tree.

Share your family tree on a big stage for your own benefit.

I've been building two other family trees lately that I'm not sharing online. One is for my son's girlfriend and one is for my college roommate. These trees don't belong online because I wasn't asked to share this information.

But my enormous family tree is another story. When the Italian government started posting vital records online in 2017, my genealogy goal changed.

I'm not satisfied with documenting my direct ancestors and cousins. I want to connect everyone from my ancestral hometowns. I don't care if someone is the mother-in-law of the 2nd husband of my 1st cousin 5 times removed. She's from one of my towns and has a connection to me. She belongs in my tree.

Strangers often thank me for the people, facts, and documents I've put together for their family. Sometimes they turn out to be a DNA match to my parents or me.

When all goes well, I can build onto my new contact's branch of the family. I can follow their ancestors to America, picking up what might otherwise have been a dead end. Sharing your family tree is the surest way to open up those dead ends.

The latest person to write and thank me for his ancestors turns out to be my 5th cousin once removed. Just knowing who my mom's 5th cousin is blows my mind. Thank you, internet.

This week I'm gathering vital records for his ancestors, adding them to my family tree, and sharing them with him on Ancestry. To me, this is the ideal collaboration. Don't touch my work. But let's work together. We can benefit one another.

You can talk to me all day long about your preferred family tree software. But nothing compares to the combination of Family Tree Maker on my desktop and Ancestry.com.