Without Vital Records, What Can You Do?

Last week I told someone we can't expand her family tree. She knows a lot about the relatives born in the 1890s, but their mother will remain a mystery for one reason. The vital records for her town are not available.

To discover your Italian ancestors, you must know exactly where they were born. Only then can you check which birth, marriage, and death records are online. In this woman's case, we know the town, but almost no records have survived.

Missing Records Create Bricks Walls

I have a similar situation with my Grandma Mary's ancestors. I discovered exactly where they came from. It's a section of the town of Sant'Angelo a Cupolo called Pastene. Pastene is very small, and there are a lot of vital records available. The problem is, there are no records before 1861.

A few years ago I hired a pair of researchers based in Naples, Italy, to take a ride to Pastene. I last visited the town in 2018, but I found the church doors locked. I'm not sure how far I would have gotten even if I had made it inside. I asked the Italian researchers to give it a try.

They found a surprising lack of records. They said the town didn't keep pre-1861 records. Even the church records were scarce. The researchers did find a few scraps that helped my family tree. I was able to take Grandma's paternal line back 4 generations beyond her father. The paternal line of the Sarracino family goes back to the 1740s in my tree. I wish all her branches went that far!

This unexpected find proves exactly where my ancestors lived. I can walk right up and see their houses on my next visit.

About 2 years later—and 2 years after my latest visit to Italy—I found a very interesting map online. This 1825 map of Pastene contains numbered tracts of land and houses. It highlights only 3 specific areas by name:

• the center of town containing the church and the piazza, labelled Pastene
• a cluster of houses labelled Saraceni
• a much smaller group of houses labelled Molli

I don't know why the map only calls out the names Saraceni and Molli. But I felt sure they referred to my Sarracino and Muollo ancestors.

What Other Documents Exist?

Now I have proof that I was right. While revisiting one of my genealogy bookmarks, I found the website with the Pastene map I'd found. I decided to explore the rest of the site to see what might be useful to me. To my surprise, I found a census of Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, including Pastene. I recognized all the last names on the pages.

My Italian historian friend explained this was part of a census of the entire Papal State. On the last page of the 60-page census of Sant'Angelo a Cupolo is the date 23 July 1825. The map has a long inscription with the exact same date. Clearly the map and the census go together.

As I paged through the census, I found quite a few families named Saracino. Each listing is nothing more than a person's name, their father's name, and a house or property number. I'm convinced one entry (Domenico Saracino, son of Giovanni) is my 4th great grandfather. The census tells me he lived in house 209 and/or 222. On the map, 209 and 222 are in the Saraceni cluster of houses.

My ancestors' town is small enough for me to believe I found their home in 1825!

Pastene is a one-road town. The Saraceni section of the map is at a noticeable bend in the road. That bend helped me find it on Google Maps and go in for a closer look.

Now I know exactly where to walk on my next visit there.

I'm at a dead end with Grandma's family due to a lack of records. At least now I may know why. Pastene ignored Napoleon's decree to document their people because it was church property. They started keeping records in 1861 because that year they belonged to the state.

The town's website says, the Church passed ownership of the town to the Kingdom of Italy in September 1860. My Pastene became part of the newly established Province of Benevento in 1861. And then the record keeping began.

Knowing exactly where my ancestors lived, down to the house numbers, is wonderful. I can't trace them back any further, but I can walk among their homes. That's my consolation prize.

I'll continue to explore the 1825 census for more clues. What unexpected historical documents might you find for your town?

How DNA Can Help Find Your Ancestral Hometown

Some people think seeing your DNA pie chart is a waste of time and money. When I saw my first DNA results in 2012, I'll admit, I was very disappointed. But in 10 years, the number of DNA testers and the technology used for analysis have grown.

AncestryDNA updated their DNA Communities recently. I checked the results for my parents, my husband, and me. My first thought was, "Yeah, you got that right." The communities matched exactly what I know based on the paper trail.

It's amazing to see how specific our results are as compared to 10 years ago.

Mom and I have the South Benevento & North Avellino Provinces community. That's exactly how I always describe where our ancestors came from. When I zoom into our communities on AncestryDNA, the locations of my direct ancestors begin to pop up. They form a corridor that stretches from northern Avellino up through southern Benevento. That's the cradle of my genetic matter right there.

The updated AncestryDNA communities are too accurate to ignore.

This is all very nice to see. Only later did the true value of these communities hit me. What if you don't know exactly where your people came from? What if family lore tells you nothing more than a country of origin? I know that's true for so many descendants of immigrants. What if that country's borders have changed over time? How can you get anywhere in your family tree research on such slim information?

One answer is your DNA Communities. AncestryDNA compares your DNA results to those of millions of other test-takers. They form clusters of people based on your matches and your matches' matches. If your DNA matches have identified their ancestral hometowns, or if they match the population there today, it becomes clear. Your people must have come from the same area.

My husband's updated community is also very accurate. His test results have always said nothing more than 100% Japanese. That's awesome in itself, to be 100% of anything.

But his new community has the names of 5 cities, and the first 2 happen to be exactly where his family came from. His dad's side is from Hiroshima, and his mom's side is from Yamaguchi. I can verify this with his ancestors' immigration records. It's amazing that all his history, from 300 years ago to his grandparents, rests in a small slice of Japan.

And my family history is very similar. Civil records put my ancestors in that thin corridor of southern Italy since the late 1600s. Church records show my maiden name existed in my Grandpa's hometown since at least the 1400s.

Let Your Communities Narrow Your Search

Let's say your ancestor emigrated too early for their hometown to appear on a ship manifest. And you can't find any other record for them that states a specific town of birth. Check your DNA Communities! One of them may narrow down your search to a handful of towns.

In many countries, you must know your ancestor's town of birth or you may never find their records. If you can narrow down your search to a short list of towns, you may find your ancestor faster.

If I didn't already know my ancestral hometowns, these results would have pointed the way.

I checked my DNA results on MyHeritage, and they have what they call Genetic Groups. I have far less confidence in these groups. They're not very specific, and they include Ohio because my dad and his cousins were born there. His family had only recently moved there. My Ohio roots are very shallow.

My 2 other Genetic Groups are better than Ohio, but nowhere near as specific as AncestryDNA. They are Italy (Bari) and Italy (Campania). I know my roots are 100% in Campania, but that's an entire region of the country. That wouldn't help me find my ancestors. MyHeritage has a "Low" confidence level that I'm even from Campania!

My 23 and Me results are way off in so many ways. What they tell me would be of no use whatsoever in helping me find my ancestors. But I didn't buy their test kit. I don't know if the results would be more specific if I had.

Have you tested with AncestryDNA? Do you still have some mysteries about your places of origin? Check out your updated communities! You can even see which of your DNA matches belong in the same communities. If you haven't found your town of origin, maybe one of your closest matches has.

Using Obituaries to Find Missing Cousins

I can never find obituaries for my ancestors. No marriage notices, no social events, nothing! Even so, when Newspapers.com had a membership sale, I signed up so I could do research for others.

But first I remembered an event in my life I wanted to look up. Of course the right local newspaper isn't available on Newspapers.com. I was off to a terrific start! Switching gears, I started looking for U.S. obituaries of anyone who came from my Grandpa's town in Italy. I did that by searching for his exact town name.

When names won't work, try an obituary search for your ancestral hometowns.

You know how genealogists joke about their love of cemeteries? Well, this ghoulish game is perfect for us. The idea is to see if you can take a total stranger's obituary and find their place in your family tree.

After a couple of misses I found Mary. She was born in Colle Sannita in 1880 and died in Pennsylvania in 1970. Her obituary includes both her parents' names. It also says her husband Tony (also from Colle Sannita) had died only 3 weeks earlier. Of course I looked up his obituary, too.

Now comes the challenge. Could I fit this couple—both completely unknown to me—into my family tree?

I started with Mary whose maiden name they misspelled in the obituary. I knew it was wrong because I know the names from Grandpa's town like the back of my hand. I searched my collection of the town's vital records and found her birth record. I soon realized she was already in my tree with a complex in-law type of relationship to me. I even had her husband Tony's name in my tree based on 2 things:

• their son's 1914 birth record from the town, and
• a marriage notation in the column of her birth record.

Mary's Italian birth record had Tony's full name written in the column. I'd expected to find his birth record with her name on it. But there was no record for any Tony with Mary's name on it. So he's been a dead end for some time.

To figure out which birth record was his, I searched for the parents mentioned in his 1970 obituary. I had to be careful that I had exactly the right parents in this town where names repeat a LOT. So I searched for all the children born to a couple with the right names, Damiano and Maddalena. Finally I found a child born at a time when the birth records were far more detailed. This one record included the names of Damiano and Maddalena's fathers. That was the clue I needed to be sure I'd truly found the right couple.

I had no idea what became of the 1880s–1890s babies in my family tree.

In the end, Tony became my 5th cousin 3 times removed. He was a dead end until I happened upon his wife's obituary. Now he's a distant cousin who shares my 7th great grandparents. Recently, I've been using the earliest records from Grandpa's town to fit more families together. But when I get to the later documents, many people will become dead ends for me. I can't know who left for another country or who they married.

A targeted search for your ancestor's town may tie together lots of loose ends in your family tree. For me, this is a great tool for discovering who left Italy, who they married, and what kind of life they lived.

Don't have access to a website like Newspapers.com? Prepare yourself to play this game the next time they offer a free weekend. Maybe this Memorial Day!

Using Color to Understand Your Family's Last Names

I have zero regrets about my time-consuming family tree research. The countless hours spent downloading and renaming every available vital record? Worth it. All the spreadsheets for tracking my projects? Worth it. I see the benefits of my work every day.

Why Use Color-Coding?

My latest project (and it's a whopper!) makes me realize how much I love the color-coding feature of Family Tree Maker. It's been around for at least 2 years, and I borrowed the idea to use on 2 of my favorite genealogy spreadsheets:

• the grandparent/Ahnentafel chart
• the surname chart

In Family Tree Maker (FTM), I wanted a visual way to distinguish my 4 main branches—1 for each grandparent. Choosing each grandparent one at a time, I:

• clicked the Color Coding button
• assigned a color to the grandparent and their direct ancestors:
  • yellow for my paternal grandfather
  • pink for my paternal grandmother
  • green for my maternal grandfather
  • blue for my maternal grandmother

See if your family tree software has a color-coding/tagging function and start reaping the benefits.

Now I can see right away if someone in my family tree is my direct ancestor. And I can see which of my grandparents descends from them. Better still, since Dad's parents were 3rd cousins, I have a bunch of double ancestors. They're recognizable because they have both yellow and pink colors.

Other Uses for Color-Coding

It makes sense to use the same colors in my other charts because then I know exactly who's who.

In my grandparent/Ahnentafel chart, I filled in all the numbers and colors ahead of time. (You can download one for free.) Having the numbers in place made it very simple to put a newly found ancestor's name where it belongs. And the colors keep my branches straight. That's very important when I have so many repeated last names in my tree.

When it comes to my double ancestors, I enter them in two places in the Ahnentafel chart, and I give them a blended color. They are orange, a combination of yellow and pink.

You can expand the color-coding concept to your other family tree tools.

In my surname chart, I added a tally to show how many times each of the 115 last names appears among my direct ancestors. The winner is the name Zeolla belonging to 17 of my direct ancestors.

Then I added color blocks to show which branch(es) contains each name. Some names belong to only one branch. That's the case for all but one name on my maternal grandmother's line. Except for one, all her ancestors' last names are unique to her branch of my family tree. Three of my ancestral surnames, including Zeolla, belong on 3 of my branches. Several other names belong on my 2 paternal branches.

Reaping the Benefits

I mentioned above that my latest project is a whopper. It's the big one. The one I've been working up to for years. And it could take me years to complete. But I'm absolutely loving it!

Two weeks ago I wrote about my plan for this project (see "Laying the Foundation for a Solid Family Tree"). Ever since then I've been adding about 100 relatives to my tree each day. It has been amazing. I'm reviewing every vital record from Grandpa's hometown and finding missing details, like:

• exact dates for births, deaths, and marriages
• parentage that proves 2 same-named people are the same person
• early deaths that connect to a family from the town's 1742 census.

It's wildly rewarding. In 2 weeks I've completed all the records for 1809–1816. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the vital records for 2,730 people. Even though I'm only up to line 2,504 in a 38,351-line spreadsheet, I'm chomping at the bit to move on to another town.

As I go through the records, adding and updating people, I may find that a person's previously unknown parents are already in my tree. When I add the child and see their ancestors' color-coding, I'm thrilled! I've taken someone who was a dead end and turned them into my true cousin.

Three weeks ago I wrote about "How to Find the True Cousins in Your Family Tree." My true cousin count was 6,095. Since then I've added many more. Each day I'm turning relationships like "1st cousin 3x removed of husband of aunt" into actual blood relatives. It's so gratifying.

The only other color-coding I'm using in Family Tree Maker is purple for DNA matches. What other types of relationships would you color code?

Take These Steps to Be Ready for the 1950 Census

When they release the 1950 United States Census on April 1st, will you be ready to find your family? It will take a few weeks for the collection to be fully indexed and searchable. But don't let that stop you.

With very little trouble, you can create a list of who you want to search for. Then you can prioritize your list and use an online tool to tell you where to look.

Create Your Search List

Once again, it's Family Tree Analyzer to the rescue. Here are the steps I followed to create my list of 1,045 people who may be in the 1950 U.S. census:

1. Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree. Your family tree software or the website where you keep it should have this option.

2. Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your GEDCOM file.

3. Click the Main List tab, then choose Individuals to Excel from the Export menu at the top.

This saves the file in CSV format. I find it's better to save the CSV file in your spreadsheet software format. For me, that's Excel. This will give you more functionality and let you save your formatting, like column widths.

You can delete several columns for simplicity. All you really need is:

• Forename
• Surname
• BirthDate
• BirthLocation
• DeathDate
• RelationToRoot

4. Sort the data by the BirthLocation column, then hide (or delete) the lines for anyone who didn't live in the USA. Make this column nice and wide so you can see the country.

This step took a while for me because I have about 36,000 people in my family tree who never came to America.

Keep your immigrant ancestors in mind. I realize I've hidden the lines for my grandfathers and my great grandparents. I know I won't forget them, but I will put their lines back in.

Follow these few steps today and be completely ready for the upcoming release of the 1950 U.S. census.

5. If you hid the non-U.S. lines, copy the entire worksheet to a new, blank worksheet. The hidden lines will not copy. If you deleted the lines, go to step 6.

6. Sort the data by the BirthDate column, then hide (or delete) the lines for anyone born before 1850 and after 1950.

7. Sort the data by the DeathDate column, then hide (or delete) the lines for anyone who died before 1950.

8. If you hid the out-of-range lines in step 7, copy the entire worksheet to a new, blank worksheet. The hidden lines will not copy. If you deleted the lines, go to step 9.

Now you have a list of all the people in your family tree who may be in the 1950 census.

9. Sort the data by the RelationToRoot column so you can focus on your closest relatives first.

When they release the census and you start your search, you can hide or delete lines as you find people. I'm going to add a new column to my spreadsheet where I can put an X when I've found someone.

Find the Neighborhood Before the Index is Ready

I know I want to find my parents first. They made their first appearance in the 1940 census, so now I want their families in 1950.

To find the right set of census pages to scour for their families, follow these steps:

1. Go to stevemorse.org and select Unified 1880-1950 Census ED Finder from the US Census menu.

2. See what address you have for the family in the 1940 census and enter that on the stevemorse.org website.

I'll set the State to New York, the County to Bronx, the City or Town to Bronx. Then I'll enter the House Number 260, and choose East 151st Street from the pull-down list. Next I'll click the "see google map" button to view this address on the map. You need this so you can see what the surrounding streets are.

3. Select the nearest cross or back street from the pull-down menu. Repeat this step as needed.

4. Look beneath the street names you've chosen. You'll see how much you've narrowed down the possible enumeration districts.

Don't wait for the 1950 census to be indexed. Use this tool to go to the right set of pages.

In my case, my mom's family will be in one of two enumeration districts. I can easily go through them page-by-page when the images are available. In fact, since the majority of my relatives lived right there, I'll be on the lookout for any familiar names.

So you see, with very little effort, you can be ready for the April 1st release date. You'll have your list, and you'll have your priority people. The best thing about this spreadsheet is it'll help make sure you don't overlook anyone.

Be thankful we're getting access to 1950 in 2022, at the end of the 72-year privacy period. People in the U.K. just got access to their 1921 census!

Laying the Foundation for a Solid Family Tree

You can't skip a generation while building your family tree. You can't find your 3rd great grandparents without your 2nd great grandmother's name. That's why rule #1 of creating a new family tree is, "Start with what you know." You enter yourself, your parents, your grandparents. By doing so, you're starting the foundation of your family tree.

Census records, ship manifests, and draft registration cards were all I needed to build my U.S. family tree. Then I got hungry for more. More relatives, more generations. To expand my family tree further back in time, I needed "old-country" records.

Today my family tree just topped 37,000 people stretching back to the late 1600s. Are they all my blood relatives? No. In fact, last week I explained how to tally up your different relationships. I had just over 6,000 blood relatives in my family tree.

An audit of vital records from Grandpa's hometown proves how I'm related to almost everyone!

Who are the other 31,000 people in my tree, you ask? They are in-laws and in-laws' in-laws from my part of Italy. Ironically, I wrote a popular article years ago about who to cut out of your family tree. One of my main rules on who to cut involves in-laws. I add only the parents of an in-law to my family tree and no one else. Take my 1st cousin as an example. Her spouse is in my tree, of course, but I'm not going to research him. I'll add his parents, and that's all.

But for me, the in-law rule does not apply to my Italian nationals. When I reviewed vital records from one ancestral hometown, one thing became clear. Everyone in town had some relation to everyone else. The town was a bit isolated, so intermarriage of families happened over and over again.

If you have deep roots in a place where people stayed put for centuries, this is likely true for you, too.

I expanded my family tree with thousands of townspeople. It seemed there was almost no one in the vital records who didn't have a connection to me. I mentioned this to my husband who wondered, "How many people would be in your tree if you did add them all?" After telling him I couldn't even guess, I wondered what I could do to find the answer.

Reviewing Every Record

For my hometowns, I made spreadsheets of the names of people in every available vital record. What if I added a column and marked who's in my family tree?

Since my tree is so broad already, I'm starting my tally with the earliest records, beginning in 1809. My spreadsheet has a line item for each image downloaded from the Antenati website. I'm adding a number in the new column to show who is in my tree.

Some images have more than one document, so the number of people depends on the image. A two-page marriage image has two pairs of brides and grooms. If both couples fit into my tree, I score that line as 4 for 4 people. If only one couple fits, I score it as 2. A two-page birth image counts as 2 if both babies fit into my tree. I'm not counting the parents because they're going to have a lot of kids.

The tally is more about ensuring that I fit in everyone I can. The sum of these numbers isn't going to be a true count of who went into my family tree. Someone may be counted several times. They're born, they marry (maybe a few times), and they die. They're going to rack up a few numbers, but they're only one person.

What I really want to spot is the people in the documents who can't fit into my family tree. I'm making these people visible by highlighting their lines in yellow. As I scroll down the spreadsheet, any line without yellow tells me those people and their facts are in my tree. As my tree grows, I can always double back and re-check the yellow-highlighted lines. These people may fit into my family tree later.

Proving My Theory

The results so far are fantastic. As I check each document, many of the people are already in my tree. If not, then their parents are in there, and I can now add the child. The people I can't fit are usually from another town or my town's aristocrats. I come from pure peasant stock, so none of my people were marrying into the upper class.

A broad and solid foundation to your family tree may support your entire ancestral hometown.

I love the idea of checking the vital records one-by-one. Sometimes I capture a child who died young. Their death record may be the only chance for them to get into my tree. The best outcome is when I find proof that two people in my family tree with the same name are actually the same person. This exercise, which I've only just begun, has given me the proof I needed to merge a bunch of people together.

I'm seeing plenty of interest out there in One-Place Studies—investigating everyone in town to see how they fit together. This is what I've been doing for more than 10 years. Now I'm being methodical about it. As I review each vital record, it reminds me that the answers to many questions are out there. I don't want to overlook any of the clues.

Make sure your family tree has a solid foundation. Climb up each generation carefully. Then expand to your ancestors' siblings. Add their spouses, their spouses' families, and so on. With a broad foundation, you can piece together entire towns. Now you've created something of value to yourself, and to thousands of other people.