How I Stumbled on a Clue to Bust a Brick Wall

Last week I was trying to find a particular birth record on the New York City Municipal Archives' website (see Day 5 of 7 Days to a Better Family Tree). I didn't have the certificate number, so I did a broad search for births in the Bronx within a span of years.

The certificates in my search results didn't show names—only numbers. I had to open each one to see if it was the birth record I needed. One record struck me as a possible misspelling of my own last name, Iamarino. The baby's name, written twice on the document, looks like Danette or Dometta Amarino. The parents are Francesco Amarino and Maria Iacobacia.

That combination of names rang a bell. My 3rd great uncle Francesco (Saverio) Iamarino married (Anna) Maria Iacobaccio. They emigrated to New York. My dad remembers two of their U.S.-born children as his "aunts" Lina and Filly, as well as Filly's sons.

But baby "Danette," born in the Bronx in 1898, was not someone I'd ever heard mentioned. Was she really my 1st cousin 3 times removed, or was this combination of parents' names a coincidence?

I was about to delete her downloaded birth record. But then I took another look at her potential father in my family tree. I had only his 1855 Italian birth record and his 1937 New York death certificate.

Found by accident, downloaded on a hunch, this birth certificate helped break down a brick wall in my family tree.

I needed to find some censuses for this family. My search on Ancestry delivered the family in 1900, 1915, and 1920. I found "Aunt" Lina on the 1900 census using what I always imagined was her real name: Nicolina.

But there was a surprise on the 1900 census. Nicolina had a 2-year-old sister named Antonetta.

Hold on a minute! I said that name aloud the way a Southern Italian immigrant might pronounce it: Ondonet. (See Look Past the Misspellings to Find Your Ancestors.) The 1898 birth certificate I found by accident was baby Antonetta, misunderstood by the clerk as Danette or Dometta. She was my cousin after all.

The New York State census for 1915 further supported "Danette" being my cousin. This year the family included both "aunts" Lina and Filly. And also my newly discovered "aunt" Antonetta. But there was another surprise. The family added a son in 1903 named John. My dad and I had never heard of him, either.

The 1920 census held yet another surprise. Lina is missing, having married in 1919. Antonette and John are there, and they wrote Filly's name as Filomino. This tells me her real name was Filomena, as I'd always suspected. Later in life she Americanized it to Phyllis.

But the surprise was the family's location. They're not in the Bronx, even though the head of the household would die there 17 years later. They're in North Brunswick, New Jersey.

You might think I would dismiss this as being the wrong family. But I knew there was a connection to New Brunswick, which borders North Brunswick. I have a few 1930s photographs of my dad and his family standing beside a car in front of the New Brunswick City Yards.

It was a collection of old photos in front of the "New Brunswick City Yards" that told me I was on the right track.

I wish I could find this building! But New Brunswick has been rebuilt over the years, thanks to Rutgers University and factory closings. I searched for historic photos of the area with no luck.

The connection to North Brunswick interested me because I lived there in 1985–1986. I discovered they lived in the village of Adams Station. I actually worked in that village and lived a mile up the road.

I really needed to find the family in the 1930 census, but I couldn't find them by name. So I searched the census records by location only. North Brunswick, New Jersey, had only 2 districts in 1930, so I could browse them page by page.

They conducted the 1930 census in April—2 months after my 3rd great uncle's wife died. Will her family still be there? Aunt Filly was with her husband in New Brunswick. Aunt Lina was with her husband in the Bronx. Their brother John may have married that year. I had 74 pages of census to go through. With 20 pages left to go, I found them!

Just as I was losing hope, I spotted the name Marino. There was Frank, a 77-year-old widow, his 25-year-old son John, and John's new wife Rosie. This census had no street names or house numbers. It was simply the Adams section of North Brunswick.

I went on to find John, the son of my 3rd great uncle, in the 1940 and 1950 censuses. Although he was in a different house each time, he was always two-and-a-half miles from where I lived 13 years after his death.

I've spent hours gathering this family's records and putting tons of facts into my family tree. I've taken this family in unexpected directions. And it was all because a name on a random birth certificate seemed to me like it should be my family.

If you have a hunch about a slightly "off" genealogy find, follow your instincts. Do the research and prove that the person is either in or out of your family tree.

A Theory of Relativity to Drive You Crazy

Have you seen the meme of Albert Einstein drawing his family tree on a blackboard? He says to himself, "So that would make my second cousin once removed the great aunt of my first cousin twice removed…no, wait, that can't be right."

You know what? He's actually onto something. If you follow the rules, and ignore your known connection to someone, things can get weird.

My father's parents had the same unusual last name—Iamarino. We never gave it much thought. But once I got interested in genealogy, I wanted to know if they had a connection. It turns out my grandparents, Pietro and Lucy Iamarino, were 3rd cousins.

The dotted line around one instance of Francesco and Cristina tells me they're in my family tree twice.

Pietro and Lucy's shared 2nd great grandparents appear twice in my ancestor chart. They appear on Grandpa Pietro's line and on Grandma Lucy's line.

If we apply relationship rules to my family, Grandpa Pietro's 3rd cousin (Grandma Lucy) is my 3rd cousin twice removed (3C2R). My 3C2R's son (Dad) is my 4C1R. And I'm my own 5th cousin!

A Scientific Experiment to Prove the Theory

To test out this idea, I searched my family tree for another one of Grandpa Pietro's 3rd cousins. I chose a different set of his 2nd great grandparents. Then I clicked my way down 5 generations to one of their 2nd great grandchildren, Domenico.

Family Tree Maker correctly tells me Domenico is my 3C2R and his daughter is my 4C1R. So, if you put aside that fact that Grandpa Pietro married his 3rd cousin Grandma Lucy, Lucy would be my 3C2R. And her son (Dad) would be my 4C1R. Dad's children (like me) would be my 5th cousin. And my kids would be my 5C1Rs!

And that's when Albert Einstein's mind was blown. Don't you think "I am my own 5th cousin" should be my new email signature?

Cousins marrying cousins adds a new level of mind-blowing relationships to a family tree.

Applying the Lesson to DNA Matches

Aside from the fact that it's funny, I bring this up for a more practical reason. We see that different interpretations of a relationship can co-exist. Doesn't this help make sense of some DNA relationships?

I'm looking at one DNA match in my list. Ancestry DNA says she's most likely my 4th–6th cousin. But I know where she fits in my family tree, and she's my 3C2R. There's another, closer relative in my list. I know she is my 3rd cousin, but again, Ancestry DNA says she's most likely my 4th–6th cousin.

We know DNA passes down randomly from generation to generation. Even full siblings can have very different mixtures of their shared ancestors' DNA. Each of your DNA matches has a laundry list of possible relationships to you.

Look beyond the labels your DNA website uses to the groupings they use. Ancestry DNA groups your matches as:

• Parent/Child (both my parents tested, so I see them in this group)
• Close Family (this group includes my 1st and 2nd cousins, plus Dad's 1st cousin and her children)
• Extended Family (these range from Mom's 2nd cousin to Dad's 3rd cousin, and even a 5C1R with multiple connections to me)
• Distant Family (this is where I see the 3C and 3C2R I mentioned above, plus every other relationship under the sun)

Many people in your family tree can have multiple relationships to you. What really matters to you is where they fit in the tree. Don't get hung up on the labels.

Do you have ancestors who married a cousin? What does that make you to yourself?

And speaking of crazy relationships:

• Untangling Our Twisted Family Relationships
• Why DNA Matches Appear Closer Than They Are
• The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About

Another Way to Find Errors in Your Family Tree

I've added so many people to my family tree this year! I synchronized my Family Tree Maker (FTM) file with Ancestry on Sunday morning. It said I'd added 310 people the day before. That's a new record! I decided it was time for a thorough error check.

FTM has a built-in error report, and I wanted to compare it to that of Family Tree Analyzer. The differences surprised me. The second listing I saw on my FTM error report was for Harold Gibbons. He had a duplicate birth fact that Family Tree Analyzer didn't see.

When I took a look at Harold Gibbons in my tree, I saw both 22 Sep 1899 and 26 Sep 1899 listed as his birth date. One date came from an index of New York City births. The other came from a World War I draft registration card.

The birth index said Harold's 1899 Manhattan birth certificate number was 37387. The NYC Municipal Archives has digitized their vital records, and they're available online. So I checked to see when Harold, my cousin Rod's uncle, was really born.

This report gives a different account of the errors—or possible errors—in your family tree.

When I saw his birth record, his name showed my first problem. The certificate says Harold T. Gibbons. (Why didn't they spell out his middle name?) The WWI draft registration card I'd saved for him says Harold Patrick Gibbons.

I checked the parents on the birth certificate to see if they were a match. Yes: John Gibbons and Lillian Lanigan are the parents I expected to find. The certificate shows the date of birth as 26 Sep 1899—that agrees with the NYC birth index, but not the WWI draft card.

Now I knew that draft card belonged to another man. Ironically, I had researched the wrong Harold's place of work. I even included a photograph of the building and a description of the business.

I deleted the draft card, building photo, and the facts for the wrong Harold. Now the right Harold's birth certificate is there to document his date and place of birth.

And that was only the first item I checked from the error report.

How to Create Your Error Report

If you use Family Tree Maker:

• Click the Publish tab at the top of the program.
• Click Person Reports in the left column and choose Data Errors Report.
• Click Create Report, then click Cancel to make some enhancements:
  • Choose to include All individuals.
  • Click the first button under Data Errors Report Options to open the Errors to Include dialog box. I chose to deselect two choices:
    • Spouses have the same last name (so what?)
    • Marriage date missing (that's because the document is not available)
• Close the dialog box, click Generate Report, and wait.

Be patient if you have a big family tree. Go have some tea and cookies.

Family Tree Maker has a built-in error report that may surprised you with its findings.

My report showed a ton of duplicate marriage bann errors, but that isn't an error. I always record two marriage banns for marriages in Italy. That's their marriage process. I wanted to remove these entries from my report. I needed a spreadsheet. I clicked the Share button in the top right corner of Family Tree Maker and chose to Export to CSV file.

Open your CSV file with any spreadsheet software and sort it by error type. Then delete any lines with errors you know you don't need to fix. Then jump in and start checking errors. Delete each line you review/fix, and whittle down the number of errors to check.

If your list is really long, don't get upset. Some items will be non-errors. For example, I see I have a bunch of possible duplicate names. Some documents list a person by different names, and we want to note that. I expect to keep those.

I'm actually happy to see a group of errors that look like this:

Possible duplicate event: Name
Possible duplicate event: Sex
Possible duplicate event: Death
Possible duplicate event: Birth

These duplicates happened in 2019 when my FTM file suffered a disaster. I fix these duplicates whenever I see them, but now, finally, I can get rid of them all.

Use the error report in your family tree software and find mistakes you never knew were there.

Genealogy Obsession Pays an Unexpected Dividend

I'm obsessed with my massive genealogy project. Connecting everyone from my ancestral hometowns is all I want to do! I've improved my process along the way, and today my tree has 50,000 people. (See my more efficient technique below.)

When I write about this project, some people say, "I wish I could do that, but the vital records aren't available." Others say they're now doing the same thing, and all the connections are astonishing.

How many people from one town are somehow related? It's not just an obsession. It's a legacy.

Building an 18th–20th Century Foundation

When I add a person to my tree from the 1880s–1900s, I know they're someone's grandparents. That made me realize my project makes it easier to figure out my connection to distant DNA matches.

If you have a DNA match with a very small family tree, you may not see much more than their grandparents' names. I used to make an effort with these matches but not get very far.

Now I'm in a much better position to figure out my connection to a DNA match's grandparents. This weekend I scrolled through my match list, looking for those I hadn't figured out.

Simple notes make it easy to navigate your DNA match list.

One after another, I found their recent ancestors in my tree, and I saw our connection. I add notes to my matches that appear on the main DNA match list on Ancestry. I can scroll down the list and see who needs more research. This weekend I added new notes, like this:

• his 1G Maddalena Iamarino is my 3C3R, common ancestors are my double 5Gs Giovanni Iamarino and Libera Pilla
• 5C thru shared 4Gs Giuseppantonio Basile and Maria Maddalena Tedesco
• 3C descendant of Antonio Pilla and Angelina Iarossi, common ancestors are my 2Gs Gennaro Pilla and Maria Giuseppa Liguori
• her 1G Gennaro Finella is my 3C3R, common ancestors are my 5Gs Giuseppe d'Emilia and Orsola Mascia

Some matches helped me see which of my distant cousins came to America and who they married.

My all-consuming genealogy project is bearing useful fruit!

Letting the Documents Lead the Way

Here's an overview of my process and how I made it work even better.

I started with my Grandpa Iamarino's hometown of Colle Sannita. Vital records for the town are available online on the Antenati website (see "How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives"). They have:

• Birth, marriage, and death records from 1809–1860 except for 1859 deaths and marriages
• Birth records from 1861–1904 except for 1875
• Birth records from 1910–1915 except for 1911
• Death and marriage records from 1931–1942 except for 1939 deaths

That's a total of 225 types of records and more than 38,000 document images.

My first step after downloading all the files was to:

• view each document and
• rename the jpg file with the name(s) of the subject(s).

An image named 007853875_00496.jpg now contains the names of a baby and its father:

007853875_00496 Carmine Pasquale d'Agostino di Giuseppe.jpg

The father's name ("di" means of in Italian) lets me search for all the children of any man, like Giuseppe d'Agostino. I can use a free program called Everything to search my computer for "d'Agostino di Giuseppe. (See "My Secret Weapon for Finding Relatives".)

This file-renaming process is the basis for building an entire town's family tree.

The file renaming process alone was quite a task! I renamed more than 38,000 image files for this town (and tons more for my other towns). Then I was ready for the BIG project.

I created a spreadsheet with the name of each file. I go line-by-line, viewing each document again, and trying to fit the person or people into my family tree. If they fit, I mark it in my spreadsheet. And if they don't fit, I mark that, too.

I went through several years' worth of documents this way. One problem came up again and again. Some townspeople went by their middle name, making them hard to find each time they had another baby. So I made a change to the process.

If I'm adding an 1865 baby to a couple, I'll mark it on the spreadsheet. But before moving to the next line, I'll search for every other baby belonging to this couple. And if their kids' birth records have a marriage notation, I'll search for their spouses. And I'll add any of their kids. Then I'll return to the next line in my spreadsheet.

This way, couples using unexpected first names won't stump me each time they have another baby. It saves so much time when I complete their families all in one go.

Another problem I overcame was searching for a set of parents only to discover their baby is already in my tree. That was a wasted search. Here's how I fixed that problem. Before I begin another year's documents, I sort my Family Tree Maker index by birth, marriage, or death year. Then I compare the spreadsheet to the index and mark off the people I already have.

Because I complete entire families at one time, each new year I review is already 75% complete.

At this moment I'm up to the 1868 births. I have 64 folders left to go out of the 225 available. When I add 20th-century people to my family tree, it gets easier to connect with more DNA matches.

When I do get to the bottom of the spreadsheet, I'll make one more pass. I'll re-review the people I couldn't fit into my family tree. They tend to fall into 5 categories, and I want to mark them as such:

• "Out-of-towners" who happened to have a baby or die in Grandpa's town.
• "Old people" who died too early for me to know who their children were, or to have their parents in my tree.
• "Too-common names"—This is usually the only child of a couple I can't ID because so many townspeople had the same names.
• "Foundlings" who died without marrying.
• "Possibilities"—These are people I may be able to fit into my tree after I've gone through all the documents.
  

About 95% of the people found in those 38,000+ document images have a connection to me. Towns in this area kept largely to themselves because travel between them was hard. And all my roots are in this area. I'll bet I can reach the same 95% connection rate with documents from my other ancestral hometowns.

Well, my retirement is fully booked. I'm in my happy place every single day. Where are you?

An Easy Way to Rid Your Family Tree of Typos

Two weeks ago I explained how I use standardized comments in my family tree file. (See "How to Overcome a Town Clerk's Errors.") If a death record uses the wrong last name for the mother, I use a standard comment. In the description field for the death fact, I enter "Her mother's last name is _____ on her death record."

This shows I'm aware of the error, and I've made sure I've attached this fact to the right person.

One benefit of standardized comments is your family tree software's type-ahead feature. As you begin typing, your software will suggest what you might be about to type. It can save you from having to type the whole phrase.

Spotting Your Typos

That type-ahead feature tends to point out your past mistakes, though. You won't know where you made that typo, but you'll know it's lurking somewhere in your family tree.

There was one place where I kept seeing a past error. I knew the error came from a search-and-replace I did long ago. You see, I'd been entering people's occupations in my tree in Italian for all my Italian nationals. Then it dawned on me that I should include the English translation in parentheses, too.

One search-and-replace error had to do with the Italian word for priest—sacerdote. Somebody in my tree was something called a priest participant, or sacerdote participante. So search-and-replace turned his occupation into "sacerdote (priest) participante." Each time I add another priest by typing "sac," that error taunts me.

Finding Out Who Has the Typo

Now I know how easily I can fix these typos when I spot them. Your family tree's GEDCOM file is the quickest, easiest way to find and fix any typing errors.

Next time you see a typo in any field, use your GEDCOM file to find the culprit.

A GEDCOM is a text file that uses a standard format any family tree program or website can read. No matter where you build your tree, you can export a GEDCOM.

I opened my GEDCOM file in my favorite text editor and searched for the mistaken priest entry. I found that it happened only once, and it was easy to see which of the 48,853 people in my tree had this error. Next I opened my Family Tree Maker file and went to Benedetto Giampieri's occupation note. I changed "sacerdote (priest) participante" to "sacerdote participante (priest participant)."

Now I'll never see that error again.

Other Uses for the Process

This process came in handy last week. When I add a marriage date to a couple in my tree, and that date came from his, her, or both their birth records, I use one of these standardized comments in the description field:

• From his birth record.
• From her birth record.
• From both their birth records.

Before I decided on which exact phrase to use, I used a couple of variations. Those variations kept showing up as I typed "from his bi," "from her bi," or "from both." I was sick of seeing the variations that had no period, an extra space, or an extra word.

The only way I could see who in my tree was using those variations was to search my GEDCOM. A marriage comment poses an extra challenge in your GEDCOM file. You won't see the names of the bride and groom anywhere near this comment. You'll see their ID numbers instead.

If you see lines like this in your GEDCOM:

0 @F193@ FAM
1 HUSB @I485@
1 WIFE @I986@
1 MARR From both their birth records.
2 DATE 19 FEB 1900

…go up to the top of your GEDCOM and search for either his ID (@I485@) or hers (@I986@). That'll show you the name of the bride or groom. Then you can go into your family tree to correct the typo you found.

One of my most common typos happens when I don't take my finger off the shift key soon enough. Then I wind up with names like GIovanni, FIlomena, GIuseppe. It happens to me all the time! Now I know I can search my GEDCOM for these misspellings and others, like DOmenico, GIorgio, VIncenzo, and more.

Do you see your past mistakes when you begin typing in your family tree? Are you prone to certain kinds of typos like I am? Let your GEDCOM help you find and eradicate your mistakes forever.

And speaking of GEDCOM files:

• 4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer
• How to Find the True Cousins in Your Family Tree
• This Genealogy Report Shows You What's Missing

An Unusual Find Triggers Historical Research

I spent last Sunday jumping from one genealogy document to another. I had no research plan in mind. Instead, I let the documents lead the way.

In the 1933 death records of Colle Sannita, Italy, I found several pages of text about one man. Antonio Paolucci was my 4th cousin 3 times removed, born in 1887. As I studied the pages, looking for familiar Italian words, I struggled to find a date of death.

A few phrases started to come together. In World War I, Antonio served in the 1st "bersaglieri" regiment—an infantry corps of sharpshooters. The documents say Antonio's mother Carmela is his beneficiary; his father Nicola is already dead.

One date and place kept repeating: 28 October 1915, Castelnuovo Carsico. Antonio fought in a battle on that date and was never seen again. This document says Antonio is presumed to have died in that battle. It took 18 years for the army to make this declaration and give Antonio's mother her compensation.

I noticed the title on one page: "Sentenza di presunta morte di Paolucci Antonio." That's a declaration of the presumed death of my distant cousin Antonio.

It took all these pages to explain what happened to Antonio. And I still had to do a ton of research.

Search Engines, Maps, and Translators

At this point I knew that cousin Antonio was an elite soldier lost in battle. But where is the place they called Castelnuovo Carsico? There are a few towns in Italy with Castelnuovo in their name, but I couldn't make anything of Carsico. I wondered if this was what they were calling a town in another country. Castelnuovo means new castle. Were they fighting in a town with a name that also translates to new castle?

When I typed "Carsico" into Google Translate, it translated to Karst. Aha! I remember Karst from my earlier World War I research. The Italian Army fought battles on the Karst Plateau in today's Slovenia, on the Italian border. Someone else in my family tree died in battle there. He was my 2nd cousin 3 times removed.

To try to locate the October 1915 battle, I used Wikipedia to learn about the Third Battle of the Isonzo. This battle happened at the right time, in October and November 1915. And it happened near the Italian town of Gorizia. Is there a town near Gorizia and the Karst Plateau with a name that translates to new castle?

Using Google Translate again, I found that Novi Grad is Slovenian for new castle. But the town of Novi Grad is much too far east of the Karst Plateau. We know that country borders were very fluid, and Slovenia may not have been Slovenia then. So I tried other languages. In German, the translation is Neues Schloss, but again, that town is much too far away. There's a Slovakian translation of Nový Zámok and a Czech translation of Nový Zámek; both are too far away.

I wish we could all use the in-country place names instead of translations!

My past research helped me find the place where my cousin must have died in battle.

Stitching the Facts Together

Another website about the 1st Bersaglieri Regiment mentions Gorizia, Italy. I took a closer look at it on the map and found both a castle and a World War I museum. Each one is a short walk away from the Slovenian border.

The Gorizia Castle is on high ground overlooking Slovenia. What a perfect place to position your battalion of sharpshooters. But this medieval castle is not new.

At the northern edge of the castle, the map shows a "road" called Galleria Bombi. But it isn't a road. It's a tunnel that stretches from the main piazza of Gorizia to the border of Slovenia. I thought it meant "bomb tunnel," but it's named after Giorgio Bombi, an Italian politician and mayor of Gorizia. During the war, they may have used the tunnel strategically.

Gorizia Castle's website says it was reduced to a pile of rubble during the war. Italy didn't rebuild it until the 1930s. Antonio Paolucci's declaration of presumed death is from 1933. Could they have called the newly rebuilt Gorizia Castle the Castelnuovo?

I did find one website that places the 1st Bersaglieri Regiment at Castelnuovo in "Gorizzo." The timeline matches up. All the evidence I've found, when taken together, tells me that my cousin died in battle at Gorizia, Italy.

I've made this journey a few times now, learning about battles that claimed my relatives. I also learned about one battle that made my grandfather a POW for a solid year. My 28-year-old cousin Antonio was at least 12 hours away from home, sent into battle because of his shooting skills. I'm glad I can symbolically lay him to rest, pushing in that map pin at the place where he fought for his country.

I started the day with some aimless genealogy research. I ended it with a full-blown story about my cousin Antonio.