Fortify Your Family Tree

27 December 2022

20 December 2022

It's Time to Wrap Up Your Genealogy Year

I haven't created a list of next year's genealogy goals since 2020. I stopped because my techniques and my true mission kept evolving.

The best example of this is what happened after I finished this 2019 genealogy goal:

Log 5 years' worth of birth records from each of my ancestral hometowns into spreadsheet.

I completed that goal, but my next project made my 2019 effort useless. The purpose of logging those 5 years of documents was to make it easier to search for any one person.

But I found an infinitely better method. And it was much easier to completely finish than adding to the spreadsheet. I renamed thousands of Italian vital record image files to include the name of the person and their father.

Let your 2022 genealogy accomplishments pave the way for your 2023 successes.

What's the next logical step to take in your genealogy journey?

For example, here's how I renamed the 2nd birth record of 1809 in one of my towns:

2 Pasquale Maria Cernese di Giovanni.jpg

The baby is Pasquale Maria Cernese (Maria is a common middle name for Italian baby boys), the son of Giovanni Cernese. With all the files renamed this way, I can easily search for all the children of Giovanni Cernese at once. I can run the Windows program called Everything and type in:

"Cernese di Giovanni

That'll show me a list of every possible child of Giovanni Cernese. My work is now a database that I share with other descendants of my towns.

I've explained this, my secret weapon, many times before. This time, it's a prime example of why I stopped setting annual genealogy goals. Instead, I'm constantly working on my tree and imagining how I can make the most of all that data.

So instead of making a 2023 Genealogy Goals List, let's look back for a moment. Let's take stock of our 2022 genealogy accomplishments. Then we can wrap up our genealogy year and dream up what comes next. I'll start. In 2022:

I finished examining the 38,000 available vital records from Grandpa Iamarino's hometown of Colle Sannita. (See How to Use Your Personal Genealogy Database.)
I made the names of all those files available to anyone who may search the internet for "Colle Sannita." (See How to Create and Share Your Ancestral Town Database.)
I followed different types of genealogy leads to unexpected places. (See A Random Search Led to a Detailed Life Story.)
I returned to my Genealogy To-Do List again and again to keep things interesting. (See Start Your Rainy-Day Genealogy List.)
I used Family Tree Analyzer, the relationship calculator spreadsheet, and color-coding to see my family tree's facts and connections in different ways. (See How to See Your Cousin Connections More Clearly.)
I spent November tying up a long list of loose ends in my family tree. (See Make November Genealogy Loose Ends Month.)
I somehow managed to publish this blog every Tuesday!

As 2022 ends, I'll finish renaming the vital records from my other grandfather's hometown—Baselice. Then I'll be ready to piece together every Baselice family in my tree. And I'll publish my database for other descendants of the town to use.

One big goal is nearly finished, clearly paving the way for my next big genealogy project.

Unless a new idea strikes me, I'll move on to another one of my ancestral hometowns. For me, that's what genealogy is all about. I'm claiming every last drop of my heritage.

What were your genealogy accomplishments in 2022? Where will that work lead you in 2023?

13 December 2022

Don't Get Over-Ambitious with Your Family Tree

Recently I wrote about how I ripped 25,000 obsolete source citations out of my family tree. I did it in one place: the Sources tab of Family Tree Maker. And despite being such an enormous change, I had no problems.

It cut my tree's file size in half. I needed that! And I synchronized my tree with the one on Ancestry.com successfully. No problems at all.

That success made me a bit too bold. Recovering from my next decision took 4 days. And I still have a lot of collateral damage to fix, but nothing devastating.

NOTE: Before you tell me how much better your family tree software is, it can't do what FTM can do. Only this software lets me work on my tree on my computer and regularly synchronize my work with my public tree on Ancestry.com. My family tree needs to be shared!

Pushing that Button

I was happily updating source citations for vital records from 1809. I have a few hundred of them in my family tree. I need to update them because the Italian vital record website (Antenati) changed the URLs of every document. I began to notice along the way that attached to each Italian "repository" in my tree was an old URL. And each old URL does not work. That's no good.

Then I went and did a crazy thing. I did a search and replace for the bad part of the URL. As I clicked Replace, I quickly saw how massive a change this was. This one little edit affected thousands of media, citations, and people.

But I'd had good luck before, so maybe it'd all be fine.

As I clicked Replace in Family Tree Maker, I quickly saw how massive a change this was. Undo! Undo! Alas, it was too late.

It wasn't. I started the sync process at 2:30 in the afternoon. Occasional status reports said my edit affected about 7,000 people, 5,000 media files, and 10,000 source citations. Then the progress reports ended. It was simply "analyzing changes" for hours. I set my computer not to go to sleep, and I went to bed.

When I checked my still-running computer in the morning, there were 2 messages:

Family Tree Maker lost its internet connection, causing the sync to fail.
FTM had identified 55 people with discrepancies, and it asked me how to handle them. I clicked "overwrite with information from FTM," but with the interrupted internet connection, it was too late.

I had to compact my file again, which takes about 90 minutes. Then I tried to sync again. It still failed. But it went a long way before calling it quits. It appeared to update all the citations, media, and people, but I guess it didn't finish.

I had to go to Plan B. I opened my backup file from just before the doomed search and replace. I began the sync process again. That meant that even this older file was vastly different than my online tree. Much like the last time, the process took 12 hours, and despite promising status reports, it failed.

I closed my file and compacted it, deciding to chat with FTM support in the morning. Brandon at FTM found that one (only one!) of my 57,114 people had gotten corrupted. He advised me to make note of her facts and delete her from my Ancestry tree. Then he said to close and compact my file again before attempting to sync.

This time it worked. I did the ill-fated search and replace on Friday afternoon. I was finally synchronized and ready to go late Sunday morning.

The Aftermath

The back-and-forth between FTM and Ancestry during the failed syncs broke several things. Now that my family tree is synchronized with Ancestry again, here's what I need to fix in my file:

Lots of unrecognized addresses. I need to delete several of them because the people who lived there are no longer in my tree. But the rest belong in my tree. I can fix these for one person and choose to correct the error everywhere the address is found. I'll fix them as I spot them.
7,500 uncategorized media. Luckily I can select bunches at a time and categorize them at once. I fixed them in a few minutes. Media categories don't carry over to Ancestry.com, so these changes were not involved in my next sync.
A small number of missing media. I have to retrieve them from my computer. Not a problem.
Some marriage citations split in two: one citation for him and another for her. But they all have the correct updated URL that started this whole mess!
Some people have duplicated facts—name, sex, birth, etc. I'll fix them as I find them.

A recent success with a big change to my family tree made me a bit cocky. Now I'm paying the price.

That's what broke because of my sync woes. I've started to revisit the hundreds of 1809 source citations I updated at the end of November. But I won't fix them all in one session.

Lessons Learned

I've learned these lessons before! But I got cocky and need a reminder.

Don't make huge changes all at once, no matter how lucky you feel. Handle big changes in smaller chunks.
Save and compact your file after you finish one type of change, or a moderately sized batch of changes. Then,
Sync your file before moving on to another type of big change.

My problem is that I work on my family tree full time. I make a ton of changes every day. I suppose as long as those changes don't affect 7,000 people, 5,000 media files, and 10,000 source citations, I might be alright. Onward!

06 December 2022

Which Side the Cousin Falls On is Key

It's always great when someone who writes to you about your family tree turns out to be a distant cousin. They'll usually say, "My great grandfather is in your family tree. How are we related?"

It always takes a little work before I can answer that question. First I find their ancestor in my family tree and see their relationship to me. Then I add my new cousin to my tree—without knowing the names of their parents or grandparents—to see our relationship.

That ends now. A few years ago I shared a spreadsheet I called a relationship calculator. (Download your copy.) Its main use is to help you name your exact relationship to a descendant of one of your ancestors.

For instance, when I go to Italy I visit my Dad's first cousins. Their grandparents were my great grandparents. If I want to know my relationship to my cousin's grandchild, I can use the relationship calculator. I am the great granddaughter of Francesco Iamarino, and my cousin's grandchild is his 2nd great grandchild. That makes the youngster my 2nd cousin once removed (2C1R). The spreadsheet makes that clear.

What if we look at the same spreadsheet in a different way? This time I want to find my relationship to the great grandchild of a particular cousin in my family tree.

Once you find which cell matches a particular cousin, you'll see your relationship to all their descendants.

I'm randomly choosing Antonio Pilla from my family tree. Born in 1878, Antonio is my 2nd cousin 3 times removed (2C3R). Let's pretend his great granddaughter wrote to me asking how we're related.

Step 1 of 2. Find the Right Cell

"2nd cousin 3 times removed" is in 2 different cells of the relationship calculator:

once in relation to my 1st great grandparent (column E row 11), and
once in relation to my 4th great grandparent (column H row 8).

That means I need to understand how I'm related to Antonio Pilla. Our relationship chart on Ancestry.com shows a connection through my Francesco Iamarino. He's my great grandfather. That means Antonio Pilla is my 2C3R found in column E row 11 of the relationship calculator.

Step 2 of 2. Count the Generations

The rest is a snap. Antonio is my 2C3R from column E row 11, and I want to see my relationship to his great granddaughter. All I have to do is move down column E three rows:

move down one row for Antonio's child
move down a second row for Antonio's grandchild
move down a third row for Antonio's great grandchild.

Now I'm at column E row 14 which reads "2nd cousin 6 times removed" (2C6R).

"No kidding, Einstein," you say. "Your 2C3R plus 3 generations equals your 2C6R."

That's right…except when it isn't. And now I finally see why that simple math works only some of the time. It depends on which side of the yellow line your relationship falls on.

The updated relationship calculator (see the link above) has a diagonal string of cells highlighted in yellow. Each yellow cell is a full-cousin relationship: 1st cousin, 2nd cousin, 3rd cousin, etc.

Same type of cousin. One to the left and one to the right of the yellow line. Which side the cousin falls on is everything!

Antonio Pilla fell into cell E11, and that's to the left of the yellow line. But what if my relationship to him was the 2C3R found in cell H8—to the right of the yellow line? You can see that the great granddaughter of a man in cell H8 would be my 5th cousin! The progression would be:

Antonio 2C3R
his child 3C2R
his grandchild 4C1R
his great grandchild 5C

That's what's been driving me nuts. I couldn't understand why simple math didn't always work. The key is that yellow line.

Maybe you're able to figure out relationships in your head. But as you've seen, you've got to get past one big wrinkle: the yellow line.

Now I can stop putting temporary, unnamed people in my family tree just to figure out a relationship. The answer was right there all along in the relationship calculator!

For more uses of the relationship calculator:

29 November 2022

How to Export and Delete Branches from Your Family Tree

Last week I cut my Family Tree Maker file size in half with one move. (See "When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?") The file was impossibly big at more than 7 gigabytes. Quickly removing more than 25,000 obsolete source citations cut the file size in half.

My project to document my ancestral hometowns will make my family tree grow so much more. That's why I decided to make more cuts.

I'm going to export some in-law and distantly related branches out into their own family trees. Years ago I decided to limit in-law branches. I said I would not document anyone but the parents of a relative's spouse. I wouldn't include that in-law's siblings or grandparents—only their parents. (See "When to Cut a Branch Off Your Family Tree.")

But I had one exception to the rule. If my cousin asked me to research their spouse's family, I went all-in.

That rule gets adjusted today. I will research my cousin's spouse if asked. But I'll do it in a separate Family Tree Maker file. Leave my master family tree file out of it.

Three exportable branches came to mind:

My great granduncle Semplicio's wife's family. She came from a huge family that was so easy to document. A relative of hers encouraged me to continue the work. But that are so many people and documents, and they have no relation to me. I'll export them to a separate tree.
My 1st cousin's wife's family. My cousin asked me to document his wife's family. But she is continuing this project herself. I'll export them to a separate tree.
My distant cousins who emigrated to Brazil and had 100 years' worth of descendants. After years of longing for my distant cousin's book on the Brazilian branch, I finally received it. What an amazing work she produced! But I can't get documents for the Brazil-born family members, so it's a dead end. I'll export them to a separate tree.

I also have a lot of people who we know are cousins, but there aren't enough Italian vital records to prove it. I don't want to pull them out, but I may. I can always pull them back in if more documents arise.

Exporting the Branch

I'm starting this process with a 3.846 gigabyte Family Tree Maker file containing 57,831 people. Let's pull out great granduncle Semplicio's wife's family and keep only her and her parents.

I began by going to her in my family tree and choosing File > Export. I selected her name, Giovina Renza, and clicked Ancestors. Many of her siblings' families are in my family tree. To capture them, I checked the box for Include ancestors' descendants.

I excluded the descendants of Giovina and my great granduncle Semplicio. Those people are my cousins. I had to consult my family tree on Ancestry.com to make sure I didn't miss any of my cousins and their spouses. That left 97 people to export to Giovina Renza's family tree. I clicked Apply then OK to export the group, making sure to include all their related document images.

3 steps to help you safely preserve and delete an unwanted branch of your family tree.

Deleting Only the Right People

Now things were going to get tricky. I wanted to delete all the right people from my main family tree. I went to Family Tree Maker's company page to find the best method for deleting a branch from your family tree. It was surprising.

The best way to delete the branch is to use Family Tree Maker to create a chart including all the right people. Then there is an option to Delete From File either Selected Persons or All Persons in Chart. (This doesn't work with Relationship charts or Pedigree charts.) To keep Giovina, her parents, and all their documents, I'll have to delete branches within the chart one at a time.

I went to the oldest Renza in my tree, Giovina's grandfather, and created a descendant chart. I found Giovina in the chart so I could make sure to keep her. Then I deleted the descendants of her aunts, uncles, and siblings. To do this, I:

Selected the eldest member of a family unit, then
Right-clicked to choose Select Person and All Descendants and Spouses.

This highlighted a large group of people that I made sure did not include those I want to keep. I right-clicked any highlighted person and chose Delete From File > Selected Persons. Up popped a list of the people to delete. After again making sure my cousins weren't in there, I clicked OK, then I clicked Delete.

The process took a couple of minutes and gave me a progress report part of the way through. It read, "Persons remaining to be deleted: 22." Then 13, 11, 10, 9, and done. The chart regenerated, and that group of people was gone.

I repeated the process carefully 4 more times. In 3 cases I had to delete people individually. Either they had no descendants or their descendants included Giovina. Now I had only what I wanted: Giovina, her parents, and her descendants who are my cousins.

Taking Care of Associated Media Files

Next I went to the Media tab of Family Tree Maker to check that:

Giovina had her pre-marriage immigration record and all her census forms
Her father had his birth record and even his census forms where his now-deleted son was the head of household.
Her mother had all her document images.

When I looked only at my collection of census files, I spotted one for a now-deleted Paul Renza. I clicked to see the details, and sure enough, the document was linked to no one. That means I'll have to find and delete any orphaned document images myself.

To do this, I opened my exported Family Tree Maker file for the Renza family in a new window. It contains all the appropriate documents. I can compare the two Family Tree Maker files side-by-side to make sure I delete all the right ones from my main file.

The Renza branch removed 92 people from my family tree. When I finished removing the other 2 branches in my list, I had removed 714 people from my family tree!

With a slimmed-down tree, I can continue adding my 18th- and 19-century cousins from Italy. That is my focus and my purpose. I'm eager to get back to it once International Genealogy Loose Ends Month is over.

22 November 2022

When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?

Note: The problems I described in this article were entirely my laptop's fault. I replaced it after 9 months of needless suffering.

Halfway through International Genealogy Loose Ends Month I faced up to a big problem. (See "Make November Genealogy Loose Ends Month.") My Family Tree Maker file is too bloated with 57,827 people. It can take 3 hours for me to compact the file, which is an important maintenance step. I have to leave my computer running overnight so my files can upload to the cloud.

Something's got to give!

Early last week I was fixing existing images in my family tree—not adding new ones. I edited every World War I and II draft card to crop out the black space. I love the results! (See "How to Improve Your Digital Genealogy Documents.") I replaced bad images with good ones of a smaller file size. That's a worthwhile task, and I planned to move on to bad census images next.

Then I remembered a loose end from earlier this year. The New York City Municipal Archives released vital records for the city's boroughs, and I have tons of relatives from the city.

You've hit the jackpot in vital records for your family tree. Can you accept them?

In my family tree, whenever possible, I used the NYC vital record indexes on Ancestry.com to note certificate numbers. For example, my grandmother was born in the Bronx in 1899. In the description field for her birth, I added "Bronx birth certificate #3072." I did that for every birth, marriage, and death record from the city when possible. (See the "Day 5" section of "7 Days to a Better Family Tree.")

This past week I spent a day gathering 172 documents from the Municipal Archives' website. The most efficient way to tackle this task was to use the latest GEDCOM file exported from my family tree.

I opened my GEDCOM in a text editor and searched for:

Bronx birth certificate
Bronx death certificate
Bronx marriage certificate

…doing that for Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens as well. The certificates are downloadable as PDFs, but I can export the certificate from Acrobat as an image. Two-page certificates export as two images. Now I have 172 PDFs plus 309 document images!

With my Family Tree Maker file already struggling under its own weight, I'm not about to add 309 images to it. Holy cow, that would take forever anyway.

Instead, I know I have the information available whenever I need it. I can create a source citation for each certificate that includes a link to the PDF. This way, anyone who finds their relative in my tree on Ancestry can get the document for themselves.

Sticking to the True Goal of My Family Tree

I began thinking of what I could do next without adding more documents to my tree.

My family tree's goal is to help people with ancestors from any of my ancestors' hometowns. It has names, dates, and places for TONS of people. But most of those facts have no sources or documents.

To add value to my tree, I can build useful source citations that include a link to the original documents. I don't have to add the documents themselves.

But before I build my missing source citations, I have another, really big loose end. Many years ago I documented my Grandpa Leone's entire hometown of Baselice, Italy. I did this by viewing microfilmed vital records (1809–1860) at a local Family History Center. It took me about 5 years to do. (See "Why I Recorded More Than 30,000 Documents.")

All those countless facts have well-crafted but useless source citations. Why is that? Because they cite the microfilm number you would need to order from a Family History Center. And they ended their microfilm program a few years ago.

Source citations can become obsolete. I know. I had 25,000 of them in my family tree. Here's the format for the updated citations.

Today all the documents I was citing are available on Italy's free Antenati website. (See "How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.") It would be fantastic to rid myself of these 25,000 bad source citations and create usable ones to replace them.

In fact, I'm going to delete every one of the outdated citations in one fell swoop. Then I'll work on adding good citations. I can go to the Sources tab in Family Tree Maker and rip out all the bad source citations at once. They're gone now. The process was scary, but all is well. And it cut my 7GB file size in HALF!!

Wrapping Up "Loose Ends Month"

I'll close out November by creating or improving source citations for documents and facts already in my family tree. Then I'll return to my previous project which documents the town of Baselice after 1860.

It's been a tremendous experience focusing on loose ends this month. I'm so excited by all I found. I don't know about you, but I'd like to dedicate one week a month to genealogy loose ends. Who knows? There may come a time where everything is all tied up.

Yeah, right!

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