Make a To-Do List with FTM's Media Usage Report

When I told you I'd finished cleaning up all the source citations in my family tree, I left something out. I didn't want to get into it because it may not apply to many people. But there is something I should share with you.

I wound up with about 2,000 vital records attached to people but not to a source citation. Let's say Angelo Bianco has a birth record attached to him in my family tree. He has his name, birth and baptism dates, and his parents' names and ages. But somehow, there is no citation. All the information I need is there, but the last step remains undone. I don't know how this happened.

I started to fix them by paging through all the vital records in the Media tab of Family Tree Maker. I have 8,533 vital records! I was looking for those attached to a person but missing a citation. When I found one, I'd go to the person and create the source citation. But I had no clue how many of these there were.

After doing that for a couple of days, I wondered if there was a better way. There is. It's called the Media Usage Report. To find it in Family Tree Maker, go to the Publish tab and choose Media Reports under Publication Types. You'll see the Media Usage Report. Click the Create Report button and you'll see a bunch of options you can change.

FTM's Media Usage Report helped me find and fix a long list of missing citations in my family tree.

By the way, I opened my tree in RootsMagic 8, complete with media items, and it has nothing like this report. You can view media items one at a time, but you can't even double click to go to the person or citation attached to it. I'd never looked at FTM's Media Usage Report before, and it turns out to have some great uses.

In my case, all the images missing a citation use an obsolete URL from the Antenati website. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.") I wanted to be able to see the description for each image because it contains the obsolete URL. Here's what I did to create my Media Usage Report:

• Select All individuals in the Individuals to include section.
• Select Show description in the Items to include section.
• Select Show person media in the Filter media by section.

To save a report, click the Share button in the top right corner of FTM and export to the format of your choice. I chose to export to CSV to create a spreadsheet. That way, I can simply delete each entry once it's fixed. And now I can do a search in Excel to count how many obsolete Antenati URLs I need to update. I can see my progress and estimate how long it'll take me to finish.

Here are some other Media Usage Report options that may suit your needs.

Options in the "Items to include" section:

• To include media items you've marked private, be sure to select Include private media. I made all my photographs private to keep them off of Ancestry.com. They won't show up in my report unless I make this selection.
• To find media that's missing a date, select Show date. I always put the date of the document in the image's details. If I forget, I'll see the file's creation timestamp instead of a proper date.
• To find media that's missing a category, select Show categories. It's helpful to assign a category to your media so you can find the one you need fast. FTM comes with several built-in categories, but you can create your own, too.
• If you keep details in the image's Notes field (not the Description field), select Show notes to see them.

Options in the "Filter media by" section:

• Once upon a time, I was attaching media to a fact, rather than to the citation attached to a fact. I thought that was what I needed to do. Selecting Show fact media lets me find those and fix them. (See the image to better understand.)
  

  

  When I discovered I could add a media item directly to a fact, I did. But attaching them to the citation is much better.

• Show person media displays all the media in your family tree that's attached to anyone. This is the most important choice to make.
• To find media that isn't attached to anyone, select Show unlinked media. If you save this report, you can work through them and either attach or delete them from your family tree.

For me, choosing to show source, citation, and relationship media shows nothing. Try them and see if you have any results.

Before closing my FTM file, I exported a GEDCOM file with media links. I opened that file in Family Tree Analyzer, and I didn't see any report that makes use of media. But I did find an unusual error in my tree. When I looked at a list of all the occupations in my tree, I found 11 blank occupations. That meant I'd created an occupation fact, but forgot to enter the occupation itself. I fixed them one-by-one in my tree. Three of them were actually death dates recorded as occupation facts. What happened there?

You never know what you'll find while doing quality assurance on your family tree. That's why you've go to do it!

Who Did You Inherit Your Traits From?

Can you inherit your bright-eyed optimism from your ancestors? Popular shows like "Finding Your Roots" and "Who Do You Think You Are?" tell stories about celebrities learning their ancestor shared their personality traits. But are you really a musician because your 3rd great grandfather was?

Science says you can inherit a personality trait *if* there's a physical component to it. You can inherit perfect pitch because it's a physical trait—a physical ability. You can inherit your optimism because it's tied to the oxytocin receptors in your brain.

You can also inherit traits you saw your family members modelling. I tend to react to another driver cutting me off in exactly the same way as my father. I think that's more about watching him drive than inheriting a gene. But you didn't see your 3rd great grandfather modelling his musical skills.

You may be familiar with how DNA works, but have you examined which traits and features you inherited from whom?

The Science of Inheritance

I remember learning about trait inheritance in 9th grade biology class. We all have 2 genes for each physical trait, and we pass only one to each child. If dad's genes carry both the dominant brown-eyed trait and the recessive blue-eyed trait, and mom's genes carry only the recessive blue-eyed trait, what are the chances they'll have a blue-eyed child? Do the math to see there's a 50% chance.

Let's take my blue-eyed Mom as an example. Her mother had brown eyes and her father had blue eyes. But she and her 2 siblings did not get brown eyes. That means Grandma passed down the recessive gene she inherited from her blue-eyed father.

It would be nice to think that my entrepreneurial son Chris inherited his skills from his 2nd great grandfather, Giovanni. Giovanni came to America without any type of skilled trade. But somehow, he quickly became the owner of a building with 4 apartments and retail space.

This equation shows how slim the chances were for my sons to be anything but blonde-haired and blue-eyed.

In reality, Chris probably observed his father's attempts to be an entrepreneur, and my years of working as a successful independent contractor. Chris was always determined to never work for someone else. And he's stubborn enough to make it a reality.

My other son, Joe, has long been my clone. He has a strong gene for laziness that I don't have, but he's smart enough to overcome it. He prefers to work alone without asking for help, which is something my father and I share. Many times I see Joe expressing exactly my thoughts on a range of topics. I tend to think that's from his upbringing.

Inheritance in Your Family Tree

Here's an exercise that can be a fun way to raise your family's interest in genealogy. Certain physical traits are dominant while others are recessive, like the brown eyes and blue eyes mentioned above. How many of your family members inherited recessive genes? Who do you think those genes came from?

Trait	Dominant	Recessive
Earlobes	Unattached	Attached
Tongue rolling	Can do it	Can't do it
Dimples	Have them	Don't have them
Handedness	Right-handed	Left-handed
Hair	Curly	Straight
Freckles	Have them	Don't have them
Toe length	2nd toe longest	Big toe longest
Nose width	Broad	Narrow
Lip width	Broad	Thin
Eyelashes	Long	Short

In my case, I inherited a lot of recessive genes and one big dominant one for my curly hair. I don't know which ancestor gave me my left-handedness, but not long ago people discouraged that trait. Ringo Starr's grandmother forced him to act like he was right-handed, but he isn't. He says that's why his style of drumming is so unique. He's playing backwards!

Where do you think your physical traits came from? How about your personality traits?

Want to learn more? See:

• Gregor Mendel and the Principles of Inheritance
• 27 Surprising Things You Never Realized You Inherited from Your Parents
• Dominant and Recessive Traits List

Add Consistency to Your Source Citations

On Friday I finished an ambitious family tree project I started in January. I've been working at it nearly every day, and it was worth it. I've truly fortified my family tree. (See "Take the Time to Improve the Sources in Your Family Tree.")

I reviewed and perfected every single source citation in my enormous family tree! (If you don't have 57,125 people in your tree, you can do this in a lot less time.) The project's two goals were to:

1. Use a consistent style for each type of source citation. I started building my family tree about 20 years ago, so the older citations had almost no detail. It took me a while to develop my style.
2. Fix a problem that was happening behind my back. My last laptop was a nightmare. I blame it for most of my failed syncs between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com. Those failures were splitting and duplicating my citations. Normally I'll create a citation and share it among all the appropriate family members' facts. But the failed syncs split the citation into 10 citations for 10 family members. This bulked my tree's file size up to 5 gigabytes. It would take forever to save, to back up, to compact, and to store away.

At the end of this project, I cut my tree's file size down to a fifteenth of what it was. Instead of 5 gigabytes, it's 366 megabytes. On my new computer, my tree takes only a moment to save. And copying the file to a backup location takes a second. Plus, I know my source citations are "clean enough to eat off of."

An accident duplicated my source citations and fattened up my family tree file to 15 times its regular size. Here's how I fixed everything.

How to Make Your Citations Shine

Online-only Tree. If you build and store your family tree online only, your goal is to add citations where there are none. You can't access your citations in one place or share one well-crafted citation with a family.

See if you can access an alphabetical list of everyone in your tree. On Ancestry, go to your tree and click the Tree Search button at the top right. Choose List of all people. Now check each person to see who has facts without sources. Then find the sources! Keep a running list somewhere so you always know where you left off for the day. If your family tree is a normal size, this approach will work for you.

Desktop Tree. If you build your family tree using a desktop program, you can be a lot more efficient. You should have a tab that brings all your citations together, listing them by source title. In Family Tree Maker, I can see on the Sources tab that I have 327 source titles, 87 of which are individual towns in Italy. Apart from Italy, most of my sources are census and immigration records.

I began with the censuses, from the 1851 England Census through the 1950 U.S. Federal Census. For each one, I reviewed each source citation, one at a time. First I went to the head of household in my family tree and opened the census image. Then I found the original record online. (My sources are from Ancestry mostly, with a small number from FamilySearch.) I gathered the details I needed for my source citation. I shared the citation with every appropriate fact and deleted duplicates.

For each type of source, I have a format I stick to. In general, I copy the suggested citation from Ancestry or FamilySearch. (See "Choosing and Using the Most Reliable Sources.") Then I paste the entire citation, plus several more details, into the image's details. Now the image itself tells me where it came from.

With a census or ship manifest, I add the appropriate line number(s). For a census, I spell out the:

• enumeration district
• supervisor's district
• city ward
• sheet number
• image number online

Here's how the citation looks for a particular 1930 U.S. Federal Census:

• Source title: 1930 U.S. Federal Census
• Citation detail: Year: 1930; Census Place: Bronx, Bronx, New York; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 0070; FHL microfilm: 2341200
• Citation text: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
• Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
• Web address: https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/30164368:6224

And here's what I put in the image's details:

• lines 75-81; 1930 United States Federal Census; New York > Bronx > Bronx (Districts 1-250) > District 0070; enumeration district 3-70, supervisor's district 25, assembly district 2, block I, sheet 13B; image 25 of 35
• https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/30164368:6224
• Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Bronx, Bronx, New York; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 0070; FHL microfilm: 2341200
• Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
• Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

Note that the web address I record is not the URL of the image itself. It's the URL of the record on Ancestry. The record provides a link to the image, key details, source info, and a list of related documents for the same person.

By working on all the census citations one after another, you'll get very familiar with the format. You'll gain efficiency and consistency.

After all the census citations, I worked on a bunch of sources with small numbers of citations:

• birth and marriage records from Derbyshire, England
• immigration records from Hawaii and Florida
• death records from Ohio and Pennsylvania, and so on.

I wanted to pick off smaller sources before attacking my Ellis Island ship manifests. That's a trick I always play on myself. I'd rather complete 20 source titles than get stuck in a big one, knowing all those others are waiting for me.

Work on perfecting the source citations in your family tree one type at a time. You'll gain consistency and efficiency as you add value.

After removing duplicates, I have 246 Ellis Island citations in my family tree. I built each citation using the same, consistent format. As I explained above, I copy the suggested citation from Ancestry and add it, along with extra details, to the image.

But I still had my 87 different Italian towns' citations to fix. My Italian document images all come from the Antenati website. The website changed dramatically in 2021, leaving my citations with broken URLs. And the duplication in my tree was insane.

I worked my way through the towns saving the biggest ones for last. These were my closest ancestors' hometowns. My primary town, Colle Sannita, started with more than 7,700 citations, but I saw tons of duplicates. Now that it's all finished, I have 3,377 citations.

My citation format for the Italian vital records is designed to help you find it in the Italian archives or online. It looks like this:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1809 matrimoni, Colle Sannita, document 1, image 3 of 15 at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua1113932/5VNQENO

Here's the same format showing which variables you need to plug in:

From the PROVINCE State Archives, YEAR and DOCUMENT TYPE, TOWN, document #, image # of # at URL

Having done all this, my family tree is SO CLEAN! All my earliest sub-par work is now completely up to my high standards. And I know I'll never again go on a spree adding facts and documents without perfect citations.

I've been working full-throttle on my tree for a long time. I'm growing it by leaps and bounds as I explore the vital records from my ancestral hometowns. But that's been on pause all year for this clean-up project. Now my 57,125-person family tree will start growing like crazy again. But always with perfect source citations.

Exploring Your Last Name Concentration

I recently made the comment that "I'm like the frozen concentrate of Benevento, Italy." In "Where Will Your Roots Map Take You?," I showed you how to create a map of all your ancestral locations.

Today's project focuses on your ancestral last name concentration. Granted, your name concentration depends on how much research you've done. But you may find some real surprises.

Let's look at 3 ways to discover which family names make up the biggest percentage of you. If you’d rather do it old school, you can pull the names from your family tree manually. But there's no reason you can't do option 2.

Once your ancestral last names are counted, Excel makes it easy to show your family tree composition in a colorful chart.

1. Family Tree Maker's Surname Report

After years of using Family Tree Maker (FTM), I've somehow never used the built-in Surname Report. To create yours:

• Choose yourself in your family tree and click the Publish tab.
• Under Person Reports, choose the Surname Report.
• In the Report Options column, click Selected individuals.
• You'll see your name highlighted, and you can choose the Ancestors option. But then you run into the problem of ancestors with more than one spouse. What if your ancestor isn't set as the preferred spouse? You may get step-grandparents in the list. I clicked the Filter In button because my ancestors all have a custom Ahnentafel fact. I clicked All facts, and Search where Ahnentafel Is not blank. With 401 people selected, I clicked Apply.
• Now click the boxes in the report option tab for (1) Sort surname by count, and (2) Limit counts to included individuals.

You'll see an alphabetical list of all the last names of your direct ancestors. It shows how many times each name appears in your list of direct ancestors. And I love how it shows the earliest and most recent birth year of each name in this group.

You can save this report by clicking the Share button at the top-right of FTM and choosing Export to PDF. I recommend you also choose Export to CSV so you can make some charts and graphs from the data.

2. Family Tree Analyzer's Surname Chart

You can open any GEDCOM file with Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) and sort by relationship type to find your direct ancestors. But why not give it a GEDCOM that contains only the right people?

My Family Tree Maker File has a custom field that holds the Ahnentafel number of all my direct ancestors. It also has an Ahnentafel filter so I can display only this group. You can export a GEDCOM file of only the people found in any filter you've created. I created a direct-ancestor-only GEDCOM and opened it with FTA.

With your file open in FTA:

• Click the Surnames tab and check only the Direct Ancestors box.
• Click the Show Surnames button.
• Click the top of the Individuals column to sort each surname from Z to A. (This is a numbers column, so it's really sorting from most to least.)

At the top of the report, you'll see the highest concentration of last names in your family tree. I recommend you save this information as a spreadsheet so you can do more with the data. Click the Export menu and choose Individuals to Excel. This will give you tons of facts. You may want to delete most of the columns.

Dive deeper into each of your ancestors' last names using the Family Tree Analyzer Surnames report.

3. Excel's Charting Features

The spreadsheet I saved from the FTM Surname Report works best for creating charts. It includes the all-important count for each name. The FTA Surnames Report lists each name entry separately. You'd have to do some manipulation or manual counting of each name to get enough data to make a chart.

I chose the Count column in my spreadsheet and sorted the data from Largest Count to Smallest Count. At the bottom of the list I have a lot of names that appear only once or twice among my direct ancestors. I decided to include only the names that appear 5 or more times. I selected the surname and count of each entry with 5 or more in the Count column. For me, that's a total of 29 different last names.

Click Recommended Charts on the Insert tab, and then choose All Charts. This gives you a preview of how each chart will look with your data. I chose an Area chart, and then I fiddled around with the options until I liked the results. I created a pie chart, too.

Examining Your Results

My maiden name is Iamarino, but I'm still a little surprised to see that name come out with a commanding lead. All the other names scoring double digits are surprising to me. Coming in at #2 is Pilla, which happens to be the name of my Grandpa Iamarino's mother. It's also a common name in many of my ancestral towns. But I had no idea how many of them were my direct ancestors. It's also exciting to see that my earliest known Iamarino ancestor was born in 1640. That's a remarkable find for someone with roots in Italy.

As you examine your list of last names, which ones do you think you'd like to take a step further? Why not make a poster of everything you can learn about your top surnames?

I’m lucky to have a book that explains the history of last names in Italy. It's a huge book because Italy has the highest number of last names in Europe at about 350,000. (See "The Interesting History of Italian Last Names.") There may be such a book for your ancestral places. Explore Google Books or an online library catalog for your options. If you're Italian, the book I have is available online for free. Go to https://archive.org/details/OrigineEStoriaDeiCognomiItaliani.

From this cognome or last name book, written by Ettore Rossoni, I learn that the name Iamarino:

• is very rare
• comes primarily from Colle Sannita (my grandfather's hometown)
• means the son of Giovanni (or Gianni) Marino
• is recorded in Colle Sannita as early as 1588

Does your ancestral hometown have a website? What can you learn about the history of the place that's interesting to you?

Years ago I made the surprising discovery that the patron saint of Colle Sannita is Saint George. For some reason, I chose St. George and his April 23rd feast day as a key feature in the novel I wrote as my college thesis. The title of my novel was "St. George." I mean, what are the odds?

I'm also intrigued that the Saracens occupied the town in 728 AD. My maternal grandmother's name was Sarracino. The cognome book tells me this name was once given to Arab or Islamic communities in Italy. Grandma's roots come from a town not far from Colle Sannita. They may be very ancient roots!

Pick out a few details about your ancestral town's origins. Find a nice image of the town or use the map. Put something together in Word or other software that you might turn into a book cover or a framed wall hanging.

The last names in my family tree give me so much joy. I'm always thrilled to discover a new one. Many of them pin me firmly to one place on the map, like Iamarino.

Step back from your usual research and dive into the most important names in your family tree. You may feel more pride in your heritage once you take a closer look.

And speaking of last names:

• Using Color to Understand Your Family's Last Names
• How to Keep Track of All Your Surnames
• When Did Your Ancestors First Use a Last Name?
• Where Did Your Last Name Come From?

5 Ellis Island Videos Dispel Immigration Myths

Some family history myths never seem to die. Perhaps the biggest one is "my ancestor's name was changed at Ellis Island." Despite what you see in "The Godfather" or its parody "Mafia!" (where they rename an immigrant boy Vincenzo Armani Windbreaker), it didn't happen.

Ask yourself this. When you board an airplane, does the airline know your name and home address? Yes, they do. If you board a cruise ship, does that company know who each passenger is? Absolutely yes.

In fact, they recorded everyone's details at the port of departure and gave them a basic inspection. It was in the shipping company's best interests to turn away anyone who would be rejected in New York. Why? Because the company had to pay the return fare for any rejected immigrant.

East Coast Immigration

Visit the Ellis Island Foundation online to see 5 videos that detail your ancestor's immigration experience. Here are some of the key points from these educational and informational videos.

1. The immigration process is much more difficult now that it was when your grandparents arrived. For the most part, all you had to do was arrive, have a place to go, and not have a contagious disease. The entire process happened within hours.

2. The medical inspection lasted a few seconds. The staff had an average of 6 seconds to look at an immigrant and decide if they were healthy enough. They checked for one contagious eye disease called trachoma that was a big problem at the time. To do this, they had to turn the immigrant's upper eyelid inside out to look for bumps. If the person was sick, they might stay in the building's dormitory until they recovered.

During the Ellis Island years, European immigrants went through a relatively speedy entry process.

3. Ships had a manifest with each passenger's name and information when they arrived. They turned the manifests over to the Ellis Island officials. In the Great Hall of Ellis Island, people waited in line for hours to speak to an inspector. Translators were there to assist. The inspectors asked questions to see if a passenger's answers matched what was on the ship manifest. They asked questions like, "Where are you going?"

4. About 1 in 10 immigrants also had to go before a board of special inquiry. They had to wait in the dormitory for their hearing. After answering several more questions, the majority passed and went on their way. In fact, Ellis Island denied entry to only 2% of immigrants.

Of course your ancestor came here legally. It was so easy to do.

West Coast Immigration

The Ellis Island videos mention that their immigrants came from Europe. Asian immigrants arrived at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco. My husband's Japanese ancestors arrived there. Recently I found the manifest showing his grandmother Hanako's detention at the facility.

Asian immigrants faced a longer, tougher entry process at Angel Island in San Francisco.

I found her on a page filled with woman who had 2 things in common:

1. Many had a rubber stamp next to their name that says Photograph Marriage. We all believed Hanako was a "picture bride," but she denied it. Now we have this proof as well as what seems to be the actual photograph.
2. Most of the people on the page had uncinariasis, also known as hookworm. Officials labeled these immigrants as having a "dangerous contagious disease." The people were all detained, treated, and released. Many of the contagious picture brides are also labeled L.P.C.: likely public charge. That seems odd when they had an arranged husband to meet them.

It looks as though they held Hanako for 18 days before her husband took her to her new home.

Immigration was much harder at Angel Island because of prejudice against Asians and the Chinese Exclusion Act. If there were European immigrants arriving in San Francisco, they received preferential treatment. Officials processed their papers aboard the ship so they could disembark and be on their way. This was also true of 1st and 2nd class passengers at Ellis Island.

Unlike Ellis Island, the Angel Island immigration process didn't take hours. It took weeks, months, or sometimes years.

It's important to understand the experience of your immigrant ancestors. I often think of my great grandmother Maria Rosa, who made the 3-week voyage while she was 6 months pregnant. It sounds nauseating! Or my grandfather Pietro, who arrived at age 18 after somehow getting from southern Italy to a port in France. Or my grandfather Adamo, who first arrived in 1914 as a 23-year-old, but had to return to Italy to fight in World War I for the Italian Army.

They all made long, difficult journeys, and most seemed to decide to never speak about it again. Take some time to understand the journey your ancestors made. You know you owe everything to them.

To learn about the Ellis Island immigration process, view the 5 videos at https://www.nps.gov/elis/learn/education/eie-series.htm.

To learn about the Angel Island immigration process, see the History Channel page at https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/angel-island-immigration-station.

And speaking of immigration:

• Why Did Your Ancestor Leave Home?
• How Did Immigration Laws Guide Your Ancestors?
• Who Was Your First Immigrant Ancestor?

Where Will Your Roots Map Take You?

A couple of years ago I was looking at a map I bought while on vacation in Italy. I realized all my ancestral hometowns fit into a small area of the map. My roots are extremely concentrated. They're all in one province (that's like a county in the U.S.), with one exception that's just over the border.

Here's the part that amazes me. My grandparents and one set of great grandparents met and married in America. But their roots were in neighboring towns in Italy. You may have similar stories in your family tree. Of course immigrants felt comfortable in neighborhoods where everyone spoke the same language. And they felt even more comfortable when their neighbors spoke the same dialect. Imagine how much that helped them make the transition to their newly adopted country.

Generating Your Roots Map

This week I wanted to see a visualization of not only my ancestors' towns, but all their birthplaces on the map. I turned to a program I tested 2 years ago: Microsoft's Power BI Desktop. (BI stands for Business Intelligence.) If you want to try this, see the 5 steps further down in this article. But here's how easy it is to create the map once you're in Power BI:

1. Click the Map icon (which looks like a globe) and expand the graphic to fill the workarea.
2. Drag the FactType field into the Filters column and check Birth in the list.
3. Drag the SortableLocation field and drop it in the Location section of the Visualizations column.

Those 3 steps gave me 18,947 blue dots on my world map. (That's how many people are in the GEDCOM file I'm using.) I see a ton of dots covering the New York City area and scattering over to the Midwest where Dad was born. Italy is positively overrun with blue dots.

Each datapoint in your family tree can generate more research leads.

I can use the scroll wheel on my mouse to zoom in on Italy. There I can see a huge cluster of blue dots from Naples in the west to Foggia in the east. I love this visual. This is the cradle of my civilization.

If you'd like to create this map for your roots, all the software is free. The only caveat is you must be using a Windows computer. Here's what to do:

1. Download and install the free Microsoft program at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop.
2. Export a GEDCOM from your family tree program or website. You may want to filter your export to your blood relatives (your ancestors and all their descendants) or only your direct ancestors.
3. Open your GEDCOM with Family Tree Analyzer (https://ftanalyzer.com) and choose to Export Facts to Excel. (It will actually be a CSV file.)
4. Open the CSV file to see if there are any columns you don't want. I noticed start date and end date columns, and 2 columns up front, that I decided to delete. Save your changes.
5. Launch Power BI Desktop and choose to Get Data from your CSV file.

Now you're ready to create your map by following the 3 steps I outlined at the top of this article. It makes me proud to have such a tight cluster of roots. Having clusters all over the world might make your existence more of a miracle.

Following the Trail Wherever It May Lead

My Italian cluster is why I spend all my time indexing and exploring vital records from these towns. Even if someone is in my tree due to marriage only, they are me. They're all me.

I'm even expanding into other neighboring towns. I was trying to track down the family of a DNA match when I realized her ancestor's last name exists in the next town. I started scouring that town and found her ancestor's 1842 birth record. And I saw a handful of familiar last names there.

The nearby dots, towns next to your ancestral towns, hint at future family tree research.

I have more than enough towns and data to keep me exploring and discovering for the rest of my life.

Are your map clusters telling you to research a new town? Look for nearby dots on your map. Maybe your ancestor married someone from the next town. It may be time to expand your search.