Key Facts on Your Ancestor's Italian Military Record

As a child I heard that my grandfather was a prisoner of war in World War I. I heard he ate rats to stay alive. It wasn't until 2018 that I learned more.

That's the year I went to Benevento, Italy, to see his military record. (Follow the preceding link to find out how to do it.) There's a ton of information on this record.

My 2023 article, "Free Italian Military Records for WWI and WWII", has been popular recently. I owe you a detailed explanation of what you can find on your ancestor's Italian military record.

There's a detailed physical description of your ancestor on his Italian military record.

Most of the World War I era Italian military records follow the same format. At the top of the page is the record number, the soldier's name, and their year of birth.

Personal Data and Markings

The top of the left column says Date e Contrassegni Personali or Personal Data and Markings. This section tells you the names of the soldier's parents, his birth date and place of birth. There's a detailed physical description, including:

• Height (statura) and chest (torace) measurement in centimeters. My grandfather was 158 centimeters tall with an 80 centimeter chest.
• Color (colore) and type (forma) of hair (capelli). His hair was brown and curly.
• Color of eyes (occhi). His eyes were brown.
• Complexion (colorito). His skin was rosy.
• Condition of teeth (dentatura). His teeth were healthy.
• Art (arte) or profession (professione). He was a shoemaker.
• Whether he could read (leggere) or write (scrivere). He could do both.
• Draft number (numero nella leva) and place (comune) of registration. He drew number 51 in the 1891 draft in Baselice.

Continuing down the left column, we see where the soldier would be when home on leave. (Domicilio Eletto all'Atto dell'Invio in Congedo.) This is usually his hometown.

Next is Distinctions and Special Services (the heading is Distinzioni e Servizi Speciali). I've downloaded a lot of these records for soldiers who died in the war. I can't find any that have something written in this section.

The next section lists exemptions from service. (The heading is Annotazioni per il personale ascritto a corpi o servizi pei quali sono stabilite dispense dalle chiamate.) My grandfather's record says the army released him on 14 Aug 1926—long after he'd settled in New York.

The bottom of the left column tells you if the soldier ever left Italy. The heading means he obtained a passport without restrictions (Nulla osta per conseguire il passaporto per l'estero e rimpatrii). The military gave my grandfather clearance to go to New York on 31 Mar 1914 and 2 Apr 1920.

The large center column details the soldier's military information. Exact dates are in the right column.

Enrollment, Services, Promotions and other registration changes

The heading at the top of the center column is Arruolamento, Servizi, Promozioni ed altre variaziony matricolari. Military service was mandatory at age 20 in Italy at the time, so the first entry is for the soldier's enlistment.

Some parts of this column are handwritten, and others use a rubber stamp. You'll see phrases repeated. These include:

• chiamato alle armi (called to arms)
• lasciato in congede illimitato (left on indefinite leave)
• mandato in congedo illimitato (sent on indefinite leave)
• concessa congedo illimitato (granted indefinite leave)
• reggimento fanteria (infantry regiment)
• dispensato dalla chiamata alle armi (exempted from the call to arms). This can be due to illness or because he left the country.
• prigioniero (prisoner)
• rimpatriato (repatriated)

Merit Action Campaigns (Decorations, commendations, wounds, injuries, fractures, mutilations in war or in service)

The bottom of the page details service awards and injuries. The heading is Campagne Azioni di Merito; Decorazioni, encomi, ferite, lesioni, fratture, mutilazioni in guerra od in servicio.

The army awarded him the Inter-Allied Victory Medal and the Italian War Commemorative Medal. He was in New York at the time. I don't know if they gave these medals to his mother in Baselice.

What a gift it is to see a fallen soldier's military record or obtain the volume and record number.

Some of the specifics I learned about my grandfather's service were:

• He enlisted on 21 Mar 1911, before his 20th birthday.
• His first call to arms was on 23 Oct 1911.
• He received a medical leave on 20 May 1912.
• He joined an infantry regiment on 5 Dec 1913. They granted him unlimited leave on 21 Feb 1914 because of his honorable conduct. (That's when he left for New York City.)
• They excused him from the call to arms on 15 Jul 1914 and 23 May 1915 because he was in America with permission.
• He returned to Italy to answer the call to arms issued on 31 Aug 1915. (Not everyone did. His first cousin stayed in New York.) He joined the 40th infantry regiment.
• He joined the 134th infantry regiment on 14 May 1916.
• They promoted him to corporal on 1 Jan 1917.
• He became a prisoner of war in the Mauthausen, Austria, prison camp on 6 Nov 1917. Mauthausen was a concentration camp in World War II. It's the subject of a gut-wrenching film, "The Photographer of Mauthausen". His date of capture confirmed my earlier speculation. He was very likely among the 250,000 Italians taken prisoner during the Battle of Caporetto.
• One year later, on 6 Nov 1918, forces released him from the POW camp.
• On 21 Aug 1919, the army granted him unlimited leave. They cited his honorable service and faithful conduct.

I heard that he spent two years at home recovering before finally returning to New York. Now I have actual dates. He returned home shortly after his 6 Nov 1918 liberation, and the army approved his return to New York on 2 Apr 1920. That was 17 months later. Italy paid his fare.

My grandfather always conducted himself in a proud and honorable manner. His military record shows he earned that right.

No matter where your ancestor served, you can learn a lot from their military record.

And speaking of military members:

• Appreciate the Veterans in Your Family Tree
• Finding Your Family's Fallen War Heroes
• Does Independence Day Make You Think of Your Ancestors?
• An Unusual Find Triggers Historical Research
• Finding Fallen Soldiers in Your Family Tree
• Important Stories Wait for You in Military Records

Find Your Passion and Genealogy is Pure Joy

Everyone with an interest in their family tree was a beginner once. And it seemed overwhelming. Then we find our way. We make mistakes. We go back and fill in what we missed. After a while, our family trees have leaves on almost every branch.

Is this when some people get tired of genealogy? Do they imagine there's nothing left to do?

If that's how you're starting to feel, you haven't found your passion yet.

A single spark can ignite your passion for your family tree.

Finding That Passion

I became so passionate about genealogy that I resented having to work for a living. So my husband and I did the math, and I was able to retire a few years early.

Now I can devote my time to the two tasks that spark my passion.

1. Citing my sources. In 2017 vital records for my ancestral hometowns came online. I downloaded them all to my computer. I decided to piece together tons of families from these towns without citing my sources for now.

Big mistake! Who's going to believe my family tree without sources? So I've been creating all the missing source citations. I've made a lot of progress and should finish later this year.

At the start, more than 9,000 blood relatives in my family tree had no source citations. Today it's down to 814 blood relatives. I push to complete at least 100 people a day. I've gone as high as 180 people in a day.

When I finish the 814 remaining relatives, I'll have 52,000 non-blood relatives to tackle. But they're not as big of a priority. I'll keep working on this project, but it may not get all my attention every day.

This passion is making my family tree valuable to anyone with relatives from my towns. It will be my legacy.

2. Italian vital records. Once I retired, I took things up a notch. Instead of searching the document images for one relative at a time, I began renaming the images. Now they're all searchable on my computer. I name each birth and death record for the individual and their father. For example, take the 1814 birth record of Antonio Bianco, the son of Francesco Bianco. I renamed the image "8 Antonio Bianco di Francesco". (8 is the document number. The di means of in Italian and makes a great shorthand.) The image's folder location tells me the type of record, year, and town. It's in the "1814 births" folder for the town of Baselice.

For marriage records, I name the groom and bride and use the document number. For example, "15 Giovanni Iamarino & Libera Scrocca".

With the images renamed, I can search for a particular name or for all the children of Francesco Bianco. This is a tremendous help when you're piecing together a whole family.

When I finish renaming an entire town's records, I create a spreadsheet and publish it on my website. Anyone with ancestors from my towns can search these files for their people. They can see where to find their documents online. This is a valuable service, so I'm passionate about working on the next town. (See "How to Create and Share Your Ancestral Town Database".)

Now It's Your Turn

What about you? What can you do to keep up your interest and improve the quality of your tree?

Seek out the parts of the family-tree building process that excite you. When you find one, pour your time into it. I'll bet it keeps you eager to come back for more. Here's a checklist to get you started.

• What’s your favorite part of the process?
  • Reviewing your online hints. See "3 Ways to Tell If That Hint is No Good".
  • Checking out every decent search result. If I discover that one of my Italian nationals came to the United States, I do search for them in U.S. records. Then I do the same for their children.
  • Working on one document type at a time. When I decided to improve my downloaded document images, I went through one type at a time. I fixed them in Photoshop. I found it exciting to crop the big black backgrounds out of draft registration cards. Now my images look better and take up less space. (See "How to Improve Your Digital Genealogy Documents".)
  • Examining your DNA matches' trees. Sometimes it's a DNA match's tree that tells me who married whom, and who left Italy. These are valuable leads.
  • Poring over new record collections. What a joy it was when the New York City Municipal Archives put lots of vital records online. Now I can find vital records for relatives at my desk. (See "When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?")
• What needs improvement?
  • Is your style consistent? Add quality to your family tree by using a consistent style for names, places, and dates. (See "Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree".)
  • How complete are your source citations? The free Family Tree Analyzer can show you exactly who is missing their citations. It's easy to generate a list. See "These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable".
  • Do your images need help? Why put a color-faded photo in your family tree when you can correct the color? Why have a huge black border around that ship manifest? You can use photo-editing software to improve all your images.
  • Are you happy with your document filing method? If you can't find the document you need right away, you may need a more logical system. See "3 Simple Rules for Managing Your Digital Genealogy Documents" and "3 Rules for Naming Digital Genealogy Documents".
• What can you chip away at each time you open your tree?
  
  I'm lucky to be able to treat this hobby like it's the full-time job I always wanted. But you may not have much time to spend on genealogy. Which tasks can you pick up at a moment's notice and make good progress on? Some suggestions:
  
  
  • Make a list of your closest DNA matches. Work on identifying the closest match you don't already know. (See "Digging Into a DNA Match's Family Tree".)
  • Run any report from Family Tree Analyzer and whittle down the list. For instance, run a Data Errors report and check the results against your family tree. How many can you fix in one sitting? (See "How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree".)
  • Start a folder for one ancestor and gather more and more documents to use in their "Book of Life". Keep a text or Word file in that folder, too, with ongoing notes to use in their book. See "How to Create a 'Book of Life' for Your Relatives".
  • Keep a detailed note about where you left off for the day. Return to the same task next time without having to jog your memory.

Someone once said choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Well, if you find your passion for genealogy, you'll be glad to work on your family tree every chance you get. You'll feel driven to make it the best it can be.

Go find your spark and light that fire!

A Mild Scrub for Your GEDCOM File

A GEDCOM file exported from Family Tree Maker isn't compliant with the GEDCOM standard. That's what a reader of this blog told me. That's a problem if you export a GEDCOM and want to import it into different software. You may lose some data.

After going through the article he sent me ("How to Scrub Your Data", by Keith Riggle), my eyes glazed over. But I decided to see which changes I'd like to make to my family tree in the spirit of following best practices.

Protect your family tree file for the long haul by replacing outdated fact types.

As I looked into it, I discovered something new about the text editor I use every day—Notepad++. There's a plugin for use with GEDCOM files, of all things. It's called GedcomLexer, and it does a better job of displaying your GEDCOM file. To install it, I went to the Plugins menu and chose Plugins Admin. Then I selected GedcomLexer from the list.

Now all the 4-letter GEDCOM tags in my file are blue and bold. A person's ID number is maroon. Source and family numbers are orange. All other text is gray, with one exception. It displays what it calls a User Tag in bold magenta. The User Tags I see in my file include:

• _LINK
• _FREL
• _MREL
• _MILT

The initial underscore seems to be another way of showing that it isn't an official GEDCOM tag. The LINK tag happens when I add a URL in the Web address field of a source citation. I'm going to ignore that tag. I know my links work when I upload my GEDCOM to Geneanet.org. And in RootsMagic 8 they're displayed as Source comments or Detail comments. The article on data scrubbing suggests putting it in the source citation's notes. I have tens of thousands of source citations. No thanks.

The FREL and MREL tags also happen automatically. They're near the end of a GEDCOM where Family Tree Maker keeps track of family units. I can't find any online reference to them, but the word Natural comes after each one. They must mean Father's RELationship and Mother's RELationship. When I import my GEDCOM into other software, family relationships remain intact. Even an adopted relationship makes the transition. So I won't give anymore thought to FREL and MREL.

The MILT tag is the one that bothers me. First of all, the discontinued GEDCOM tag for Military Service is MILI, not MILT. I use this tag for military service dates. And I don't see any logical, GEDCOM-valid substitute. I checked my grandfather in RootsMagic 8 (a file created from a GEDCOM), and his military facts were intact. On Ancestry, everything's fine, but on Geneanet, all his military service dates are labeled Conscription! I'm not going to do anything about this one either.

Deciding What to Change

Let's keep this simple and choose a few easy-to-replace discontinued tags to edit. Here's how to begin:

• Go to https://www.tamurajones.net/GEDCOMTags.xhtml and scroll way down to Overview Table.
• Paying attention to the last column (labeled 5.5.5), look for familiar* GEDCOM tags marked with a red X. The X means they have discontinued this tag. The more common discontinued tags (you may find others that you use) include:
  • ARVL for arrival
  • DPRT for departure
  • EMPL for employment
  • SSN for Social Security Number
• Make yourself a running list of the ones you'd like to change.
• Export your GEDCOM file and open it in a text editor.
• Search the file for discontinued tags.
• In your family tree software, replace discontinued tags with approved tags.

*If you aren't at all familiar with 4-character GEDCOM tags, scroll through your GEDCOM file a bit. You'll see things repeated, like NAME, DATE, PLAC (for place), BIRT (for birth), DEAT (for death), RESI (for residence), SOUR (for source), etc.

It's a shame Family Tree Maker offers these discontinued fact types in its selection list. But going through this exercise should be enough to make us remember which ones not to use anymore.

Making the Changes

More things to do with your GEDCOM:

• An Easy Way to Rid Your Family Tree of Typos
• 4 Ways to Safeguard Your Digital Family Tree
• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree

1. ARVL and DPRT. When I first started using Family Tree Maker, I noticed there were emigration and immigration fact types as well as departure and arrival fact types. I decided to use emigration and immigration for a person's first voyage, and departure and arrival for later trips.

Now I see they've discontinued ARVL and DPRT. In my GEDCOM file, instead of ARVL and DPRT, I have TYPE Arrival and TYPE Departure. Is this Family Tree Maker's method of handling the discontinued tags? I do have EMIG and IMMI tags. I'd prefer to go with them.

This long-overlooked feature in Family Tree Maker is just what I need for this GEDCOM cleanup.

What I'll do in my Family Tree Maker file is:

• Go to a person with a Departure fact and select it in their Person tab.
• On the right, beneath the person's profile image, click the Options button. Then choose Fact Data Options.
• This opens a Departure Fact Data Options window. At the top, select "Show facts for All individuals". In my family tree, this covers 222 Departure facts.
• Beneath the list of people, check the box for "Change selected facts to this fact type". Choose Emigration from the list, then click OK. Done!
• Now choose an Arrival fact and follow the same steps, changing the fact type to Immigration.

That was so easy. The steps will be different if you don't use Family Tree Maker. I have a free copy of RootsMagic 8, and I can only change one instance of a fact data type at a time.

If your family tree software doesn't let you change every instance of a tag at once, you'll have to do it one at a time. Use your GEDCOM file to find each instance and scroll up a bit to find the person's name. Then make the change in your family tree software.

2. EMPL. I haven't used this tag, but if you have, you can change it from Employment (EMPL) to Occupation (OCCU).

3. SSN. In my early days, I recorded the Social Security Numbers of deceased relatives. This number is often included in a U.S. Social Security Death Index record.

I thought it would be handy if I needed to request more detailed information about that person. Take my grandfather's first wife, for example. Before I learned her maiden name, I thought about paying to see her Social Security application. Then I discovered her name when I found her passport application by using her birth date.

Soon after I started, there was an uproar over the publication of SSNs and the possibility for fraud. I decided to stop recording these numbers as a record type. I put them in the person's notes or skipped it from then on.

When I search my GEDCOM file for "SSN", I find only two SSN facts (for my grandfathers). There are also 4 mentions of "SSN" within a person's notes (that's fine). I'll go to my grandfathers in my Family Tree Maker file and move their numbers into their notes.

---

It came as a shock to me that Arrival, Departure, and Military aren't valid GEDCOM tags. As I said, I'm sticking with Military unless someone can suggest a better alternative. But from now on I'll always use Emigration and Immigration for all trips. Think about these trips in modern-day terms. You have to go through Customs and show your passport for an international trip. So EMIG and IMMI seem reasonable.

If you want to scrub your GEDCOM harder, see the related articles at the end of "How to Scrub Your Data".

4-Tool Combo Solves a DNA Problem

I've been playing around with the chromosome browser on MyHeritage. In my DNA match list on MyHeritage, I have a woman, her father, and his mother. (They're all my AncestryDNA matches, too.) I know their roots are in the Italian hometown of my dad's family.

Their relationship to each another should look interesting on the chromosome browser. I compared them to myself and my dad and my 6th chromosome is where the action is! My dad and the woman and her father and her grandmother all intersect on two parts of my 6th chromosome.

Then I looked at my dad's DNA test. I added the 3 family members (but not myself) on his chromosome browser. I found that the 4 of them intersect on my dad's 6th and 11th chromosomes. That's a solid connection.

So here's the big question. Why does the grandmother show up in my Family Tree Maker file as "wife of 4th cousin 1x removed"? There was a ton of intermarriage in our shared ancestral hometown. So the grandmother and I have 27 different relationships in FTM, but none of them are by blood.

I've let this go unresolved for too long. It's time to bring in genealogy tools in addition to the chromosome browser.

I knew they were related to each other. A chromosome browser tied them to Dad and me.

Tool #1: Family Tree Analyzer

A reader of this blog once told me that Family Tree Maker has a known flaw when it comes to relationships. There will be cases where it is wrong—particularly with more distant relationships. The reader suggested I defer to Family Tree Analyzer for the correct relationship.

So I opened my latest GEDCOM file in Family Tree Analyzer. I found the grandmother in the Individuals table. When I scrolled over to see the Relation to Root column, it said she's my 6th cousin once removed. Aha! So there is a true cousin connection.

Tool #2: Ancestry.com

I build my tree using Family Tree Maker and synchronize it with my tree on Ancestry.com. What a surprise to see that my Ancestry tree already knew she is my 6th cousin once removed. She's labeled as such on her profile page.

On that page I can click our relationship to see a list of generational steps from her to me.

Tool #3: Family Tree Maker

Back in Family Tree Maker, I followed those generational steps. I went from her to her father, grandfather, great grandmother, and up that paternal line until I saw it.

Way up the line, her 5th great grandparents had a yellow color code. (I use color-coding in FTM to identify my 4 grandparents' lines.) That tells me they are direct ancestors of my paternal grandfather. When I clicked their names, I saw that they are my 6th great grandparents. (Family Tree Analyzer agrees.)

Tool #4: Relationship Calculator

I wanted confirmation and to see my relationship to her son and granddaughter. (They each have more than one connection to me.) I opened my relationship calculator spreadsheet. First I went to the column for my 6th great grandparents. Then I went down that column to the row where my DNA match is this ancestor's 5th great grandchild. The column and row intersect at 6th cousin once removed.

The next 2 rows show my relationship to her son (7th cousin) and granddaughter (7th cousin once removed). Finally! I've known about these DNA matches for years without understanding our relationship.

Multiple tools pointed to one relationship. Then my color-coded family tree brought it all together.

I did look at the Shared cM Project tool on DNA Painter to try to figure out my relationship to the grandmother. But there were too many possibilities. I also looked at the diagram of possible relationships diagram on MyHeritage. Our true relationship is too distant to show up there. Even when I compared her to my father's DNA test, it leaned toward a 3rd cousin relationship. (Thanks, endogamy.) The true relationship of 6th cousins was too far away to show.

As I mentioned, I'd already placed these 3 DNA matches in my family tree. I can take their lines back to my 8th great grandfather, born in 1671. But it always bothered me that the real picture of our relationship was hiding. Family Tree Maker does know that my 8th great grandfather is my DNA match's 7th great grandfather. But I would never have seen the true relationship without the help of other genealogy tools.

The truth is out there, as they say.

5 Super-Cool Features of MyHeritage

This week I'm exploring overlooked features on the MyHeritage website. Not long ago, I told you about their new Ancient Origins Breakdown, which was a lot of fun to explore. Now I've fallen in love with a few more features, and I must share them with you.

1. Cousin Finder™

This new feature uses published family trees to find your cousins. It gives you "DNA-level insights without a DNA test," according MyHeritage. And it's fascinating.

The MyHeritage Cousin Finder™ gives you DNA-level insights without a DNA test.

To use Cousin Finder, go to MyHeritage and select it from the Discoveries menu. In my case, the tool brings me 5 cousins:

• my 1st cousin Nick
• my 2nd cousin John (both of whom I grew up with)
• a 3rd cousin with my maiden name
• a 4th cousin's daughter whose last name I recognize
• my father's 5th cousin in Italy

To find out if the woman with the familiar last name is who I'm guessing she is, I can click View relationship. This opens up a family tree diagram showing my exact connection to her. Based on her last name, I figured she had to be the granddaughter of my mother's 3rd cousin Rita. Rita had 2 biological sons, so I thought this woman must be the daughter of one of those sons.

The diagram makes it clear that she is who I thought she would be.

Next I looked at the match with my maiden name. Our relationship chart says he's a descendant of Teofilo Iamarino. I know him! He's my great grandfather's brother. When I checked my family tree, I found that I have this man in there already. But I only knew his name thanks to a distant cousin from Brazil.

Finally, there's my father's 5th cousin in Italy. The relationship chart shows me he's a descendant of my 4th great grandfather's sister. Because they never left Italy, I didn't have this cousin's name, or his father's name before. I'll have to ask my Italian cousins if they know him from town.

2. Fan View

Ancestry.com offers a fan view of your family tree. You can choose from vertical (family), horizontal (pedigree), and fan views. Unless you pay extra for Ancestry Pro Tools, though, you can see only a 4-generation fan view. For someone like me who can name a pair of her 9th great grandparents, 4 generations won't cut it.

I love everything about this 10-generation fan chart, free on MyHeritage.

The Fan View on MyHeritage lets you show up to 10 generations. For me, that means everyone I've identified up to my 7th great grandparents is in the chart! A second view identifies 8 branches of my family tree using the last names of my great grandparents.

As I hover over any solid block in this view, I can see the name of the person it represents along with their lifespan. But what's also helpful is seeing the blank spaces. Those are the dead ends in your family tree. For me, these are the places where the vital records end. For you, they may be the places you need to research next.

It's a terrific representation of all the work you've done researching your ancestors. Remember, you can select anyone in your family tree to see their fan view.

3. Chromosome Browser

MyHeritage lets you compare your DNA (or that of any kit you manage) to as many as 7 DNA matches at a time. You can see where their DNA overlaps and use the information to narrow down a connection.

I used GEDmatch years ago to learn that my parents share DNA. It's a small amount, and I'm sure it's Identical By State, not Identical By Descent. All their ancestors came from neighboring towns in a small region.

This Chromosome Browser highlights the spots where you and 2 other people share DNA. It shows me the triangulated segments I share with both my parents. On chromosomes 6 we share genomic position 6358001–11179154. On chromosome 9 we share genomic position 19946627–28460340. It may help me to find DNA matches who share those same genomic positions.

Using the Chromosome Browser, I found a DNA match who shares several segments with my father and me. I decided to follow up on this match using the next feature.

4. Diagram of Possible Relationships

If you click to review a DNA match, the screen begins with an estimated relationship. I'm looking at a match named Deborah from the USA. MyHeritage tells me her estimated relationship to my father. She should be his first cousin's daughter.

Beneath the estimated relationship is a section called Possible relationships. This tells me there's a very high 93.6% chance Deborah is my father's 1st cousin's daughter. There are other possible relationships with the tiniest percentages of probability. At the bottom of this short list is a link that says "Show more relationships plus diagram". That diagram is the key.

This MyHeritage diagram shows you where to look for that DNA match's identity.

The diagram makes it very clear where their relationship fits. It tells me to look at the siblings of my father's parents, and then their grandchildren. Deborah will be the grandchild of one of my father's aunts or uncles.

Sure enough, there is a Deborah in my family tree—the granddaughter of my father's Uncle Mike. If I didn't already have her, this diagram would tell me where to look. I would research my grandmother's 2 siblings and my grandfather's sister.

Digging into Deborah a tiny bit led me to her mother-in-law's missing maiden name, so that's a win!

5. Photo Dater

Finally, there's a feature I'd been looking for ever since I read about it a while ago. It's supposed to be able to date your photos. I didn't see it in the Photos menu, but then I found out it happens by itself—if it's going to happen.

The MyHeritage photo dater could be the answer you need to solve a genealogy mystery.

I have a few photos that had no results, but one that did. It's a photo of me as a kid in about 1972. There's nothing useful in the background for dating the photo, but I got a result. The estimate is 1975. That's pretty good! I uploaded a 1986 photo of myself wearing huge sunglasses. There are several old cars in the background. The estimate is "after 1985". Wow! What other photos have I got?

I uploaded a photo from about 1961. It's my mother, my siblings, and me (in a stroller) in the California sunshine. The estimate is 1963. Very impressive! Finally, I have 4 photos of my grandmother and her family in the nineteen teens. (See "My Aunt's Photos Tell the Other Side of the Story.") Two of the 4 showed estimates that were once again very close.

Go through your photos to see which ones could use a date estimate to help you figure out who's who.

Last week I revisited FamilySearch.org's Full-Text Search and found new treasures. Today's look at MyHeritage tells us we should revisit resources and take a deeper dive.

Unexpected Finds from FamilySearch Labs

It's been a while since I looked at the "Labs" section of FamilySearch.org. This is where you can take advantage of their enormous "Full-Text Search" project. You can find new documents for your family tree because your ancestor merely gets a mention.

I went to https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text and started by entering two names and one place. They were my great grandfather (Giovanni Sarracino) and his brother-in-law (Semplicio Saviano) in the Bronx, New York. They were businessmen whose dealings are still clouded in mystery. I don't know how they came to own a building with retail stores and four apartments.

Here are three complete surprises I found there. This should inspire you to search these records, too!

Find unusual genealogy documents where your ancestor is a supporting character, not the star.

My Great Grandfather's Signature

My first result says my great grandfather was a witness on a Petition for Naturalization in 1940. I don't know this other man. He didn't live in my great grandfather's neighborhood or come from his hometown. But how cool is it to see my great grandfather's signature for the first time?

My 2nd Great Uncle's Children

Next I found several pages of Bronx probate records. The subject of the records was Giuseppa, the widow of my great grandfather's brother. At first I didn't see a connection and didn't know who she was. But one of the pages is a 1908 baptism record from St. Rita's Church in the Bronx. That caught my eye. They baptized my grandmother there in 1899.

The baptism record is for my 1st cousin twice removed, Angelo Sarracino. He's the son of Angelo Sarracino (my 2nd great uncle) and his wife Giuseppa Orrosa.

This legal filing has an astonishing 100 pages, each of which I downloaded as an image. Here are the details I found in this document that I didn't know before:

• Giuseppa Orrosa (spelling uncertain) died on 2 Feb 1920 at 222 East 150th Street, Bronx, New York. With some difficulty, I did find her New York City death certificate. Too bad it uses her husband's name as her father's, and her mother's name is the same as hers.
• Her eldest son Anthony filed several legal papers to claim Giuseppa's financial holdings. Some of his siblings were minors, and there was no will, which complicated things. The document shows how much he paid for lawyers and his mother's funeral.
• Giuseppa had $1,339 in the bank, $750 at home, and held a promissory note for $1,000. My great grandfather and his brother-in-law's wife must have borrowed money from Giuseppa. I had no idea she was also involved in my great grandfather's business dealings.

Searching for more Sarracino documents led to a string of discoveries.

• I found New York City vital records and Italian birth records in towns that are new to me.
• I found a previously unknown child for Giuseppa who died after two days.
• I found several spellings of her maiden name. Her exact town of origin is still a mystery to me.

All the documents have different spellings of her maiden name. Only one spelling variation has a match on the Cognomix website. This website shows you where you can find any last name in Italy today. That one spelling is Orasi. I tried doing a wide search for anyone name Orasi coming to America. None of the leads from this wide search turned out to be helpful.

As I went through the 245 pages of search results, many were from Giuseppa's probate records. To narrow the search, I used only Semplicio Saviano's name. This led to a very sad discovery.

My Cousin James' Difficult Life

Semplicio and his wife Giovina had 11 children, four of whom died by the age of four. Giovina died at age 46 when her youngest child was only seven years old. Her son James was 12 years old at the time. All I knew about James was that he lived to be 79 years old and never married.

This set of 1928 documents shows that James was a delinquent child who ran away from home often. The file claims he had an IQ of 37 and had two mental examinations before his mother died. His father once placed him in an institution, a "Catholic Protectory", for six weeks, where he did well. At one point, Semplicio had to file a report with the Missing Persons Bureau. James' probation officer lists many incidents where James:

• was found dirty and neglected
• was delinquent from school
• called in a false alarm
• was begging for money at 3 a.m. by the Brooklyn Bridge!

A court order forced Semplicio to pay $3 a week for the boy's "maintenance", and he was having trouble keeping up.

An official interviewed James' sister Columbia. She said his weak mental and physical state were due to convulsions when he was born, and a 12-hour coma. The family wanted James to go back to the Catholic Protectory. There he could do manual work away from the "so-called crowd of defective children".

The institution said they'd welcome James. But if he didn't do well, the only alternative was to send him to the now-infamous Letchworth Village. It seems that never happened. Semplicio suggested in 1928 that James should work in the lumber yard where his brother Anthony worked. Anthony could keep an eye on James. The 1930 census shows that James was a lumber helper. In the 1950 census he's a pin boy at a bowling alley.

This document contains facts about Semplicio's family that I would never have known. It describes the family home in great detail. It lists the jobs, schools, and income of the whole family. I like the description of the apartment even more because this is the same building where my mom grew up. It's where my grandparents lived when I was a kid.

This amazing find tells a new, detailed story about my 2nd great uncle Semplicio's family.

The full-text search section of FamilySearch is well worth visiting every several months. Everything I described here didn't show up in my results the last time I looked. What will you find?