How to Visit Your Ancestral Hometown at Your Desk

Have you ever seen a Google car driving around? I saw one, and it was goofy as can be.

I'm grateful for those cars! They've driven up and down the windy, narrow streets of my ancestral hometowns in Italy.

My ancestors, and maybe yours, left their homeland because of poverty and a lack of prospects. But today their sleepy little hill towns beckon to me with their beauty and serenity.

I use a combination of Bing maps and Google maps. In Bing I save collections of places. I have one collection of all the landmarks I can see from my mountaintop home in New York. In another collection, I have some of the current and past homes of my relatives in Italy.

The view from my grandfather Leone's first home in Basélice.

Bing offers a birdseye view, and sometimes a street-level view. But Google has sent that crazy car exactly where I want be, like the house where my grandfather was born in 1891.

I can sit here at my desk and "stand" in Italy. I'm right outside the rebuilt house in Basélice, Italy, of my grandfather Adamo Leone. I can see the amazing hilltop views I'll bet his family loved.

I can "stand" near my cousin Esterina's pink house in Colle Sannita, Italy, and see the giant windmills that lead to Basélice. On Esterina's property, partially buried in the ground, is an old doorstep. That's where my other grandfather Pietro Iamarino's house once stood.

The view from my grandfather Iamarino's one-time land in Colle Sannita.

If you're lucky enough to have a birth record for your ancestor, check it again for a street name, and maybe a house number.

Then give it a shot—put that address into Google maps and see if you can walk the streets where your roots still live.

Free Resource Provides Graphic Genealogy Research Basics

I'm happy to pay for my ancestry.com subscription. I have full access for less than a dollar a day.

But many genealogy fans prefer to go the all-for-free route.

Well, there's a newcomer to the genealogy resource field. MooseRoots is a completely free site that can help you find birth, death and marriage dates and places, and a lot more. (See also What To Do When You Have No Birth or Death Record.)

Results of a search for Grandma's birth record.

From their Genealogy Collections page, choose from a long list of categories, including:

• U.S. Census records
• State birth records
• State death records
• State marriage and divorce records (Australian records, too)
• Casualties from several wars

I began testing the site by looking for my grandmother's New York City birth record from 1899. I already have a copy of her birth record from the New York City Municipal Archives. The main fact I learned from her birth record was that her middle name was Carmina—and that's not what she told us it was.

The MooseRoots result was disappointing because it didn't include her parents' names. But it did include the certificate number. That would be enough for me to find the original on microfilm at the archives.

Next I searched the same collection for anyone with her last name to see if I would find her siblings. I found her two brothers, but the transcriptions of their first names were ridiculous. I found two misspelled Alfredos, and I wouldn't know which one was my great uncle if I hadn't already known his birthday.

But the lack of parents' names is based on the record collection, so I don't blame MooseRoots. I checked California birth records because I know they include the mother's maiden name. And those maiden names appeared in the results. But the California birth records did not include a certificate number.

Easily share various parts of the results page.

I was very impressed by MooseRoots' collection of Japanese-American Internment Camp records. Unfortunately, you can't search for a specific name or sort the results, so I didn't see the two last names of my in-laws. (See also Can Genealogy Research Be Painful?.)

I chose a random person named Tanaka (another family name in my husband's tree), and I was impressed with the results.

The website generates a narrative including lots of facts about Takanosu Tanaka: his year and place of birth, that he was widowed, the name of the "camp" where he was detained (Tule Lake), and much more.

As I scrolled down the page I found visualizations of Takanosu's facts. And this is the thing that makes MooseRoots unique: visualizations.

A company called Graphiq powers the site. Graphiq compiles facts into colorful graphs to make them easier to understand.

I believe MooseRoots has plans to become a much richer genealogy resource. When you click a person's name in your results list, you have the opportunity to add their photo once you create a free account. I hit a snag when I tried to register with my Facebook account. Instead, I chose the Google+ login option. That worked, but then the "Add or Edit Photos" button didn't do anything. So, they've got some kinks to iron out.

This video includes facts
unique to your ancestor.

Search results pages give you one-click access to an Ancestry search and a MyHeritage search if you're a subscriber. You can click a button to share any individual piece of the results.

The 1940 Census results included a nice surprise: a customized video that includes the census facts for the person you chose. There's also a scrollable list of other people on the same census sheet, with clickable names. (See also How To Squeeze Everything Out of the Census.)

When you're visiting the site, be sure to click the More menu at the top of the page to get an idea of which collections may be the most helpful to you.

Happy [moose] hunting.

The Italian Genealogy Goldmine: "Wedding Packets"

I've shown you how to dissect Italian birth records, Italian death records (twice, in fact), and Italian marriage records before.

But I promised to explain the treasure trove I call Italian "wedding packets". (Maybe these exist for other countries, too!)

If you're researching your Italian ancestors, and you're lucky enough to find your ancestral hometown's records in the Italian genealogy archives (Antenati), then you have access to the wedding packets.

On the Antenati site, you'll find different kinds of "matrimoni" documents for each year.

• First comes "Matrimoni, pubblicazioni" which includes the two times a couple had to publicly post their intention to marry. The first record may not tell you anything more than the names of the groom and bride and both sets of parents.
  

  

  First notification of intention to marry.

  The second record provides ages, occupations, places of birth and/or residence. If the bride or groom is widowed, you may also get the name of the deceased spouse.
  

  

  Second notification of intention to marry.

• Second is "Matrimoni" which adds the date on which they were approved for marriage (think of it as a marriage license date), and the date they were married in church. Sometimes you'll also find the names of the priest and witnesses.
• Third comes "Matrimoni, processetti"—my favorite! This wedding packet can contain many pages. It starts with a birth record for the bride and groom. If either is a widow, you get the deceased spouse's death record. Then there is a death record for any of their parents who have died. This, of course, can tell you the names of the bride or groom's grandparents. If the father of the bride or groom has died, and their grandfather is not alive to give his permission for the marriage, then you'll also see the grandfather's death record.
  

  

  Groom's first wife's death record.

Groom's father's death record—giving me the names of my 4th great grandparents.

The best-case scenario is an older couple, both widowed, and both with no living parents or grandparents. I've had wedding packets provide me with one or both spouse's great grandparents' names!

We're lucky because in the old days, no one stayed single. If their spouse died, they absolutely remarried—sometimes again and again. Life was too hard not to have a partner.