Fortify Your Family Tree

18 July 2017

What To Do When Your Last Name Is So Common

All my direct ancestors had Italian last names. I'm lucky to know in exactly which small towns they were born. And the hometown is the key to everything.

My name of Iamarino is found in only 10 towns.

Some of my Italian last names (or cognomi, in Italian) are rare. They're specific in origin to a small geographical area. The name Iamarino barely existed outside of my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita.

But some of my Italian last names are about as rare as Smith or Brown in America. According to an Italian surname search site I like to use, you can find my family names of Leone and Caruso EVERYWHERE.

It would be impossible to identify my Leone or Caruso lines without knowing where my great grandparents were born.

There may not be a word strong enough to emphasize how important it is to know your ancestor's hometown. Critical. Crucial. Imperative. Nope—it's more important than that.

If your foreign ancestors emigrated to the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., etc., cross your fingers and hope they arrived at a good time. Early ship manifests didn't capture much information about the passengers.

My name of Leone comes from a couple more places.

If your ancestor arrived at Ellis Island, which was open to immigrants from 1892 to 1954, you're in luck. If you find your ancestor, you should be able to learn the name of their hometown.

I may tell you I'm from New York City, but that's because I'm pretty sure you've never heard of the exact town where I grew up. But my grandfathers never said they were from Naples. They let us know very strongly that they were not Napolitani.

They were very proud of their small towns of Basélice and Colle Sannita. Both towns are in the middle of nowhere, about a 90-minute drive from Naples.

So before you begin chasing the wrong family, you must nail down that hometown.

Find out how. Read about other ways of finding your ancestor's hometown in Where Did Grandpa Come From?

16 July 2017

Finding Your Ancestor's Lost Babies

When I began documenting my grandfather's Italian hometown—every single birth, marriage and death record between 1809 and 1860—one thing saddened me time and time again.

So many of the babies died within days, months, or a couple of years. I mourned for each one of them. It seemed even sadder that the next baby born was given the same name as the one who died.

Trying to be an optimistic genealogist, I focused on the upside. I was finding previously unknown children. Here's an example. I found that my great great grandparents Antonio and Colomba tried three times to name a child after Antonio's father: Raffaele.

My great uncle Raffaele was the third sibling named after his grandfather.

The first Raffaele died as a child, so none of my cousins were aware of him. Last night I found another baby! This time it was a girl they named Raffaella. She died, too, leaving that name to the great uncle we know: Raffaele Saviano.

When you're researching a family in the 1800s, expect to find a child born almost every year beginning a year after a marriage.

If an ancestor's family has several years between births, keep looking. There's a strong chance that other babies were born who didn't grow up.

My great great grandfather Nicoladomenico Leone married twice and fathered 12 children. About half of them survived to adulthood. See When I'm Sixty-Four I'll Still Have Only Two Children.

I don't know about you, but I want to know about and appreciate all the lost babies.

14 July 2017

Organize Your Genealogy Research By Choosing Your Style

Develop and stick to your own style and naming conventions to achieve better organization.

When my husband and I were planning our Italian honeymoon in 2003, my imagination ran wild.

What if I find an old house with my maiden name on it? What if I meet a distant relative who looks like me?

These thoughts propelled me into the obsessive hobby of genealogy.

Early disarray

My first discovery was the Ellis Island website where I found ship manifests for my two grandfathers.

I found other people on other manifests who may or may not be relatives. I began filling a notebook with facts on potential relatives—pages and pages of scribbled, disconnected information.

Taming the chaos

Then I graduated to family tree software and learned some of the recommended conventions. For example, when recording dates:

dd Mon yyyy, as in 24 Sep 1959 or 01 Jan 1856, is a versatile format that anyone can understand. If I told someone in England that my brother's birthday is 6/11/1955, they would read November 6, not June 11.
When estimating a date you can use Abt. (about), Bef. (before), Aft. (after), Bet. (between). For example, my great great grandfather was still alive at the end of 1860, but he was dead when his grandchild was born on 12 Mar 1870. To record what I know, I've listed his death date as Bet. 1861–12 Mar 1870.
If I don't know someone's birth year, but I know when one of their children was born, I use a placeholder date. This helps me see the general time in which they lived. I subtract 25 from their oldest child's birth year (e.g. 1800 minus 25) and record their birth year as Abt. 1775.

This is crucial in a tree like mine where about 10,000 Italians have a combination of what seems like 10 names.

I've also developed my own format for annotating documents such as census forms and ship manifests. For example, in my family tree software I will put a note on a census sheet and include the following:

the line numbers for this family
City, County, State 1920 census
enumeration district #, supervisors district #, ward of city #, block #, sheet #
image 3 of 300 (if found in an online collection)
a link to the original document on ancestry.com, familysearch.org. antenati.san.beniculturali.it. etc.

This amount of detail allows anyone to verify my facts and see the document for themselves.

Owning the facts

When I first subscribed to ancestry.com, I knew I wanted to have every important document stored on my computer. So I download everything I find.

Almost from the start, I chose my style—how to name the files and where to keep them. I name the files LastnameFirstnameYear.jpg, in general. If it's a census form, it's named for the head of household. If it's a two-page ship manifest, the file names end in -p1.jpg and -p2.jpg. The folder names are simple and clear.

A consistent file-naming style leaves no room for error.

This consistency became second nature. It helps me spot what I'm looking for in no time.

Finally, my document tracker spreadsheet is my ongoing catalogue of every document I have. This spreadsheet tells me at a glance what I have and what I still need to find for any given person.

If genealogy is your obsession, you know how easy it is to go wild gathering facts, photos and documents. Take the time to develop your style.

Your consistency will pay rich dividends.