Which Clubs Did Your Ancestors Join?

If you're missing key information on an ancestor of Italian heritage, there is a resource that may help you.

The Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) is a national organization of Americans of Italian heritage founded in 1905. The order promotes Italian culture, traditions, language, and contributions to the world.

Go to Ancestry.com and search the card catalog for "sons of italy". You'll find enrollment applications, lodge records, and mortuary fund claims. As of this writing, they have documents from:

• Pennsylvania
• Massachusetts
• West Virginia
• California
• Illinois

A very family tree-friendly membership application.

I found OSIA applications for two of my grandfather's first cousins, Henry and Anthony Pilla. Here's what I learned (or confirmed) from their applications:

• Full name
• Father's name (mother's name if father is dead)
• Address
• Date of birth
• Place of birth
• Wife's name
• Citizenship
• Medical information

Today OSIA offers its members discounts on insurance, travel, car rental and more. Generations ago their death benefit may have been a big attraction.

Enrollment card, updated for his death.

Here is an enrollment card for Gennaro Muollo that tells me:

• His father was Angelo
• He was 40 when he was initiated on 27 April 1919
• His relative Giovanni was 32 on that date
• His death benefit is $400
• He died on 29 June 1937

Check your family tree for any Italian American men or women who may have belonged to an organization.

Find out what you can about that organization. It may lead to helpful documents that will add to your family tree.

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• Where to Find Free Historical City Directories and Newspapers
• This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name

Finding a Genealogy Victory in Defeat

You may have heard that come September 1, 2017, you can no longer order microfilmed records from FamilySearch.org. I didn't think I'd need microfilm anymore since records are being digitized.

But I have one small town in Italy that needs my attention now. So I ordered the microfilm and went to view it at my nearest Family History Center today.

I was focusing on my great grandmother's parents, Antonio Saviano and Colomba Consolazio. I'd hoped to find their births, their marriage, and their parents' names. I had their parents' names only from their own death records. That's not very reliable.

I was disappointed.

This film does contain birth records for two of my great grandmother's brothers. But it does not have her parents' births or marriage.

Grasping for something of value, I scoured each year's index for Saviano or Consolazio. I found two men who may be the brothers of my Colomba Consolazio. I found them on their children's birth records.

Then I got lucky. One of these potential brothers was Gaetano Consolazio. I found his marriage record and learned his parents' names. And this proved to me that he was my great great uncle.

A reliable source for my third great grandparents' names.

When my great great grandparents died, their eldest son, Semplicio Saviano, provided the information. He had never met his grandparents. Maybe he didn't know their exact names.

The names I had from Colomba's death record were Semplicio Consolazio and Rafina Zinzaro. The name Semplicio seemed legit because her eldest son was Semplicio. Except I knew she had a baby before him named Raffaele!

Rafina Zinzaro bothered me because Rafina is not a name I've seen before.

The far more reliable source is Gaetano Consolazio's marriage record. His parents, my third great grandparents, were Fiorinto Consolazio and Rufina Zullo who lived in neighboring Santa Paolina.

Gaetano even named his daughter Rufina, so I got to see that unusual name twice. And Fiorinto makes perfect sense to me. You see, I have records from another town showing the birth of my great grandmother and three of her siblings. On two of those documents it says Colomba Consolazio is the daughter of Fiorinto.

I thought those were the mistake. But the less reliable death record contains the mistakes.

So I will score today as a victory.

I'm disappointed not to have found what I wanted. But now I have reason to believe the Consolazio and/or Saviano families lived in Santa Paolina before going to Tufo. The Saviano family then moved to Pastene, where my great grandmother was born.

I have no reason to think they moved because they were given land or something. The fact that they moved twice is even more bizarre.

So I gained some solid information today, along with some leads. I have to quickly decide if I need to order microfilm for the town of Santa Paolina.

The clock is ticking!

You may also enjoy:

• How to Read an Italian Birth Record
• How to Read an Italian Death Record
• How to Read Italian Marriage Records

Dealing With Human Error on Genealogical Documents

An interesting point came up in a Facebook genealogy group yesterday. The clerk who hand-wrote your ancestor's birth, marriage or death record may not have been that skilled.

• He may have misspelled a word—leaving you to try to translate a word that isn't a word.
• He may have made an accidental substitution—adding the wrong sibling's birth record to a set of marriage documents.
• He may have recorded the midwife's last name as the baby's last name.

What do you do with this messed up documentation?

In an earlier article about disagreeing documentation, I spelled out my two cardinal rules:

1. The earliest recorded document is probably correct.
2. Some documents are more official than others.

Sometimes you need to:

• Make an educated guess
• Use the scientific method
• Gather as much information as you can

Then see if logic tells you what the truth must be.

Here's an example. Consider these data points:

• Michele Petruccelli was born in Baselice, Italy on March 8, 1800 to Costanzo Petruccelli and Brigida Ciusolo.
• Michele Petruccelli was born in Baselice, Italy on September 11, 1802 to the same parents.
• Two babies born to the same parents, with the same name. Logic tells us the first Michele must have died before the second Michele was born.
• No death records are available for 1800–1802, so we cannot verify the first baby's death.
• In 1828 Michele (born in 1802) married Mariarosa Mattia. She died in 1828.
• In 1830 Michele (born in 1800) married Veneranda Pozella.

The marriage records overlook the fact that Michele is a widower.

If logic says there were not two sons growing up in the same family with the same first name, then both the 1828 marriage and the 1830 marriage must belong to the younger Michele Petruccelli—the survivor who was born in 1802. This hypothesis works because the two marriages do not overlap.

This means there was a clerical error. In 1830 when widowed Michele Petruccelli married for the second time, a clerk accidentally used the birth record of the deceased Michele Petruccelli.

For further proof, I took another look at the 1829/1830 marriage records. It says that Michele was 23 when he received permission to marry. That fits 1802 Michele better than 1800 Michele.

Of course it's still wrong. He was 27!

The document does not say that Michele is a widower, but it does say his bride is a widow. In the full set of marriage documents for Michele and Veneranda, there is no mention of Michele's first wife Mariarosa Mattia.

This is also a mistake. It's really quite an oversight!

Mariarosa Mattia's death record clearly states she was the wife of Michele Petruccelli, son of Costanzo.

The death record for Michele's first wife leaves no doubt who her husband is.

So what would you do? Michele and Mariarosa were married only eight months when she died, so they had no children. Michele and Veneranda also had no children though they both lived past the year 1860. There is no more evidence.

I'm convinced the clerk made mistakes in 1829/1830. The Michele born in 1800 died before 1802. The younger Michele grew up and married twice.

So, having exhausted all resources and finding that logic is on my side, I'm going to update my family tree.

I'm going to say that the first Michele Petruccelli died before the second was born on September 11, 1802. And I'm going to give the bride, Veneranda Pozella, to the second Michele Petruccelli.

By the way, Michele Petruccelli is the brother-in-law of the sister-in-law of my fourth great uncle whose name is also Petruccelli. It's a small town.

You may also enjoy:

• How To Run Your Genealogy Research Like Clockwork
• How to Find More Great Grandfathers for Father's Day
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How to Use the Free Online Irish Census

Americans are—in this order—German, Black, Irish, Mexican, English, Italian, Polish, French…. The list goes on and on.

The 1901 and 1911 Ireland census is searchable for free online.

In 2013 many articles were written about facts learned from the 2010 United States Census. Britain's The Daily Mail states that people of Irish descent are about 12% of the population in the USA. They number more than 35 million and are the third largest ethnic group in the country.

Simple search form

I can't seem to find any in my family tree! But recently I was doing some research for a close friend of full Irish descent. I found a very helpful website from the National Archives of Ireland.

Before I explain everything they make available, let's look at how to search the 1901 and 1911 Irish census.

In the short search form, choose either the 1901 or 1911 census and enter what you know. Last name, first name, county, age and sex. Then click the search button.

On the results page, check the box that says "Show all information". This will give you lots of details about each result and help you find the best choices. In this example, I can rule out the two Patrick Cunninghams who are single because I know my Patrick was married.

Show all information to help you find the right family.

For each of the married Patricks, I can click their name to see a list of every member of the household. From this screen I can tell I'm looking at the right family. My friend had told me Patrick's wife's name and a few of their children's names.

Now that I'm confident this is the right family, I can click any of the links below the words "View census images". What I want the most is Household Return (Form A) and the Additional Pages.

Ready to download the census! You can see the census sheet at the top of this page.

These links download a PDF file containing an image of the census. Now I can see for myself every recorded detail. These facts helped me go back and find the same family in the 1901 census.

The National Archives of Ireland website also includes fragments for these census years:

• 1821
• 1831
• 1841
• 1851

You can click to drill down by county, parish, townlands/streets, and then see a list of households to view. See the website's description of what is in these collections.

The Early 20th century Ireland page provides interesting glimpses into life at the time. It includes a wonderful collection of photos you'll want to see.

For more help with your Irish ancestors, see the Archives' list of genealogy websites available.

You may also enjoy:

• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• Simplify Your Genealogy Info Gathering With This Form
• How to Find State-Specific Death Indexes and Records

Divide and Conquer Your Family Tree Research Tasks

Is your family tree research stuck? Are you so overwhelmed by certain tasks that you're avoiding them? Is a brick wall stopping all other progress?

You can overcome these genealogy blues with a simple plan.

Divide and Conquer

These brief spurts of activity will be as healthy for your family tree as a brief sprint is for your heart.

• Work on those tedious tasks in simpler chunks.
• Avoid your brick wall and forge ahead with another branch of your family tree.
• Narrow your focus and score some big gains.

This method will keep you productive and happy with your genealogy hobby. And you'll be learning along the way.

"Fix all my source citations" is an overwhelming roadblock. "Fix my 1930 census source citations" is something you can tackle!

Make Cleanup Projects Less Intimidating

Are you avoiding adding source citations to your family tree? Is the size of the project scaring you away? Break the big task into smaller pieces. Set aside chunks of time to devote to the task, and keep track of your progress.

Don't let the overall task overwhelm you. Think of it as "today I'll start adding citations to all of my 1940 census tasks". Get as far as you can in the time you've decided to spend.

Hopefully you'll either be eager to move on to the 1930 census, or eager to come back tomorrow and finish up 1940.

Piece by piece you will tackle the task.

One Bad Branch Shouldn't Spoil the Tree

Are you getting nowhere with one pesky branch of your tree? Leave it alone for a while.

Focus on another branch and document the daylights out of it! Find every piece of supporting evidence you possibly can. You'll have an excellent example of how well you can do this. Your branch will be impeccable.

Plus, working on perfecting an easier branch will teach you about certain resources and documents. It may inspire you to take a different approach to your brick wall branch.

Now go get 'em!

Need some more inspiration?

• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research
• Organize Your Genealogy Research By Choosing Your Style
• How the Scientific Method Can Help You With Your Family Tree
• How to Build a Professional-Quality Family Tree

How to Build a Professional-Quality Family Tree

I began writing this blog to encourage other genealogy hobbyists to take their family trees to a new level. My first several articles focus on the basics of a reliable, valuable family tree:

1. Gather multiple pieces of evidence for each fact. People make mistakes. It could be the census taker or the person providing information for someone's death certificate. Because of human error, one piece of evidence does not make proof.
2. Cite your sources. It's critical to be able to retrace your research steps. If you cite your source for a fact as the 1930 U.S. Federal Census, give the location right down to the sheet number, and provide a link to where you found it online, it's reproducible. If it's reproducible, it's more reliable.
3. Analyze your facts for discrepancies. My family tree has many people with the exact same name. I found a situation where I gave the same birth date to two different men with the same name. I needed more investigation to fix the error.
4. Ensure you're recording facts for the right person or people. For example, are you sure the census form you're looking at is for the specific family you think it is?
5. Research historical events as they pertain to your ancestor. One of my ancestor's hometown changed its name after World War II. If I hadn't discovered that, I wouldn't have been able to visit the town years ago. And I wouldn't be able to find the town's vital records today.

It all boils down to this: You've got to do the legwork. Do not trust information that falls into your lap. Use someone else's tree, for example, as a series of leads for you to investigate.

The New York City Municipal Archives at 31 Chambers Street in downtown Manhattan. It's the Taj Mahal of research for New York City families.

How Professional Genealogists Work

Professional genealogists follow a standard of proof to deliver accurate research to their customers. Maybe you've seen references to the Genealogical Proof Standard.

Let's look at how the five elements of this standard can improve your family tree research.

1. Conduct a reasonably exhaustive research. This goes back to my first point above of gathering multiple pieces of evidence. It also involves conducting searches that may not yield any results. For example, let's say you expected to find a family at a particular address in the 1930 census, but they're not there. To be thorough, you may need to go through every page in that census. If you still haven't found them, you may need to check out the surrounding enumeration districts.
2. Maintain complete, accurate citations to the source or sources of each piece of information. This was my second point above. You want to make your steps retraceable and show the quality of the sources. For example, the 1930 U.S. Census seems more reliable than "my cousin's father". Citing your sources can also show how many sources you've used. Several excellent sources make a fact very reliable.
3. Test your information. This relates to my third point above about analyzing your family tree for discrepancies. If you find an error, you may need to test the validity of one of your sources.
4. Resolution of conflicts among evidence items. This would be the logical conclusion to your analysis of discrepancies. When you resolve a discrepancy, make a note about the steps you took, and why you made your decision.
5. A soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion. When you resolve a discrepancy or find something in your tree that you don't have a lot of confidence in, make notes. I like to flag questionable facts in my family tree by adding a bookmark (a feature in Family Tree Maker) and a note. This alerts me to facts with a lower level of confidence so I can treat them with the proper amount of faith.

You may not have the funds to hire a professional genealogist. You may prefer to do the work yourself because the hunt is what makes it so enjoyable.

But if you can adopt these practices, you can have a professional-quality family tree.

And speaking of genealogy methods:

• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research
• How to Visualize Your Ancestor-Finding Progress
• Find Those Stubborn Genealogy Documents with Creative Searches

Here's Why Genealogists Love Immigrants

ID photo from a Petition for Naturalization

Last year my cousins' father passed away and I found his obituary. The man we called Doc is someone I've known since I was a little girl. But I didn't know anything about his family.

Genealogists know how to pull tons of facts from a well-written obituary. I documented Doc's family names and relationships in my family tree software.

Using these new pieces of information, I searched for his father Mario's arrival in the United States from Italy.

Mario's naturalization documents are among the richest I've found. Let's go through them to see how much you can learn about an immigrant ancestor through their naturalization papers.

Certificate of Arrival

When an immigrant wanted to become a citizen in the early 1900s, they provided information about their arrival into the U.S.:

Certificate of Arrival

• date of arrival
• port of entry
• name of ship

That's a boon to your family tree research right there. In Mario's case, the documents include a Certificate of Arrival that verifies these facts.

This certificate gives you, the family tree researcher, exactly the information you need to find Mario's ship manifest. There you can gather information that may include his father or mother's name and his town of origin.

Declaration of Intention

This form has so many vital facts packed into a small area. In Mario's case, we learn his:

• address
• occupation and age
• physical description
• town of birth
• birth date
• wife's name and date and place of birth
• wedding date
• children's names and birth dates

Mario's arrival information, confirmed on the Certificate of Arrival, is repeated here. Plus we see his signature and photograph.

Petition for Naturalization

Enough data to make a genealogist weep.

After filing a Declaration of Intention and going through the process, the immigrant completes another form. Mario's Petition for Naturalization repeats and supports the facts on his Declaration of Intention.

So if you are able to find one, but not both of these detailed forms for your ancestor, you've still found a genealogical treasure.

If your ancestor had a spouse and children at the time of their declaration and petition, you now have an official source of their vital information.

Mario's paperwork provided me with Doc's real name and birth date, as well as those of his brothers, whom I didn't know. With these facts I can fan out my search for census forms, Social Security Death Indexes, and other records of this family.

Perhaps most excitingly, I can search for documents from Mario's hometown in Italy and try to extend his family history there.

Naturalization records are available through the U.S. Naturalization and Records Administration (searchable online), Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org.

The sheer density of critical vital information makes genealogists absolutely adore our immigrant ancestors.

And speaking of immigration:

• 6 Key Genealogy Facts on a Ship Manifest
• Why Did They Come To America?
• What To Do When Your Last Name Is So Common

Step-by-Step Discovery of My 5th Great Grandparents

It wasn't long ago that I discovered the maiden name of one of my great great grandmothers. (See This Expanded Resource Provided an Elusive Maiden Name.) It was a big deal when I learned her name was Maria Luigia. But it was amazing to learn her last name: Girardi.

My great great grandmother's birth record.

It was even more exciting to me as a Yankees fan! (For non-fans, the Yankees' manager was Joe Girardi for many years.)

Last night, while the Yankees were winning their game, I was at my computer. I was going through birth records from the online Italian archives. (See How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.) I was focusing on Maria Luigia Girardi's hometown of Pescolamazza—now called Pesco Sannita, Italy.

Her 1840 birth record gave me the names and ages of her parents: Gioacchino Girardi and Maria Teresa deNigris. I set Maria Teresa deNigris aside for the moment and worked to fill out this family more thoroughly.

First I looked for more siblings for Maria Luigia. I found Emidio born in 1843, Nicola Maria born in 1847, and Francesco Saverio born in 1851. Based on their parents' ages, there should be more children, both older and younger than Maria Luigia. But before finishing that search, I got excited to find her father Gioacchino's birth record.

My great great great grandfather's birth record.

There he was, my 3rd great grandfather, born in 1814. His parents, my 4th great grandparents, were Nicola Girardi and Maria Pennuccia. He was their first-born child, but I found several younger siblings by going year-by-year through the birth records for their town.

Sibling Giuseppe was born in 1815, Francesco Saverio was born in 1817, but apparently he died because another Francesco Saverio was born in 1822. Maria Rosa was born in 1825 and Pietrantonio in 1829.

Once I was confident I'd found their first-born child, I went in search of the marriage of my 4th great grandparents. The documents for marriages in 1813 in Pescolamazza are incomplete, consisting only of each couple's two declarations of their intention to marry.

Bingo! My fifth great grandparents—two sets!

But that was enough.

I found Nicola Girardi and Maria Pennuccia's declarations in February 1813. Each of these two documents contained the man and woman's parents' names.

There they were. Two sets of my 5th great grandparents from a branch I would never have discovered if I hadn't learned that previously unknown name of Girardi: Giuseppe Girardi and Serafina Orlando, and Carlo Pennuccia and Angela Verro.

During tonight's Yankees game, because I can't just sit on the couch all evening, I will search for more children born to these two couples. Their children will be my 4th great uncles and aunts. Having their names, and finding their children, will allow me to piece together a lot of the Girardi and Pennuccia documents from the town.

Finding the siblings is the only way to know how or if other people in this tiny town are related to me.

My experience in documenting the entire town of my grandfather taught me a lesson. (See Why I Recorded More Than 30,000 Documents.) If people have the same last name, and it's a very small town, and it's an era when relocating was not common, they're most probably related.

So go after those siblings. If you're searching records from the 1800s, remember that a woman might give birth nearly every year, and well into her forties. While many of the children will not live to adulthood, I personally treasure each one. And I'm so thankful to find them.

Back to the search!

You may also enjoy:

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• How Is That Possible?

Why I Recorded More Than 30,000 Documents

In 2007 I started ordering Italian vital records on microfilm from FamilySearch.org. The films were from the hometown of one of my grandfathers.

My first goal was to find birth records for my great grandparents to find out their parents' names. But so many people in the town had similar names it was comical. I wasn't sure I was looking at the right family.

There was only one solution. Record every single fact and plug them into my family tree software.

I did this for five years. Once or twice a week I spent a handful of hours with a computer open on my lap beneath the microfilm viewer. I developed my own shorthand: b, d, wed, bap, and Italian words like di and fu. I became incredibly fast at typing names like Mariantonia, Angelamaria, Francesco Saverio, Giuseppe, Giovanni.

More than 90% of the town is related to me!

Oh, did I mention I'm Italian?

This work was invaluable. I shared it online with anyone who may have ancestors from my grandfather's town of Basélice. I documented about 16,000 people, and about 15,000 of them are relatives by blood or marriage. Yeah.

Today Italian descendants are gleefully finding their ancestor's documents on FamilySearch.org or the Antenati website. Maybe you've been lucky and found your grandfather's birth record. Maybe you found your great grandparents' marriage record. But are you overlooking entire generations?

This year I used a simple app to download every document available from my ancestral hometowns. Now the organized images are on my computer (and a backup drive) awaiting my analysis.

I'm focusing on my mother's mother's branch first. Despite having grown up with cousins from this branch, I have the least information about them. I cannot get beyond my third great grandparents.

My first visit to Pastene, Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, Italy.

So here's the dilemma. The hometown of the families in this branch is Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, and specifically the smaller frazione within that town called Pastene. Only a limited amount of documents is available to me from the town. And one set of my great great grandparents was born in another town whose documents are not online.

The solution is going to be extensive, possibly exhaustive documentation of each birth, marriage and death record.

I've begun by finding every child born to my great great grandparents. I'm also documenting the children of my great great grandfather's brother.

The holy grail is that one magical document. The one that includes a baby's grandfather's name. The one that has a baby's maternal uncle as a witness. The one that names the father of a baby's grandmother who is reporting the birth.

I've got to look at each marriage record, too. There may be a marriage between a man and woman whose names I don't recognize. But maybe one is the grandchild of my ancestor. And maybe my ancestor's death record will be included.

Hopefully you enjoy the hunt as much as I do. Perusal of all available documents is the bare minimum.

Complete documentation…priceless.

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Finding the Story Behind an Intriguing Family Photo

UPDATE: Publishing this story drew the attention of several of my relatives. We're now feeling a bit confident that my Uncle Army was in the Army Air Corps. His nickname had nothing to do with this. "Ame", which sounded like "aah may", is what my grandmother called him. It was short for Amelio (aah MAY lee oh). We kids thought it sounded like army.

My "Uncle Army", the photographer.

My earliest memory of my grandmother's brother—who we kids called Uncle Army—is posing for his camera. It was a large format camera that used glass plate negatives. It had a drape under which the photographer hid himself and his lens from the light.

I sat on a long upholstered bench in my great grandmother's home with my two siblings and my three first cousins. He took our portrait.

Uncle Army was a professional photographer in the Bronx. He took our communion photos, our confirmation photos, and our wedding photos.

He was a portrait photographer par excellence. Everyone acknowledged him as a true artist.

Serafina & Amelio Sarracino

So I was surprised to learn that Uncle Army, born Amelio Sarracino, enlisted in the army in 1943 at the age of 38. He was a married man with a gorgeous young wife, but he may have had a bit of wanderlust.

Due to his age, Uncle Army (that nickname is so ironic now) didn't fight for the military. He took photographs during his two-year stint.

None of my living relatives knows where Uncle Army was deployed or what he saw and photographed.

I found a book about the Signal Corps called "Getting the Message Through—A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps," by Rebecca Robbins Raines.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Chief Signal Officer felt he needed "a variety of specialized companies to meet the needs of radio intelligence, operations, photographic duties, repair, depot storage, construction, and so forth."

I hope someday to find evidence of my uncle's World War II photography. Meanwhile, Uncle Army will always be the standard by which all other photographers are judged.

This story didn't give you any concrete family tree tips, but maybe you'll feel inspired. My inspiration was a genealogist's tweet about the stories our family photos can tell us.

Go take a look at your family photos.

While we're on a military theme:

• POW: My Grandfather's World War I Experience
• Does Independence Day Make You Think of Your Ancestors?
• Why You Need Your Ancestors Draft Registration Cards