Create a Digital Map of Your Family History

I've been in love with the aerial view in Google Maps for years. I've created different collections of map pins, like all known addresses for my grandfather. Everywhere I visited during my 2015 trip to France and Italy. The dozen or so places I've lived.

Now I'm creating an itinerary map for my next visit to my ancestors' hometowns in Italy. And I'll have it with me on my iPhone.

Create Your Portable Family History Map

First, you need a free Google account. Sign into that account and go to www.google.com/maps on your computer. You can look up virtually any address, town or place of business in the world and click to stick a pin in it.

Click any spot or place-name to save it.

I have a reservation at Hotel Antiche Terme in the city of Benevento. I found it on the map and clicked it. (Apparently it has two names, which may be good to know when I get there.) Then I can click SAVE to keep this location.

Choose what you want to do with this place.

Now I have a few options. I can simply make the location a favorite, put a flag or a star on it, or save it to a list. I've created a different list for each of my ancestral hometowns.

Here's my list so far for Benevento. It includes my cousin Vincenzo's wonderful pizzeria where I met him in 2005. It includes the State Archives of Benevento—the absolute godsend that has given me all the records from all my towns. I plan to go there to find my grandfather's military records. And it includes the hotel where I'll be staying.

In my ancestors' towns I've saved the locations of the cemeteries, the piazzas, the churches, and the homes of the cousins I'll visit. I'm going to buy an international plan for my iPhone while I'm in Italy (not expensive at all). With that plan, I'll be able to open the Google Maps app on my phone and access my saved locations.

One of my personal lists of places to go.

In my paternal grandfather's hometown of Colle Sannita, I need to see the church of St. George the Martyr (la Chiesa di San Giorgio Martire). So that's on my map. A couple of streets away are two addresses where my ancestors lived (I suspect one is a pile of rubble now). I plan to use the app to guide me as I walk from the church to these locations. I can snap photos of these places and upload them to my personalized map later.

My personal collections of map pins will be accessible to me wherever I go.

Add Places to Your GPS

My husband bought a map of Italy for our GPS device because we'll be renting a car for a few days. He asked me to mark some of my destinations in the GPS as favorites. "Put your cousin Maria's house in there," he said. "She's so far in the middle of nowhere, I don't have a real address for her," I replied.

Pinpointing a hard-to-find location.

But you can add a precise location to your GPS using longitude and latitude coordinates, so that's what I did. Here's how.

I've studied the aerial and street view of my grandfather's town so many times I can find my cousin Maria's house by sight. I visited her there 13 years ago, and I still remember her describing her horrible garage as a landmark. Yes, the house is far from town, but I found it. If I click to put a pin in it, Google Maps gives me some information about that location.

The information says the name of the town, shows a little image, and includes the GPS coordinates. If I click those numbers, I can:

• add a label to this place
• save it in my list of places
• see those coordinates nice and big so I can punch them into my GPS.

Now I can easily find two of my cousins' homes and not worry about getting lost where there are barely any road markers.

Longitude and latitude coordinates tell your GPS exactly where to go.

Whether you're planning a real trip, want to share your collections with your family, or want to "walk" your ancestors' streets in Google Street View, these map collections are a must-have for any genealogist.

More ideas for map lovers:

• When You Can't Find Your Ancestor on a Map
• Finding Ancestral Homelands That Are No Longer There
• Free Resource Lets You Plot Family Tree Locations

3 Top Safety Tips for Your Family Tree Data

Results of Following Genealogy Best Practices, Part 3

This is the third article in a series about the benefits of following genealogy best practices. (Read about more genealogy best practices in part 1 and part 2.)

Last November my 5-year-old computer started misbehaving. I couldn't risk losing all my genealogy data and business assets, so I acted quickly. I secured my data and made multiple backups while I waited for my new computer to arrive.

Five months later, I'm faithfully sticking to my data-safety plan. I hope this will inspire you to do the same before disaster strikes.

1. Stick to an Easy Back-Up Plan

To make sure my family tree research is protected, I created a simple back-up plan. Each Sunday I run down my short list of which files to back up to which location. Here's the entire list, just to prove how simple it is.

LAST BACKUP 4/15/2018

• Back up to OneDrive:
  
  1. (automatic) Antenati files
  2. (manual) E:\FamilyTree
• Back up to external drive:
  
  1. C:\Users\diann\Documents\Quickbooks
  2. C:\Users\diann\Documents\Outlook Files
  3. E:\ everything EXCEPT FamilyTree

I have two main backup locations: a 1 terabyte external drive and 1 terabyte on the Microsoft cloud (OneDrive). That's a lot of space. A lot of space.

I subscribe to Microsoft Office 365 because I need it for work. The cloud storage is free with my subscription. You can use free or paid cloud storage from Apple (if you have an iPhone), Google, Dropbox and other providers.

I love how the folders I set as OneDrive folders are continuously updated on the cloud. I don't have to save a spreadsheet as I'm working on it. And if I rename files or folders, that's synchronized with the cloud version. No effort needed.

My OneDrive folders are backed up automatically.

The thousands and thousands of Italian vital records I've downloaded from the Italian genealogy archives site (Antenati) are always backed up to the cloud. So are my genealogy tracking spreadsheets.

What I still update manually are the new document images I've downloaded and added to my family tree. I also copy my complete Family Tree Maker file, its automatic backup, and my 2 most recent manual backups there. Once a week I simply drag the newest files to my cloud storage.

The rest of my backup list shows me the few locations of files to copy to my external drive. By sorting my file folders by date, I can see what's new and complete all my backups in about five minutes.

2. Take Advantage of Free Cloud Storage

I've explained how I'm using my 1 terabyte of Microsoft OneDrive. You don't have that? Try a search for "free cloud storage providers".

Note: I don't keep anything on the cloud that's personal. My email and financial records are not there. Only publicly available genealogy documents are there. So don't be paranoid and brush off this idea. You can do it safely.

Take a look at Google Drive and Dropbox. If you don't want to pay for storage, you can combine different free spaces. If you spell that out in your backup list (like mine above), you'll always know what goes where.

3. Keep Track of Your Genealogy Records

I believe strongly in keeping an inventory of the documents I've attached to people in my family tree.

I've also got:

• a complex spreadsheet where I'm documenting the thousands of vital records from my ancestors' 5 Italian hometowns
• an ancestor spreadsheet listing the name and Ahnentafel number of each direct ancestor whose name I've discovered
• a list of Italian words for occupations and their English translations. (See How to Handle Foreign Words in Your Family Tree.)

Anything you need to reference regularly, need to keep track of and want to keep updated, you can store on the cloud. Then you've always got a safety backup.

To safeguard your genealogy treasure, make these steps a habit. Decide which files belong where. Pick a day each week to make a manual backup. If you can remember to brush your teeth each day, you can remember to practice these safety tips.

Be safe out there.

These articles will help you protect your family tree:

• How to Back Up Your Family Tree Files Automatically
• Prepare Your Family Tree for Your Computer's Demise
• Moving Your Family Tree to a New Computer
• A Resolution You'll Want to Keep
• Track Your Genealogy Finds and Your Searches

Results! Hiring a Professional Genealogist

I finally did it. I hired professional genealogists to do what I can't: find my ancestors' records in a church in Italy.

My ancestors' church

For one full week I tried not to think about the two genealogists who were visiting the tiny hamlet where my ancestors lived.

And then came the results. Eleven high-resolution images of documents dating back to 1803. The images were numbered one to eleven, and a PDF file gave me a brief explanation of what they were.

Anxiously, I opened up my family tree and went to my grandmother's family. Her parents (last names Sarracino and Saviano) came from this little hamlet called Pastene. I've been there and visited the cemetery. I've viewed the town countless times on Google Earth. It's a long, thin string of houses and an old church. That's it.

Examining the Results

With my family tree on one monitor, I started going through the new images on another.

#1 The 1873 marriage record for Giovanni Saviano, the brother of my great great grandfather Antonio. I would have liked to learn the bride's mother's name, but this type of record includes no parents.

#2 The 1842 marriage record for Giovanni's and Antonio's parents, my 3rd great grandparents, Raffaele Saviano and Grazia Ucci. This confirms two facts for me:

• my great great grandfather Antonio was their first-born child
• my 3rd great grandmother's name was not Maria Grazia as I'd suspected, but Grazia.

#3 The 1864 marriage record for my great great grandparents Giuseppe Sarracino and Maria Luigia Muollo. One of my goals was to learn Maria Luigia's mother's name, but it is not there. It did tell me that my estimated birth year for one of their sons is almost certainly wrong.

Those are all great facts even though they don't provide what I really wanted: parents' names.

The rest of the documents had me puzzled. I wasn't quite sure who I was looking at. My family tree documents that Giuseppe Sarracino's (from document #3) father was Antonio. But was this him?

#4 The 1821 marriage record for Antonio Sarracino and Vincenza Perrella. Vincenza was from another town. Is he my Antonio?

#5 The 1826 marriage record for Antonio Sarracino and Anna Maria Muollo. Wait, what? I'm still not sure who's who.

#6 through #11 are records of households in the town. The church wrote these lists of the "souls" in their town, but to a genealogist, they're basically a census. OK, here we go.

1803: A husband and wife and their deceased parent's names. They have one son named Antonio Sarracino, age 4. So far, technically, this could be my 3rd great grandfather Antonio Sarracino. He's about the right age. But that's not proof.

1803 church record for Domenico Sarracino's household

1816: The same family with two more daughters.

1823: The same family, but now the mother has died, and Antonio's wife from document #4, Vincenza Perrella, has also died.

1827: Now Antonio no longer has his sisters with him. He has his father, the widower, and his new wife, Anna Maria Muollo from doument #5. They have a new baby named Teresa.

1827 church record for Domenico Sarracino's household

1833: The same family members plus two more children for Antonio and Anna Maria: Giovanni and Mariagrazia.

You know, I'm still not sure exactly what I've got here!

The last document. 1837: Antonio has a household of six people now. His father is not there and may have died. His children are all still alive. Teresa. Giovanni. Mariagrazia. And a new baby: Giuseppe Sarracino.

1837 church record for Antonio Sarracino's household. The youngest baby is my great great grandfather.

That's it! This is in fact the family of my great great grandfather Giuseppe Sarracino. Back up a minute. Now that I know who this family is, let's take a closer look at all the details.

From these six household lists, I've learned the names of:

• My great great grandfather Giuseppe's three older siblings.
• His mother's name and her parent's names. Those are my 4th great grandparents Francesco Saverio Muollo and Grazia Cimino.
• His father's parents' names: Domenico Sarracino and Teresa Mastroberardino. They're also my 4th great grandparents.
• Domenico and Teresa's parents' names. Those are my 5th great grandparents: Giovanni Sarracino, Rosaria Santangelo, Domenico Mastroberardino and Maria Tufo.

What an incredible revelation! The lack of civil documents for this town had me stuck. But these simple lists found in the church records brought me back three generations. This is something I can't imagine doing on my own. In this remote little town, my broken Italian wouldn't get me very far.

Now I am absolutely planning to go into that church on my upcoming visit to Italy. Simply standing there, knowing the names of many generations of my ancestors who were baptized and married there, will move me to tears.

So what's next? My researchers tell me there is a central church archive that may help me with my Saviano branch.

In the meantime, I have the names and ages of two new great aunts and a great uncle. There's a good chance that inside the Pastene records I've downloaded to my computer I will find their children. The records for those children may tell me more about their mother's Muollo ancestors.

The quest continues!

You may also enjoy:

• When Should You Hire a Professional Genealogist?
• Appreciate the Veterans in Your Family Tree
• How to Handle Foreign Words in Your Family Tree