Closing the Book on One Family at a Time

Follow along as we figure out what's needed to "finish" documenting my grandmother's family.

It's time to work closer to home.
Complete your closest families' documents.

Last time I talked about 4 keys—4 things to focus on that will make you a better genealogist. One of them was "finishing" your research on individual families.

There's never going to be an end to the things you can learn about any given family in your family tree. But you can "close the book" on getting copies of their major documents.

You'll find this exercise more meaningful if you stick to your closest relatives. I'll choose my paternal grandmother Lucy, her brothers (Mike and Frank), and her parents (Pasquale and Maria Rosa).

The head of this family unit was my great grandfather Pasquale Iamarino. He was born in Italy, came to America in 1902, lived in New York and Ohio, and died in 1969.

I've had a lot of luck finding Pasquale's documents. (See "How to Use a Paper Trail to Recreate Your Ancestor's Life".) I have his:

• 1882 birth record from Italy and his baptismal record from the church
• 1902 ship manifest when he came to New York City
• 1905 New York State census
• 1906 marriage certificate with my great grandmother
• 1908 Hornell, NY, directory
• 1910 Federal census and 1915 New York State census
• 1918 World War I draft registration card
• 1920 and 1930 censuses when the family lived in Ohio
• 1931–1935 city directories from Ohio
• 1940 census
• 1942 World War II draft registration card
• 1969 death certificate from the state of Ohio

That's a pretty good haul! But there is a major piece of documentation I've never found for Pasquale. His naturalization papers.

The 1910 census calls him an Alien. The 1920 census says he had filed his naturalization papers. The 1930 census says he is a naturalized citizen. I can narrow it down further with his WWI draft registration card. In September 1918 he was a Declarant.

He began the citizenship process by September 1918, but did he file his papers in New York? He lived in Albany in June 1915, and he was an Alien on the 1915 state census. Or did he file his papers when he moved to Ohio?

I have a theory that Pasquale moved from New York to Ohio for a better opportunity with the railroad. Maybe the Erie Railroad preferred that he become a citizen.

It's a good bet that Pasquale filed his papers in the court nearest to Girard, Ohio, outside Youngstown.

My great grandfather's documents: so close to complete.

That's one set of papers I need. What about the rest of this family of five?

For my great grandmother, Maria Rosa, I have her:

• 1880 birth record from Italy
• 1906 immigration record
• 1906 marriage certificate
• 1910–1940 censuses
• 1931–1935 city directories from Ohio
• 1970 death certificate

According to the 1940 census, she never became a citizen. I don't expect to find any other documents for her.

Since she doesn't seem to have become a citizen, my great grandmother's documents are complete.

I'm missing my grandmother Lucy's birth and death records. Recently I solved the mystery of her missing birth record. I found her in a birth index with a misspelled last name and no first name. Now I have the document number and the wrong last name (Merino). I should be able to order that from New York, and I can order her death certificate from Ohio.

For my grandmother's brothers, my great uncle Mike and great uncle Frank, I have each census and lots of facts. As for their vital records, I have all the dates, but I don't have certificates of their births, marriages and deaths. I don't know about you, but I pay to get certificates only for my closest relatives. My dad loved these, guys, but I'm afraid I never met them.

So, the final tally of what I need before I can "close out" this family:

• Pasquale's naturalization papers, probably from Ohio
• Lucy's birth certificate from New York
• Lucy's death certificate from Ohio

I'm ashamed of myself for not having purchased my grandmother's 1954 death certificate. Somehow I overlooked it. And I'm even more ashamed that I never before figured out when my great grandfather became a citizen. (It still doesn't come up in a search.)

This is exactly why I'm encouraging us all to go back to basics. Look at the families closest to you—each of your grandparents' families for starters. Figure out what's missing:

• What can you find online?
• What will you have to send away for?
• What can you find on a genealogy road trip?

Take a day off from one of your distant-cousin-searches and come closer to home. Find the missing pieces for your closest relatives. Then share what you've learned with your family.

4 Keys to Make You a Better Genealogist

Even 1 key will get you going. All 4 might unlock a ton of treasure.

If you could pick only one, which of these family tree accomplishments would make you a better genealogist?

1. Perfecting your file, folder and document ORGANIZATION
2. Cleaning up your FACTS AND SOURCES and doing them right from now on
3. "FINISHING" your research on individual family groups
4. SHARING your findings with relatives

Let's take a look at each one so you can decide. And once you do choose one, you've got your 2019 Genealogy Goals in your sights.

They're not just shiny objects.
They are the heart of solid genealogy.

Organization

How quickly can you locate your maternal grandparents' 1940 census document? Your great grandfather's ship manifest? Your great uncle's World War II draft registration card?

If you don't know exactly where to look and exactly how you would have named the file, you may need an organization upgrade.

Create your organization style, and stick to it. Almost from the beginning, I decided:

• how I wanted to name my document images and
• how I wanted to organize those images in file folders.

I'm 99.8% digital; so little paper that it's in one manila folder.

I name my folders, all within my FamilyTree folder, for the type of document:

• census forms
• certificates (that's all birth, marriage and death records)
• city directories
• draft cards
• immigration
• passports, etc.

I name my document images for the person (or head of household, if it's a census) and the year: LastnameFirstnameYear. The file names can get very long for a marriage, where I include both the groom's name and the bride's name, plus the year. But then the file name is very descriptive.

This system has worked incredibly well for me ever since I started this crazy hobby.

Facts and Sources

As you work on your family tree year after year, you may find you do things differently than you did before. Hopefully you're doing them better than you did before.

If you want others to recognize your family tree for the good work it is, fix your facts and sources.

Revisit your earliest work and put in the sources you skipped in your excitement. (See 6 Easy Steps to Valuable Source Citations.) Add annotations to your document images within your family tree. (See How to Increase the Value of Your Family Tree Images.)

Finishing

Yes, I know all the jokes and memes. Genealogy is never finished.

But you can finish gathering all the known documents for a given family. Pick a particular nuclear family—like your grandparents, your mother and her siblings.

You can finish your search for their:

• census forms
• birth, marriage and death records
• immigration records
• military records

Your family tree probably has lots of nuclear families you didn't finish working on. Why not finish searching for their key documents now?

As you "finish" each family unit, you can consider moving on to this next goal.

Sharing

Imagine your mother and her family again. You've got as many documents for that family as you can get.

This would be the perfect time to create a booklet or a scrapbook about them. Write their story, based partly on the documents and facts you've collected. Put something together and share it with your loved ones.

I wrote a brief life story for my grandfather recently, and it made my mother incredibly happy. (See 5 Steps to Writing Your Ancestor's Life Story.)

If one or more of these ideas hits home for you, why not make it happen in 2019? I haven't finished annotating my document images (Facts and Sources), so I definitely want to do that. I'm also very eager to finish some families, or at least finish gathering all the census forms that I'm still missing.

I want us all to be better, more thoughtful and accurate genealogists. These 4 keys can definitely put you on your way.

My Cousin Has a Genealogy Surprise in Store

Sometimes your family tree research can uncover uncomfortable secrets.

Growing up, my mother had a cousin who was her dear friend. But she had no idea how they were cousins. My mom would tell me, "Oh, she's a Saviano, but I don't know how."

Angela's identity became clear when
I spoke to my mom's 3rd cousin.

When this cousin asked me to look into her family tree, I learned about her tragic grandmother, Angela Letizia Saviano.

• On 21 May 1898, Angela sailed from Italy to New York. She was with my great great grandfather, Antonio Saviano, his wife and 2 of his children.
• Angela was 18 years old and from the same small town as my Saviano family.
• She listed another of Antonio Saviano's children as her cousin.
• Antonio Saviano was her uncle; Angela's grandparents were my 3rd great grandparents.
• Angela's 1880 birth record shows that her mother had the same last name as my grandmother. Was she a double cousin?
• Angela married a man from the same little town, and her mother-in-law was on that ship in 1898, too.
• Angela had one child, a daughter Catherine, in New York City in 1899.
• Angela died at the age of 21 of a leaky heart valve. She'd been under a doctor's care for 1 month.

Angela's only daughter is the reason my mom's cousin "was a Saviano." Angela was this cousin's grandmother.

One of my 1st genealogy finds had the mysterious Angela.

Last week this same cousin asked if I'd found out anything about her father's side of the family from Bari in Italy.

I can do that research now. With online access to Italian birth, marriage and death records, it should be easy. (If you have any Italian ancestors, find out about the Antenati site.) I started by looking at the U.S. documents I'd collected for my cousin's father and his brothers. I had their names and approximate ages, their father's name (Francesco), and their hometown (Alberobello).

I searched the Alberobello birth records for the 3 brothers and found them all. Now I knew their mother's name was Isabella. But there was something unusual written on the side of the first-born son's birth record.

It's right there on his birth record:
his parents married later.

Vincenzo's 1891 Birth

His birth record said his parents married in December 1891—that's 6 months after he was born. It says they got married to make this baby legitimate.

OK, maybe that's not such a big deal (although this was 1891). But the couple's marriage document shows that the mother of the baby—the new bride—was 14 years old. The father, Francesco, was 25.

As ewww as that is, there's more. Francesco first got married in 1888 to a woman who must have died by mid- to late-1890. And while this wasn't uncommon, the then 13-year-old girl he got pregnant in late 1890 (that part IS uncommon) was the half-sister of this first wife.

How do you think that went? The little girl is consoling him over the loss of his wife, her sister, and it winds up getting physical? Bye-bye childhood, Isabella. It's mommy time.

Francesco's 1866 Birth

I found one more twist to this tale. Another shotgun wedding. Francesco, who made baby Vincenzo with 13-year-old Isabella, was also born out of wedlock. His birth record also says that his parents married to make the baby legitimate.

Francesco's father, also named Vincenzo, was 30 years old when he married for the first time. His wife, already the mother of his child, was a widow and only 23 years old. Maybe this is how they consoled widows and widowers back in the day!

My cousin who wanted this information isn't online. I'll have to print out the information and documents and mail them to her. I'm still trying to figure out how to lay out these facts as clinically as possible.

I want to keep digging into this family's vital records. I'd like to find the relationship between Francesco's grandmother and Isabella, his child bride. They have the same last name. (Of course they do.)

I'm expecting a few more plot twists ahead.

And speaking of surprise babies:

• My 5th Great Grandfather: A Random Act of Kindness?
• When I'm Sixty-Four (I'll Still Have Only Two Children)
• Finding Your Ancestor's Lost Babies