Look Over Here! How to Focus for Better Genealogy Results

The genealogy journey is fun. Being efficient makes it fun AND productive.

We all multi-task. Sometimes it's the only way to do the many things we need to do. But when it comes to genealogy, you'll gather more facts and documents if you focus.

Focus on the task at hand. Don't get distracted by what you see along the way. You can make a quick note to come back for that other shiny object later. But for now, do what you're there to do.

Here are 3 examples of how and why you need to keep your focus.

One Name Only

Last weekend I wanted to make progress on one of my 2019 genealogy goals. On my computer I have tons of vital records from my ancestral Italian hometowns.

My 2019 goal is to add every "Pozzuto" baby from one town to my family tree. Why Pozzuto? Because that last name has DNA matches to both my mom and my dad.

The birth records stretch from 1809–1915, and I was up to 1841.

Recently I've been renaming these thousands of files to include the name of the person(s) in the record. For example, I renamed the file

101577322_00004.jpg to
101577322_00004 Teofilo Mascia di Antonio and Salvatore Celestino Pugliese.jpg

With renamed files, I can use Windows File Manager to search for any name. This is fantastic when I need to find out who or when someone married. (Note: I keep the number in the file name so I can easily find the link to the original image online.)

Then I thought, instead of renaming files and moving on, why not ID the Pozzuto babies as I rename the files? So that's what I did. As I rename a file and find a Pozzuto baby, I add them to my tree. In practically no time I renamed every birth record from 1841–1847, stopping for each Pozzuto baby.

I added 36 more Pozzuto babies to my family tree! For now, I ignored every file with my maiden name or my direct ancestors' names. They will be there when I need them. Focus is what's getting this goal done.

Leave that other information alone for now. Focus on your current goal for better results.

Follow That Family

Earlier this year I finished another of my 2019 genealogy goals. I keep a spreadsheet of each document I add to my family tree. (I call it my document tracker.) The last column has a list of what I'm missing for a particular person. It lists the census years I need, their immigration record, marriage date, death, etc.

My goal was to search for each missing census listed as "need to find" on my document tracker.

I accomplished this goal by staying focused. I went through my document tracker's alphabetical list of people. I searched for, and usually found, the missing census forms. I noted them on the spreadsheet, and moved on to the next family.

Even though I still can't find some census sheets, I found most of them. And my goal was carefully worded for success. "Search for all missing census forms in Document tracker." That focus kept me on-task and got the job done.

Clean This One Spot

There are so many cleanup tasks you can do to your family tree. It's only natural that you'd develop a style after spending some time doing this crazy hobby. Then you want to go back and make your earlier work match your style.

I came up with a style of adding very detailed notes to the document images in my tree. If it's a census sheet, I start with:

• the line numbers to look at
• the proper title of the document
• a bunch of facts, including:
  
  • supervisor's district number
  • enumeration district number
  • sheet number, etc.
• the image number, like "image 16 of 947"
• the URL
• the source citation (copied from the online collection where I found it)

By focusing on census sheets only, I was able to add all these facts to every census image in my tree. I gather every bit of that information each time I save a new image. But the cleanup task was for older documents I saved before I got so careful.

One of my 2020 genealogy goals will be to beef up and standardize the notes on every ship manifest image in my tree. I'm good at adding all the facts now, but I wasn't so good in the beginning. If I focus on only that task, I'll get it done faster.

Keep the focus on one task to improve your consistency and efficiency.

Each time I sit down to work on my family tree, I choose a task. I might pick an item from my annual genealogy goals list. I might click away at a cleanup task. Or I might pick someone at random and search for their missing documents.

No matter which family tree task you choose to work on today, focus on that task! Ignore the other interesting things that pop up. (Or make a quick note and move on.) Stay focused, and at the end of the day you'll find you've gotten a lot further than you expected.

What Was Happening When Your Ancestor Died?

If a lot of townspeople died at the same time, something big happened.

When we research our relatives from centuries past, we find lots of tragedies. Mothers who die in childbirth. Babies born shortly after their father died. Two or 3 siblings dying within hours of one another. Stillborn babies.

If you find family members dying at about the same time, that may point to an historical event.

Did something happen to cause many people to die? An epidemic? A natural disaster?

The 1805 Earthquake

Many years ago an historian from my grandfather's hometown gave me a piece of history. It's a list of 40 townspeople who died in the earthquake of 26 July 1805. To put this in context, that's the same year Napoleon declared himself the Italian Emperor.

The info in the list is as good as an Italian death record. It includes:

• the deceased's name and age
• their parents names
• their spouse's name if they had one.

One by one, I'm checking the victims' names against my family tree. On line 23 I find someone. Everything I knew about Maria I learned from her son Giovanni's 1829 death record. I knew her husband died in 1805, but it wasn't clear if Maria was alive at that time.

What can history's tragedies tell you about your ancestor's death?

Now, thanks to this list of earthquake victims in 1805, I've got more facts:

• She was born in 1749. By coincidence, that was the estimated birth year I was using already. I have a rule I follow. If I don't know when someone was born, I subtract 25 from their oldest child's birth year. I had Maria's birth year as "about 1749" because I know her son Giovanni was born in 1774.
• Her parents were Mattia Pizzella and Libera Polcino. I can estimate that they were born "about 1724".
• Her husband was Giorgio Pozzuto. That's a key fact. That and her age helped me match this earthquake victim to the woman already in my family tree.
• Her approximate date of death. My list of victims doesn't say whether these 40 people died immediately. In Family Tree Maker, I'll give them a death date of "about 26 Jul 1805". I'll add "Victim of the 26 July 1805 earthquake" as the description. My source for these facts is my friend the historian. He has given me lots of facts over the years. He has access to the original documents.

Three of the victims were my 6th great aunt Libera and her 2 little girls Grazia and Anna Maria. Libera's husband Giovanni Palmiero must have remarried after their deaths. Can you imagine his sorrow, having his family wiped out? There is another Giovanni Palmiero in my family tree. He's about the right age and married a younger woman. This could be him, but without church records for his marriage, I can't be sure.

A list of the victims of the 1805 earthquake gave me the missing information I needed.

Finding Disasters

Search online for epidemics, pandemics, earthquakes, and floods in your ancestors' part of the world.

One of the first things I found was that the 26 July 1805 earthquake killed 44 people in Grandpa's town. An estimated 5,573 people died from this event and its aftershocks in all.

My cousins in Italy showed me the stone threshold where my grandfather's house once stood. They said they had to demolish the house after a 1960s earthquake. An Italian earthquake list on Wikipedia makes it clear. The 21 August 1962 earthquake ruined Grandpa's home. It was a 6.1 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was nearby in Irpinia, Avellino. That's the neighboring province.

Irpinia had an earlier, bigger earthquake on 23 July 1930. I was hoping to see if anyone had died in Grandpa's town on that date, but the available death records start in 1931.

Still, you can see where I'm going. If you can find a list of disasters near your ancestor's hometown, you may find the most likely cause of death for your relatives.

In 1918 a flu pandemic killed 20 to 50 million people. The cholera pandemic of 1910–1911 took more than 800,000 lives. For more on this topic, see "Why Did They Die?"

It's disappointing when old death records don't show a cause of death. Spend a little time investigating the major killers of the time: waves of sickness and natural disasters. You may find your family member's probable cause of death.

Don't Ignore a Genealogy Hunch

If you don't have enough info to go on, imagine what that info ought to be.

I spent all day yesterday piecing together a family for Barbara. We began with a few basic facts. I knew her parents' names and her grandparents' names. I didn't have any dates, but I knew Barbara's approximate age.

Let me walk you through how I built out as many facts as possible from those basic facts.

Census Records Lead to One Another

First I wanted to find Barbara in a census or two. With only "New York City" as a location, I found her in the 1940 census. From that I learned the names and ages of her siblings.

Their names helped me be sure I had the right family when I found them in the 1915 and 1920 censuses. As the children grew up, I found that the parents were no longer together. At first I thought Barbara's father had died, but her mother was in one place and her father was in another. They had divorced.

Next I searched for earlier censuses when Barbara's parents were children.

Knowing when Barbara's grandparents were born, I found their marriage records. And some of their death records, which also provided their exact birth dates.

Searching for the Immigrant Ancestors

I'm the luckiest Italian American alive. My 2 grandfathers often told me the names of their hometowns in Italy. My ancestors came to America late enough for their ship manifests to be very detailed.

My 2 grandmothers were born in New York. But their parents arrived here in 1899 and 1906. Their ship manifests tell me their hometowns.

If your people came to the new country before the late 1890s, you may get no help from their ship manifest. That's when naturalization papers can fill in the gaps.

Ship manifests are not created equal. The late 1890s to 1920s are full of great information.

But Barbara's grandfather's certificate of naturalization doesn't say where he came from. The dates on his papers helped me find his ship manifest, but there was a problem. He was the only one onboard from his town, and the town name was so generic.

Barbara said he was from southernmost Italy. There was no town with this name down south. I thought the town might have a longer name. I found a good possibility, but its 1880s birth and marriage records were destroyed! I've sent an email to the town asking for help. We'll see what they say.

But there was another immigrant to find. Barbara's paternal grandfather was born in New York in the 1890s. I didn't know who his immigrant father was. How could I go back another generation in Barbara's family tree?

That's when my big hunch came into play.

When the paper trail is out of your reach, make your best educated guess.

Barbara's father was John and his father was Sylvester. His father should be Giovanni, right? And based on Sylvester's age, I thought "Giovanni" should have been born about 1865. That was my hunch.

But Giovanni and Cristina had come to America before 1889. Their ship manifests won't tell me their hometowns. I did find Giovanni's naturalization record from 1894. Now I had his exact birth date and a ship arrival date in 1881 (too early). Unfortunately, that date was an estimate, and there's no ship arriving on that date from Italy.

I may be stuck on finding the family's hometowns, but I was able to build out Barbara's family and make her very happy.

Have you been doing this genealogy thing for a while? I'll bet you know more than you give yourself credit for. If you've got a hunch, follow it through. It may lead you to a new generation.