Why Did Your Ancestor Leave Home?

Someone asked me why our ancestors left Italy when it's so beautiful there. I knew the answer, but I remember when I thought the exact same thing.

Then I read a bit of the country's history. Southern Italians faced overwhelming poverty while those in the north fared much better. The young men from the south could have taken factory jobs in the north. But there was too much competition.

Many made their way to the United States of America after hearing that jobs were plentiful. They were hard jobs in steel mills, railroad yards, and coal mines. But it was steady work and decent pay. My grandfathers seized the opportunity and applied for citizenship as soon as possible.

Being an immigrant is not easy. Why did your ancestors choose to leave?

What was going on in your ancestral homeland when your ancestors emigrated? The FamilySearch website is a great place to begin your search. For instance:

• Germans left their country at many points in their history. The main reasons were poverty and religious persecution.
• Many early English emigrants went to America to improve their business prospects. Some were prisoners, sent to other countries. Some military personnel received land or money to stay in the place where they had served.
• The Irish fled famine and poverty. They were also suffering from religious persecution. Some sought political asylum, and others were prisoners sent to America.
• Italian emigration skyrocketed from 1870 to 1914. Young men sought the steady work they couldn't find at home.

A real-life library, or an online catalog search, can tell you why your ancestors moved. One thing is very clear. There has always been a ton of moving going on.

A table on Wikipedia shows the number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. by decade. Based on each census from 1850–2000, the table breaks down the numbers by country and region. (Note: The table is missing 1930 and 1940, and it ends a full 20 years ago.)

The table shows who was leaving their homeland in large numbers at certain times in history. One or more of these trends may apply to your ancestors. For instance:

• German immigration ranged from a half million and 2.7 million people each census year since 1850. It's never let up. In fact, the largest ethnicity in the USA is German at 14.7%*.
• The British Isles and Ireland ranged from nearly 1 million (1990 and 2000) to 4 million (in 1890) people. The English make up 7.8% of America, and the Irish are 10.6%.
• Italian immigration surged to 484,000 people in 1900, and a high of almost 1.8 million people in 1950. After that, quotas forced some of my relatives to go to Canada. Italians are 5.5% of Americans.
• French immigrants peaked at 153,000 in 1920. Relatively speaking, those are low numbers. In fact, the French comprise only 2.6% of Americans.
• Canada has ranged from almost 150,000 in 1850, to 1.3 million in 1950.
• The former Soviet Union hit its peak of more than 1 million people from 1910–1950.
• The former Czechoslovakia topped out at almost a half million people in 1950.

Some countries are seeing a dramatic rise in emigration:

• Mexico surged from 103,000 in 1950 to 9 million in 2000, with a big increase starting in 1980. Mexicans are 10.9% of Americans. That's now the 3rd highest percentage of Americans. First are Germans and second are non-Hispanic Blacks or African Americans.
• The Caribbean Islands began their surge in 1970 and reached almost 3 million strong in 2000.
• Chinese immigrants had many bans and restrictions in the 1800s. But they nearly doubled from 530,000 in 1990 to 989,000 in 2000. This ethnicity represents 1.2% of Americans.

Statistics paint a picture of nationalities fleeing oppression.

While I adore Italy, and I feel at home in my ancestral hometowns, I know it is not the Italy my ancestors left behind.

I encourage you to learn a bit of the history of your "old country". You'll discover a new-found appreciation for your immigrant ancestors' sacrifices.

*The percentages of ethnicities in the U.S. comes from a 2019 article on the WorldAtlas website.

And speaking of emigration/immigration:

• How Did Immigration Laws Guide Your Ancestors?
• Grandpa's Journeys Shed Light On My Own
• Celebrating My Peasant Ancestors

One Man's Big Impact on My Family Tree

Revisiting a clean-up project instantly added dozens of relatives to my family tree.

In July I recommended using Family Tree Analyzer to find the unsourced facts in your family tree. For the steps, see Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations.

My report seemed to have a lot of false positives. Many facts in the list actually had proper sources in my family tree. Discouraged, I tried another method. I ran the Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker. I exported the report as a massive Excel file. It's huge because I have 25,000 people in my family tree, and I don't add a source for a person's sex. So everyone made it into the report!

I spent time deleting lots of lines from that spreadsheet. Then I decided to revisit the report in Family Tree Analyzer. This time I excluded another fact type (Parental Info) before exporting it to Excel.

With a bit more fine-tuning, the report turned out great.

I realized I could cut out all the dates that I left unsourced on purpose. When I don't know someone's birth date, I give them an estimate. In your family tree software, you can type "About" or "Abt" when you're entering an approximate date.

If they are a parent, I make them 25 years older than their oldest child. If I know their spouse's birth year, I estimate they were born about the same year.

Since there can't be a source for my "About" dates, I don't need them in this report. I sorted the report by the Date of Birth column and removed every line where the date begins with "ABT" (for about). Now I'm down to about 114 lines in the spreadsheet. The Undocumented Facts report in Family Tree Maker produced a 45,000-line spreadsheet!

Diving into the New Unsourced Facts Report

The first few lines are for my young cousin-in-law. I have no sources for him, but later I'll see what I can find online.

I'd prefer to work on my 19th century Italian relatives first. The first one in the list is Lorenzo Capozza. In my family tree I see he was born in 1828 in my great grandmother's town of Pescolamazza. He married my 3rd great aunt, Nicolina Caruso, on 19 Apr 1856 in that town.

I must have been rushing along when I found this marriage fact. I didn't save the marriage record to my tree. I didn't chase down Lorenzo's birth date or parents. And I didn't add my sources. Bad genealogist!

Lorenzo was 28 years old when he married my aunt in 1856, so he should have been born in 1828. The marriage record says he was born in the same town, but something's wrong. I have all the town's available vital records on my computer. He isn't in the birth records for 1826 through 1829. I can keep searching each year's birth index, or I can go to the detailed records in the 1856 marriage documents.

Before I do that, the marriage record says Lorenzo's parents are Pietro Capozza and Maria Emanuele Pennuccia. I looked for them in my family tree.

One Man Makes His Mark

They're in there, along with their son Antonio, 5 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren, and at least 12 2nd great grandchildren! I'd already pieced together a huge family for them from the vital records collection. But I never found Lorenzo.

Feel free to borrow this image.

But that's only part of the story. All the people related to Pietro Capozza and Maria Emanuele Pennuccia in my tree are UNRELATED to me. I've given them all my "No Relationship Established" graphic as a profile picture. (See How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree.)

The moment I make Lorenzo the son of Pietro and Maria, all those people will be my relatives. The relationship is through Lorenzo's wife, my 3rd great aunt.

Why did I put this enormous unrelated family in my tree, you ask? It was an out-of-control case of mistaken identity! When my great grandparents married in 1906, a couple from her hometown were the witnesses. The male witness was Nicola Capozza—same last name as our Lorenzo. But he was from a different branch of the family.

I realized too late that all those descendants of Pietro and Maria were an unrelated family.

Until now.

With Lorenzo attached to his parents, all those people are now relatives. I have to remove the "No Relationship Established" graphic from each one. How tedious.

But I have a method I'd like to share with you.

This trick simplifies an error-prone task.

Here's how I handle a big change like that. I have that graphic attached to a large number of people, so finding all the right people in a list wouldn't be easy. What I do is:

• Click everyone in the family who needs the graphic removed, one at a time.
• Change their last name to begin with a 1. Capozza becomes 1Capozza. That makes it easy to find the right people in the list of who's attached to that graphic.
• Go to one person with that graphic and click to detach it.
• This brings up a list of each person attached to the graphic. I can select everyone whose name begins with 1.
• Once I remove the image, I rename everyone in my family tree whose name begins with a 1.

That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's very helpful. I used to struggle with removing that graphic from the right person. A lot of the townspeople have identical names! I use a 1 so it's at the top of my index of all people—easy to find.

Now comes a much bigger challenge. All those new relatives need their vital records and sources!

Make the Most of Each Shiny Genealogy Object

I saw someone in an online genealogy group mention a book about building your family tree. The book said to research and build each of your 4 grandparents' lines one at a time. One at a time!

People in the group (including me) laughed at the idea. How do you choose where to start? How can you ignore information that falls into your lap about another grandparent?

I recommend a much less rigid approach. Genealogy is a hobby, not a requirement. If you're not having fun at it, you're doing it wrong.

When you start out, which branch to follow may depend on:

• Which documents are available
• Who's on your mind at the time
• Whatever you find that interests you.

After you've made some progress, follow your heart. I spent years (about 2008–2012) researching my mom's father's ancestry. Back then, his town's vital records weren't online. Research meant spending countless hours, and a little money, viewing microfilm in a church somewhere.

Those records were the biggest and shiniest genealogy object I could imagine. I set out to learn every possible name in my grandfather's family tree.

Then the Italian vital records started coming online. I jumped into my dad's father's ancestry. Why him? My 2 grandfathers left Italy to come to New York. My grandmothers were born in New York to Italian immigrants. I wanted to know about the families left behind.

You may wonder if you should stick to a plan and ignore the latest shiny genealogy object. Genealogy isn't a race to the finish. Yes, you want to learn about all your ancestry. But you need to have fun, too. It's the fun and joy of new discoveries that'll keep you going.

So, what's the next place for you to focus your attention? It depends.

Many times I launch Family Tree Maker without knowing what I'm going to do that day. This weekend I decided to search for missing documents. I opened my Document tracker spreadsheet and looked at the Need to Find column. I wanted to find missing records for my relatives who never left Italy.

Then one thing led to another. I was going through the spreadsheet alphabetically. I noticed I'd never researched Concetta Basile's husband, Giambattista Martuccio. I found his name written in the column of Concetta's birth record with their marriage date. And that was all I had.

Giambattista became my shiny object. I found his birth record and learned his parents' names. I found his mother's birth record and discovered her parents were already in my family tree.

I found Giambattista's father's birth record, and his parents' marriage records. Giambattista's grandmother was an Iamarino, like me. I found his grandparent's birth records and their parents' marriage records. I wound up taking Giambattista's family back to the early 1700s. Giambattista Martuccio, who started the day as a name, is now my 3rd cousin 3 times removed. He now has a very full family tree. His wife Concetta is also my 3rd cousin 3 times removed.

Following a shiny object sometimes leads to real treasure. It did this time.

That shiny object took up my whole afternoon. And it was totally worth it.

Strike a balance when you're playing with your family tree. Remember to keep things interesting. Here are some ideas that'll help you make progress and have fun:

• Check your progress to see which part of your family tree is lagging behind. Give that branch a little attention.
• Do any of your 4 main branches overlap? (My grandparents were 3rd cousins. My parents have a mystery DNA relationship.) Research that relationship.
• Make the most of a new set of documents you find. I've been giving more attention to my overlooked ancestral towns lately. I also have an awesome book detailing Grandpa Iamarino's townspeople in the year 1742. You can't ignore these things!
• Follow any leads you pick up from members of your family. I'm the one who found out exactly where my mom's mother's family came from. The family lore was a bit broad, but I built on it.
• Plug in the holes you weren't able to plug before. There may be new document collections available to you that weren't there before.

With all these possible priorities, and more, each genealogy session can be a spur-of-the-moment adventure. If it's a dead end, don't get frustrated. Follow a new shiny object and see where it leads.

Genealogy is my escape. My happy place. Balance your research priorities and keep things unstructured. It can be your happy place, too.