08 December 2020

Inside My Digital Genealogy Toolbox

I do some genealogy work every single day. First I decide what I'm in the mood to do. Then I take out whichever tools I need for the task.

Here are some of my typical family tree-building tasks and the tools I need to complete them.

File Renaming

This is a foundational task that improves everything else I do. I don't know about other countries, but Italy has a massive amount of vital records online.

All my ancestors came from a handful of neighboring towns in Southern Italy. Each town has a large collection of birth, marriage, and death records. I've downloaded tens of thousands of record images to my computer.

When I want an easy task—one I can do while half-watching TV—I start renaming the image files. If it's a birth record, I rename the file to include the baby's name and their father's same.

Now this record (and tons of others) is searchable on my computer. Including the father's name in the title makes it easier to find exactly the person I need.

Tools Required:

  • GetLinks for downloading a ton of records easily
  • File Explorer (Windows) for storing and renaming the images
  • Photos (Windows) for viewing the images and zooming in for clarity
  • Karen's Directory Printer for creating a text file of every file name in a set of folders. When I finish a town, I'll publish a searchable list of every available vital record for others to use.
I rarely write anything down when I can type it. These pencils are a metaphor for keeping all your genealogy tools in tip-top shape.
I rarely write anything down when I can type it. These pencils are a metaphor for keeping all your genealogy tools in tip-top shape.

Filling in the Blanks

When I want to take advantage of all that file renaming, I start filling in missing facts.

With all those renamed vital records, I can find missing birth dates for my family tree. I can sort the index of my Family Tree Maker file by Birth Date and look for people with an incomplete date of birth.

The Italian vital records for my towns begin in 1809. So, for this task, I'll scroll down to people born in 1809. I can look for anyone without a complete birth date. Then I'll search my renamed files with a wonderful program called Everything. I'll review the search results, double-clicking an entry to view the image. I'll keep going until I find this person.

Now I can enter their birth date into Family Tree Maker and add their baptism date and street name, if available.

I started at 1809. I'm up to 1850. When I've tackled all the missing birth dates, I can sort the index by death date or marriage date. If there are records available for that year, no fact can hide from me.

Tools Required:

  • Family Tree Maker for seeing what's missing
  • Everything–a fast, powerful search tool that can find any name among my renamed files
  • Photos (Windows) for viewing the images
A couple of new additions to my genealogy toolbox were hand-picked for my most ambitious family tree projects.
A couple of new additions to my genealogy toolbox were hand-picked for my most ambitious family tree projects.

Fitting a Piece into the Puzzle

When I'm ready to ready get down to business, this task is the entire ball of wax. The Holy Grail. It will fulfill my wish to create the ultimate family tree for people with roots in Grandpa's hometown.

A long time ago, I started entering facts from vital records into a spreadsheet. My 2019 genealogy goal was to enter the facts from the first 5 years of birth records for each of my ancestral towns. I wish I'd gotten more done, but it's very time-consuming. I'm glad I have those first 5 years.

Now I'm going line-by-line, hoping to find a place in my family tree for everyone in the town. I'm nearly finished with the 1809 births. Then I'll work through the 1809 marriages and deaths.

It's amazing how many people have a place in my tree. Here are the steps I'm following with the 1809 births:

  • Search my Family Tree Maker file for the baby. I may have them already. If so, I make that line in the spreadsheet green.
  • If I don't find them, I search for their parents. In most cases, I have the father birth year because his age was on the birth record. If I find the right married couple, I can add their baby to my family tree.
  • If I can't find the parents in my tree, I search my vital record collection. If I can find the marriage or death of either parent, I'll know who their parents were. If they're already in my tree, I can add this family unit to my tree.

In most cases, I can fit that 1809 baby in my tree. Sometimes the baby is a blood relation, like 1st cousin 6 times removed. Other times the relationship is crazy-distant. If there's any connection, I want them. It serves my purpose of documenting the entire town.

If the baby fits in my tree, I:

  • crop and enhance the vital record image in Photoshop
  • rename the image file in my standard format
  • add a title and source citation to the image's properties
  • add the baby, their facts, and the image to Family Tree Maker
  • file the image away
  • add a line to my document tracker spreadsheet for the baby and this birth record

But wait. There's more. Why not search for the marriage or death of this child? I've had cases where one 1809 baby led to multiple marriage records and a death record. I've added dozens of people and documents stemming from one baby.

This project is the be-all and end-all. It is my gift to Grandpa's town.

Tools Required:

  • Excel for storing and reviewing facts from each vital record
  • File Explorer (Windows) for adding details to the images
  • Photos (Windows) for viewing the images and zooming in for clarity
  • Family Tree Maker for adding the new documents and facts
  • Everything for finding any name among my renamed files
  • Photoshop for cropping the images and improving the contrast and readability

Each of these projects is so routine to me that I automatically launch all the tools I need for the task.

Is your genealogy toolbox lacking? Or is it up to every challenge?

01 December 2020

These Genealogy Projects Can Chase Away the Boredom

Would you get bored with your genealogy research if you were at it for 8 hours a day?

Last Friday was my first vacation day of 2020. As obsessed as I am with genealogy, I have a corporate job that keeps me away from it. The day after Thanksgiving was my first day off that wasn't a national holiday. At last I was able to spend hours on end doing genealogy!

If you have the time, and you want to make progress on your family tree, there's a secret to keep it from getting tedious. Projects.

If you have a variety of genealogy projects to work on, you won't get bored. You may be thinking, "If you're bored, stop doing genealogy." Sacrilege, I say!

Here are my favorite projects I turn to whenever genealogy is becoming a chore.

Before I go on, here's a programming note: I've been publishing a new article each Tuesday and Friday for 4 years. I've published 432 articles! This labor of love has taken over my life, so I'm dropping it down to once a week. I'll publish a new article each Tuesday, starting today.

Fit Everyone into My Tree

My family tree is going to be THE resource for any descendant of my grandfather's hometown. I've got tens of thousands of the town's vital records beginning in 1809. And I have a book that documents everyone who lived there in the year 1742.

I'm laying a solid foundation by fitting people from the 1809 vital records into my tree. In some cases I can connect them to people who were alive and documented in 1742.

Here's how it worked this long weekend:

  • Check an 1809 birth record to see if the baby is already in my family tree.
  • If not, check my tree for the parents.
  • If none of the people are in my tree, search my extensive database of the town for them.
  • Other records, like the death records of the parents, usually help me place them in my tree.
  • Then I can add the baby and search for their marriage or death records.

The whole process can take a long time, but I added dozens of townspeople to my tree for each 1809 baby.

Using all my tools, I can fit nearly the whole of Grandpa's town into my family tree.
Using all my tools, I can fit nearly the whole of Grandpa's town into my family tree.

Share My Research Database

I have all the town's available vital records on my computer. I've renamed them to include the subject(s) of the document. For example, "007853875_00496.jpg" is the first 1809 birth record. I renamed it "007853875_00496 Carmine Pasquale d'Agostino di Giuseppe.jpg" because it's the birth record of Carmine Pasquale d'Agostino, the son of Giuseppe. Keeping the number in the file name helps me tie it back to the file's original location online.

Now I can search for ANYBODY on my computer with a program called Everything. My plan is to share this amazing database with anyone with roots in the town. Before I do so, I need to finish renaming the extra documents that come with a marriage. These can include:

  1. the groom's birth or baptism record
  2. the groom's father's death record
  3. the groom's grandfather's death record
  4. the groom's mother's death record
  5. the groom's first wife's death record
  6. the bride's birth or baptism record
  7. the bride's father's death record
  8. the bride's grandfather's death record
  9. the bride's mother's death record
  10. the bride's first husband's death record

What a treasure trove! The only problem is, I haven't renamed ALL the files. I still need to do this for the marriage records from 1834 through 1860. I'll get there soon enough.

If I get bored with fitting each baby into my tree, I keep on renaming these marriage documents.

Once each vital record has a name, I can make the whole town searchable for other descendants.
Once each vital record has a name, I can make them all searchable for other descendants.

Fill in Missing Dates

One quick-shot project is to find exact dates of birth when all I have is a year. This happens when I have a birth record that includes one or both parents' ages. I can say, for example, that the father was born in 1830.

If I sort the Family Tree Maker index by birth year, it's easy to see all the people with missing birth records. Then I can use the Everything program to search for and fill in their missing birth dates. On Thursday I was up to people born in 1830. Now I'm up to 1850.

Pick Up a Forgotten Genealogy Goal

Each December I write down specific genealogy goals for the new year. Then 2020 happened. I tried to keep up with my 2020 goals in January and February. But when everything fell apart in March, I had bigger things to worry about.

Now I've settled into a groove (a deep groove that led me to take one day off this year). I can always look at my goals and pick whichever one interests me at the moment.

Return to An Old Research Thread

I like to work off lists that I type into a text program. I do this for my corporate job, and it works so well that I use it for genealogy, too.

To that end, I have a text file named Notebook filled with genealogy information. It tells me where I left off on my marriage document renaming project. It has my genealogy goals for the last few years. It has a list of rainy-day genealogy tasks, like "sort out my photos and add more to my family tree." It also has research notes, like: "Did Gregorio Liguori and Apollonia Grazia Caruso have a child before 1809? Search the Circello marriages starting in 1825 looking for other children. (I'm up to 1843.)"

There are details on projects I've completely forgotten. But each one is something I can turn to if I get bored with whatever I'm doing.

You can always make progress on your genealogy research. Even if you can't visit that library you need, there are tons of ways to fortify your family tree. What excites you today?

24 November 2020

Don't Let Latin Church Records Scare You

I spent the weekend with the type of genealogy records I hate: Latin church records. Normally I'm knee-deep in Italian vital records. It's second nature to locate and pull out the facts I need:

  • dates
  • names
  • relationships

But I would cringe when faced with a church record written in Latin. Reading an Italian document is as easy for me as reading an English document. That took practice. Complete immersion in Italian vital records made them easier and easier to understand.

Now I'm more comfortable with Latin records after a weekend of immersion.

The town I was researching had very brief church records. They didn't include anyone's age. That did simplify things, though. All I needed to translate was the date and names.

Here's a breakdown of the 3 things you need to know to get over any fear of Latin documents.

Talk about facing your fears. After a weekend of non-stop Latin church records, I have no problem translating these genealogy documents anymore!
Talk about facing your fears. After a weekend of non-stop Latin church records, I have no problem translating these genealogy documents anymore!

1. Latin Dates

Nearly all the documents I was reading wrote the day of the month as numerals, not words. Some records did spell out the day of the month. When that happens, I consult the Latin Genealogical Word List on FamilySearch.org.

I got stuck on one document where the writing was faint, and they wrote the day of the month as an ordinal number (first, second, third, etc.).

There were a lot of birth records on the same page. The records before this one had the Latin words for 23rd, 25th, 26th, and the records after it said the 28th and 29th. That narrowed things down. I compared the numbers on the page. Then I consulted the Numbers section of the Latin word list. I decided this date said vicesimus octavus, the 28th.

The Latin months are very close to English and Italian months. They're easy to understand. But sometimes the documents use a shorthand I know from Italian records. They abbreviate September through December as:

  • 7bre. Forget that it's the 9th month of the year. The beginning of September means seven. In Italian it's Settembre. Sette means 7, so 7bre for short.
  • 8bre. In Italian the word is Ottobre, and otto means 8; 8bre.
  • 9bre. Novembre; nove means 9.
  • Xbre. They use a Roman number in most cases, but you may see 10bre. In Italian it's Dicembre, and dieci means 10.

They wrote the year as numerals in the documents I was reading. But you're probably viewing these documents in a collection for a particular year. You should already know which year you're viewing. If your document isn't in a collection, or it mentions another year, check the Latin genealogical word list.

2. Vital Record Words

You'll get used to the other key words you need to focus on:

  • Die. Often the first word on a document, die means on the day. The document may begin Die 24 9bris 1814, meaning on the 24th day of November, 1814.
  • Nomen. When you're looking at a baptism record, try to find the word nomen. Right after it is the first name given to the baby.
  • Natus/Natu/Nata, ex, et. A bit above the baby's name, look for a variation of natus ex. This means born of, and right after the ex you'll see the baby's father's name followed by et, which means and. Then comes the baby's mother's name.

Here is an example of the key sentence in a baptism record, dissected for translation:

  • nata (if it ends in an a, the baby is a girl) means born
  • ex Joseph [last name] means of Joseph, as in the baby is born of Joseph, its father
  • et Rosa [last name] means and Rosa, so the baby is born of Joseph and Rosa
  • cui impom est nomen [impom is an abbreviation of impositus] Rosaria means they give to the baby the name Rosaria

The full sentence would look something like: Nata ex Joseph et Rosa cui impom est nomen Rosaria.

Now that you know the construction, it isn't so intimidating.

Marriage documents have keywords, too. Look for matrimonio tra near the beginning of the document. This means marriage between. Then find the groom's name and his parents, followed by the bride's name and her parents.

These compact little marriage records pack a lot of info into a small space. And the Latin genealogy words are nothing to be afraid of.
These compact little marriage records pack a lot of info into a small space. And the Latin genealogy words are nothing to be afraid of.

The marriage documents I viewed stacked 3 dates in a row. These were the dates when the couple posted their intention to marry, or their marriage banns. Then, in different handwriting, I saw another date and several names. This was the date on which the couple married in the church.

3. Latin Names

The last piece of the puzzle is the names. On these documents from an Italian church, the last names were in their original Italian. Most first names were in Latin. Once I got used to them, it wasn't a problem. Know that male names often end in -us or -ius, while female names end in -a. Here are some examples:

  • Antonius = Antonio or Anthony or Anton; the female is Antonia
  • Dominicus = Domenico or Domenick; the female is Dominica
  • Franciscus = Francesco or Francis or Frank; the female is Francisca
  • Joseph = Giuseppe or Josef; the female is Josepha
  • Joannes = Giovanni or John or Johann; the female is Joanna
  • Sebastianus = Sebastiano or Sebastian; the female is Sebastiana
  • Vincentius = Vincenzo or Vincent; the female is Vincenta

For some Italian names, they change an f to ph. Epiphanio is Epifanio and Philippo (sometimes shortened to Pho) is Filippo.

You can get used to Latin by looking for the key words you need and dissecting the sentences. This is exactly how I recommend people get used to Italian documents. Find the key words that help you understand:

This is an article I never thought I'd write because Latin documents made me cringe. But now I see how they work. Just pick out the dates names you need. Don't let them scare you.