Keep These Genealogy Resources Always Within Reach

Our genealogy research evolves over time. And we change our methods as we expand our family tree. I've gotten to a point where there are certain resources I must have handy as I work on my tree.

Here are 7 of my most-needed resources. Because of my heritage, some of my tools are Italian-specific. But I'm sure there are similar resources for your heritage.

1. Google Translate

After years of Italian research, I understand all the important genealogy words. Months, numbers, relationship words, and more. But sometimes a record mentions a mother-in-law (suocera), brother-in-law (cognato), or some other word I don't know or can't remember.

When that happens, I rely on Google Translate. It's critical when I'm faced with a free-form document explaining how a soldier died in the war. Or how someone died in a tavern while passing through another town.

I keep Google Translate on the always visible bookmarks toolbar of my web browser.

2. Google Maps and Bing Maps

I need both map websites on my bookmarks toolbar. When I'm reading an old vital record, and it includes a street name, I want to see the place! Google Street View is wonderful for seeing the house or the neighborhood. But Bing Maps does a better job of showing every last street name in my ancestral Italian towns.

Keep both types of maps handy. Each one has its benefits, and you'll get more value by using both.

If I'm looking up a street in Italy, I locate it on Bing Maps, then find the same, unmarked location on Google Maps. Now I can use Google Street View for a better perspective.

For U.S. addresses, Bing Maps includes the county name up at the top. Google Maps makes me read a Wikipedia entry to find the county name. I like how Bing does it.

3. Ancestry and Antenati Websites

Lately I've been searching for missing documents for whoever I'm viewing in my family tree. If I discover that someone born in Italy went to America, I need their immigration record. I go straight to Ancestry.com to find the document.

Let's say I find out that one of my distant cousins in Italy married a woman from another town. I go to the Antenati website and look for his wife's missing birth record.

Both websites are critical to my progress.

4. "Colle Sannita nel 1742"

I'm so lucky to have this book! It's a detailed listing of every family in my Grandpa's hometown in the year 1742. When I'm lucky enough to identify people who were alive in 1742, I can often find them in the book.

When I do, I learn the whole family's names and ages. I learn where they lived, what they did for a living, and what property they owned. The book details more than 500 families. If the publisher ever does the same for my other towns, I'll buy those books in a heartbeat.

A United States equivalent of this book might be land records and wills.

5. Street Name Changes for Grandpa's Hometown

The book about Colle Sannita tells how the ancient street names changed over time. Have you noticed how many European countries have streets named for FDR and JFK? Those weren't the original names.

Keep important notes handy by using the Plans tab of Family Tree Maker.

In Italy, they renamed many streets for Italian heroes (Vittorio Emmanuele, Umberto I, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Count Camillo di Cavour) or for important dates in their history (IV Novembre). I update the old addresses so I know where to visit in Grandpa's town.

I use the Plan tab of Family Tree Maker to keep my list of old street names and modern equivalents handy. When I spot an old street name in a vital record, I click over to my list to see the new name. Using the current street name allows Family Tree Maker to plot it on the map.

6. Translations of Italian Occupation Words

Old Italian vital records may show someone's occupation as something that doesn't translate. That's why I keep a spreadsheet of all the Italian job words I've found, and their English translations. I started by copying an old website that was making the rounds. Then I added more words I found that weren't on that website.

When I need the list, I right-click Excel in my Windows toolbar and choose my Italian occupations file. If you're using foreign-language documents, make a spreadsheet of words that trip you up.

Make sure all your family tree-related files are easy to find when you need them.

7. Grandparent/Ahnentafel Chart

Are you using my grandparent spreadsheet with Ahnentafel numbers in each cell? If so, keep it handy. Any time you discover a new direct ancestor, put them in that chart immediately. Your chart is a great way to really see which direct ancestors' names you're missing.

Each of the tools above is either physically on my desk (the book), or bookmarked on my computer for quick access. Make sure everything you need to forge ahead with your research is as handy as possible.

What are your must-have tools and resources when you're working on your family tree?

Put More Logic in Your Genealogical Research

When I'm adding people and facts to my family tree, I can feel my mind racing. I'm running through a decision tree to decide the next step.

What's a decision tree? It's a series of questions where each answer tells you which way to turn. I follow this type of path without realizing it. Let's take a look at this process and see how you can best apply it to your family tree research.

Fix an Illogical Birth Year

There's a man named Donato in my family tree with an estimated birth year of 1715. He had two children with an estimated birth year of 1790. Making babies at age 75 is definitely pushing it, even though Charlie Chaplin did so at age 73.

How would you figure out whether his age estimate is a mistake? Here's my thought process:

• In my family tree, Donato has an exact date of death in 1792. Let's take another look at that death record to see if it states his age.
• I have several versions of the death record, and each one says he was 57 years old.
• That would mean Donato was born in 1735, not 1715.

Does that work? Let's keep going through the logic.

• I have two wives for Donato. Is it possible that I combined two different men with the same name? Let's check each copy of his death record.
• No, I did not combine two men. One copy of his death record mentions both his wives by name.
• Donato's estimated birth year matches that of his first wife Anna, but where did it come from? Let's look at their family.
• My family tree has two children for Donato and Anna. It says they were born in 1740 and 1765. The 1715 estimate is 25 years earlier than their first child Teresa's 1740 birth year. That's my usual formula—25 years before the first child's birth is the estimated birth year.
• Is 1740 the correct birth year? Let's look more closely at Teresa.
• Teresa's husband was born in 1759 and they had a son in 1793. It's ridiculous to think she had a baby at age 53 with a man 19 years her junior.
• Where did I get her 1740 birth year? I have an 1800 death date for Teresa, so let's look at the death record.
• Aha! Teresa died in 1825, not 1800. I've never seen such a blatant error in my tree! Her 1825 death record says she was 65 years old.
• Now I know Teresa was born in 1760, not 1740. That means her parents' birth year estimate should be about 1735 (1760-25).

Donato's death record is logical after all. It says he was born in 1735, and that what the logic says, too. Problem solved!

When the data in your family tree makes no sense, get more data!

Narrow Down a Missing Death Date

Not all death records are easily available to us. When that happens, you can use logic to narrow down the death to a range of years. Here's the example of my 2nd great uncle Filippo Caruso.

• I have Filippo's 1868 birth record from their hometown in Italy.
• This helped me find him coming to America in 1903 to join another brother, Giuseppe, in Elmira, New York.
• I found him living with Giuseppe in both the 1910 and 1920 censuses in northern Pennsylvania. I needed to keep following Filippo through time.
• In the 1930 and 1940 censuses he is living with another brother, Nicola, in Hornellsville, New York.
• The date of the 1940 census with Filippo is 24 April 1940. What happened next?
• The Catholic church in Hornellsville has a lot of my Caruso relatives in its graveyard. Naturally, I discovered this after I made a trip to see the town!
• The Find a Grave website has a photo of Filippo's grave that says 1868–1940. That means he died soon after the 1940 census.
• Since I don't have Filippo's exact death date, I have to estimate his death date. I have it written as "Bet. 24 Apr–31 Dec 1940" because he was alive for the census, but dead by the end of the year.

Filippo's exact death date was unknown to me. But the big websites update record collections all the time. I went to Ancestry.com to see if the New York Death Index might contain Filippo. And it does! Now I know my 2nd great uncle died on 2 Sep 1940. My estimate was right, but this is much better.

Don't forget to repeat your search for missing records every six months or so.

After you track down every possible genealogy document for someone, it's time to check for newly available information.

Find a Missing Birth Date

I like to sort my Family Tree Maker file by Birth Date and work on someone whose exact birth date I don't know. For this example, I'll choose Anna Maria Basile. All I know about her right now is:

• She married Angelo Zeolla.
• They had a daughter in 1830 when Anna Maria was supposedly 26 years old.

The logic I've gained from Italian vital records tells me that based on her age, I should be able to find her marriage records. That will tell me her birth date and her parents' names. I should be able to find more of her children, and I may find her death record, unless she died after 1860. I say that because I know that available death records for Anna Maria's hometown end in 1860.

Here's the logic I'll follow:

• I'll search the Italian records for the marriage of Angelo Zeolla and Anna Maria Basile.
• Yes! I found their marriage documents in 1826. I learned Angelo and Anna Maria's exact birth dates and their parents' names.

Both sets of parents were already in my family tree. Once I connected Anna Maria to her parents, I saw that she's my 1st cousin 6 times removed.

To learn more about Anna Maria, I'll search for more of her children. Here's the process:

• I found their first child in 1827. Now I know which street Anna Maria lived on with her husband.
• On her third child's birth record, I found that Anna Maria's family moved to a different street in town.
• The couple had their last child in 1847.
• Neither Anna Maria nor Angelo died before 1860 when the available death records end.

How else can I narrow down when Anna Maria died? There is one other possibility. Anna Maria's oldest children could have married before 1860. Based on one child's marriage records, I know Anna Maria and her husband were alive in December 1853. I followed all her children and couldn't get any more facts about Anna Maria or her husband.

Using logic to search for the answers turned a random name into a true cousin.

The more you use census forms, ship manifests, vital records, etc., the more you learn. Think about how each document can help you the next time you have a question. Then use logic to do all you can to find the answer.

Discover Your Ancestral Hometown's History

My earliest family tree breakthroughs came from municipal websites. I was impressed, 15 years ago, by how many small towns in Italy had an information-packed website. Today, you may find a website for almost any town or township anywhere in your country or your old country.

I remember being very interested in my most recently discovered ancestral hometown. I went to the town's website and decided to send an email to the webmaster. To my delight, he wrote back to me with documents for the births and marriage of my great grandparents.

With the explosion of interest in ancestry, town webmasters may not be so generous today. They'd be overrun by requests!

Still, there's a lot you can learn by finding these town websites. My favorite thing to do with Italian town websites is search for their history (storia) page. Here's what I learned about one hometown: Sant'Angelo a Cupolo.

• The name of the town comes from (a) their patron saint, Michael the Archangel, shortened to Sant'Angelo; and (b) the fact that it sits up on a hill, or dome (cupolo). So, it's the town of St. Michael the Archangel which sits up on a hill.
• The first mention of the town is in a document from the year 1065!
• The most sacred landmark in their neighborhood is the statue of the Madonna del Rosario. The name of the church where my ancestors were baptized and married is Santa Maria Santissima del Rosario. The statue must be inside the church.
• The convent I saw on a distant hill on my first visit to the town dates back to 1775. That means every ancestor I can name also saw that building up on the hill.
• The typical dishes of the town are tagliatelle, cecatielli, fusilli, stuffed peppers, and tripe (eww).
• The main religious holidays for my great grandparents' neighborhood are the feasts of San Biagio and San Giuseppe (the name of their piazza).

Your ancestral hometown website can give you a taste of what it's like to live there, and how it was for your ancestors.

There's also information that's important to people who live in the town today:

• Photographs of the town.
• The town's elected officials. You may recognize some last names.
• Local businesses.
• Resolutions and ordinances.
• Local organizations.
• Places of worship.

Whoa! That last fact may have helped solve a long-standing mystery about my 2nd great grandfather, Antonio Saviano. I have a 1925 photo of him in his coffin, and there is a ribbon pinned to his jacked. It's hard to read, but it seems to match the name of the church in one of the town's neighborhoods. Maria Santissima delle Grazie translates to holy Mary of the graces. Maybe Antonio was a supporter of the church from his new home in the Bronx.

Let's try a U.S. town now. I lived in Southampton, Pennsylvania, for many years. Like many U.S. town websites, Southampton offers:

• A way to reach its different administrative departments.
• Meeting minutes from the town council.
• A calendar of upcoming events.
• The town's history, which began in 1685—ancient by U.S. standards.
• Historic photos.
• A list of townsmen who fought in the Revolutionary War. Very cool!

Hometowns across the United States are highly likely to have a website featuring a bit of their history.

If you don't know much about your ancestors' hometowns, it'll be a real treat to browse their websites.

What if your town doesn't have a website? My family tree contains the town of Spondon, Derbyshire, England. When I searched, I didn't find a town website for Spondon. What I did find is a bunch of websites providing some of the same information as the town websites.

• Wikipedia can give you the town's statistics and history.
• The FamilySearch.org wiki also has information about the town. Plus you get a list of the town's documents available on FamilySearch.
• You can find photos and maps for your town in your search results.
• Scour those search results for more insights into the town.

An image search for your ancestors' hometown may show you landmarks from their time.

I want to make sure my future visits to my ancestral hometowns happen on one of their feast days. That way, I'll have the chance to see many more townspeople than I have before. Find out about your town's attractions and their history before you visit. Or search for photos and feel as if you're there.

Give it a try!