An End-of-Year Tune Up for Your Family Tree

The end of the year is a perfect time to give your family tree a thorough check for errors. How many times during the past year did you:

• Add a person without checking if their birth date fits in with their parents and siblings?
• Change the way you record a particular fact, like someone's nickname?
• Accidentally attach a marriage date to the first spouse instead of the second?
• Update a person's birth year without changing their parents' estimated birth years?
• Attach a census fact to the youngest child in the family who wasn't born yet?

All kinds of human errors can happen while you're caught up in the genealogy zone. I generated two reports to find errors in my more than 33,000-person family tree:

• In Family Tree Maker, I ran the Data Errors Report.
• In Family Tree Analyzer, I opened a brand new GEDCOM file to look for the usual types of errors. If you don't use Family Tree Maker, create or download a GEDCOM file of your family tree. Then open it in Family Tree Analyzer and check out the error list.

Human error will always creep into your genealogy research. Here are 2 reports that will find the mistakes in your family tree.

I saved the Family Tree Maker report as a very long PDF file. It's long because it lists "The marriage date is missing" each time I don't know a couple's marriage date. That isn't an error. These early documents aren't available, so I'm ignoring that message.

The report also thinks it's an error when a husband and wife have the same last name. It isn't. I use only maiden names for the women in my family tree, but sometimes a Marino marries a Marino. What're you gonna do?

Here are the errors from the Family Tree Maker Data Errors Report that I'm fixing in my family tree:

• The birth date occurred before his/her father/mother was 13. This happens when new information changes my estimated birth date for a person. Let's say I add a person to my family tree with a birth year of 1800. If I know their parents' names, I give them an estimated birth year. My rule is to say the parents are 25 years older than their oldest child—until I find hard facts. So I'll give the 1800 baby's parents an estimated birth year of "Abt. 1775." But what if I discover that baby was born in 1782? If I don't redo the math for the parents' estimated birth year, I'll have a "parent too young" error.
• The birth date occurred after his/her mother was 60. I have two very large families where the children's births spanned way too many years. In one case, the oldest child was so much older than the rest that their birth year had to be wrong. I had to look at their children, too, to make sure I used a valid date estimate.
• The birth date occurred more than one year after his/her father died. This happened with people born in the 1700s. All I could do was adjust the child's birth year to the year their father died.
• The birth date occurred more than one year after his/her mother died. Same problem as above.
• Baptism date occurred before individual's birth date. This was my typo, and I' glad the report pointed it out.
• The individual was married before the age of 13. Unfortunately I have a couple of cases where that's true.
• The marriage occurred after the death date. A man's wife died before him, and I marked his death date as After her date. Then he remarried, and I forgot to delete that death estimate.

These reports will find conflicting facts in your family tree.

• The marriage occurred after the spouse's death. I must have given a marriage date to the first spouse instead of the second. It's too easy to make that mistake.
• Event immigration (or divorce or marriage) contains no data. I can't explain how some of these happened, so I appreciate this safety net.
• This individual's children sort order may be incorrect. I thought that was automatic. I may have clicked the wrong button on this family.
• Person does not have a preferred spouse set. Somehow I added marriage date without adding a spouse's name.
• The birth date is missing. These are living people I added recently. I don't know how old they are, so I'll have to add estimates based on their parents' ages.
• The name may include a nickname. I had a man's nickname in parentheses with his name. Now I've changed the nickname to an alternate Name fact.
• Residence date occurred before individual's birth date. The 1940 census says where the family lived in 1935. It may be the same house or the same place/town. Twice I gave the 1935 address to kids born after 1935. Now I've deleted those residence facts.
• The age at death is greater than 120. This is usually not an error. If I don't have a document to tell me when someone died, but I know they were dead when their child died, I'll say they died "Bef. [the child's death date]." This error report isn't taking the "Before" into account.
• The burial date occurred before his/her death. This was my typo, but yikes! What a thought.

Find those troublesome families in your family tree with one of these genealogy error reports.

When you're working in Family Tree Maker, the software will make an alert sound if:

• You add a baby to a parent who's too young, too old, or too dead.
• A bride or groom is under the age of 13.
• A husband and wife have the same last name.

I appreciate those warnings—except for the last one. But if you update someone's birth date later, you may not get the warning. That's what these reports are good for.

Give your family tree an error cleanse before the new year. Start off 2022 with a cleaned-up, fine-tuned, fortified family tree.

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.