How to Find the True Cousins in Your Family Tree

I've been on a genealogy rampage lately—but in a good way. I'm tapping into my enormous database of vital records from my ancestral hometowns. And I'm using it to add about 100 people a day to my family tree.

Everyone from my ancestors' hometowns can fit into my family tree somehow. But right now, I'm going after my distant cousins. Here's how I'm doing it:

• I pick one of my direct ancestors, like a 4th great grandfather.
• I locate every one of their children.
• I find out who each child married, and I search for their children.
• I keep searching for children's children until I reach the end of the available vital records.

It's a blast to add whole families to my tree that some distant cousin is going to find through an Ancestry hint.

What happens when you research your ancestors siblings? Your family tree grows to include hundreds or thousands of blood relatives.

With all this recent growth, as of this writing, I have 36,434 people in my tree. Many of them have crazy relationships to me. Like step-father of the son-in-law of the 2nd great uncle of my great aunt's husband.

Now that I'm concentrating on blood relatives, I wondered how many of each type of cousin I've located. How many 1st cousins 3 times removed have I found? How many 3rd cousins 4 times removed?

To find out, I exported a current GEDCOM from my Family Tree Maker file. (Make sure you are the root person in your GEDCOM file.) Then I opened it with Family Tree Analyzer. I clicked Main Lists to see a spreadsheet view of everyone in my family tree. Then I clicked the Export menu at the top of the program and chose Individuals to Excel.

In one second flat, I had a spreadsheet with all the facts and people from my tree! I opened the file and sorted it by the RelationToRoot column. Then I filtered out any blank relationships, hiding them from view. (Family Tree Analyzer doesn't include crazy relationships like the one I mentioned above.)

Use Family Tree Analyzer to instantly export all your family tree facts to a spreadsheet. Then sort and filter to see how many types of cousins you've found.

Now I can click with my mouse and pull it down to select relationships of the same kind. Then I can see at the bottom of the spreadsheet how many rows I've selected. Here's what I have.

I'm using an abbreviation below that I learned from another genealogist. C means cousin and R means removed, so 1C3R is a 1st cousin 3 times removed.

# of First Cousins in my family tree:

• 1C–5
• 1C1R–30
• 1C2R–108
• 1C3R–97
• 1C4R–190
• 1C5R–259
• 1C6R–166
• 1C7R–65
• 1C8R–10

# of Second Cousins in my family tree:

• 2C–44
• 2C1R–172
• 2C2R–29
• 2C3R–193
• 2C4R–439
• 2C5R–339
• 2C6R–114
• 2C7R–15

# of Third Cousins in my family tree:

• 3C–101
• 3C1R—112
• 3C2R—116
• 3C3R—556 Whoa!
• 3C4R—485
• 3C5R—179
• 3C6R—29

# of Fourth Cousins in my family tree:

• 4C–18
• 4C1R–21
• 4C2R–215
• 4C3R–361
• 4C4R–205
• 4C5R–44

# of Fifth Cousins in my family tree:

• 5C–16
• 5C1R–86
• 5C2R–159
• 5C3R–70
• 5C4R–44

# of Sixth Cousins in my family tree:

• 6C–19
• 6C1R–28
• 6C2R–16
• 6C3R–20

# of Seventh Cousins in my family tree:

• 7C–9
• 7C1R–6
• 7C2R–3

# of Grand Aunts and Uncles in my family tree:

• grandaunts and uncles–14
• 1st great grandaunts and uncles–46
• 2nd great grandaunts and uncles–68
• 3rd great grandaunts and uncles–103
• 4th great grandaunts and uncles–89
• 5th great grandaunts and uncles–77
• 6th great grandaunts and uncles–77
• 7th great grandaunts and uncles–9

# of Great Grandparents in my family tree:

• 1st great grandparents–8
• 2nd great grandparents–16
• 3rd great grandparents–31 only 1 missing!
• 4th great grandparents–53
• 5th great grandparents–84
• 6th great grandparents–108
• 7th great grandparents–72
• 8th great grandparents–20
• 9th great grandparents–5

I love seeing this breakdown of my people. I'm astonished to learn that I've identified three of my seventh cousins twice removed. The only thing keeping me from finding 8th cousins is a lack of records. But I'm psyched to keep adding more and more cousins. And their spouses. And their spouses' families.

You say you don't venture beyond your direct ancestors? These cousins are your people, too. Does everyone ask you if you've finished your family tree yet? Tell them you have several hundred cousins still to find. And their spouses. And their spouses' families. Tell them this is one puzzle that's never finished!

Find out what else you can do with Family Tree Analyzer:

• 4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer
• Did I Find a Scandal in My Family Tree?
• Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates

Family Tree Research Takes Time to Bear Fruit

Twenty years ago I knew absolutely nothing about my great grandmother in Ohio. I met her only once when I was five years old.

When I was about to leave for my 2003 honeymoon in Italy, my aunt mentioned my great grandmother's last name. Caruso. I never knew what it was before that moment.

After visiting Italy, I wanted to know more and more about my ancestors. Great grandma Caruso was one of my biggest mysteries. Relatives couldn't agree on her first name. A cousin who grew up with great grandma Caruso remembered her saying she was from "Pisqua Lamazza." Well, that isn't a town. But it was a clue.

Maria Rosa was barely a memory for me. Now I have so much great information!

Here are all the puzzle pieces that had to come together for me to trace great grandma Caruso's past. Once I cracked her mystery, I was able to climb five generations up her family tree.

Immigration Record

I had to figure out what town she came from that sounded like "Pisqua Lamazza." I tried a simple trick that I've used over and over again. I searched Ancestry for anyone named Caruso coming to New York Harbor in the early 1900s. In the search results, I paid attention only to each person's hometown.

And then I saw it. Pescolamazza. That was it! I could imagine someone with a heavy accent pronouncing that town the way great grandma Caruso did. Now that I had the name of her hometown, I went to Google Maps. But Pescolamazza doesn't exist. A separate Google search had the answer. The town of Pescolamazza had changed its name to Pesco Sannita in 1947.

To my delight, Pesco Sannita is very close to my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita. And all my other ancestral hometowns.

Knowing the town name, I found a 1906 ship manifest showing the arrival of Maria Rosa Caruso in America. The only problem was, it said she was married.

For years I wasn't sure this was my great grandmother on the ship manifest. Then I saw the truth was hiding in plain sight.

Town Hall Record

Based on her age written on the July 1906 ship manifest, Maria Rosa Caruso was born in 1881 in today's Pesco Sannita. An Italian friend offered to go to the town hall to request Maria Rosa's 1881 birth record for me.

The town clerk said Maria Rosa wasn't born there. He suggested she might be from another town. How disappointing!

Marriage Record

In 2009 I visited the New York State Archives. I found out my great grandparents married on 29 November 1906 in Steuben County. I had the certificate number, so I sent away for the document.

I realized that Maria Rosa married my great grandfather four months after arriving in America. Four months!

Her marriage certificate managed to get both of her parents' names wrong. They listed Maria Rosa Caruso's father as Francesco deBenevento. This was obviously a misunderstanding. He was Francesco Caruso from the province of Benevento. For her mother, it said only Maria Luigia. No last name.

But now I had a document saying she was 26 years old in late 1906. So she wasn't born in 1881. She was born in 1880. The Pesco Sannita town clerk would have checked the index of the book of 1881 births. He didn't look beyond the year we requested.

They're great to have, but your immigrant ancestor's new-world documents often have bad information.

Another Cousin

It's so important to put your family tree online. Another cousin found me and shared a lot of information about the Caruso family. He'd been to Pesco Sannita a few times. Too bad he didn't find me sooner.

Thanks to him, I learned the names of all the Caruso brothers. They were working for the railroad before sending for their only sister. They must have worked with my great grandfather and arranged for him to marry their sister. That's why my great grandparents married so quickly.

I still wondered if the 1906 ship manifest was the right one. It said she was already married. When I took a closer look at it, I could see a very light "S" written right over the "m" for married. A few lines above her, someone had lightly written "single" over the "m" for married. Now, at last, I knew I'd really found her.

Vital Records

I'd spent a few years viewing microfilmed Italian records at a Family History Center. I was concentrating on another branch of the family. It would take many more years before I'd get around to Pesco Sannita.

That all changed in 2017. I learned the Italian government was putting digitized vital records online for free. The Antenati website gave me access to tons of records from Pesco Sannita.

My first stop was the 1880 birth records. Not only did I find Maria Rosa's birth record—with her parents' full and proper names—I discovered she was a twin! Sadly, the second-born twin, Luca, was stillborn.

To this day, I'm continuing to explore the Pesco Sannita vital records to grow Maria Rosa's family. The early drip, drip, drip of clues about my great grandmother is now a full-on stream of facts.

All kinds of obstacles may keep you from climbing to that next generation in your family tree. Solving the mystery of a single ancestor can take:

• a bunch of different documents
• some imagination, and
• access to just the right records.

Gather every shred of evidence you can, and if that isn't enough, gather more!

How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website

UPDATED 31 MAY 2022 with a much easier way to get to the high-resolution version of any image.

UPDATED 2 APR 2022 with an insanely easy way to zoom in on an image.

People are still upset about the redesign of the Italian ancestry website, Antenati.

Take heart! You can master the Antenati site with a few key tips.

Why They Changed the Website

There was a time when the Antenati site went down almost every day. Since the change, I found the images were slow to load a couple of times. And only once did I find the site unavailable. That's a big improvement.

The redesign makes site maintenance easier for their team—no doubt. It's a huge website! The homepage today says its contains:

• 65 different state archives
• 1,383,064 register books
• 100,761,770 images.

As a 25-year website maintenance veteran, I get why the Antenati team wants to make their lives easier. Now let's make your life easier.

Adapting to the Changes

Create Source Citations. Every Antenati document in my family tree has a source citation that's partly wrong now. UPDATE: The old source's image URL now takes you to image 1 of your document's register book. But my citations do spell out the province, town, type of record, and year of the document. Even with a bad URL, that is enough information for anyone to go see the original.

Here's one of my old citations:

From the Benevento State Archives: http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Benevento/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Baselice/Morti/1856/199/007850708_01745.jpg.html

You can see the document is from Benevento, from the town of Baselice, and from the death records for 1856. So my old citations aren't a complete loss.

Your new Antenati documents need a new style of source citation. Here's my template.

My new Antenati source citation format is this:

From the xxx State Archives, YEAR TYPE, TOWN, document xx, image xx of xx at book url
image URL

I keep that text (and so much more) in my Notebook.txt file that's always open on my computer.

Using the same image as an example, I'd change:

• "xxx State Archives" to "Benevento State Archives"
• "YEAR TYPE, TOWN" to "1856 nati, Baselice"
• "document xx, image xx of xx" to "document 65, image 35 of 41"
• "book url" to "https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/detail-registry/?s_id=757415"
• "image URL" to "https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/wWK9rlj/full/full/0/default.jpg" (Find out how to get the image URL below.)

Altogether, the new source citation is:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1856 nati, Baselice, document 65, image 35 of 41 at https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/detail-registry/?s_id=757415
https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/wWK9rlj/full/full/0/default.jpg

This format gives you all the information you need to go see the document for yourself, online or in person. It includes the URL of the register book and the URL of the high-resolution image of the document.

Navigate Smartly. Getting to the register book you want is easier than it was before. We used to click a province, click a time period, click our town, click a document type, and click a year. That got you to the right collection of images.

Now I start at the homepage and enter the name of the town I want. Then I can narrow down the results. Maybe I want only birth records. I can scroll down the town's results page and click Nati below the Tipologia heading. Then I can either scroll through the years or click Espandi below the Anno heading, and choose my year.

Note: I always view the site in Italian. If you haven't figured out that Anno means year and Nati means birth, you need to get grounded. The FamilySearch wiki is a great resource for learning Italian genealogy words. Memorize a few words and make things much easier.

Now that you're looking at the register you want, the best thing to do is look for the index pages. If the book cover is image 1, click the forward arrow at the bottom of the viewer to make sure the index isn't image 2 or 3.

If the index isn't in the beginning of the book, you need to go to the end. But the Antenati site doesn't have a button to let you jump to the end. You need to use the thumbnail view menu. Here's how:

• Looking at your register book, click what's meant to be a page view icon on the right (see #1 in the image below) and choose "Right" to display thumbnails on the right. (Not all books have true thumbnails right now.)
  
• Scroll down the thumbnails and click any one to jump to that image.

Once you know what and where to click, the new Antenati site is easy to master.

Zoom in to Read. The index and documents may be too small to read. But the plus button at the bottom of the viewer doesn't work, right? Actually, the plus button is completely unnecessary! Once I realized this, I avoided tons of frustration.

To zoom in on any image, simply click the image! Click it again to zoom in further. I didn't realize this until April 1st when the 1950 U.S. Census was released on the NARA website. They use an almost identical image viewer, and I found out you can simply click the image to zoom in.

Get the High-Resolution Document Image. They must not want us to find and download the high-resolution images like we used to. Why else would they make it so tough to get to them?

While it is a big inconvenience, I've turned this process into a habit. Now it's second nature for me to get the document image I want.

This section is all new as of 31 May 2022.

Getting the vital record you need from the new Antenati website takes a few more clicks. Don't worry! It'll become routine after a few tries.

The Antenati site no longer gives us a button to download a high resolution image of the document we want. That feels like such a tease. But here's a solution for you.

Start by going to the page you want within any register book. As you click from page to page, you should notice that the last section of the URL (after the last slash) in the address bar of your web browser changes with each page. Copy that last section and paste it into this URL that you will keep in a safe place, replacing only the word TARGET:

https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg

For example, I'm looking at a document and the URL ends in 5K6QgbP. If I paste that into my template URL, replacing the word TARGET, I get https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/5K6QgbP/full/full/0/default.jpg. If you click that link you'll see the document all by itself. You can click the image to enlarge it. And you can right-click and save that wonderful high-resolution image.

This may seem like a pain, but wow is it easier than the method I've been using since last November!

I like to leave all the browser tabs open until I complete my source citation. Copy the register book URL, the image URL, and the page number in the register.

Adapt and thrive. It's not that bad once you get used to it, and we're still getting a free resource that's intensely valuable. Remember:

• Gather source citation details as you go.
• Use the hidden thumbnail page navigator to get around.
• Zoom in by simply clicking the image once or twice.
• Paste the end of the URL into your template URL and get that high-resolution image.

The old website was no picnic. Make this one work for you.

And speaking of Italian vital records:

• How to Read an Italian Birth Record
• How to Read an Italian Death Record
• How to Read Italian Marriage Records

Why DNA Matches Appear Closer Than They Are

DNA match Maria and I are 6th cousins twice removed. I've done the research work, as has she. My 7th great grandparents Domenico and Filippa are her 5th great grandparents. Our relationship is through my paternal grandfather's branch. According to Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project, she and I should share 0–45 cMs because we're so distant. But we don't. We share 79 cMs (centiMorgans). That's enough for us to be solid 3rd cousins.

A chart on the ISOGG Wiki says there's an 11% chance that 6th cousins testing with AncestryDNA^® will share any DNA. And this is my 6th cousin twice removed!

Exclude Smaller Amounts of DNA

So why do some DNA matches appear to be much closer cousins than they are? The answer in this case is endogamy. Endogamy is a long history of marrying within a closed community. And it ran rampant among my ancestors. My roots run deep in a handful of neighboring hills towns in the Campania region of Italy. Populations stayed put for centuries. Everyone married someone from town or someone from the next town.

Keep in mind your 3rd–4th cousin DNA matches may be more distant than they appear.

All that swimming in the same gene pool makes for some complex relationships. But what if DNA match Maria and I have another, more distant relationship? If we do, then our shared 79 cMs may be the sum total of smaller, unrelated amounts. We may be getting up to 45 cMs from Domenico and Filippa and 34 more cMs from other shared ancestors.

If your DNA testing service has a chromosome browser (FamilyTreeDNA or 23andMe^®), use it to focus on the longer stretches of DNA you share with a match. If you exclude the very short spans, you're left with a more realistic amount of meaningful shared DNA. That smaller number may point to your true relationship.

Find Another DNA Source

For reasons I can't understand, AncestryDNA doesn't offer a chromosome browser. That means I can't focus on only the long stretches of DNA Maria and I share. Luckily, I've found our main relationship. To account for the extra DNA, I need to expand the common branches of our family trees. I need to look for other relationships.

I found a possibility, but it requires one logical assumption. Maria's great grandfather Giuseppe Basilone was born in about 1852. There are only two Giuseppe Basilones born in the town at that time. (Find out how I know there are only two.) There are no available marriage or death records to prove my theory. But there is logic.

I took the bold step of merging two people in my family tree:

• 1852 Giuseppe Basilone of unknown ancestry, and
• 1851 Giuseppe Onofrio Basilone, who happens to be my 2nd cousin 4 times removed.

When documents are not available, thorough research around your person can help.

Why was I comfortable doing this? Because:

• Giuseppe Onofrio was 32 years older than his wife when he married in 1904. (I have the 1904 date from his wife's birth record.)
• The Giuseppe I'm trying to connect to had 4 children from 1878–1886, and then they stopped coming.
• It's logical that Giuseppe's first wife died after 1886, and he remarried a much younger woman.
• The only other possible match is a Giuseppantonio (not Giuseppe) Basilone. He's a dead end. There's no annotation about his marriage, and there are no birth records for his children.

Still, this is a theory, so I wrote a detailed note about it in my family tree. If I'm correct, DNA match Maria is now also my 5th cousin once removed. This relationship is through my paternal grandmother. My 5th great grandparents Paolo and Giuseppa are her 4th great grandparents. We just got closer! That relationship is good for about 21 cMs, or a range of 0–80 cMs. This extra relationship would explain why Maria and I share 79 cMs but are distant cousins.

Two distant relationships added together can seem like a much closer cousin.

Don't Get Hung Up on Estimates

What does this mean to you when you're checking out your DNA matches? Once you get past 2nd or 3rd cousins, every other match may be more distant than they appear. This is especially true if you come from an endogamous population like me. Other well-known endogamous populations are:

• Acadians
• Amish
• Arabs
• Ashkenazi Jews
• French Canadians
• Mennonites
• Newfoundlanders
• Polynesians

Think of the early settlers of Colonial America. Their community was pretty small, so how many marital choices did one have? This was the case with all my semi-isolated Italian towns.

Don't fret about the estimated cousin relationship if the facts don't support it. Instead, look for other, hidden relationships.

Keep Genealogy Exciting With This One List

I abandoned my annual genealogy goals in the year of the plague—2020. It seemed pointless to be so disciplined when it felt like the end of the world.

Did I give up on my family tree research? Just the opposite. I've become more productive at building my family tree. Even before I retired from my job three months ago, I was spending time on genealogy every single day. Now that I am retired, my family tree is my full-time job.

Do you ever worry about becoming bored with your genealogy research? I don't. The research routine I've settled into keeps me engaged and entertained. Every day!

The secret is to (a) have a list of tasks you can work on, and (b) do whatever you're in the mood to do. On any given day, I may pick a task and go at it, or jump from task to task, or let my findings lead me where they want to go.

Create a list of genealogy research tasks for yourself, and you can always do what makes you happy on any given day. Let me explain my list, and you can think about what to put on yours.

Steady progress on your family tree is always entertaining when you have tasks to suit your mood.

My list revolves around my ultimate goal for my family tree. This is not for everyone, but I know I've inspired some of you. My goal is to connect everyone from my ancestral hometowns in one massive family tree.

While researching a town in Italy, I found connections between everyone in town. All my ancestral hometowns are rural and isolated. Everyone married someone else in town or from a neighboring town. And all my hometowns are neighboring towns.

My towns' vital records are available online. After finding as many of my direct ancestors as possible, I wanted to fill out each individual family. Who did my direct ancestors' siblings marry? Who were their children? I can answer those questions, limited only by the years for which vital records are available.

In trying to connect everyone from my towns, I have an enormous family tree with well over 34,000 people. Lately, by doing whatever makes me happy, I've been adding an average of 100 people a day to my tree.

Here are my favorite genealogy tasks. Each day I start working on whichever one will make me happy at that moment.

Task 1. Research people with approximate birth dates.

There are lots of people in my tree without an exact birth date. For many of them, all I need to do is search for the right document.

My favorite task right now is finding a date of birth for everyone possible.

First I sort everyone in my Family Tree Maker file by birth date. I began this task with people born in the 1780s. Italian civil records begin in 1809, but the early marriage records can include a birth date.

I'm up to people born in 1827. When I find someone's birth record, I add their parents. Then I search for all their siblings and see who each one married. I find each couple's children and the families of each spouse. The people add up fast, which is why I'm averaging 100 people a day.

Task 2. Fill in missing facts in my document tracker.

When I add a genealogy document to my family tree, I record it in a single spreadsheet I call my document tracker. I sort the 5,000+ lines by last name with one line per person.

One year my genealogy goal was to search for missing U.S. census records for the people in my document tracker. Now I'm going line-by-line finding missing vital records for every Italian.

If I find a birth, marriage, and death record for someone, I color the line green so I know I've found everything. If any dates are outside the range of available vital records, I note that and color the line blue. That tells me I've done all I can.

Task 3. Fit everyone from my Colle Sannita spreadsheet into my tree.

One of my 2019 goals was to transcribe the 1809–1813 birth records from my Italian towns in a spreadsheet. Now I'm focusing on my Grandpa Iamarino's hometown of Colle Sannita. I'm working to fit every single baby from these years into my tree.

The spreadsheet tells me the baby's name and birth date, and the parents' names and ages. Sometimes I find that the parents are already in my tree, so all I have to do is add the baby.

Other times I need to find out who the baby grew up to marry, and then see if I have that family in my tree. One way or another, I can fit almost everyone in. I'm currently down to line 145 in the spreadsheet, and there are only seven babies I can't place in my family tree. Yet.

Task 4. Download and label more Italian vital records.

My 2nd great grandmother was born in Santa Paolina. I find that many people from that town married someone from the next town, Tufo. Now I'm downloading Tufo record images from the Antenati website. Finding the Tufo birth, marriage, or death records I need to complete a family is so satisfying.

Each time I download a vital record, I rename it so the people are searchable on my computer. For example, one two-page record image from 1821 is on my computer as:

18 Michele Pasquale Romano di Giovanni & 19 Giovanni Raffaele Grosso di Domenico.jpg

The "di" tells me the name of the baby's father. This makes it easy for me to quickly find every child born to one couple. I can search my computer for "romano di giovanni" and check each result to see the mother's name.

I'm including the record numbers so a collection of files is in chronological order. I may need #18 Michele now, but later on, I'll probably need #19 Giovanni. When I do, I'll find his record easily.

I love viewing all the vital records and renaming them. It helps me get familiar with the last names from any given town. I can usually spot an out-of-towner by their unfamiliar last name.

Find a genealogy task you really enjoy. Then work on it whenever the mood strikes you.

Task 5. Reduce the size of huge document images.

Last year I learned a better way to save files in Photoshop to reduce their file size. (I'll explain this if anyone is interested.) My family tree has tons of bloated census pages, immigration records, and more. When the mood strikes me, I search for the fattest files and resave them. Then I replace the image in my tree. This helps reduce the overall size of my massive family tree file.

Task 6. Follow up on leads in my research notebook.

I have a text file I work in every single day called notebook.txt. It has my to-do list, information I need to keep handy, and it tells me where I left off on all the tasks above.

The file also contains leads and project ideas I've added over the years. One project revolves around photos I took in Italy. They are photos of monuments to the young men from three towns who died in World War I and II. My project is to fit each one of the men into my family tree.

My text file also has notes about some of my DNA matches, where I left off with genealogy hunches, and more. It even has a daily schedule of what I want my retirement to look like. I love to be productive, and my family tree is more than enough to keep me active and happy for the rest of my life.

What are you doing to keep up your genealogy research momentum?

Create an Ancestor Profile from Vital Records

How much can you ever know about your peasant ancestors? I spend all my time reading 19th-century vital records from a handful of rural Italian towns. Most records contain X's instead of signatures because almost everyone was illiterate.

In places like these, you can't expect to find your ancestors in the local society pages. No one could read, so there wouldn't be a need for such newspaper coverage. All you have are birth, marriage, and death records. Well, almost.

You can find some general local history about your ancestral towns. Last week I wrote about using Google Books to learn more about the places where your ancestors lived. You may find a good reference book in a library, too.

Without published stories, what can you learn about your family from vital records and a book or two? Here are examples from my extended family tree.

Successful Man Suffers Many Losses

When you find every available vital record for a family in your tree, you'll begin to see a snapshot of their lives.

Nicolangelo Nista was born in 1788 in my ancestral hometown of Colle Sannita, Italy. Piecing together the vital records for his immediate family, I discovered:

• His first wife and two of their daughters died on August 2, August 7, and August 9, 1834. The dates make it reasonable to think a sickness was going through the town at the time. That year saw many more deaths than the surrounding years.
• Four of his other children had already died before 1834.
• His wife's death left Nicolangelo with six children to raise, ranging in age from 18 to two years old.
• He married a younger widow the following year.
• They had four children together, two of whom died in infancy.
• His sister Nicolina was luckier in life, despite dying at the age of 46. She had at least two children who grew up, married, raised a family, and outlived her.
• His brother Giovanni became a priest and lived to be 78 years old.
• Nicolangelo lived to be more than 72 years old. The available death records for the town end in 1860, and Nicolangelo was still alive.
• He was a proprietario—an owner of property or a business. Despite his losses, Nicolangelo is likely to have lived a comfortable life.

Earthquake Hits Home

The same town of Colle Sannita has suffered several earthquakes. The 1962 earthquake damaged my grandfather's childhood home so badly, they had to demolish it. On my second visit to Grandpa's town, my cousins showed me the stone front doorstep. It was all that remained of his home.

I have a list of the 40 victims of an earthquake in Colle Sannita way back on 26 July 1805. Civil records for the town begin in 1809, yet I've managed to place a few of the victims in my family tree. One of them was my 38-year-old 5th great grandaunt, Libera Nigro.

See how one piece of local history from your ancestral hometown can add very real context to your family tree.

Libera and her husband Giovanni had three daughters that I've found. Sadly, Libera and two of her daughters, ages four and five, died in the 1805 earthquake. Without that list of victims, I would have no record of little Grazia and Anna Maria, my 1st cousins 6 times removed.

Suffering and Serendipity

I love to put entire families together from my ancestral hometowns. In doing so, I often see cases of several children dying young in the same family. It's so sad to see a couple name their baby Giuseppe, for example, only to have him die so soon. They name the next son Giuseppe, and he dies young. Then they name the next one Giuseppe. Each time I see this happen, I say, "That's a doomed name for them."

It also makes me sad to see a husband and wife die on the same day or a few days apart. These death records don't include a cause of death, but we may assume they died of the same cause. Maybe they both caught the flu or had some sort of accident.

One thing I noticed years ago always makes me laugh. You see, most of the old-country Italians in my family tree were poor. They usually gave their children one or two first names. For example, my 5th great grandparents named one son Angelo, and the other Tommaso Antonio.

Sometimes I find a well-to-do family. What's funny is that these richer families often give their children four or five first names. One such family named their children:

• Angela Maria Lorenza
• Maria Luisa Barbara Margarita
• Maria Amalia Carmela Camilla
• Domenico Maria (he got short-changed)
• Francesco Saverio Gaetano Achille
• Carolina Maria Vincenza

Pay attention to each detail from vital records. You may find common patterns like this.

Their father had the honorary titles of Don and Baron. At different times his occupation was landowner (proprietario), gentleman (galantuomo), or well-to-do (benestante). I always joke that these families were rich enough to afford more names for their babies.

The keys to developing a profile from vital records are:

• Find every available vital record for the immediate family.
• Notice the timing of events.
• Search for historical points of interest, like earthquakes, famine, disease, and war.

What stands out about your ancestors' vital records?

And speaking of vital records:

• Tackling Several Genealogy Projects on the Fly
• Solve Genealogy Mysteries Step-by-Step
• Use What You Know to Break Down a Brick Wall

Surprising Free Finds from Google Books

Long-time reader of this blog, Suzanne, found two books that mention my great uncle. She had no luck on Newspapers.com, but she found him when she searched Google Books.

She encouraged me to pick up and continue the search. Two legal briefs help explain how my immigrant uncle and my great grandfather came to own a building. They were leasing it in 1905 from a brewing company—a company that may have had some bad lawyers. My ancestors parlayed this lease into ownership of the building where my mom was born.

What else might I find on Google Books? As usual, I didn't have much luck in searching for the names of my ancestors. Changing tactics, I searched for the names of my ancestral Italian hometowns. I searched for Santa Paolina, a small town in southern Italy, and I made a surprising discovery.

Imagine finding this one-of-a-kind biography of your ancestor.

In my family tree is the 1873 birth record for my 2nd cousin 4 times removed, Fioravanti Ricciardelli. His great grandfather, Emanuele Ricciardelli, is my 5th great grandfather. One search result in Google Books is "History of the Municipalities of Hudson County, New Jersey," written by Daniel Van Winkle in 1924. This isn't what I expected when searching for my town.

The book details the lives of Hudson County's notable citizens, including my cousin Fioravanti. Thanks to the page-and-a-quarter devoted to my cousin, I learned:

• His father, also named Emanuele Ricciardelli, was a "Red Shirt" who fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi for Italy's freedom.
• I knew from vital records that Emanuele and his wife had only 4 children in Santa Paolina. Now I know why. The book says the family moved to another town that's a half hour away by modern transportation. That's unexpected. They may have had more children in their new town.
• My cousin Fioravanti was an accomplished musician, business owner, and inventor.
• In America, he married a distant cousin from Santa Paolina, also named Ricciardelli. They had 9 children in New Jersey.
• The book says Fioravanti raised and educated all his siblings.

This is the type of detail I never get to learn about my Italian relatives. Even if I had discovered the family in U.S. documents, they wouldn't give me this much detail. Without this book, this family was a dead end. What a wonderful find!

Start Your Google Books Search

To search Google Books, go to google.com and start a search as usual. Then click "Books" below the search box. Note: You may have to click the word "More" before you see the "Books" option. Next, for more satisfying results, click the words "Any view" and choose "Preview and full view." Now you can fully explore the best results. If you find something you want, you may be able to download the book as a PDF. Note: You can save a step by going straight to https://books.google.com.

With this Google Books search, I can learn more about the WWI battle that almost killed my grandfather. What can you find?

Get creative with your searches. You never know what you'll find. Think about:

• People and Places. Try family and town names from your family tree. I found an 1888 Italian book about the history of my ancestral hometowns. It tells me their populations at the time.
• Historical Events. Which wars or other important events had an impact on your family? I'll search for the World War I battle where they captured my grandfather and imprisoned him for a year.
• Maps. I'd love to find a book with old maps of my towns of interest. The closest I came is a book with a folded-up map in the back. They didn't scan the unfolded map!
• Workplaces. Search for the company where your ancestor worked. What was happening when your relative worked there?

Devote one hour to Google Books and you'll understand more about your ancestors' lives. It's a massive resource. Thank you to Suzanne for reminding me to give it more attention.

And speaking of searching:

• Searching for the Missing Link in Your Family Tree
• Let a Few Quick Wins Reinvigorate Your Genealogy Research
• How to Avoid Searching for Non-Existent Genealogy Records

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?