Laying the Foundation for a Solid Family Tree

You can't skip a generation while building your family tree. You can't find your 3rd great grandparents without your 2nd great grandmother's name. That's why rule #1 of creating a new family tree is, "Start with what you know." You enter yourself, your parents, your grandparents. By doing so, you're starting the foundation of your family tree.

Census records, ship manifests, and draft registration cards were all I needed to build my U.S. family tree. Then I got hungry for more. More relatives, more generations. To expand my family tree further back in time, I needed "old-country" records.

Today my family tree just topped 37,000 people stretching back to the late 1600s. Are they all my blood relatives? No. In fact, last week I explained how to tally up your different relationships. I had just over 6,000 blood relatives in my family tree.

An audit of vital records from Grandpa's hometown proves how I'm related to almost everyone!

Who are the other 31,000 people in my tree, you ask? They are in-laws and in-laws' in-laws from my part of Italy. Ironically, I wrote a popular article years ago about who to cut out of your family tree. One of my main rules on who to cut involves in-laws. I add only the parents of an in-law to my family tree and no one else. Take my 1st cousin as an example. Her spouse is in my tree, of course, but I'm not going to research him. I'll add his parents, and that's all.

But for me, the in-law rule does not apply to my Italian nationals. When I reviewed vital records from one ancestral hometown, one thing became clear. Everyone in town had some relation to everyone else. The town was a bit isolated, so intermarriage of families happened over and over again.

If you have deep roots in a place where people stayed put for centuries, this is likely true for you, too.

I expanded my family tree with thousands of townspeople. It seemed there was almost no one in the vital records who didn't have a connection to me. I mentioned this to my husband who wondered, "How many people would be in your tree if you did add them all?" After telling him I couldn't even guess, I wondered what I could do to find the answer.

Reviewing Every Record

For my hometowns, I made spreadsheets of the names of people in every available vital record. What if I added a column and marked who's in my family tree?

Since my tree is so broad already, I'm starting my tally with the earliest records, beginning in 1809. My spreadsheet has a line item for each image downloaded from the Antenati website. I'm adding a number in the new column to show who is in my tree.

Some images have more than one document, so the number of people depends on the image. A two-page marriage image has two pairs of brides and grooms. If both couples fit into my tree, I score that line as 4 for 4 people. If only one couple fits, I score it as 2. A two-page birth image counts as 2 if both babies fit into my tree. I'm not counting the parents because they're going to have a lot of kids.

The tally is more about ensuring that I fit in everyone I can. The sum of these numbers isn't going to be a true count of who went into my family tree. Someone may be counted several times. They're born, they marry (maybe a few times), and they die. They're going to rack up a few numbers, but they're only one person.

What I really want to spot is the people in the documents who can't fit into my family tree. I'm making these people visible by highlighting their lines in yellow. As I scroll down the spreadsheet, any line without yellow tells me those people and their facts are in my tree. As my tree grows, I can always double back and re-check the yellow-highlighted lines. These people may fit into my family tree later.

Proving My Theory

The results so far are fantastic. As I check each document, many of the people are already in my tree. If not, then their parents are in there, and I can now add the child. The people I can't fit are usually from another town or my town's aristocrats. I come from pure peasant stock, so none of my people were marrying into the upper class.

A broad and solid foundation to your family tree may support your entire ancestral hometown.

I love the idea of checking the vital records one-by-one. Sometimes I capture a child who died young. Their death record may be the only chance for them to get into my tree. The best outcome is when I find proof that two people in my family tree with the same name are actually the same person. This exercise, which I've only just begun, has given me the proof I needed to merge a bunch of people together.

I'm seeing plenty of interest out there in One-Place Studies—investigating everyone in town to see how they fit together. This is what I've been doing for more than 10 years. Now I'm being methodical about it. As I review each vital record, it reminds me that the answers to many questions are out there. I don't want to overlook any of the clues.

Make sure your family tree has a solid foundation. Climb up each generation carefully. Then expand to your ancestors' siblings. Add their spouses, their spouses' families, and so on. With a broad foundation, you can piece together entire towns. Now you've created something of value to yourself, and to thousands of other people.

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!