How DNA Can Help Find Your Ancestral Hometown

Some people think seeing your DNA pie chart is a waste of time and money. When I saw my first DNA results in 2012, I'll admit, I was very disappointed. But in 10 years, the number of DNA testers and the technology used for analysis have grown.

AncestryDNA updated their DNA Communities recently. I checked the results for my parents, my husband, and me. My first thought was, "Yeah, you got that right." The communities matched exactly what I know based on the paper trail.

It's amazing to see how specific our results are as compared to 10 years ago.

Mom and I have the South Benevento & North Avellino Provinces community. That's exactly how I always describe where our ancestors came from. When I zoom into our communities on AncestryDNA, the locations of my direct ancestors begin to pop up. They form a corridor that stretches from northern Avellino up through southern Benevento. That's the cradle of my genetic matter right there.

The updated AncestryDNA communities are too accurate to ignore.

This is all very nice to see. Only later did the true value of these communities hit me. What if you don't know exactly where your people came from? What if family lore tells you nothing more than a country of origin? I know that's true for so many descendants of immigrants. What if that country's borders have changed over time? How can you get anywhere in your family tree research on such slim information?

One answer is your DNA Communities. AncestryDNA compares your DNA results to those of millions of other test-takers. They form clusters of people based on your matches and your matches' matches. If your DNA matches have identified their ancestral hometowns, or if they match the population there today, it becomes clear. Your people must have come from the same area.

My husband's updated community is also very accurate. His test results have always said nothing more than 100% Japanese. That's awesome in itself, to be 100% of anything.

But his new community has the names of 5 cities, and the first 2 happen to be exactly where his family came from. His dad's side is from Hiroshima, and his mom's side is from Yamaguchi. I can verify this with his ancestors' immigration records. It's amazing that all his history, from 300 years ago to his grandparents, rests in a small slice of Japan.

And my family history is very similar. Civil records put my ancestors in that thin corridor of southern Italy since the late 1600s. Church records show my maiden name existed in my Grandpa's hometown since at least the 1400s.

Let Your Communities Narrow Your Search

Let's say your ancestor emigrated too early for their hometown to appear on a ship manifest. And you can't find any other record for them that states a specific town of birth. Check your DNA Communities! One of them may narrow down your search to a handful of towns.

In many countries, you must know your ancestor's town of birth or you may never find their records. If you can narrow down your search to a short list of towns, you may find your ancestor faster.

If I didn't already know my ancestral hometowns, these results would have pointed the way.

I checked my DNA results on MyHeritage, and they have what they call Genetic Groups. I have far less confidence in these groups. They're not very specific, and they include Ohio because my dad and his cousins were born there. His family had only recently moved there. My Ohio roots are very shallow.

My 2 other Genetic Groups are better than Ohio, but nowhere near as specific as AncestryDNA. They are Italy (Bari) and Italy (Campania). I know my roots are 100% in Campania, but that's an entire region of the country. That wouldn't help me find my ancestors. MyHeritage has a "Low" confidence level that I'm even from Campania!

My 23 and Me results are way off in so many ways. What they tell me would be of no use whatsoever in helping me find my ancestors. But I didn't buy their test kit. I don't know if the results would be more specific if I had.

Have you tested with AncestryDNA? Do you still have some mysteries about your places of origin? Check out your updated communities! You can even see which of your DNA matches belong in the same communities. If you haven't found your town of origin, maybe one of your closest matches has.

Using Obituaries to Find Missing Cousins

I can never find obituaries for my ancestors. No marriage notices, no social events, nothing! Even so, when Newspapers.com had a membership sale, I signed up so I could do research for others.

But first I remembered an event in my life I wanted to look up. Of course the right local newspaper isn't available on Newspapers.com. I was off to a terrific start! Switching gears, I started looking for U.S. obituaries of anyone who came from my Grandpa's town in Italy. I did that by searching for his exact town name.

When names won't work, try an obituary search for your ancestral hometowns.

You know how genealogists joke about their love of cemeteries? Well, this ghoulish game is perfect for us. The idea is to see if you can take a total stranger's obituary and find their place in your family tree.

After a couple of misses I found Mary. She was born in Colle Sannita in 1880 and died in Pennsylvania in 1970. Her obituary includes both her parents' names. It also says her husband Tony (also from Colle Sannita) had died only 3 weeks earlier. Of course I looked up his obituary, too.

Now comes the challenge. Could I fit this couple—both completely unknown to me—into my family tree?

I started with Mary whose maiden name they misspelled in the obituary. I knew it was wrong because I know the names from Grandpa's town like the back of my hand. I searched my collection of the town's vital records and found her birth record. I soon realized she was already in my tree with a complex in-law type of relationship to me. I even had her husband Tony's name in my tree based on 2 things:

• their son's 1914 birth record from the town, and
• a marriage notation in the column of her birth record.

Mary's Italian birth record had Tony's full name written in the column. I'd expected to find his birth record with her name on it. But there was no record for any Tony with Mary's name on it. So he's been a dead end for some time.

To figure out which birth record was his, I searched for the parents mentioned in his 1970 obituary. I had to be careful that I had exactly the right parents in this town where names repeat a LOT. So I searched for all the children born to a couple with the right names, Damiano and Maddalena. Finally I found a child born at a time when the birth records were far more detailed. This one record included the names of Damiano and Maddalena's fathers. That was the clue I needed to be sure I'd truly found the right couple.

I had no idea what became of the 1880s–1890s babies in my family tree.

In the end, Tony became my 5th cousin 3 times removed. He was a dead end until I happened upon his wife's obituary. Now he's a distant cousin who shares my 7th great grandparents. Recently, I've been using the earliest records from Grandpa's town to fit more families together. But when I get to the later documents, many people will become dead ends for me. I can't know who left for another country or who they married.

A targeted search for your ancestor's town may tie together lots of loose ends in your family tree. For me, this is a great tool for discovering who left Italy, who they married, and what kind of life they lived.

Don't have access to a website like Newspapers.com? Prepare yourself to play this game the next time they offer a free weekend. Maybe this Memorial Day!

Using Color to Understand Your Family's Last Names

I have zero regrets about my time-consuming family tree research. The countless hours spent downloading and renaming every available vital record? Worth it. All the spreadsheets for tracking my projects? Worth it. I see the benefits of my work every day.

Why Use Color-Coding?

My latest project (and it's a whopper!) makes me realize how much I love the color-coding feature of Family Tree Maker. It's been around for at least 2 years, and I borrowed the idea to use on 2 of my favorite genealogy spreadsheets:

• the grandparent/Ahnentafel chart
• the surname chart

In Family Tree Maker (FTM), I wanted a visual way to distinguish my 4 main branches—1 for each grandparent. Choosing each grandparent one at a time, I:

• clicked the Color Coding button
• assigned a color to the grandparent and their direct ancestors:
  • yellow for my paternal grandfather
  • pink for my paternal grandmother
  • green for my maternal grandfather
  • blue for my maternal grandmother

See if your family tree software has a color-coding/tagging function and start reaping the benefits.

Now I can see right away if someone in my family tree is my direct ancestor. And I can see which of my grandparents descends from them. Better still, since Dad's parents were 3rd cousins, I have a bunch of double ancestors. They're recognizable because they have both yellow and pink colors.

Other Uses for Color-Coding

It makes sense to use the same colors in my other charts because then I know exactly who's who.

In my grandparent/Ahnentafel chart, I filled in all the numbers and colors ahead of time. (You can download one for free.) Having the numbers in place made it very simple to put a newly found ancestor's name where it belongs. And the colors keep my branches straight. That's very important when I have so many repeated last names in my tree.

When it comes to my double ancestors, I enter them in two places in the Ahnentafel chart, and I give them a blended color. They are orange, a combination of yellow and pink.

You can expand the color-coding concept to your other family tree tools.

In my surname chart, I added a tally to show how many times each of the 115 last names appears among my direct ancestors. The winner is the name Zeolla belonging to 17 of my direct ancestors.

Then I added color blocks to show which branch(es) contains each name. Some names belong to only one branch. That's the case for all but one name on my maternal grandmother's line. Except for one, all her ancestors' last names are unique to her branch of my family tree. Three of my ancestral surnames, including Zeolla, belong on 3 of my branches. Several other names belong on my 2 paternal branches.

Reaping the Benefits

I mentioned above that my latest project is a whopper. It's the big one. The one I've been working up to for years. And it could take me years to complete. But I'm absolutely loving it!

Two weeks ago I wrote about my plan for this project (see "Laying the Foundation for a Solid Family Tree"). Ever since then I've been adding about 100 relatives to my tree each day. It has been amazing. I'm reviewing every vital record from Grandpa's hometown and finding missing details, like:

• exact dates for births, deaths, and marriages
• parentage that proves 2 same-named people are the same person
• early deaths that connect to a family from the town's 1742 census.

It's wildly rewarding. In 2 weeks I've completed all the records for 1809–1816. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the vital records for 2,730 people. Even though I'm only up to line 2,504 in a 38,351-line spreadsheet, I'm chomping at the bit to move on to another town.

As I go through the records, adding and updating people, I may find that a person's previously unknown parents are already in my tree. When I add the child and see their ancestors' color-coding, I'm thrilled! I've taken someone who was a dead end and turned them into my true cousin.

Three weeks ago I wrote about "How to Find the True Cousins in Your Family Tree." My true cousin count was 6,095. Since then I've added many more. Each day I'm turning relationships like "1st cousin 3x removed of husband of aunt" into actual blood relatives. It's so gratifying.

The only other color-coding I'm using in Family Tree Maker is purple for DNA matches. What other types of relationships would you color code?