Inspiration Leads to a Family Tree Growth Spurt

When your family tree is always on your mind, inspiration waits around every corner. This week I found 3 sources of inspiration while going about my usual activities. That led to a whirlwind of activity, and I added 339 people to my family tree. In one day!

Inspiration Source #1

I spent years working as a corporate website manager. I've brought those skills to this blog and my personal website, forthecousins.com. While looking at my sites' statistics, I started scrolling through a page on my personal site. It has cemetery photos I took in one of my ancestral hometowns.

My great grandmother Maria Rosa Caruso came from a small town called Pescolamazza. Today it's called Pesco Sannita. On my two visits there, I took photographs in the cemetery, mostly of graves with the names Caruso and Girardi. But I never added the people from these photos to my family tree.

Your own family tree notes and photos can be the inspiration you need now.

I had very few Carusos in my tree—only my closest relatives. I need a lot more generations of cousins to figure out where the people from the cemetery belong.

I have thousands of Italian vital records on my computer that I renamed to make them searchable. That makes it easy to find people and piece their families together. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.") The 339 new people I added are the tip of the iceberg. I know I can fit everyone from my little towns together through blood or marriage. It's all a matter of time.

I'm eager to add Pesco Sannita relatives to my tree, but I stumbled across another discovery.

Inspiration Source #2

Once in a while I upload a new copy of my family tree's GEDCOM file to Geneanet.org, updating my tree there. I happened to notice, for the first time, that I can upload my DNA results there, too. It's another free resource for international DNA matches. (See "These DNA Sites Expand Your Tree in New Directions.")

I looked through my 95 new DNA matches, viewing the family tree of those who had one. Many of my matches are French. That makes sense, since Geneanet's headquarters are in Paris. But I have no French roots and my French-named matches have no Italian names in their trees.

Still, I did find one terrific match. I recognized his last name, and all the last names in his tree, as coming from one of my ancestral hometowns: Circello.

Keep your eyes open for genealogy research inspiration. It could be anywhere!

I have a 3rd great grandfather named Francesco Saverio Liguori from Circello. It's another beautiful little town that I enjoyed visiting. That gives me a definite interest in the town. In fact, I've downloaded all the available vital records for Circello. When I get a little bored with one of my other genealogy projects, I always turn to Circello. I've been renaming the town's records to make them searchable. I have 26 years' worth of document images to go.

On Geneanet, I'm looking at a distant cousin's very impressive Circello family tree. We share very little DNA, but to be honest, I'm more excited by his family tree than by him. His tree will be helpful in showing me the big picture as I comb through individual documents.

I see at least one couple from my family tree in his tree. (The wife in this couple has my maiden name of Iamarino.) His information takes these people back an extra generation to the late 1600s. This guy has done his homework. A kindred spirit.

Inspiration Source #3

I belong to Facebook groups for a few of my ancestral Italian hometowns. Sometimes I see posts from people trying to research their roots in that town. The other day I helped out 2 such people with roots in Baselice. I gave them names and dates from the town's vital records. Then I made sure those names are also in my family tree.

There are still tons of people from the post-1860 vital records of Baselice who need to be fit into my tree. One of my ongoing projects is to make sure everyone from the town finds their place in my tree. These online encounters inspired me to do some more of that work.

With so much inspiration all around, how can anyone get tired of their family tree research? Instead of getting frustrated by a brick wall, follow through on that inspiration. Expand your family and expand your history. I try to offer fun and unusual projects to you through this blog. Why not try one of these popular ones?

• How to Share Your Family Tree Research with Relatives
• 5 Steps to Writing Your Ancestor's Life Story
• 7 Days to a Better Family Tree

These DNA Sites Expand Your Tree in New Directions

Ten years ago I asked my parents to take a DNA test. I told them it would help me see whether my matches were on mom's side or dad's side. I even uploaded our 3 DNA tests (plus my husband's) to other DNA websites.

I must admit I've spent very little time looking at their DNA matches. Instead, I've analyzed the daylights out of my matches. I've categorized them, added notes, and grouped them with colorful dots.

Then on Friday, DNA expert Diahan Southard gave another insightful webinar. She recommended two things I've overlooked:

1. My parents are one generation closer to their ancestors than I am. So they will have some matches I don't have.
2. AncestryDNA has the most tests by far, but they ship to a limited number of countries. (See the full list.) Other websites, like MyHeritage, have a more global collection of DNA testers.

After hearing that second point, I was eager to see our matches on MyHeritage. Sure enough, I'm seeing matches that aren't on AncestryDNA. They're from:

• Italy
• Brazil
• Australia
• United Kingdom
• Venezuela
• Slovakia
• New Zealand
• plus the USA and Canada

I didn't realize how AncestryDNA limits my international pool of matches.

You can do this for free, same as I did. Create a free account on www.myheritage.com, go to the DNA menu, and choose Upload DNA data. (See your testing site for instructions on how to download your DNA data file.)

I'll bet you'll have much better matches than I do. For some reason, my number of matches is very low compared to other people. On AncestryDNA, I have 5,554 matches. I've seen other people with 50,000 matches. What the heck? On MyHeritage, I have 554 matches—but 90% of them are people not on AncestryDNA.

I spent a whole day looking at the family trees of DNA matches for my parents and myself on MyHeritage. The most exciting result is that many of them are from my mother's ancestral hometowns in Italy. Those towns have almost no matches on AncestryDNA!

Don't overlook the free resource that offers you a host of new international DNA matches.

I recognize most of the last names in these matches' family trees. I dug through my downloaded collection of vital records from the towns. I built out families and placed my new DNA matches in my family tree. Sometimes our connection was an in-law connection, not a cousin connection. That means I need to piece together more ancestors.

While my number of international DNA matches is low, they give me a lot more families to explore. I'm excited to have a new project on my list. Yes, I'm still winding up a cleanup project to add source citations to some document images in my family tree. But I can wrap that up in three solid days. And I'm still working through my maternal grandfather's hometown, adding people to my tree. And I'm even still renaming lots of my downloaded vital records to make them searchable.

But that doesn't mean I'm not excited by the next big project! Thanks to my international DNA matches, I can expand my reach into my "underserved" towns:

• Sant'Angelo a Cupolo
• Apice
• Pescolamazza
• Santa Paolina
• Tufo

I'm also revisiting the DNA kit I uploaded to familytreedna.com. That match list (only 321 people) has even more names I haven't seen on AncestryDNA. Very few of them have uploaded a tree, so I may not get very much out of this list. But again, I'll bet you will.

I'm eager to add as many people from my underserved towns as possible. My family tree is full to the brim with ancestors from my grandfathers' hometowns. But my grandmothers' lines need work. Now I can expand their families further!

If your family hasn't been in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand for several hundred years, don't ignore the power of MyHeritage. And if you're managing DNA kits for your close relatives, explore their unique matches. Go ahead. Dip your toes in the international gene pool.

Make a To-Do List with FTM's Media Usage Report

When I told you I'd finished cleaning up all the source citations in my family tree, I left something out. I didn't want to get into it because it may not apply to many people. But there is something I should share with you.

I wound up with about 2,000 vital records attached to people but not to a source citation. Let's say Angelo Bianco has a birth record attached to him in my family tree. He has his name, birth and baptism dates, and his parents' names and ages. But somehow, there is no citation. All the information I need is there, but the last step remains undone. I don't know how this happened.

I started to fix them by paging through all the vital records in the Media tab of Family Tree Maker. I have 8,533 vital records! I was looking for those attached to a person but missing a citation. When I found one, I'd go to the person and create the source citation. But I had no clue how many of these there were.

After doing that for a couple of days, I wondered if there was a better way. There is. It's called the Media Usage Report. To find it in Family Tree Maker, go to the Publish tab and choose Media Reports under Publication Types. You'll see the Media Usage Report. Click the Create Report button and you'll see a bunch of options you can change.

FTM's Media Usage Report helped me find and fix a long list of missing citations in my family tree.

By the way, I opened my tree in RootsMagic 8, complete with media items, and it has nothing like this report. You can view media items one at a time, but you can't even double click to go to the person or citation attached to it. I'd never looked at FTM's Media Usage Report before, and it turns out to have some great uses.

In my case, all the images missing a citation use an obsolete URL from the Antenati website. (See "How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.") I wanted to be able to see the description for each image because it contains the obsolete URL. Here's what I did to create my Media Usage Report:

• Select All individuals in the Individuals to include section.
• Select Show description in the Items to include section.
• Select Show person media in the Filter media by section.

To save a report, click the Share button in the top right corner of FTM and export to the format of your choice. I chose to export to CSV to create a spreadsheet. That way, I can simply delete each entry once it's fixed. And now I can do a search in Excel to count how many obsolete Antenati URLs I need to update. I can see my progress and estimate how long it'll take me to finish.

Here are some other Media Usage Report options that may suit your needs.

Options in the "Items to include" section:

• To include media items you've marked private, be sure to select Include private media. I made all my photographs private to keep them off of Ancestry.com. They won't show up in my report unless I make this selection.
• To find media that's missing a date, select Show date. I always put the date of the document in the image's details. If I forget, I'll see the file's creation timestamp instead of a proper date.
• To find media that's missing a category, select Show categories. It's helpful to assign a category to your media so you can find the one you need fast. FTM comes with several built-in categories, but you can create your own, too.
• If you keep details in the image's Notes field (not the Description field), select Show notes to see them.

Options in the "Filter media by" section:

• Once upon a time, I was attaching media to a fact, rather than to the citation attached to a fact. I thought that was what I needed to do. Selecting Show fact media lets me find those and fix them. (See the image to better understand.)
  

  

  When I discovered I could add a media item directly to a fact, I did. But attaching them to the citation is much better.

• Show person media displays all the media in your family tree that's attached to anyone. This is the most important choice to make.
• To find media that isn't attached to anyone, select Show unlinked media. If you save this report, you can work through them and either attach or delete them from your family tree.

For me, choosing to show source, citation, and relationship media shows nothing. Try them and see if you have any results.

Before closing my FTM file, I exported a GEDCOM file with media links. I opened that file in Family Tree Analyzer, and I didn't see any report that makes use of media. But I did find an unusual error in my tree. When I looked at a list of all the occupations in my tree, I found 11 blank occupations. That meant I'd created an occupation fact, but forgot to enter the occupation itself. I fixed them one-by-one in my tree. Three of them were actually death dates recorded as occupation facts. What happened there?

You never know what you'll find while doing quality assurance on your family tree. That's why you've go to do it!