When I was a kid, Dad bought me two big jigsaw puzzles. He taught me how to find the edges and look for the right shapes, then he let me figure out my own method. We glued the finished puzzles, framed them, and hung them on the wall. Decades later I bought more puzzles and hung them up. When I graduated to better wall art, I turned my love of puzzles to crossword puzzles. Then I discovered the biggest, farthest-reaching, never-ending puzzle of all. Genealogy! I like to think of my insanely big family tree as a jigsaw puzzle that has no edges. I can keep fitting people together for the rest of ..read more

It's been a while since I had a digital family tree disaster, but they do happen. I'm committed to preventing the loss of any of my genealogy research. And I have to believe you want to avoid losing your work, too. That's why I have a multi-step backup plan that I follow carefully. See "Quick and Easy Family Tree Backup Routine." Here are 4 reasons you need to choose and follow a genealogy file backup plan. Are you committed to preventing the loss of any of your genealogy research? 1. Natural Disasters Can Happen I live in New York and on April 5th I experienced my 2nd east-coast eart ..read more

Two months ago I presented 5 cleanup projects, but there are always more ways to scrub your family tree. Most days I forge ahead with my project to connect everyone from my ancestral hometowns. When working on that, I can add 100–200 people to my tree in a day. With my family tree approaching 79,000 people, it's important to keep up with my cleanup tasks. Here are 3 areas every family tree needs some cleanup: Names, Dates, and Places. These are the 3 most basic things you need to get right in your family tree. Note: If you build your family tree online rather than desktop software, do ..read more

Blog reader Steve asked how to find people who were born after available vital records end. Like me, he's dealing with Italian records that aren't online. My towns' birth records end in 1915. His town's online vital records end in 1899. The answer to his question is true for any ancestor's missing vital record. My grandmother was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1899. She had one sibling born before her in Italy. I have his 15 Dec 1898 Italian birth record, but his death record isn't available. I only know he died before his parents boarded a ship for New York on 3 July 1899. Grandma's October ..read more

In 2009 I began a long process of viewing 1809–1860 vital records from my grandfather's hometown. I had to pay to view the microfilmed records at a Family History Center on crummy old equipment once or twice a week. In 2017 the same documents came online in pristine high resolution. I didn't begin this journey with any knowledge of Italian vital records. I figured it out with experience. And so can you—especially with these 5 tips for success. These 5 tips will make you an Italian vital record expert. 1. You Need to Know the Name of the Town Before you can find a vital record for your ..read more

Two weeks ago I wrote about "5 Ways to Find Loose Ends in Your Family Tree." Since then I've been having fun doing just that. I sorted the people in my family tree by birth date and focused on anyone with an incomplete birth date. (For example, 1870 instead of 12 Mar 1870.) Then I searched for the missing birth record for each person. Many of these people were not born in my ancestral hometowns, which explains the missing date. Luckily, I often had evidence to suggest which town they came from. A marriage record or banns can include the hometown of the other spouse. In other cases, I used the ..read more

When my son's fiancé lost her father in 2021, I offered to research her family tree. It's become something of a tradition for me. I did the same for my brother's wife, my 1st cousins, and last week for my 2nd cousins when their father died. For my son's fiancé, you have to go back to generation 12 in her ancestors report to learn that her last name is French. In generation 13, we see she's a descendant of the Dutch/German family Rittenhouse. That's a very famous family in Philadelphia. My sister-in-law's German/Jewish origin shows up in her 2nd great grandfather, born in 1853. But for my all-I ..read more

After fitting 95% of the people from 3 of my ancestral hometowns into my family tree, I was eager for more. Now I'm working on a town I expected to be a problem. This town was part of the Papal State, owned by the church itself. They didn't keep civil records before 1861. (See "Becoming Italian Was a Long, Hard Journey.") I figured I'd never get very far since there are no vital records for my 3rd great grandparents and above. But I found a couple of entry points. Two spouses of my closest relatives had families I could search for in the documents. Before I knew it, I was adding between 100 an ..read more

Imagine starting up your computer to add a new baby cousin to your family tree. But all you see is a File Not Found error. Nooooo! Panicked doesn't begin to describe how sick you feel. I'm someone who curses a blue streak in the face of computer problems. I can't describe the pain in my head and stomach at these times. That's why I take extreme precautions with my digital family tree files. (And many other types of computer files, too.) To avoid disaster, here are 4 crucial ways you can safeguard your digital family tree files. Get started before disaster strikes! Keep your family tree s ..read more

Last weekend I cut my list of missing maiden names in half. It was exhilarating! I use Crista Cowan's method and mark missing names in my family tree with _____ (5 underscores). That makes it easy to find everyone who's missing a name. They're all at the top of the alphabetical list of names. By the way, if you're using a woman's married name in your tree because you don't know her maiden name, STOP IT. The tree already tells you who she married. I did a new search for each person in my tree with a missing last name. You may be thinking, "I already searched for them." Don't let that stop you f ..read more