Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
There are plenty of genealogy T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. that read something like, “I am completely finished with my genealogy … said no one ever!”
Most of us who take this seriously truly do not know when to quit. Any hobby can start small and get out of hand over time. There’s nothing wrong with determination to find something difficult and be diligent in having evidence to back up your findings.
There are a lot of addictions worse than genealogy!
That said, we should know when to quit, on a small scale. Our research can go in many directions at once, and there are times when there is not much of a chance to find a specific piece of information, and we should know how to put the brakes on, even for that small part of our research.
For example, if you have an ancestor who was born in Chicago prior to the Great Fire of 1871, it is a safe bet that you will not find a surviving copy of the birth certificate. Same goes for Italian records that pre-date 1809. There might be church records in Italy, and hopefully you can go some day to find more ancestors. However, you should not let these “brick walls” bother you or make you want to find a new hobby.
We have to know the limitations of the records we try to find and be prepared for some difficult truths.
Truth #1: Some records just don’t exist
Records can be destroyed in a fire or flood. Records can be lost by the person whose job it was to store them. Records can be stolen by people who use them. Records can be photographed or microfilmed and the cameraman might miss a page, or an entire year, and when you try to find something, it’s just not there.
When you determine once and for all that a primary source is missing, you need to mark this in your tree that you tried to find it, failed, and must live with a secondary source. If you can’t find a birth certificate, you might have to live with a gravestone with the year carved in it. Yes it might be wrong, but you don’t have anything else to go with. Maybe a marriage license has the person’s age. Maybe the death certificate in Chicago has the birth year in Italy. Yes that could be wrong, but at least it’s something. It’s ok to log this in your tree that you may never get a more accurate birth date. Don’t stress about it. Don’t keep pushing looking for an impossible find. Just keep track of what you looked for, when you want to try next, and when time permits, you can revisit this problem, or ask your fellow researchers at a genealogy group meeting what they would do.
Truth #2: Some records are just plain wrong!
How can this be? I am reading a record from the time of the event. How can the people who were there be wrong? I am running into this situation a lot lately, and it is not a matter of ego to question the people who wrote these records. Take a look at the facts you have first. Here is a simple situation.
Francesco Paolo Casalino born Aug 10 1834 in Triggiano, Bari to Michele Casalino and Giuseppa Addante.
Vincenzo Casalino died January 9 1836 in Triggiano Bari age 18 months, son of Michele Casalino and Giuseppa Addante.
Hmm, I don’t have a Vincenzo born before 1836, and I don’t have a Francesco Paolo who died after 1834. A good researcher will review the Casalino family in the 1830s and look for other births and deaths. The age is close enough to make this plausible if one of the names is wrong.
What could be wrong with the information above?
– The name of the child could be wrong on either the birth or death, perhaps both.
– The names of the parents might be wrong – maybe one of these children belongs to a different family
– There could have been a twin in the births that was missed
– The witnesses who gave this information to the Mayor maybe had one too many Sambucas the night before….
Remember that witnesses go to the Mayor’s office to report these events, and typically they are not the father or mother. They could be other relatives, neighbors, or who knows. These folks have no compelling reason to lie, but they just might get the information wrong, and tell the Mayor the wrong name. We have no way to ask them, so we have to live with what they put on the records.
So how do you clean up this mess? Do you search every year looking for Francesco Paolo’s death? Maybe he lived to a ripe old age. Maybe he moved to America, or Argentina. Maybe he changed the spelling of his surname and we can’t connect a death to that birth. Maybe the age of Vincenzo is inaccurate. Maybe he is 18 years old, or 18 days, not 18 months. Then again this could be the same person who lived 18 months and they just got one or both of the names wrong on the records. I have had to use the grandparent’s names to help me figure out what this child should have been named at birth.
If Michele Casalino’s father was Vincenzo Casalino, and the 1834 birth was his first son, then the birth record name Francesco Paolo is probably wrong, and the child should have been written down as Vincenzo. Keep in mind that there could have been earlier sons born to this couple, or earlier sons of this father with a previous spouse. You need to find them all, and then find the deaths of those children. If there was no surviving son of Michele Casalino at the time of the 1834 birth, then Vincenzo should have been that child’s name.
When you find an inconsistency like this, you need to record the actual name on the record, and then record your analysis of why you think that record is wrong. This will help others who research this family to use your expertise and draw their own conclusions. Don’t just mark your tree with Vincenzo born 1834 and leave it at that. Other researchers will be confused when they try to find Vincenzo’s birth and it doesn’t match.
You may not want to go through every year looking for all the children of this family in order to narrow down the possibilities. Again, you should keep a log of what you tried, and a task list of what you intend to try when you get back to this mess later on.
Getting back to the subject of quitting, all I’m saying is that these small problems can cause big headaches. It’s ok to be willing to take a break from a small problem, keep track of what you did so you don’t waste time repeating your work, and circle back some other time.
