There are two events that take place every ten years. The first one is that I get the chance to finally take a nap! The other is the United States Federal Census. The Census is used to measure how many people are in each area of the country, and then to divvy up the federal funds to do the most good. The Constitution requires it, and a census has been done every ten years since 1790. U.S. Census records contain many pieces of data that help us, and there are many problems. We can find out the country of birth …

What’s in a name? More than you know, actually. More than I know. Today’s journey shows us that names are not consistent, even though we would hope they are. I hope I am able to explain how you should make decisions regarding names, even when they aren’t 100% perfect. Here are the traditional rules for naming children: Rule 1: First son is named for his father’s father. Rule 2: First daughter is named for her father’s mother. Rule 3: Second son is almost always named for mother’s father, except when there are two grandfathers with the same first name. They …

Probably all of us miss our relatives who have passed away. Many of us wish they were still here for many reasons. They might keep the “Italian culture” more the old way, with Sunday dinners and family being closer than they are today. Many of us just miss the people and would like to speak to them one more time, to let them know what happened since they left. And genealogists want to ask them a BUNCH of questions! I was reminded of this the last time I saw the movie “5000 Miles From Home.” If you do not own …

The theme for most of my columns this year has been “some of this is great, and some of this is bad and needs very thorough review.” This month is no exception! After attending a conference in McHenry recently, I was asked about my experience with “THE Family Tree. … Not “My Family Tree,” but “THE Family Tree.” Well, my favorite website, familysearch.org, has been asking everyone to contribute their research to something called “THE Family Tree.” I will be the first to admit that I do not know all that much about how “the” family tree functions. I have …

I was almost 11 years old when I first saw the announcement of the election of a new Pope. I didn’t know of any of the Cardinals except Cardinal Cody of Chicago, so the announcement of Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice was not a surprise or shock. The media did not pick him, so they were shocked and surprised. The real surprise and shock came 33 days later when my father tried to get me up to go to school and I didn’t want to get up, and he told me that the Pope had died and I probably swore …

Big news! Some of it great, some of it…not so good. When I was at the Rootstech conference in Salt Lake City in 2024, Familysearch was making a big deal about using “AI” technology to transcribe genealogy documents into searchable data. They gave us a taste by indexing words from wills and probate records which are typed on a typewriter rather than handwritten. My genealogy colleagues who need wills and probate records were all excited, and rightly so. My Italian genealogy colleagues were expectedly disappointed. I’ll try to explain this for people who are not tech nerds like me. The …

I have a lot of very distant cousins. They are so distant that I never met them, yet they are in my family tree. I have closer cousins that I do not hear from, and there are people who have left our family due to divorce. Roughly once a year, I search to see if any of these people have passed away, so I can update my tree, and visit the grave or crypt if possible. Among all the sources we use, the death notice (sometimes called “obituary”) is a common resource and relatively inexpensive. Today, more notices are posted …

In some of my recent columns, I have discussed some lesser-used resources, mostly because A) I have discussed the “most-often-used” resources a lot more, and B) I am finding out how useful these lesser-used resources can be. A recent example was the atti diversi, the records of stillbirths and orphans, with occasional deaths of adults in other towns that you might never have found otherwise. Today’s column concerns something very simple but very necessary sometimes. It is called the “indici decennali.” These are indexes for each town that cover a ten-year period. As we have gone over before, in every …

Depending on which genealogical web site you prefer, there is good, or bad news. In several columns I have mentioned that some Italian genealogical records are available on FamilySearch, some on Portale Antenati, and some on both. Recently, there has been a significant change, one I am profoundly unhappy with. An agreement was signed recently that has done the following: If the records appear on the Antenati site, they will be in the FamilySearch catalog, but you cannot view them EVEN IN A FAMILYSEARCH CENTER OR AFFILIATE, unless you are logged into FamilySearch with a church login. If the records …

I usually talk about the primary genealogy records you should all look for: births, marriages and deaths. They are the foundation of genealogy research. For many of our ancestors, they are the only biographical information we have. And for many researchers, those three record types are more than enough to keep them busy. Lately, I have been working with a record type that you may never need, but you ought to know about. These records might solve problems you have had for a while. They are called “Atti Diversi.” It sounds like “random stuff.” “Stuff that doesn’t fit the other …