Dan Niemiec

Dan Niemiec has been the genealogy columnist for Fra Noi since 2004. For the past 30+ years, he has researched his genealogy back 17 generations, plus tracing descendants of his ancestors, yielding nearly 100,000 relatives. His major focus is on civil and church records in Italy, Chicago vital records, Chicago Catholic records and most major genealogy web sites. He has given dozens of presentations to many local and some national genealogy societies on topics such as cemetery research, Catholic records, Italian records, Ellis Island and newspaper research, among others.

Finding a genealogy buddy

Dan Niemiec February 1, 2011 1

There are times when I wish I could do some market research about Italian genealogy. For example, I wonder just how many people are curious about their Italian roots and ask relatives for information. Then there are those who look into their own roots online. Then there are those who visit libraries and government repositories to dig a little deeper. Then there are the ones who want records from Italy to start tracing their ancestors. Finally, there are the lucky few who actually visit Italy to dig further back. Not everyone who asked cousin Dan for a copy of the …