Columns

A lot of people have asked me recently about finding more information about their immigrant ancestors. Names, dates and places are the bricks and mortar, but if you want to build a cathedral, you need to do some detail work. Most of our immigrant ancestors did not tell us the story of their journey to America. In many cases, they did not want to recall the unpleasant experience of spending two to three weeks aboard ship, crowded, with little room to sleep, poor food, and poor facilities. If you don’t talk about it, then it didn’t happen! In other cases, …

Last month we talked about computer software to use to enter and organize your genealogy information. I used Family Tree Maker as the example program but there are others out there. We can’t show screens of every program in this column but it is important that you pick one program and stick with it. If you are new to genealogy, you won’t know the strengths and weaknesses of each program. The best thing you can do is to read reviews on the internet, or join a local genealogy group and ask the experienced members for advice. There is also a …

In the past couple of months, we have gathered information from various sources, good and bad. The information may be accurate and may be a little hazy. The amount of information is becoming hard to organize. The chart we drew up on the first day is getting filled with little notes and corrections. We might be losing control of the information we have gathered and we need to organize it and make it easier to focus on specific facts we want to investigate. Usually when we research, we are looking for one or two specific facts at a time. It …

If you’ve ever worked in an office, or if you’ve ever been in a fender-bender, you’ve played a little game called “He Said She Said.” You both argue until blue in the face, but since neither of you has definitive proof of what happened, neither of you can settle the dispute. If only I had better proof than that no-good rotten so-and-so… In genealogy, you may not have arguments per se, but you are looking into your family tree and you are not a professional genealogist. You’re just a regular person. So when someone else looks into the same family …

Last month, we started our journey of discovery by filling out a pedigree chart with all the information we know about our ancestors. I bet a lot of you were surprised by how much you do not know. That is normal. It might have been a struggle to remember your grandparents’ anniversary. (Some folks can’t remember their OWN! Ouch!) This is all part of the process. You should not give up because you do not know everything right away. “The Search” is what genealogy is all about. Now that you have filled in a pedigree chart with what you know, …

Fra Noi is introducing its exciting new format this issue, and I am proud to be a part of the new era! One of the new perks for this column is that you can visit the new Fra Noi web site and actually see some of the documents and web pages I describe. So this is a golden opportunity to make the column more helpful by showing you what to do instead of just describing. So now seems as good a time as any to get you started with your Italian genealogy from the ground up. I know not everyone …

Well, you have spent 20 years accumulating your family tree information, photos, documents, and sundry. Now what do you do with it? Share the wealth! When you get to a good break point in your research, you should put together a disc of your scanned photos and documents and make copies and send it out to relatives, close or distant. There are a multitude of reasons why you should use the tools of computers to copy and distribute your life’s work. 1) Preservation — By having everything copied to the computer, it keeps the originals from being handled. You can …

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 …