Pursuing Our Roots

A major new block of genealogy data has recently been released! Every 10 years, genealogists await the release of the U.S. Census Population Schedules. After a federally mandated 72-year waiting period, they release the names and data of everyone who was enumerated in the census. Prior to the 72-year wait, you can find demographic data, such as ethnic trends, but not the list of everyone’s name. When the 1920 census was released in 1992, there were no on-line genealogy web sites. The only way for people to look up their families was to go to the National Archives on 73rd …

Last month, we looked at the peculiar problems of finding the marriage dates and marriage records of our Italian relatives. Since we keep better track of birthdays than anniversaries, we don’t always have the paper trail among our own records and photos to find the wedding dates of our grandparents, aunts and uncles. The Italian records are quite complete, and for the most part couples married in the town where the bride’s father lived, so even if that wasn’t the birthplace, it wasn’t far away. But when you’re looking for the marriage of a couple in America, it’s not nearly …

Ok, you can stop crying now. I know our emotional families cry at weddings. As a genealogist, I only cry when I can’t find a marriage date! It is one of the tricky pieces of information to unearth, with its own special brand of problems that we must be prepared to deal with. The three most basic pieces of genealogical information are the birth, marriage, and death dates. Birth and death are easier to find, because there are better clues. We remember celebrating birthdays with relatives. A milestone birthday party is usually very memorable, so our photo albums give us …

This is an election year, and a hot button political issue for both parties has been the status of illegal immigrants. This is certainly not the first time this issue has been a point of debate among the politicians. Our immigrant ancestors were also the subject of debate many decades ago! After World War I, many refugees left war-torn Europe for a better life in America. They were unable to come here during the war and now they were determined to get away from their destroyed towns and start over. After many came here, the government, bowing to political pressure, …

The journey from Italy to America is most likely the most important part of the lives of our immigrant ancestors. It is certainly a major part of their history, and we need to understand as much as we can about those several weeks in their lives. In the past couple of months, we learned a lot about their experiences aboard ship and at Ellis Island. We learned some tips on finding their passenger list at www.ellisisland.org. Now that we found it, what do we learn from it? Please keep in mind that the older the passenger list is, the less …

Last month, we discussed the procedure our immigrant ancestors had to go through to get off the ship and be released from Ellis Island. This procedure varied at other ports but was similar. By most estimates, 2 percent of the immigrants who entered Ellis Island were forced to return home for health reasons or because they failed the mental aptitude tests or for various employment reasons. During World War I, it was difficult to travel to America, mostly thanks to the new U-Boats that were sinking ships around the coasts of Europe. By the time World War I ended, many …

Last month, we went through some of the decision processes our ancestors went through to make the great trek to America. One of the most important parts of our family history is to understand why our grandparents left their home and everyone they knew and came across the ocean to a place that was entirely different. Most of the Italians who came to America did not leave Italian farm work for American farm work. This is especially true if they were heading for Chicago. Leaving one farm for another didn’t make sense. They barely had enough money to get aboard …

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 …