Tag Archives: Dan Niemiec

More than 20 years ago, a woman named Cyndi Howells decided that she needed a set of links to her favorite genealogy sites. As with most genealogists who start a simple project, it got out of hand and became much larger and more time-consuming than originally intended. (I can speak with experience on this as well!) She ended up creating her own site called “Cyndi’s List” www.cyndislist.com, which connects to over 300,000 links to genealogy web sites all over the world. What started as a small personal project has become 8-12 hours a day, seven days a week! For free! …

During all the time I have been updating everyone with more information on familysearch, I seem to have neglected another site with Italian records that everyone who is working with Italian records ought to know about. This site is an ancestry site for Italy, designed to allow us to search and browse Italian civil registration records. It’s not Ancestry.com, it’s an Italian site called Antenati. (Antenati: Gli Archivi per la Ricerca Anagrafica, http://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/?lang=en) You can leave the language for the website in Italian if you wish! Antenati contains the same records typically available on familysearch, and on microfilm in the …

I have relatives all over the world. Literally. Obviously most of my close relatives are live in the Chicago area, but many other close and distant relatives stayed for decades in Chicago’s wonderful climate and then decided that once they retired, they would move to California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada etc. (I noticed nobody moved to the Yukon!) I have many relatives in Italy, naturally, but I also have some in France, a handful in Brazil and Argentina, and an entire group in Australia. Thanks to social media, I am able to keep track with some of these international cousins and …

  Genealogy conferences all over the nation almost always have a room set up for vendors to sell genealogy-related items such as books, maps, how-to manuals and old postcards. There are always vendors who sell T-shirts with humorous genealogy pun-laden sayings. The most common joke (I use the term loosely) is worn by about 20 percent of the attendees at the conference, and it says “Genealogists Never Die, They Just Lose Their Census.” I’ll pause while you groan…. Before the internet was a daily part of our lives, one of the most important sources was the federal census. If you …

  There are days that I wish there were a Facebook page just for genealogists! I would love to be able to post a question about a particular family, or a specific town, or both, and have everybody see it who has even a moderate interest. Everybody would try to answer the question. They would either tell me what I need to know, or teach me how to find it for myself, or both. The Facebook can be used that way, but you get all the hassles of being on Facebook, like endless vacation pictures, angry political posts, and unfunny …

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have come and gone, and many friends and family members posted photos honoring their parents, as did I. As a genealogist, I can tell from the photos people posted just how well they have preserved their photo collections. Some people have 20 clear sharp images of themselves with their father or mother over a range of years. Some people have one blurry old polaroid that could have used a flash bulb! Also, in recent weeks, a cousin of mine had a fire at their home that started at the neighbors. Fortunately, no one was injured. …

Someone asked me an innocuous question about how to find their grandfather on a passenger list. Eighteen hours later, I discovered that a LOT has changed. A few years ago, the only way to find a passenger list was via microfilm. These days, it’s easier but it’s harder! To find your ancestor’s passenger list, you need to know: Ancestor’s name in the old country Approximate age Port he arrived at in America (it’s not always New York!) Ship he came in on Date he arrived You can use the declaration of intention or petition for naturalization to get this information. …

  Since last December, www.familysearch.org has been posting Cook County vital record images that were once only available for $17 through the county itself. Recently, the push has started on marriage licenses. A few columns ago, I did an entire piece of birth certificates, and another piece on death certificates, and I dismissed marriage licenses as minimally informative. I would like to amend that perspective. The Cook County marriage license is frustrating because it never lists the parents of the bride or groom. It lists the names of the happy couple and the date they applied for their license from …

There are many opportunities for genealogists to expand their knowledge. You can “learn by doing” as some philosophers would say. So you trudge along and pick up new methods as you try them, but sometimes you miss records that you need because you didn’t think of other ways to look. I have advocated many times that another way of learning genealogy is to join and attend genealogy groups in your community. Your local library may have genealogy presentations, even if they don’t have a regular group that meets there. Many of the groups that exist today are worth travelling some …

I grew up, as I’m sure many of you did, with a lot of Italian relatives who married into your family line, but some were a little different. There might be a godmother who doesn’t quite connect to the tree or folks who we call our “uncles” and “aunts,” but were they really related? “Who was Cooma Micheline? Is she a cousin of Nonna?” Nobody seemed to remember. More on them later. For now, let’s focus on actual branches, however tenuously connected to the trunk. The relatives who married in Italy typically are from the same town, or from towns …