I have been asked by people who are new to genealogy where they can go to get help from an expert, and where they can view records that are categorized as “restricted.” There are two equally valid choices, for different reasons: the nearest FamilySearch Center or Affiliate Library

A FamilySearch Center (they were called Family History Centers until early 2023) is a small room in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) building set aside for genealogical research. You do not have to be a church member to use this room, and no one will EVER give you literature or any speech on why you should join their church. EVER. (You are more than welcome to take a copy of a brochure from the desk, if you are interested.) You have to find the entrance to that building for the FamilySearch Center and press a buzzer/bell so someone will let you in the building. The main entrance they use for church is rarely the correct door for the center. Look for a sign, or a bunch of cars parked near a side door.

Your typical FamilySearch Center has a table, some chairs, several computers, and some microfilm machines that are rarely used anymore since these records are on FamilySearch.org. They are usually open on a couple of days per week, maybe a few hours on Saturday. The schedule is the same every week, but the volunteers may be different. So you may want to ask the volunteer you meet to tell you who is their very best volunteer to help with Italian research, so you can try to be there when that volunteer is working.

Back in the old days, before there was www.familysearch.org, you would go to the center, look in their catalog on CD rom (or in printed form) and fill out forms asking for copies of microfilm to be sent to your center. It would take several weeks and cost $6-$7 per film. They would notify you by e-mail when the films arrived. They discontinued this expensive system in 2017 after all the centers upgraded their internet speed to allow for multiple computers to read images from FamilySearch.org at the same time. In 2021, all existing microfilm had been digitized as images, but most centers still have microfilm readers and cabinets full of films that are almost never used anymore.

An Affiliate Library is a public library that made an agreement with LDS to store genealogical material and allow people to be able to use the resources of FamilySearch.org more locally. Not everyone lives within a short driving distance to an LDS Church, especially in other parts of the world, so the local public library is an excellent alternative. I know some people who do not live close to either a Center or an Affiliate, and those who cannot drive at all have no option but to find a genealogy friend who can drive you to a Center or Library when you need access to restricted records.

The major advantage to Affiliates is the amount of hours they are open, even on Sundays! And they typically have a lot of computers available all the time. The disadvantage is that the people who work there are trained to handle “library questions” but rarely know “genealogy questions”. Once in a while you’ll find a genealogy expert who works at the affiliate library. Find out when they’re working so you can ask for their help. (Sometimes this expert has an office job on another floor and is not available to hold your hand through hours of genealogy research questions – you will have to rely on the folks working near the computers.)

Both Centers and Affiliate Libraries usually have access to the records and catalog items that are restricted from being used at home. Only rarely is an item ok to view at a Center but not at an Affiliate Library. Once in a blue moon, an item can only be viewed at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, due to a very restrictive contract. I am not aware of any Italian records that fit this description, but there could be.

Please do not try to understand the logic behind these restrictions. It made my brain hurt until I decided to stop stressing about it. My town in Italy has 1809-1900 records restricted, 1901-1920 available from home, 1921-1929 births no longer available at all, 1921-1929 marriages and deaths available from home, 1930-1935 marriages and deaths restricted, and 1936-1945 marriages and deaths available from home. None of this makes sense to me, but I’m afraid that if I point out this disparity, they will conclude that it was indeed a mistake, and they will end up restricting everything!!

I believe that part of the logic is that they want people to continue to visit FamilySearch centers. If everything could be viewed from home, people might choose to not visit centers and they will close due to lack of interest. The interest is there, but if we can work on all our records any time of the day or night at home, and avoid bad Chicago weather, why go to a center? Frankly, it is the best place to get expert help while you’re researching. You can go to a genealogy conference, attend meetings of a genealogy group, or attend a library presentation on a genealogy topic, but to get one-on-one assistance, the FamilySearch center is definitely the best place.

Both Centers and Affiliates have subscriptions to genealogy web sites that you would normally have to pay for to use at home. They may have different sites, and different levels of access, but you should check with your Center or Affiliate to see what they have. You need to access them through the Center’s familysearch page (called the Portal) or the Affiliate’s library home page. These include Newspaper Archives, Newspapers.com, findmypast, Fold3, Ancestry Institution Version, Genealogy Bank, MyHeritage Library edition, and others. So even if your FamilySearch records are available from home, you can use these other resources for free at a Center or Affiliate. Check any public library to see what they offer. It might be more than an Affiliate due to that library having its own subscriptions.

So where are all these wonderful places? Go to https://www.familysearch.org/centers/locations/

Enter your zip code and select your city from the list. Enter your zip code and select your city from the list. They’ll be plotted on a map with slightly different looking pins. Click a pin to see the location and hours, but call the FamilySearch center to confirm the hours, in case the web site is out of date.

Enjoy!

It’s a good thing when I get to start yet another column with the above headline. I have some new tips for those of you who may be frustrated a little with how it works.

First of all, familysearch has released a lot of new Cook County births in the past few weeks. They have most of the births indexed from 1878-1933 so far, and they plan to extend that to 1940. There are some suburban Cook County births already indexed up to 1938 (Evanston, Oak Park, Melrose Park etc.) but almost no Chicago from 1933-1940 as of now.

Please keep in mind that the index of these births does NOT let us see the actual certificate, because the Cook County lawyers want us to pay $17 for each one. However, you can gather quite a bit of information from the index itself. (The main thing that is not indexed is the cause of death!)

If your birth record in the index shows a film number with seven digits, then this is a microfilm that you can still order and you can see the actual certificate. You can also visit Wilmette Family History Center and you might be able to see and copy the certificate without ordering the film.

If your birth record in the index shows a “Digital folder number” with a lot of digits, then the record in the index is not available on microfilm via familysearch. You should record the digital folder number and the image number and the certificate (or reference) number in your family tree anyway, just in case these are someday released to the public. But basically you will not be able to see the actual certificates.

“But Dan, I found my grand-aunt in the index with a birth certificate from 1911, and yet it is not on film. Why?” Well, take a look at the “registration date” in the index. You may find a birth certificate that was registered many years after the birth. These are called “Delayed births.” (My mother thinks I am a delayed birth. “I was in labor for 19 years!”) Actually, these are birth certificates that were filed when people realized that their parents (or the midwife) never filed a birth certificate, and so they had to go in and file one for themselves as an adult. However, keep in mind that the original birth certificates for 1911, for example, are filed separately from the delayed birth certificates for other people also born in 1911, which is why the delayed ones are not filmed. The good news is that many of them now appear in the index. And the person who filed the information is usually older and can confirm the details that the old midwife would not have known. They probably spoke better English as well!

There are no “delayed deaths” or “delayed marriages,” so what you see in the index is what you get. But I need to tell you about my experience searching for certificates for the past couple of months.

To search the index, they allow you to search the following fields:

First name: Should I search for Giovanni or John?

Last name

Location: I put “Illinois” here

Range of years: from 1911 to 1913, for example.

Father’s first name

Father’s last name: redundant — same as the Last name above.

Mother’s first name

Mother’s surname.

I limit the results to “Birth records” so I only check the box for “Birth.”

So I would look for the people in my file that I know were born in Chicago who I do not have a birth certificate for. I was finding very few successful results. In many cases, I had the correct birth date and parents’ names from other sources. The birth date might have come from the gravestone, and the parents’ names were already in my data file. So why can’t I find anything?

We have to remember that for many of our Chicago-born ancestors, quite often the parents were not English speakers, and the midwife who would frequently report the birth had to be more fluent in dialects than in English. So we end up with a lot of names being spelled incorrectly.

So when I failed to find someone, I would restrict the search to only the parents’ names. Find me everyone born to these parents from 1911-1913. No luck.

Ok how about only the last names of the parents. No luck.

Ok let’s look in all years. Now I find siblings of the one I need. I already found these before. Still looking for the older sibling.

Now I try no first name, no last name, no range of years, location Illinois, father first name only, mother first name only. If I’m lucky, I find a record that could possibly be the right one.

Now when I search for everyone who was ever born in Illinois to Vito and Anna, with no last names, obviously I could end up with quite a few false hits. Now I put the year range back in. Search for anyone born to Vito and Anna in Illinois between 1911 and 1913. When I would do this kind of search, I would typically get 20-30 hits and I can read the results and see which ones are the exact date and which have names that could possibly be right.

Another example: I had to find the birth certificate of the first of twenty children in a family. She was Theresa Latoria, born Jan 1 1909 in Chicago, to Michael Latoria and Rosa Scavo. I found her birth certificate under the name Viatricio Lotaro, born Jan 1, 1908 (they had a brain cramp and put the year on the paper as 1908 when it was really 1909), father was Micaligio Lotaro, mother was Rosina Scaro. So except for the first name, last name, date, father’s name and mother’s name, it was correct!!

(Notice the GS film number. This is the film you can order and look at this certificate. If there is no GS film number, you will only see the Digital Folder number, which means there is no film.)

The lesson to take from this is to try any combination of birth name and parent names until you find one that just might be it. And if you think you know the birth year, say 1909, go a year on either side (1908-1910) to be sure you have it. The delayed births sometimes are inaccurate because sometimes people have “adjusted” their birth year to accommodate other events (they lied to their draft board etc.) and now they have to live with it, so they change their birth date on their own delayed birth certificate to match with what they have already said. Sometimes, it’s just a mistake. You also cannot always trust the birth year on the grave stone either.

And after all this, don’t forget that some people just simply never bothered to get a birth certificate.

I’ll keep you posted as more data ends up on familysearch . We are eagerly awaiting marriages from the 1920s which are not indexed anywhere.

Happy hunting!

If you have any questions, send me an e-mail at italianroots@comcast.net and please put “Fra Noi” in the subject line. Have fun!

A few years ago, I received a phone call from a cousin I had not heard from in some time. Some years earlier, this distant relative and I had been in regular contact while I was working with them on their branch of the family tree. They gave me the data on the descendants and photographs, so the tree would be up to date. I gave them ancestry going farther back than they ever dreamed. Then they called me years later to tell me that they found the same ancestry data on the internet and I should check it out. After I found what they saw, it turned out that someone else had taken the data I gave them and posted it on-line as though they did the work.

This is just one of the frustrations of posting your family tree on-line. Although there are problems with on-line family trees, including but not limited to retaining the ownership, they can serve as an excellent guide toward the original sources.

Many people have found their family tree on-line because the person who did the work (or someone who stole it) posted the tree on a number of possible locations. The most likely ones are: Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, personal web sites.

If you have accounts set up on Ancestry or Familysearch, they make it quite easy to add your family tree to their sites. You download a gedcom file from your genealogy software (Roots magic, Family Tree Maker, PAF, etc.) and upload it to their site. Most people who have posted their family tree on a personal web site usually just take reports and charts from their family tree software and toss them on a web page. There are some sophisticated personal web sites that take a lot of work to maintain also. The point is that family trees can be posted and found all over the place with a google search or by searching within Ancestry or Familysearch in their searches specifically designed to search their family tree data (not their record collections).

As the person who posts the family tree, please understand that there is a responsibility involved. Each site with a family tree has a means to contact the submitter. So anytime someone looks at your tree and has a question, they will use that web site, or e-mail, to contact you, because you must know where you found the information.

Unfortunately, this is the beginning of the frustration for the lucky people who find the tree on-line. Many genealogists complain that they try to contact the person who posted the family tree and never get a response. Usually, this is because they see just enough information about a particular individual in the tree and they want to ask if there is any additional information about them. Everyone is different in how they manage their e-mail, but I hear far more people complain about lack of response than I hear about quick responses and happy success stories. I can’t speak for those who don’t reply to their questions but I think some of them feel “Hey, I posted my entire tree on-line. That’s enough! I have to answer questions too?” It seems to me that the purpose of posting one’s lifetime of research on-line should be to find others who can help, and be helped, by that post. Why bother putting the tree on-line at all if you don’t intend to work with other genealogists?

I need to digress for a moment and talk about living people in the family tree. It is NEVER a good idea to post data on living individuals on family tree sites. We have enough trouble with identity theft without giving people’s personal information on genealogy sites to make it easy. Check your genealogy program for what method they use to “privatize” the data on living individuals. Family Tree Maker, for example, has a feature that marks all data on living people “Private” temporarily. Then you download the gedcom and the individuals in the tree who are living are identified as “Private” and there is no birthdate or birthplace for those people. The deceased people in the file are fully identified. Then you turn off the “Privatize” feature and your file goes back to normal so you can add more data to it. Please make sure you do not post living peoples’ information on-line, mostly because they might find that information on the internet and when you contact them again for more information, they might be upset and reluctant to help you with more.

The next problem with on-line trees is that few of them are properly documented. They mention your great-great-grandfather’s name, his birth date of 1852, his birth place “Bari Italy,” his death date of 1921, his death place of “Chicago” and not much else. This is usually the point where you try to contact the person who submitted the tree and they don’t answer you. The problem is that you have no birth or death data on great-great-grandpa and this is all you know. So you now enter this data in your family tree file based on finding it in the web site. So are you now going to find records for Bari and see if you can find his birth record in 1852 Bari births? Naturally, this is all you have, so you order microfilm for the city of Bari, and it costs $15 to get two films that contain 1852 births. After waiting four weeks for the films, he’s not in there. You wasted $15 and your time. If the on-line family tree had a source for the 1852 birth “Grandma told me.” then you could take this piece of information with a grain of salt. I would not waste time researching a primary source for data whose source is “Grandma told me.” Not unless Grandma was known to be quite accurate with such dates and places. Part of the problem is that when people don’t remember the small town name (the comune), they usually say the name of the larger place name. “Our family comes from Bari.” “Mom’s side comes from Krakow.” “I live in Chicago.” To people who may not be familiar with the geography, this is enough to tell them basically where the family roots are from. But as genealogists, we need the name of the exact town where the records are. Great-great-grandpa was born in Carbonara, in the province of Bari. Busia (Polish for “grandma”) was born in Ocieka, near Rseszow, some 60 km from Krakow. We live in Elk Grove Village, which is near Chicago. Once you have the proper place name, you can consider searching for primary sources that can confirm what is already on-line.

The best part of finding an on-line family tree is when you find something you didn’t know, and the person who posted the tree also posts the source. “1851 Carbonara, Bari, Puglia Birth records, #141”. In some cases, they may even post a copy of the source itself! Then you can be more certain of the date and place they posted. However, I always caution people to find the source and check it for themselves. Even if the source is listed, get a copy of that document and read it yourself. You order the microfilm and get a copy of the 1851 Carbonara births and look at record #141 and find that the name is correct but the parents are all wrong. Or it references a marriage to someone who isn’t your great-great-grandma, which is possible but now deserves a second look! Or this person died in 1852 and he had a kid brother born in 1854 who was also given the same name and HE is the right great-great-grandpa. You need to find the original source and confirm its legitimacy. Bad data is like a bad cold. You post a bad piece of data that looks good on the surface, but it’s not accurate and then you post it, and then other people pick up that bad data and post it. By the end of the day, a bunch of people all have the sniffles! It is always good news to find a detailed, sourced piece of data you did not know, and maybe you could have never guessed at. But I urge you to always check that data now that you know where to look for it.

If the web site gives you a place to post a comment about some piece of data, please take the time to post your question or objection to that data. If there’s an on-line tree with “1852 Bari” you should post a comment “I found this in Carbonara Bari Puglia 1854 births #97 April 19, 1854”. Even if the original person who posted the tree never bothers to update it with your findings, maybe someone else will see your note and it will give them a clue to check the correct source and save themselves time and money.

There is no way to control all the people and data posted. The best way to help is to be the good genealogist who cites their sources, never posts data on living people, answers questions from other researchers and tries to correct bad data when possible. Then people will sing your praises on social media when they tell their friends that you know what you’re doing!

If you have any questions, send me an e-mail at italianroots@comcast.net and please put “Fra Noi” in the subject line. Have fun!