Where was Giovanni Orto’s Hometown in Italy?

I inherited my Dad’s hard drive and I found information about David Orto. I’d never heard of the Orto family. He married my 2nd cousin twice removed. His parents were born in Italy and married in Saratoga County, New York. Where in Italy was John Orto born? Dad has “Monapoli? or Barrie, Italy” written on […]

Is Mary Cutler My Eighth Great Grandmother?

FamilySearch came out with a new feature that shows where your ancestors are buried. I visited the Old Burying Ground in Lexington, Massachusetts at the end of March 2023, and I was surprised to find I have five 8th great-grandparents buried there. My first reaction was I need to go back and see the graves, […]

Where Did My Immigrant Ancestor Come From?

Locating where your immigrant ancestor came from is always a challenge. Here is one way I solved the problem. In From Tursi to Niles – The Fusco Family – I had a death certificate that said Leonardo Fusco was born on 22 September 1884 in Messina, Italy the son of Frank Fusco and Rosaline Anzollati. […]

From Tursi to Niles – The Fusco Family

My husband asked me to research his best friend’s genealogy. Giovanni Andrea Fusco was a blacksmith in Tursi, Italy, and decided to immigrate to the iron-working town of Niles, Ohio. He was followed by two of his brothers and a cousin, and as was typical of the Italian immigrants, the families stayed close together and […]

Free Research Consultations at FamilySearch

As they are expecting more requests than normal during RootsTech (February 28 through March 1, 2024), FamilySearch is recruiting volunteer consultants. I’ve signed up for the late-night shift. If you’re one of those researchers who sits down and gets into the groove late at night, I’ll have slots available from about midnight to 2 a.m. […]

How I Got Started With My Italian Research

As you can see from Vincenzo Chiariello’s Declaration of Intention, he was born in Naples, Italy. Except he wasn’t. The hardest part of researching our Italian ancestors is finding where they came from. The second part is finding the records. In this case, I was fortunate since researching in Naples is exceptionally difficult and I […]

Hobart Spencer Jr. Was Most Likely the Husband of Betsey Hazen

Pioneer Cabin, Campton Station, Grafton, New Hampshire built around 1775. Twenty-four photos, including photos of the interior, are available for viewing at the Library of Congress website. A family history written in 1963 asserted that Hobart Spencer was married three times, and the third wife was Betsey Hazen. But with today’s access to digitalized documents, […]

Are They the Same Person?

I’m not going to apologize for not blogging recently, I’ve been busy.

I continue with the Acerra, Italy project. There are now 23,210 individuals in The Town of Acerra, Naples, Italy family tree at Ancestry.com I recently completed Picardi and Piscitelli. Moving on to Pipolo. Don’t think I’m almost done. I have finished all the surnames that begin with E, but then after my family names, I moved on to P. I figure the tree should have about 80,000 names when I’m done.

Today I wanted to share the answer to a question I got yesterday, “Are they the same person?” See the document I created to compare the two men and answer that question. When you are evaluating two individuals on FamilySearch, look at the change history (bad merges and individuals adding unsourced information can make the person unrecognizable from the original entry) and the sources.