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, […]

Batch Number Search Doesn’t Seem Worth the Trouble

Originally published 8/22/2019
     I’ve been watching archived sessions from RootsTech. I highly recommend them. In particular, I was watching Finding Elusive Records at FamilySearch by Robert Kehrer which he presented in 2018. Below I’ve attached a link to a video on YouTube where he addresses using batch numbers to help you find information on your relatives which he also discussed at RootsTech.
     What’s a batch number? It is an internal number FamilySearch uses for the images and it indicates a type of record and place. So how does it work? First you search the records for your ancestor at FamilySearch. Once you find your ancestor’s record, open it and on the right hand side you will see “Indexing Project (Batch) Number.” The IGI Batch Number Descriptions (see link below) tells you what the letter in the code means – birth record, marriage record, etc. The number is the locality.
   In the example from the video Kehrer went to Search Records, found a birth record for his ancestor and he found the batch number for that record. Then he went back to Search Records, put in the information he had on the father and mother and restricted the records by Batch Number using the number from the birth record he found and substituting M (marriage) for the letter code P (birth, christening, or passenger lists).
     So why would you want to search this way instead of just putting in the names and places? I tried Kehrer’s search without the batch numbers to see what would happen. We both started by searching for Mary Leah born between 1801 and 1803 at Meole Brace, Shropshire, England. She came up at the top of the list just as she had for Kehrer. Next I searched for Thos Leah and his spouse Jane at Meole Brace, Shropshire, England, restricting the records by marriage and got Thomas Leah married to Jane Yeastope just as Kehrer did.
     The next step was to find the parents for Thomas Leah, so I did the search again restricting the records by birth but I didn’t get the same results as Kehrer until I said match the birth place exactly. So I tried doing the search again restricting the records by batch number and didn’t get quite the same results as Kehrer but Thomas Lea was number nine on the list. So personally, I’m not seeing any advantage to searching by batch number.
     As a side note, Kehrer decided Thomas Lea [Leah] christened 10 June 1770 at Meole Brace, Shropshire, England the son of Richd. Lea and Eliz. was the husband of Jane Yeastope and father of Mary Leah. I don’t think he’s right. There is another Thos. Leah son of Rich. Leah and Eliz. christened 21 June 1789 at Meole Brace, Shropshire, England and he is connected on FamilySearch to the same parents as 1770 Thomas Lea. It would not make sense to have two children with the same name alive at the same time. If it is true that 1770 Thomas Leah died before 1789, then the Thomas Leah who married Jane Yeastope in 1789 and went on to have children from 1790 to 1810 can not be the Thomas Leah son of Richard Leah and Elizabeth christened in 1789. This family needs some work before I’d be comfortable with the conclusions that have been posted.

RootsTech Presentation

IGI Batch Number Descriptions