Beautiful day to go walking in Lexington, Massachusetts, and where do I end up? The Old Graveyard. I am grateful for Find A Grave volunteers who are preserving a record of gravestones across the country.
I Am Grateful for Find A Grave Volunteers
Beautiful day to go walking in Lexington, Massachusetts, and where do I end up? The Old Graveyard. I am grateful for Find A Grave volunteers who are preserving a record of gravestones across the country.
Today I gave my first genealogy presentation for the Hudson, New Hampshire Library’s genealogy club via Zoom. Then I posted my slides with my presentation notes on Substack so the audience could share the presentation with others or refer to it later.
Leonardo Fusco’s Niles, Trumbull, Ohio death record says he was born on 22 September 1884 in Messina, Italy, the son of Frank Fusco and Rosaline Anzolldi, but no record for him was located in Messina.
Since Fusco is not a common name in Niles, Ohio, I looked to see where the other Fuscos in the neighborhood were from.
One of the first was Mrs. Mary A. Fusco born in 1872 in Tursi, Italy the daughter of Frank A. Fusco and Rose Anzoloti. She was married to Nicolas A Fusco which is why her maiden name and married name are the same. This looks like a sister.
Sure enough, Leonardo’s birth record was in Tursi. FAN (Family, Associates, and Neighbors) pays off again.
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.
6 November 2021
I created a YouTube video to walk you through adding a name to FamilySearch. I also included adding an unconnected name which you won’t do very often if ever.
21 October 2021
This week’s email from American Ancestors included an article about how the Colebrook Library (Colebrook, Coos, New Hampshire) has put their local historical newspapers online. I followed the link and you don’t need a library card to see the collection.
The same CommunityHistoryArchive has the Nashua papers that I access through my library and I now discover you don’t need a library card to see them. And with more research, I find there are public libraries all over the United States that are using the service.
So of course I dove right in and located the newspaper Forest Leaves which serves Oak Park, Illinois. I did not find obituaries for the couple I was looking for, but I found one for the second husband that named the wife with maiden name and first married name and his step children. Great find.
published 2 September 2021
I saw an announcement that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a Nationwide Gravesite Locator for veterans and their families. The database has veterans buried in private cemeteries “when the grave is marked with a government grave marker,” and military cemeteries are also included. But “we do not have information available for burials prior to 1997.”
Try it anyway. My grandfather, George Bentley, was called up for World War II. He was in training when the war ended so he his service didn’t last very long and he died prior to 1997 and is buried in a private cemetery. The search does not allow me to limit by state so Bentley turned up more than 1000 entries. George Bentley didn’t turn up my grandfather, but George W Bentley, Jr. buried in Weston, Massachusetts looked like a possible family member.
George W. Bentley Jr; PFC US Army; World War II; born 25 September 1923; died 26 September 2014; buried in Linwood Cemetery, Boston Post Road, Weston, Massachusetts. There is no link to the gravesite so I went to Find A Grave and looked at the entries at the Linwood Cemetery in Weston, Massachusetts. George W. Bentley Jr. is not listed. The cemetery is only 50% photographed so they might not have gotten to him yet. But there is a George William Bentley born 14 September 1859 in England and died 11 October 1929 in Massachusetts. Family?
21 August 2021
I recommend you have a copy of your genealogy research that only you can edit. Ancestry will allow you to create a GEDCOM file which is a generic file that can be imported into most genealogy programs. FamilySearch will not. Yesterday I was working on a client project and wanted to include a pedigree chart. I didn’t like the one I created with the free version of Legacy Family Tree, but Legacy Family Tree will allow you to import directly from FamilySearch. The free version of RootsMagic does not support downloading from FamilySearch.
When I imported the GEDCOM file from Ancestry to RootsMagic, all the sources were there. That’s a really import feature for me. The first time I tried to import from FamilySearch to Legacy Family Tree I said to do 99 generations – I stopped it somewhere in the 20th generation because I had over 200,000 individuals and most of them I knew did not have sources and were probably not correct. The second try I asked for six generations, but the sources just pointed to FamilySearch, not the actual sources. Finally I imported the Ancestry GEDCOM to Legacy Family Tree and all the sources were there.
Picking your program will probably be a personal choice of what is most important to you. The sources and pedigree charts with RootsMagic was more important to me than linking to FamilySearch so I chose it over Legacy. But there may be Legacy Family Tree features that are more important to you, I recommend you try them both out. And there are more free programs available so there will probably be a Part 2 to this blog.
3 August 2021
Online books are another source of information about our families.
Part of our genealogy research should include information about the lives of our relatives. I used to be frustrated because others had stories about their ancestors, but all I had were names and dates. Now I’ve discovered the stories too. They usually aren’t written down, but as you read the documents and learn about the local history, the stories emerge.
For my project about the Brasile family, I am tracing them through three Italian towns, and after visiting the town websites which each had a short history, and Googling, I started digging through the online books. One place is Google Books and sometimes you’ll find the whole book – I was reading books written in 1796. Other times the book is still in copyright and you can look at the WorldCat – I contacted Franklin Piece College about looking at a book in their collection.
During my search, I came across Leading Americans of Italian Descent in Massachusetts by Joseph William Carlevale written in 1946. The WorldCat listed several nearby locations where I could view the book but I discovered the book was available on Ancestry.com and I was able to download a copy of the page I knew a fellow researcher would love to see. It doesn’t pertain to what I am working on but it talks about John Petrell, his birth in Acerra, Italy, his professions in the United States, and his wife and children. At the time of writing, three of his sons were overseas serving in World War II – one as a doctor, one in the Navy, and one in the Army. It also mentioned he was a member of the order Sons of Italy; Garibaldi Club; Vespucci Club; and Mutual Aid Society. All this gives us a lot of hints about John’s life that cannot be found in birth, marriage, and death certificates.
Also, some of the books I was looking at were in Italian. Google translated them into English for me.
15 July 2021
I took a trip to the Brookline, NH Historical Society. They are open Wednesday mornings from 9-Noon and the 2nd Wednesday at 7 pm but you need to email ahead and let them know you are coming to do research.
While I enjoyed the displays of Brookline history, it was the books and documents I zeroed in on. They had copies of the following which are also available online at Google Books – Town Papers, Documents Relating to Towns in New Hampshire Volume XI 1882; True Stories of New England Captives Carried to Canada During the Old French and Indian Wars by C. Alice Baker 1897; and Register of New Hampshire Soldiers and Sailors War of the Rebellion by Ayling.
Available at Hathi Trust – History of Brookline, New Hampshire by Edward E. Parker. The book says it has an index, it doesn’t and the Brookline Historical Society has one which they sell for $15 but you can do a [CTR][F] at Hathi Trust.
What I did not find online – Brookline Deaths and Burials 1766-2020 and Hillsborough County and New Hampshire Court Records 1772-1799 by Pauline J. Oesterline.
A quick glance at the death and burial book showed the author included the plot numbers. What a treasure. My other favorite was the 1892 map which shows were each family lived. I wish I were doing Brookline research. There were more books and documents available, so if you are doing Brookline research, you’ll want to make them one of your resources.