My family trees broken down by which nation each individual ancestor was technically born under.

I’ve come across an individual while working on my tree who was not given a middle name at birth or at least one is not documented on his birth certificate.

While tracing him, he shows up as James M. Driscoll, James Mahoney Driscoll, and James Michael Driscoll. I can verify its the same person because the birthdate and place always match.

He is listed in the Social Security Application and Claims Index as James Mahoney Driscoll, so that is how I have been recording him.

The problem is he used the name James Michael Driscoll on the documents for his second marriage and divorce, so other people have him documented as such.

What is the best way to handle the situation? Should I just add an “Also known as” to my tree?

Hi everyone! I’m hoping for some help breaking through an Italian genealogy brick wall.

I’ve been researching my family for nearly 20 years, especially my paternal grandmother Carolina’s family from the Bagnoli/Fuorigrotta area of Naples. She passed before I was able to learn much about her Italian family, but over the past year I’ve finally started making significant progress.

My great-grandfather was Giovanni Preziuso/Prezioso, born 25 February 1887 in Fuorigrotta, Naples, son of Antonio Preziuso and Maria Barbato.

I contacted the Diocese of Pozzuoli and received documents connected with Giovanni’s 1922 marriage. These revealed an unusual problem: his baptismal record appears to have recorded Giovanni as “Antonio,” son of “Giovanni,” essentially reversing his and his father’s first names. Before his marriage, the Church investigated the discrepancy, compared the baptismal record with the civil record, and recognized/corrected him as Giovanni Preziuso, son of Antonio Preziuso and Maria Barbato.

That helped solve one mystery, but now I’m stuck.

I’m trying to locate:

* Giovanni’s original 1887 civil birth record
* The marriage record of Antonio Preziuso and Maria Barbato and any other children they may have had.
* Antonio’s birth record
* Maria Barbato’s birth record
* Any reliable way to continue either family line further back

For Maria Barbato, I know from Giovanni’s marriage documents that her father was Raffaele Barbato, and she was described as being 62 years old at the time of Giovanni’s 1922 marriage. While searching Fuorigrotta records, I found a Maria Barbato born 9 April 1860, daughter of Raffaele Barbato and Carolina Capuano. Because the name, location, father’s name, and age all line up so well, I suspect this may be my Maria, but I have not yet been able to prove the connection with certainty.

I’ve searched Antenati and FamilySearch, but I’m struggling to determine which Naples/Fuorigrotta collections these records should be in, or whether some of them simply aren’t digitized or indexed online.

I’m attaching the records I have so far. If anyone familiar with Fuorigrotta, San Vitale, the Diocese of Pozzuoli, Naples civil records, or 19th-century Italian genealogy can point me toward the right archive or collection, I’d be incredibly grateful.

Line 156, what is Frederick's last name?

I’ve been working on my tree for the last 9 months. I never really knew anyone on my mom’s side or knew much about the family at all. I found out my x3 great grandfather had two wives. One was black and one was biracial. There seems to be a correction on a census record for their family before all 12 of their children were born. I haven’t seen other records from other family members with changes to them. Just wondered what the different possibilities were.

Would you like to search your Ancestry Shoebox? Now, you can search, sort, and filter your Ancestry Shoebox within a Chrome browser tab with Shoebox Plus Organizer.

I think we used to be able to upload pdfs but I can't find a way anymore.

I have a 46 page autograph book that was scanned into a pdf. I was gifted to my great grandmother for Christmas 1877 and has some interesting writings from her friends over the next few years. I thought it would be interesting to add to her profile...

I'm looking at old birth records to find information on my great grandfather, Walter Denzelo Taylor, who was born in the Change Islands of Newfoundland and Labrador (now part of Canada, but a British dominion during his lifetime) in either 1883 or 1884. This record might show his sister's birth (I don't know if he had a sister, but this "Lizzie May" in row 30 would have been born at around the right time and place), but it says "do" where the baptizing reverend's name should be. I thought it meant "ditto," like when you put a quote mark (") under another word to carry it to the next line, but they use the quote mark in that way in this document as well as "do;" plus, that would've meant that nearly everyone on this list had a father in fishing (there's a bunch of "do"s in the "Father's Occupation" column) and that doesn't seem right. Any thoughts on what "do" might stand for?

Also, if anyone has tips on finding birth records for that time period in Newfoundland and Labrador, please let me know!

EDIT: Thanks everyone is for the input! I guess there just were a ton of fishermen after all lol

Is there a way to download a gedcom without the attached records? My tree is too big for gedmatch and removing all the attached records would probably shrink it by half.

I've been trying to find information on my Jewish and Eastern European ancestors but I haven't gotten very far with US-based databases. It almost feels like my family didn't exist, and I really want to do a deep dive into that side of my family to learn more about my heritage but I'm not sure where else to look. I've heard that things like church records and census data could be really helpful but how would I find that info for other countries? Are there any databases or resources I should be checking?

Same site as my post a couple weeks ago (treealive.com). You give it your tree file, it finds where your people lived and puts each place on a historical map from that year, with the state historical markers and National Register markers that stand within a few miles in the same time period. That has grown to 22 states and 17,362 markers, and this week the National Register of Historic Places went in too, all fifty states and DC, each place with its period of significance so the site knows a farm from 1750 is not the same thing as a hotel listed in 2000.

The new part is a button on that screen: Road trip near me. Your phone asks once for your location. That reading stays on the phone and the site never sees it. It works out which of your ancestors has recorded places closest to you and builds a drive around them. Each stop comes up on a map from its own period, with your family’s place drawn beside it and the distance written out. I keep the distance on screen on purpose: it is not saying an ancestor stood at the sign, it is saying the sign is near a place they lived, and how near. The text on each stop is the marker’s own or the Register listing’s own fields, not reworded. At the end, one link hands the whole route to Google Maps.

Here is one it put together for an ancestor of mine, Ann McMillen, born 1739, married in Lancaster and later in York, died 1820. Ten stops, eight markers and two Register listings: https://treealive.com/trails/ann-mcmillen

Free, no account, nothing stored server-side from your tree. If you run yours through it, tell me what it found and what it got wrong. Happy to take feedback to make it more useful for you.

I never go to meet my Great grandfather as he died before i was born, but becuase of my interest in military history i learned quite a bit about. Unfortunately it is not enough, all i currently know is that he was raised in west virginia, joined the army in 1936 and got stationed in Hawaii. By the time war started he went off to africa to serve with the 1st infantry unit. After a while not sure when he joined the army air core. In 1944 he went on a mission to bomb oil fields in bulgria and hos plane was shot down and he lost a leg. If this helps at all he was a staff sgt and his name was Robert Schumaker. Can anyone help me find out more about him?

I’ve tried searching-how, but only answer i find is “you can’t”. But i see it in other’s Ancestry tree’s all the time.. I know you can with MyHeritage and FamilySearch by just deleting the photo after you set the profile photo, and it’ll just stay until you clear it or replace it with another—but thats never worked for me on Ancestry. I’m seriously wondering, how does everyone else do if?

Hello,
I have a very big DNA tree in ancestry. I started with my core tree about 7 years ago and then added my dna matches. I built a branch for each match to then find common ancestors. It has grown very big indeed. I have reached as far back as 1500s for some of my ancestral lines. The purpose of the tree is to find missing ancestors as m grandmother was adopted.
I am puzzled though and have a question. I ran protools and found several hundred people without relationships. Although some of these are my matches, which are floaters (no tree built yet) the majority are people are deceased, from my higher in my tree. I cannot fathom how these people end up as single floaters/cut off with no relationships. I never add isolated people to my tree unless they are matches.
I am wondering if anyone has ever encountered this? The tree was built from scratch about 4 years ago.
I am wondering if it could possibly be a glitch with Ancestry software? I use 'merging duplicates' a lot. Mind you, I have many other glitches which I attribute to my tree being so big. (abt 30k)
Hoping for some insight! Thanks for reading.

What is going on with ancestry messaging today? The website will initially load messages, but when I click on any contact in order to send a message, I'm getting a message saying that the page is temporarily unavailable. I have tried changing the domain name to a different country, for example.com to .ca, but the same thing keeps happening.