Joelle Steele’s Genealogy Q & A
This is my advice column on genealogy, ancestry tracing, and genetics. You can read the answered questions below, or you can scroll all the way down to the comment section, ask me a question, and I’ll do my best to answer it for you.
Q. Do I really need genealogy software? If I do, what should I get?
A. It’s not a must have, but if your family has more than about 50 names, you will probably want it. As for which one to get, I don’t recommend one in particular as they all do pretty much the same thing. I still use an old 2000 version of Family Tree Maker for my own family and for my clients, and it works great. Brother’s Keeper is good and it’s very inexpensive (around $50).
Q. I went to a town in England to see if I could find my ancestors there. The cemetery had only eight graves. How do I know which ones are my people?
A. You can’t start researching from who you think may be your earliest ancestor. They could have hundreds or even thousands of descendants. You need to work backwards starting with your own birth certificate, and then the birth certificates of your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., until you hit the one(s) that came to America. The passenger lists will tell you where that ancestor came from, and then you keep following the line backwards until you reach the earliest ancestor you can find.
Q. Why do you need vital statistics documents? Can’t I just give you the names and dates?
A. There is a lot of information on birth certificates, death certificates, etc., that is essential when tracing lineage. Without it, a family tree can be blocked entirely or the lineage can be inaccurate.
Q. What is the best genealogy website to use?
A. You will probably need to visit several as they are all different. Some may only have part of your tree while others may have some of your family or none. You can start with ancestry.com, but I have had better luck finding people on familysearch.org. Also, not everyone’s entire family is on these big sites. And, some families have their own websites that are accessible to anyone, and you might find your ancestors on one or more of those sites.
Q. My family is half-French and half-German, but when I had my DNA done, it shows 86 percent German, Austrian, Russian, and French, and 10 percent “Mediterranean.” Does this mean what I’ve been told about my family isn’t true?
A. You were told that you are genealogically half-French and half-German. Genealogy is about nationality. But DNA is about your genetic make-up. Depending on who analyzes your DNA, you may get the past 500 years of ancestry, or you may get a DNA profile that dates back 60,000 or 350,000 years or more.
Q. What is the difference between genealogy research and ancestry research?
A. Genealogy is usually about visiting places and reviewing documents to find out what people did during their lives. Ancestry research usually refers to tracing the lineage from records and online research, to establish your family tree. I do ancestry research, and I look at a lot of websites and vital statistics documents to trace lineage, and I also help people sort out trees that aren’t linking up correctly – a fairly common problem.
Q. How far back in time can someone realistically trace their ancestry?
A. You can conceivably go back 60-80 generations. It would probably take quite a bit of time and effort, but I have traced client ancestries back as far as 900 AD, and recently back to 134 BC. One of my distant cousins traced his ancestry back to Adam and Eve — although it’s pretty speculative in places.
Q. I have been trying to find out information about the Italian side of my family. I wrote to a genealogist near where my great-grandfather came from. He couldn’t find any records at the church that supposedly had all the records. Does that mean I will never know who my ancestors were?
A. Possibly. Unfortunately, some countries, including Italy, don’t keep good records, or what records that they did keep are sometimes severely damaged or have been lost entirely in fires, floods, or wars.
Q. I grew up not knowing anyone in my family except my parents. When I did my genealogical research, I found out that my grandmother was an African-American born in Cuba, and my great-grandfather was Chinese. How can this be true? I am white with blue eyes and so are my sister and brother.
A. There are very, very few people who are genetically “white.” In fact, as of 2022, there are approximately 8 billion people in the world, and only 1.2 billion (16%) are characterized as “white” by appearance. And, of the United States population, approximately 55-56% look “white,” but whether they are genetically “white” is a very different story.
Q. I am so frustrated. I can’t figure out my Polish ancestry. The names of the places where they were born don’t appear on any map of Poland that I can find at my library, and the names don’t come up in an online search either.
A. This is a very common problem in Polish research. The borders of Poland have changed several times, and when the borders changed, so did the spelling of names. You might want to consider finding a genealogist in Poland who can help you with this, as I’m pretty sure they have come up against this problem before.
Q. I was recently given the ancestry for a line of my family that was researched by my 3xgreat-grandfather. The dates are quite old, like 1656 AM. What exactly is AM and what does this mean for my family tree.
A. AM stands for “anno mundi,” a Latin term meaning “in the year of the world.” These are years in the Jewish calendar that are based on Jewish and Christian scripture, starting with Adam and Eve being born in 1 AM. Your 3x-great-grandfather may have been referencing Jewish genealogies, and it probably means you have some very ancient Jewish ancestors.
Q. My family comes from Sweden, and the naming system is very confusing to me. First, I can’t figure out what surnames to look for as they seem to change with each generation. Second, the names I’ve heard of don’t match the names I find in my research.
A. What you are describing is the patrinomial naming system, in which Lars Andersson’s son is Carl Larsson, and Carl’s son is Bjorn Carlsson, etc. This system was also combined with the names of farms. This system began to die out around 1900 in the Scandinavian countries. So, if you’re researching prior to that, it can indeed be very confusing at times. This can cause names to not match up with what you know. Also, many Scandinavians use their middle names, not the first name. The problem you’re having might be resolved by getting the birth records directly from the church serving the birthplace of your ancestors.
Q. I am stumped in my research. I can’t find records beyond those of my great-grandparents.
A. Look at passenger lists and also look for alternative spellings of their names, especially if they immigrated from a non-English-speaking country. For example, if your last name is Miller, and generations back your family name was Mueller, then they may have Americanized it to Miller when they came from Germany. Both are occupational names for a person who owned or worked in a mill.
Q. How do you find out what your ancestors did, where they lived, etc. It seems straightforward to find their names and birth/death dates, but who they were seems impossible.
A. Depending on where in the world you’re researching, their occupation is often right on birth certificates. You can also look for people in newspapers, military records, special interest association records, etc. This is generally done online or, ideally, by visiting the places where your ancestors once lived.
Q. In the census records I found what appear to be my great-grandparents and their two children at the exact address where they lived. But the names of my grandmother and her brother, who would have been 11 and 13 years old at the time, are off by six years. Any explanation for this?
A. I have a similar problem in my own family tree, and I’ve seen this in census records before. Census takers were often at a disadvantage when trying to get information from people for whom English was a second language. If you know, from their birth certificates, the birth dates of your grandmother and her brother, go with that information.
Q. How do I find out exactly where my great-grandfather’s farm was located in Idaho. I know what town it was in, but nothing else.
A. I rely on the Bureau of Land Management for the state I’m researching. I believe they have offices in Idaho. If they can’t help, you may need to contact the city or county office that manages the purchase of lands. Maps will show you exactly where the farm was located.
Q. I know this isn’t a DNA advice column, but do you know why some companies ask for your spit and others swab the cheek? Is there a difference in the results?
A. The swab is the preferred method as it utilizes the cells from your cheek. The spit method can be problematic because food enzymes in your mouth may contaminate the sample. But, all in all, the companies that do DNA testing produce accurate results with either collection method.
Q. I have a photo of my great-granduncle wearing a military uniform decorated with medals. No one seems to be able to identify the uniform, the medals, or the country. Family stories say he was a hero who pulled six other men out of a flooding trench in France during World War I.
A. There are several books about military uniforms, and one of them is The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Uniforms of World War I. If you don’t want to buy it, you might be able to get it at your local library or through an interlibrary loan.
Q. In researching my 6x great-grandfather in Connecticut, I have found his same name in four references for the same city, but each with a different father. How do I sort this out?
A. I assume he was living in about the late 1700s. In that case, he and his father, or he and his son, might be included in the Barbour Collection of Connecticut Vital Records. This is available on FamilySearch.org (the LDS website).
Q. My great-grandmother was Greta Flyte. She was born in Sweden, but I don’t know what town. I can’t find any records of a Greta Flyte anywhere online, but I found her husband, Max Erickson and his first wife and their son, who both died in childbirth. How do I find Greta?
A. It’s possible that Greta was born a Margaret or Margareta. Greta is short for Margaret in Sweden and a few other countries, so you might want to search on that name instead. You might also need to try alternate spellings of Flyte, such as Flut or Flute.
Q. When I was researching my Swiss family roots, I had no trouble finding my ancestors. But I don’t speak, write, or read anything other than English, and now I’m trying to find out information about who they were, how they lived, what work they did, etc., and I’m coming up with nothing in the way of anecdotal information in English.
A. The main languages spoken in Switzerland are German, French, and Italian. If you’re searching online, you should be able to use the Google translator to help you read the English version of any documents that are in those languages that pertain to your family members.
Q. I have been trying to verify some of the things I was told about my family when I was a child, and so far I’m having no luck. Any suggestions?
A. Not everything you learn about family when you’re a child is always accurate or complete. So if the person who told you things is still alive, ask them again. Parents tell children what they think their child will understand at a particular age. Then, over time, some of that is forgotten or mis-remembered. It becomes “family lore.” For example, when I was 12, my mother said her mother’s first husband died in a train wreck. I had always pictured him riding a train that crashed. I found out 40 years later that he was in a truck that was hit by a train, my uncle was with him at the time and survived, and my grandmother sued the railroad and won. Search for facts and try not to rely too much on family lore.
Q. My great-grandfather was married to three women, and I can’t figure out which one was my great-grandmother. I also can’t find divorce or death records for any of them.
A. You need to get birth certificates for your great-grandfather’s children. The births of his children should ultimately lead you to determine who the mother(s) were. As for a lack of divorce records, many people today find it hard to believe that people used to just up and leave their their spouses many years ago. But they did. Before Social Security came on the scene, it was a lot easier to just leave and start over somewhere else, even with a different name. Several years ago, while working on a client’s ancestry, I discovered that her father left his first wife and two children without a divorce and married her mother in a small town 300 miles away. As for death records, look at local cemetery records. Have you looked for marriage licenses or certificates?
Q. I can’t afford to travel very far or for very long. Is it necessary to visit the places your ancestors came from in order to view all the birth and death records?
A. Sometimes it’s necessary if you can’t find any info online. But, if you can’t travel, you may be able to find a genealogist in your ancestors’ city or country who can do that research for you.
Q. I found a lot of information about my father’s side of the family on ancestry.com. But when I showed it to my grandmother, she said the lineage was incorrect in places. I went to the LDS Family Search site and part of that info matched ancestry.com’s, but the rest was different. My grandmother thought both sites were not correct but in different ways. Is this a common problem?
A. Unfortunately, yes. I have often spent hours trying to untangle lineage conflicts for clients. I rely on about 40 different websites when I am tracing lineage or trying to fix a broken tree. I scrutinize all records to determine what is different and if the lineage discrepancies are due to a birth date typo, the misspelling of a name, etc.
Q. Why did so many women die in childbirth? Why did so many children die as babies?
A. The most common cause of death to mothers, even to this day, is heart disease and stroke. But there are also problems with severe bleeding that continues a week or more after delivery and infections. There’s also amniotic fluid embolism (the fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream), and weakening of the heart muscle (cardiomyopathy). As for babies and toddlers, they died from a number of things: flu, scarlet fever, malaria, tuberculosis, infections, measles, mumps, chicken pox, small pox … The list is kind of endless for those things we have eliminated with vaccines. My own brother almost died of measles in the 1950s, and a friend of mine is completely deaf in one ear from mumps in the 1940s.
Q. What is the best way to approach writing your memoirs? What should be included?
A. What you include determines how you write your own story. Most people can write in chronological order. But, if you have a good memory, have led a very active life, want to express a lot of opinions, you may need to write by subject matter, e.g., childhood memories, teen years, marriage, raising kids, schooling, first job, career, hobbies, travels, etc.
Q. Did people move around a lot during the 1800s? It seems like my family didn’t stay in one place for very long.
A. It was easier for people to move around back then, usually for work, because they didn’t own as much stuff as people do today. They could pack a few bags, ship some belongings, hop on a train, and set up housekeeping wherever they wanted to be.
Q. I’ve been trying to find a record of my great-great-grandfather’s arrival in America. I have looked for him on passenger lists online and I still can’t find him. I’m pretty sure he came through New York, but maybe not?
A. Some ships came regularly to certain ports. Ellis Island is only one port, and a lot of people came through that port. But sometimes people came through Canada, or Baltimore, or some other port. Check them all. And don’t forget that people often Americanized their names. Look for some alternative spellings.
Q. When I find an ancestor who spells their last name differently, how can I tell what their real name is?
A. Their real name is whatever name they used. If you mean, is it the original name of your ancestors, you can only know that by examining birth certificates to see how parents were spelling their names at any given time. I’ve been working on a Hoyt family lineage, and they spelled their names differently based on when and where they lived: Hoyt, Hoit, Hoyte, Haite, Hoyett, etc.
Q. How do you find out where a person is buried? I tried find-a-grave online, but he wasn’t there.
A. This can happen when a cemetery has been closed and the graves moved; when a cemetery has fallen into ruin and there are no headstones or they are no longer readable; when a person is buried in a family plot on their farm; or when a person is lost at sea. Try to get a death certificate, which should state which funeral home his body was sent to and which cemetery he went to after that.
Q. I have my lineage completed back to 1701. I have found a lot of information about the oldest ancestors, but I don’t really know much about the three generations before me. How do I find out more about them?
A. The first place to start would be to ask everyone who ever knew your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents. to tell you what that person was like. Ask for some stories they remember. After that, you should have some leads to what might be interesting. Also, look for stories in newspapers, obituaries, school records, land grants, etc.
Q. I had my DNA tested by two different companies and the results are not the same. If all these DNA companies claim to be accurate, how can the test results be so different?
A. I am not a DNA expert at all, but I have had mine tested by three labs to see if the results were the same. I was very surprised to see how different they were. When I contacted one of the labs, they explained that DNA results are determined by three factors: 1) how far back the testing goes – some companies only go back five generations while others go back 200,000 years or more; 2) how many SNPs – single nucleotide polymorphisms – are used in a test; and 3) how the genetic material is collected, swab or saliva method. So, your genetic make-up will look different depending on the methods used by the lab that analyzes your DNA. To illustrate the differences, here are my results from three different labs:
Q. In my family tree there are some large age gaps between spouses. For example, one of my great-grandmothers was only 16 when she married my great-grandfather who was 32 at the time. This is not some religious group where marrying young girls is considered acceptable. What gives?
A. People married for love in the old days, but they also married for convenience, for survival. And they married when they could afford to do so. A young man might not be able to provide a home for a spouse and future children until he was in his mid-20s or older, or he may have lost a wife in childbirth and need someone to care for the child and produce more children. A woman’s prime child-bearing years are 16-24. In the old days, a 16-year old woman was already a mature adult, fully trained to be a housewife and mother from the time she was born. She would be marriageable at age 16. In some countries women married later, but there were still some significant age gaps.
Q. Six of my ancestors in the past five generations married cousins, including my great-grandparents who were first cousins. Could this have created any health issues that might affect my future children?
A. Only your physician can answer that question. But, marrying cousins does not necessarily mean a couple’s children will be born deformed or anything that horrendous. But, if there are genetic diseases in a family, marriages between cousins can increase the chances of inheriting one of those diseases. Some of the most common genetic diseases/disorders/conditions are: hemophilia, Down syndrome, Huntington’s disease, fragile X syndrome, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, and thalassemia.
Q. Why were names changed by Ellis Island personnel?
A. That is a myth. People came to America and they wanted to be Americans. They are the ones who usually Americanized their names or chose other names. My grandfather came from Finland to America with the last name Sandkulla, but one of his other family names was Stål, which in English means “steel,” so he changed it. It was spelled the way it was pronounced in Swedish, and so it’s spelled differently during his lifetime: Steel, Steele, Still, until it finally stayed at Steele.
Q. I am having problems putting my family history together. I started by writing about my family’s farm in Pennsylvania and my 6x great-grandfather who founded it. But there are a lot of stories about him and his wife and it seems like it’s just a confusing run-on and not a good story format. Do you have any advice for how to handle this? I have a very big family.
A. I have a small family on my father’s side and a huge family on my mother’s. I handle the history the same way regardless of the size of the family. I begin with a general section that talks about a family unit (mother, father, and children), saying where they lived, what they did as a whole. Then I follow that section with the individual stories about each person in that family group. I have edited many family histories over the years, and the more stories you have about individual people, the better this format works.
