Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was Your Best Genealogy Research Achievement This Past Month?

I had to really think about the answer to this week's question from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  It wasn't what what came to mind first.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  What was your best genealogy research achievement this past month?  Tell us about it — what you achieved, and how does it affect your 2024 goals?

2.  Tell us about your recent achievement in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

When Randy posed his question, he almost certainly meant research on one's own family.  And I actually did research on my own family this past month and accomplished quite a bit!

But I think my best research achievement wasn't on my own family.  It was on the family of someone I'm working with on acquiring dual citizenship.

That person has an Italian ancestor through whom he is eligible for dual citizenship, and that has been the focus of the research and the planning for the application.  That's what he asked me to work on.

There's no problem with his eligibility.  It's very clear he can apply through that ancestor.  It's a great-grandfather, which is three generations back, and that requires three generations of documentation and all the associated bureaucratic processes associated with that.  Plus needing to make an appointment to go to the consulate in person, which apparently at this time is at least two to three years out.  If you can actually manage to make an appointment, which he hasn't been able to do after weeks of trying.

And then last week he told me that his mother, whom I had already known was born in Germany but had not verified what her citizenship was, immigrated to the United States under a German passport, after he was born.

Well, guess what?  That makes him eligible for German dual citizenship.  Only one generation back, and only one generation of documentation.  Fewer documents, less bureaucracy.  Can be accomplished in weeks or months, not years.  Much more straightforward.

That's a far more important achievement than verifying the birth and marriage dates of a few dozen of my British cousins.

It doesn't have anything to do with my planned research goals for 2024, though.

Top 10 Posts of 2016

It is very close to the end of the year, and it's natural to look back at one's work over that time.  This year's most viewed posts fall somewhat between the results from last year and those of the year before.  In 2014 the top posts covered a wide range of topics, while in 2015 the list was solidly populated by Who Do You Think You Are?  This year half the list is WDYTYA, and the other half is all over the place.  So it appears I still have my mandate, but people are reading other topics also.

Tied at #10 are an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (no surprise), the one about Scott Foley, and a post about one of my family mysteries, the question of whether the biological father of my grandfather Bertram might also have been the father of Bertolet, the daughter my great-grandmother had three years after her husband had died.  It's nice to see that a story about my family can compete with WDYTYA.

The next two are more episodes of Who Do You Think You Are?:  Katey Sagal at #9 and Chris Noth at #8.  They were were within just a few views of each other.

Coming in at #7 is when I worked out several generations of my female ancestors' ages at death, one of my posts for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun meme.  (The corresponding post about my male ancestors' ages at death had a 10% lower viewing count, possibly because it was published a week off schedule.)

I am very happy to see that the post about photos of "contraband" scholars that were appraised on an episode of Antiques Roadshow placed high, at #6.  I keep hoping that someone will find a photograph of an ancestor in that collection.

Returning to Who Do You Think You Are?, the episode with Aisha Tyler placed #5 on the list of most-viewed posts.  She was the opening episode for this year's season and generated a lot of interest.

A big surprise was that how many place names appear in my Family Tree Maker family database came in at #4.  This was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, which certainly helps garner more viewers, but that's a pretty narrow topic.

Neoklis Girihidis

Another surprise, but a good one, was that one of my posts about opportunities to volunteer or share information placed #3 on the year's list.  The number of views was significantly higher than any other volunteer post.  I suspect one of the projects particularly caught people's attention, but I have no idea which one.  I hope it was the one about the Greek man looking to contact the Jewish boys he helped escape during World War II.

This year the highest an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? placed was again #2.  My review of the Lea Michele episode was extremely popular, even though I wasn't able to post it until more than a month after the program aired.  I transcribed all the documents that were shown, however, and I'm sure that helped bring in readers.

Warming my little editor's heart, the #1 post on my blog this year was about copyright.  Yes, the post wherein I chastised two genealogical societies (not by name, of course) for abusing others' copyrights was well ahead of #2, by a good 10% more views.  I hope the post helps people think more carefully before they just copy things from the Internet and put them into their society newsletters.  No, just because it's on the Internet does not mean it's free, and the author didn't put it there so you could copy it.

Now that I've gone through the list, the final surprise is that not a single post about newspapers made it into the top 10.  Considering that two did last year (and three were in the top 12), I wonder what happened.

I checked to see how many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? were aired this year:  a grand total of six.  And five of those made it into my top 10.  For some reason, Molly Ringwald didn't interest people anywhere near as much as the other celebrities.  But now I know why other topics were able to do as well.

I wasn't able to compare the number of shares this year, because Blogger/Google no longer seems to provide that statistic.  The most commented-on post was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun one, where Randy asked everyone to write about their most recent unknown ancestor.  That generated almost 40 comments, most from a very generous woman who looked for newspaper articles to help me in my search.  It worked — I think I've identified my grandfather's father.  I'm now searching for a likely Y-DNA candidate for testing.

Something that has not changed since last year is my overall most-viewed post.  That, now with about 67% more views than the runner-up (Lionel Ritchie on Who Do You Think You Are?, the same as last year), is the discussion of the potential of gaining citizenship through descent for people wishing to reclaim ancestral connections.  That post about citizenship is also far in the lead in the number of comments, with more than 150.

Top 10 Posts of 2015

Yes, it's that time of the year when everyone looks back, and I'm doing my retrospective look at the past year's posts to see what people found the most interesting and comment-worthy.  Unlike last year, when the posts ranged over a few topics, this year it's much more clear-cut.  Of my top ten most-viewed posts, two were about online newspapers and eight were reviews of Who Do You Think You Are?  Even the next two in popularity, which were very close behind and tied for the same number of views, were newspapers and WDYTYA.  That almost sounds like a mandate!  So, counting down from #12 to the top, we have:

11.  Who Do You Think You Are? - J. K. Rowling

11.  Big Trouble with Newspaper Digitization (which was second for the number of shares)

10.  Who Do You Think You Are? - America Ferrera

9.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Tony Goldwyn

8.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Sean Hayes

7.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Ginnifer Goodwin

6.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Bill Paxton

5.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Julie Chen

4.  New links added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page

3.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Josh Groban

1.  Who Do You Think You Are? - Angie Harmon

1.  New links added to the Wikipedia newspaper archives page

You'll note that two posts tied for #1 also.  They had the same number of views, but newspapers came out on top because of more shares.

Two seasons of Who Do You Think You Are? aired during 2015:  TLC's season 3 had eight episodes and season 4 had five, for a total of thirteen, nine of which made it into my Top 12.  I was surprised Angie Harmon was the most popular episode for views.  I have no idea whether that was occasioned by interest in the woman or the episode itself.

I mentioned above that "Big Trouble with Newspaper Digitization" came in second for shares.  It turns out the top position in that also had two posts tied:  "Slaves Listed in 1839 Virginia Will", and "Wedding Wednesday", which was about my parents' 1961 wedding.

None of the most-viewed posts was in the list of most-commented on, where this time I had a three-way tie:  my 4th blogiversary, my impressions of the joint FGS/RootsTech conference, and the lovely compliment I received from a family member of one of the WDYTYA celebrities.

I also checked posts from earlier years for most shared and most viewed overall.  The 2014 post about Dick Eastman not posting a comment of mine that he apparently didn't like is still tops in the number of shares.  But whereas last year Lionel Ritchie's appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? was the most viewed, the new leader, now almost 30% higher than Ritchie, is my post about gaining citizenship through descent.  That post also by far has more comments than any other during the past five years.  I think that's what's called a "perennial."

DAR and Lithuanian Citizenship

from Ghosts of the Pines

Well, my new presentation was well received by the Mt. Diablo DAR chapter.  I spoke about my Revolutionary War ancestor, who was a drummer for his New Jersey unit, and his brother, a Loyalist who stayed in the colonies and was hung for treason.  I'm eligible for DAR through my ancestor, and eligible for the International Black Sheep Society of Genealogists because they accept a sibling of an ancestor.  What is particularly ironic is that my ancestor died destitute and has been almost forgotten, but his brother lives on in legends, comic books, and a documentary.  I don't even know if my ancestor has a surviving tombstone, but his brother's grave marker is replaced when it disappears.

After my talk, I went to the Oakland FamilySearch Library to do some research but ended up helping someone who came in looking for advice on how to prove his grandmother was Lithuanian, so he can claim Lithuanian citizenship.  I wrote recently about the right of return and my experience researching someone's Italian ancestry.  Apparently the Lithuanian requirements are similar to the Italian, including eligibility up through a great-grandparent (though the information on the Wikipedia page is singularly uninformative).  One aspect relating to eligibility is proving that the ancestor was a Lithuanian while Lithuania was an independent country, between 1918-1940.  His grandmother was living in Lithuania at that time, and there was a 1923 national census, so I recommended he try to find out if the census has survived and has information about individuals.  There's also the possibility of finding a civil birth registration (his grandmother was born when Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire), or maybe the visa issued by Lithuania when his grandmother left to immigrate to the United States.

An interesting quirk in this patron's situation is that his great-grandfather immigrated to the United States in 1913, while Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire, but did not apply for U.S. citizenship until 1922.  When the great-grandfather submitted his Declaration of Intention to become a citizen, he renounced citizenship and allegiance to Russia.  So I'm wondering what his citizenship status was from 1918-1922, when Lithuania was independent but he had not renounced any citizenship.  Was he Lithuanian?  Russian?  Stateless?

"Right of Return": Citizenship by Descent

Was your grandmother or great-grandfather born in Italy?  Was your grandfather born in Ireland?  Or maybe your mother or grandfather (even up to a great-great-grandfather) was born in India.  These are some of the countries that allow descendants of their diasporas (citizens and/or residents who left the country to live somewhere else, voluntarily or sometimes otherwise) to apply for citizenship under less stringent requirements than the average person.

Each country sets its own requirements and restrictions for citizenship through right of return, as they do with normal citizenship requirements.  For Italy, for example, you can apply if your great-grandparent, grandparent, or parent was born in Italy and did not renounce citizenship before a more recent ancestor was born in another country.  I recently helped someone with his application for Italian citizenship using this method.  His great-grandfather was born in Italy and did not give up Italian citizenship before his grandfather was born in the U.S.  I researched and confirmed the family connections, ordered copies of the relevant required documents, arranged for a translation of my client's birth certificate into Italian, and acquired an apostille (international certification similar in function to a notarization) for his birth certificate.  He submitted his application to the local Italian consulate, which approved it with no problems.  It will take about five months for the application to be processed, and he will then have dual citizenship, U.S. and Italy.

What's the point of doing this?  Some people do it because they want to be more closely connected to their ancestral homelands.  On a more practical level, some (such as my client) do it because Italian citizenship not only will allow him to travel freely to Italy, it also permits free travel throughout the European Union.

Most of the time citizenship acquired through right of return is equivalent to full citizenship of the country.  One country that does it differently is India.  Instead of granting citizenship, that country gives descendants of the Indian diaspora status as "Persons of Indian Origin."  This status allows someone to go to India without a visa, exempts him from restrictions on work for foreign nationals, and makes it easier to become a full citizen if desired.  (Maybe one day my stepsons will be interested; their grandfather was born in Punjab.)

Sometimes a person looking for citizenship through right of return is disappointed.  Someone else I did research for was not eligible for Italian citizenship because his great-grandfather became a naturalized U.S. citizen before his grandfather was born.  In an interesting twist, descendants of the grandfather's older brother are eligible, because the older brother was born before the great-grandfather renounced Italian citizenship.

General information about right of return can be found here, with examples from several countries.  One I found especially interesting was Spain, which has a specific provision for descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from the country in 1492 (which will require a lot of research to document!).  If the country you are looking for doesn't appear in this list, try searching for "right of return" and the name of the country.