My Work
Interactive family histories — the records found and cited, the claims tested, and the whole thing published as something a family can explore rather than a folder nobody opens.
What I actually build
Not a tree. A tree is a shape, and a shape is the last thing you produce, not the thing you produce. What I build is an archive: every claim about a person carries the record it rests on and how sure that record makes it, and the whole thing is published as a site a family can walk through.
The difference shows up the first time somebody disagrees with you. A tree says Giovanni was born in 1861. An archive says Giovanni was born in 1861 — parish register of Arienzo, book 4, folio 22, which names his father and mother and is in his own parish's hand. The first is a position. The second is an argument, and an argument can be checked, inherited and corrected by somebody who comes after you.
How it is done
Start from the ground, not the name. Surnames move, mutate and repeat; ground does not. Every one of the archives below is anchored on a place first — Arienzo, Senj, Piedimonte Etneo, Schubin — and the people are hung off it. That is also why the tool on this site is a map rather than a search box.
Find out whose archive it is before looking for the record. This is the step almost everybody skips and it is the commonest reason a record that exists cannot be found. A 1930 baptism from a Croatian village is filed under Italy, because between the wars the village was Italian. This atlas carries 230 researched eras across 41 regions for precisely that reason — whose archive held this ground, and when.
Test the family stories rather than repeating them. Every family has four or five. Some are true, some are half true, and the half-true ones are the most useful because the half that is wrong usually tells you where the record actually is. The Lerena archive exists largely to do this: four traditions, tested against the record one at a time.
Write down what you did not find. A search that returned nothing is a result, and it is the result most often thrown away — so the next person repeats it. Every archive here records the negative searches alongside the positive ones. It is the least glamorous discipline in the work and the one that compounds.
Grade the claims. Nothing is stated flat. A thing is proven, probable, a candidate, or a family story — and it says which. A candidate promoted quietly to a fact is how a wrong ancestor gets inherited by everybody who copies your tree.
Nine archives, and what each one had to solve
These follow different families on four continents, and each ran into a different wall. That is why there are nine of them rather than one: the method was worked out against problems that did not resemble each other.
- Our Family written for children
The landing site the eight archives meet in, written so that a six-year-old can follow their own family back — which is the thing people actually want, and the thing a list of parish registers does not convey.
- The Defranceschi Archive Istria · Kvarner · Carnia
A family written down under eight sovereigns, in four languages, and spelled at least nine different ways.
Defranceschi · De Franceschi · Defranceski · Defrančeski
- The Falco Archive Arienzo, near Naples
Nine documented generations born, married and buried in one valley, and then a migrant ship to Brisbane.
Falco · Zampiello · Morgillo · Crisci · Maione · Rivetti · Annecchino
- The Blažević Archive Senj and the Krmpotska mountains
An evidence-first archive for the family of Hedviga Blažević of Senj — carriers, a tobacco factory, and a wall grave.
Blažević · Papić · Vukelić · Žubrinić · Kalanj
- The Lerena Archive Rosario · The Cape · The Rand
A horse-dealer out of Argentina, a stable under Table Mountain, and four family traditions tested against the record rather than repeated.
Lerena · Taylor
- The D'Arcy Archive England and Ireland · Parramatta · Brisbane
Out with the 39th Regiment in 1825, and four generations afterwards in two Brisbane cemeteries.
D'Arcy · Saniger · Sneyd · Hornby · Wakefield · Atkinson · Murdoch
- The Mazza Archive Sicily and Calabria · Brisbane
Four Italian quarters — Mazza of Piedimonte Etneo, and Prostamo, Arena and Polistena of Calabria — ending in four graves in a row at Nudgee.
Mazza · Prostamo · Arena · Polistena
- The Booyzen Archive The Cape · Johannesburg
A Cape Dutch family that kept marrying British women, changed one letter of its name in a war, and came off the train at Johannesburg with nothing.
Booyzen · Booyens
- The Luwinski Archive Berlin · Schubin · Lourenço Marques · Johannesburg
An evidence-first archive for the family of Lynn Derrick Luwinski — Berlin, Schubin, Lourenço Marques, Johannesburg and Porto.
Why this atlas exists at all
Eight of those archives kept hitting the same three walls, and all three were geographic: the place had changed its name, the border had moved so the records were in another country's archive, and "online" turned out to mean four or five quite different things. Solving that eight times over for eight families is how Record Atlas came to exist — it is the part of this work that generalises, taken out and pointed at the world.
The family facts stayed in the archives, where they belong. What came out was the geography.
If you want this done for your family
The nine sites above are what finished work looks like. Add a source if you know a record set this map is missing — that is the most useful thing a stranger can do for it, and it costs nothing.