Correspondent photo / John Patrick Gatta Roslyn Torella lectures the Mahoning County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society last Wednesday at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Parish on researching family trees through finding and interpreting passenger lists.

BOARDMAN – For more than a decade the popular PBS program, “Finding Your Roots,” brought viewers along as celebrities dug through the layers of their ancestry to discover the connections of the past that eventually lead to the present day.

At Wednesday’s monthly membership meeting of the Mahoning County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society, Roslyn Torella offered pointers for local enthusiasts on how to investigate one’s background.

“Some people are afraid to start because they do not already know a lot of their family history and there is no one left to ask,” explained Torella, who is from Lowellville.

She said she has been a member of the 53-year-old organization since 2021, treasurer (elected in 2024) and newsletter editor (since 2022) during an interview prior to her lecture.

Torella runs the Lowellville Ohio History Page, Good Old Days in Youngstown Ohio and Mahoning Valley Italian Descendants Facebook groups and wrote two books focused on local residents — “Lowellville, Ohio: Murders, Mayhem and More: News clippings covering the 1850s to the early 1920s” and “Mahoning Valley Italian Descendants: Italian Genealogy Guide.”

She credits online websites such as FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com for aiding in searches.

“They may feel that they won’t get very far. When I started my research into my family, I only knew the names of my grandparents and a few of my great-grandparents,” Torella said.

Pursuing and interpreting available information allowed Torella to go back six generations. In 1899 her great aunt arrived in Mahoning County.

“Another obstacle for folks just learning about their family history, especially if they have roots overseas, is the language barrier, but now that is less of a problem with all the online translation tools and even the members of Facebook (Meta) groups that will help with translations from a foreign language into English,” she said. “You just need to keep an open mind when researching and not be afraid to ask questions from experienced genealogists.”

The program at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Parish, which was open to the public, dealt with finding and interpreting passenger lists, particularly after 1890.

Through a PowerPoint presentation, Torella aimed to help others better understand these lists as well as the details on immigration paperwork that present clues to an ancestor’s passage and entry to America.

“One of the things that’s great about a passenger list is that it tells us that first moment that our family arrived in America,” Torella said. “It’s just really exciting to see the type of information on there.”

Torella pointed out the “keys” to starting research. That includes the immigrants’ original name from their original country in case the name was anglicized upon arrival, approximate year of birth, ancestral home in order to distinguish between anyone with a similar name, and, if possible, the year of arrival to America.

“What you want to do is gather all this information before you begin,” Torella said. “You have this so that you’re not so frustrated when you’re looking at all these different results. It helps you pinpoint who might be your actual ancestor in those results lists.”

Her lecture offered multiple ideas for ancestral investigation that included looking at archives of colonial land grants or on immigrants. She also pointed out a growing amount of online sources.

For those overwhelmed by the wealth of information, Torella gave handouts to the attendees that contained the websites and similar information taken from her presentation.

She specifically mentioned “They Came in Ships: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor’s Arrival Record” (3rd Edition) by John Philip Colletta as a “great source,” and recommended websites such as https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/passenger, www.immigrants.byu.edu, and, particularly, www.stevemorse.org because it has 300 different tool available.

Torella also mentioned that the Steve Morse site puts information from other websites into an easy-to-use and scroll-through format.

“I get, sometimes, too many results that aren’t as good, and I really like his results because they’re much cleaner,” she said.

Torella’s last nugget of advice came during a Q&A section.

“In genealogy you trust, but verify,” she said. “You have to verify as best as you can with multiple proofs to establish your point, the better you are.”

Summing up her experience investigating her roots also applies to Torella’s fellow OGS members.

“Genealogical history and social history are so intertwined and when we learn about our family, it opens us up to learning more about history, especially local history,” she said.