Italian Family History and Genealogy

How to find your Italian family history. We discuss the records, archives and language resources that will help you find your Italian ancestors.
Guest: Sarah Gutmann of www.legacytree.com/GenealogyGems
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⌚ Jump to Video Sections:
0:00 Introduction (More to come)
(01:04) Americans with Italian Ancestry
(03:51) How to Find the Italian Village of Origin
(07:41) Overcoming the Language Barrier with Italian Records
(10:26) Common Italian Occupations
(11:40) The Italian Archives
(17:46) Italian Famiglia Folios
(18:44) Italian Marriage Banns
(19:27) Italian Birth Records Online
(27:47) Italian Naming Patterns in Records
(29:11) Italian Women’s Maiden and Married Names
(30:51) Using the FAN Principle in Italian Genealogy
(32:06) How to Get Help with Italian Research from a Professional Genealogist
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#Italian #Genealogy

[@johnp6260]

Thanks Lisa and Sarah. I already use Antenati but enjoyed the presentation anyway. Fot those just starting out with Italian research, reading Italian does get easier especially with all hand written records despite the clerk's hand writting. There are records that are in a form format which is even easier to read. Indices are not available in many or most books but that may depend on the comune. I've sifted through the same record books over and over when there isn't an index. I must have viewed over 10,000 records including repeats but it has been well worth it.

[@whychromosomesmusic5766]

Some really good advice here. I can highly recommend learning at least some Italian and it might encourage you to learn more. I am currently in Unit 7 of online lessons myself. My ancestry is primarily in the Canavese region of Province of Torino. Most of those records are not available in Antenati. But they are available in Family Search. So I have focused most of my research in those records at Family Search. To date I know at least the full names of seven of my fifth great-grandfathers, the full names of four of my fifth great-grandmothers and the first name (Maria) of one of my fifth great-grandmothers. I also figured out why there is some confusion in some Ancestry family trees and why they are incorrect. There were three young men all with the name Antonio Fenoglio Gaddò, living in Prascorsano, Torino, Piemonte, Italy at about the same time. All married and having children. One was my great great grandfather. One was his first cousin. I have not determined the relationship (if any) of the third one. If I had not decided to learn Italian I would not have been able to figure out which is correct to avoid that confusion. I have also confirmed what was previously told to me by another researcher, that my great-great grandfather (William Valerio in Illinois) was an Abandoned Infant shortly after his birth and other than William Valerio he had two legal names in Italy. He was born as Valeriano Guglielmino and as an adult he married and had children as Guglielmo Valeriano. And again learning Italian helped to figure this all out. The main key was the Allegati (attachment) to his marriage record which confirmed some of the details of his birth; had the number he was given as an Abandoned Infant; and listed the names and locations of some of the families he was placed with as a small child. Now after taking some lessons in Italian I can recognize that in most records the action being described is in the past tense and therefore the verb forms being used are likewise in the past tense and most of them are Passato Prossimo. Or little things like why a particular direct article is used as opposed to another. For example the reason it is "dello Stato Civile" because "stato" requires the direct article "lo" rather than "il." And before the lessons I just knew the general meaning of the phrase. And this makes it much easier to transcribe and translate documents. Easier makes it faster and faster means finding more records in less time and that can only be a good thing ;-)

[@lucianomezzetta4332]

Brava!

[@whychromosomesmusic5766]

@@lucianomezzetta4332 Grazie! Another positive result of learning Italian is to write letters to distant cousins in Italy. Which I did and he answered back in Italian. This is something which has definitely received a positive response from others in the family including my nieces and nephews who may not have been all that interested in genealogy. But I share that letter with them and they are like, "Wow!". Needless to say the envelope is getting pretty frayed from so many of my family handling it! lol In addition another cousin from that same family came to America with his wife and we met them at a huge family reunion in Illinois and he had a huge pedigree chart and was asking everyone (including me), "So where are you on here?" And he was filling it all in and then later sent each of us a copy of the finished pedigree in an email attachment. So now I also know the names of some of the other cousins in America and in Italy and have even more to work with and more connections to share information back and forth. I am also going on Family Search and putting more entries in my Memories and Sources to add to our Italian ancestors in the trees and it really helps that I know Italian (and some Latin) well enough that I can figure out who is who in the documents and make sure the information is correct. We are also fortunate in the fact that documents in Italy are much more complete than their American counterparts. I have studied both and (aside from maybe some New England records) 19th (and even some early 20th) century American vital records don't even come close to the wealth of family information that can be gleaned from records in Italy of the 19th and early 20th century. I prefer to research in those records so much that I have somewhat neglected my family's other ancestral lines.

[@hennarosenthal]

Hi Sarah and Lisa: Like @johnp6260, I have been poking around in Antenati for several years. As usual, I tripped over it while looking for something else. The handwriting is soooo difficult to read, that I can only handle it for about 2 hours at a time before eye strain sets in. While looking at all the birth records, I noticed the same names were cropping up as witnesses to unrelated births. I have a mental image in my head that the local courthouse was “the” place to be. Coffee pot in the corner, chairs to sit and gossip... Mario and Ernesto seemed to have 2 days of the week as their time to sign as witnesses. 😃 Very helpful video all the same! Thank you for your clear instructions.

[@skanoot]

Fantastic interview.!! Great tips on researching my Italian ancestry.

[@GenealogyGems]

Thank you so much!!

[@salscandura6059]

@@GenealogyGems There are about 18 million Italian Americans according to the 2020 Census.

[@QuiltinRI]

Thank you, Lisa and Sarah. All eight of my great grandparents came from Calabria, and this was the best info on using antinati I have come across

[@TheWhitmore6]

This was so helpful! I was able to follow right along and get to my ancestors village. Thank you for this tutorial!

[@nicole_patricia]

I found BOTH Italian great grandparents on the Ancestors Portal. I’m overjoyed! Thank you so much 🙏🏼

[@GenealogyGems]

Fantastic!

[@johnvitale3453]

Very helpful, thanks

[@alessiorenzoni5586]

🇮🇹🤔Italy is the country with the highest frequency of surnames in the world: about 350,000 are in use for a population of just 60,000,000 inhabitants. Spain which is a neo-Latin and Mediterranean western country, with a culture very similar to the Italian one, there are much fewer surnames. For example, the surname Garcia is used by around 1,500,000 inhabitants; by comparison the most common Italian surname Rossi is carried by only 100,000 inhabitants

[@rodneypodesta6087]

Sara and lisa my grandfather and my grandmother on my father. S side is Italian my grandfather was born in genoa my grandmother was born here in Liverpool nsw of Italian perants

[@jeffreygebauer1253]

My great-grandfather was born in Illice and my great-grandmother was born in Gerosa. They are hamlets in Comunanza. I hired a company to do research for me would never would have found any information.

[@VanessaKittredge]

Wait, the woman doesn’t change her name when she’s married? So look always for maiden names?

[@whychromosomesmusic5766]

It depends on the record. Some burial and death records for women show her married name but then say "nata...." [maiden OR born as] and her maiden name is given as well. Most death records will give her marriage information [including previous AND surviving husbands] AND the names of her parents. But, it depends (as always) on the location in Italy as to how the records are and what is available.

[@manitheman0806]

Can you search by last name, first name ?

[@tomlucia6143]

my grandfather is from milgiuso,my grandmother is from angoli

[@johnvitale3453]

I’m looking for show notes, can you point me in the right direction

[@GenealogyGems]

All video show notes are on my website. Here's a link to the show notes for this video: lisalouisecooke.com/2022/04/19/italian-genealogy/ Thanks for watching!

[@Sandy-sb9fi]

Just a question. If the links change to the ancestral documents, how does this affect citations? Would the access date be enough?

[@GenealogyGems]

The wouldn't be enough information for you or another researcher to retrieve and verify the information you extracted from the record. It's best to download the record, and then type up your source citation.

[@Sandy-sb9fi]

@@GenealogyGems Thank you!

[@alessiorenzoni5586]

🇮🇹What are the most common surnames in Italy? Here is the ranking Region by Region: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWqoo3hpd9WtZsk

[@giorgiodifrancesco4590]

"Bracciante" means day labor, not "bracciale" (this means "bracelet/armlet")

[@victoriad9483]

Is there any reason the mother on a birth record would give her mother’s maiden name as her surname? It appears my second great grandmother may have done this.

[@shiadotdotcom8497]

My 3rd generation grandfather was Battistini and changed his late name when he came through Ellis island to “Perpuli (y)” bc he was from a village Perpoli and he was around 10-13 yrs of age. I want to go further than him but I can’t find records.

[@realguapo_mma]

Un gelato perpiachere no look happy 🎉😊

[@VanessaKittredge]

But you need to know the year of the marriage or birth or death in order to search?? If I knew all of that I wouldn’t need to search. Ugh!

[@whychromosomesmusic5766]

The exact years given are not always correct. The good news is that some Italian records have ten year indexes: Indice/Indici Decennali. They are alphabetical and often give the year of the record and the number of the record. The records are usually in chronological order. So if you get (for example) a listing in the ten year index for Giovanni Rosso born 1869, record #25. You can go to the birth records for 1869 and count forward from the first record (#1) to record #25 and that should be his birth record. Also very often the ten year index will give the first names of the fathers. So it will probably say something like "Giovanni Rossi di Antonio, 1869, 25" and maybe the next listing in the index might say "Giovanni Rossi di Pietro, 1872, 14" etc. Same general arrangement for marriage records (usually alphabetical by the surname of the grooms but with the brides' names as well....and the ten year indexes for death records also the same general process for those ten year indexes. Most ten year indexes are only for the civil records. The church parish records sometimes have name indexes at the end of the records for that year. Not all of them do but some of them do. Earlier church records are in Latin. Depending on the region (I think). For example my ancestors were in Province of Torino, Piemonte. The church parish records available in microfilm on Family Search start in 1823 and for most parishes they were in Latin through 1837. Some records were in Italian even as early as 1823. But most of them (if not all) were in Italian starting in 1838. Family Search has church parish records available in microfilm for church parish records of Province of Torino (in Italian) from 1838 to 1899. Not all parishes are represented but most of them are. Then other church parish records in microfilm are available by searching the Catalog specifically by the comune. Some of those have church parish records back to the 1500s. The microfilms are sometimes difficult to search because they have records of different comuni mixed on the same microfilm and some years are mixed up and not in order and some have indexes and some do not. In my own research I have found the best thing for me to do is to put the microfilms in a thumbnail view and eventually I figured out just by sight what was probably the first page of a particular set of records. However I am learning Italian so it might be easier for me than for someone who doesn't know Italian. Civil records for Province of Torino mostly start in 1866 and go up to about 1930. They are usually separated by comune. I am not that familiar with the records of other places in Italy. Records for the City of Torino from the 1700s to 1812 were mostly in French. Some sets of records have name indexes available and some do not. After communicating with others doing research in Italian records I have come to the conclusion that the ability to search and find what you need pretty much depends on where in Italy they are searching. It also, of course, depends on whether or not the researcher knows the exact name of the comune in Italy. There are some books which can be helpful in narrowing that down -- sometimes. I have had some success in helping others with a book entitled "Origine e Storia dei Cognomi Italiani" [Origins and History of Italian Surnames] by Ettore Rossoni. It is alphabetical by surnames and it goes into some really good detail. Some surnames it even states the most likely comuni within a province where a particular name is (or was) common. However, it is in Italian so one would have to at least be able to use an online Italian dictionary to read what the entries say. Google Translate might also be good enough to translate most of the phrases used in the entries in the book. It also gives any variant spellings of a surname in case the spelling is a little different. It also explains if variant spellings are primarily different because of the locations where those spellings are prominent. The book is available online for free. I have used it a lot.

[@bradymiclea4171]

17:51 did she seriously just say famiglia and pronounced the 'g'?

[@tml184]

Guttman? Oy vey.