Discovering your Italian roots can be a fun and rewarding journey. The key is to start with the present and work backward.
A good way to start is by asking family members about your ancestors and their towns in Italy. Also, look for clues in passenger lists and naturalization records.
Birth Certificates
Tracing your Italian roots can be a rich and rewarding project that connects you with your heritage. But you may run into brick walls if you still need an Italian birth certificate to help you prove your lineage. Luckily, you can find several resources to help you overcome this obstacle.
Begin by asking your family members what they know about your ancestors’ origins in Italy. Then, start searching for records on the Internet. The most valuable resource is the website, which contains searchable birth, marriage and death registers for many Italian towns.
When embarking on tracing Italian ancestry and uncovering familial roots, delving into Italian genealogy records becomes an essential and enlightening step, providing a wealth of historical information and valuable insights into one’s heritage.
Another important source is church records, which can reveal much genealogical information. If your ancestors were Catholic, they probably attended the local parish and its associated schools. You can also try a site called Comuni-Italiani, which has links to websites where church records have been transcribed for various towns in Italy. These sites vary by city, and some are specific to one comune or range of years. Check out passenger arrival lists if you’re looking for ancestors who came to America.
Marriage Records
Adding marriage records to your Italian genealogy can help you expand the family story and give a sense of their day-to-day lives. This is particularly true for female ancestors. These supplemental documents were required by law to establish parental consent for marriage and can often include birth, baptismal and death extracts.
Some have a wide range of civil birth, marriage and death records from Italy’s 107 provinces available to its users online (see A Guide to Tracing Your Italian Roots). They are organized by province with options to narrow the search by comune or year.
Generally, male ancestors formally renounced their citizenship with Italy when they were naturalized in the United States. You will want to check more than one passenger arrival list if you have southern ancestors. Also, because most Italian immigrants were men, they may have traveled back and forth between America and Italy before settling in America. These trips were likely for work to support the families left behind in Italy.
Death Certificates
Over four million Italians immigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920. Tracing their roots is not challenging, but you can close this gap in your family history with a little research and letter writing.
Death certificates can reveal valuable information about your ancestors, such as birth and marriage records. These documents typically include the deceased’s name, the date and place of their death, and the parents’ names (if known). Death certificates can also give you a clue as to why your relative died. For example, if a person is a victim of a crime, the cause will usually be listed in the record.
Many of these records can be accessed online. Searching, which hosts the database, is a great way to begin your search, as it provides keyword searches for many civil records from Italy’s 107 provinces. Additionally, numerous websites offer transcribed and searchable Italian records. These sites are often grouped by comune or range of years, so you must know your ancestor’s ancestral village to search these records.
Census Records
Although it’s easy to get caught up in the “where, when, and how they lived” aspect of tracing Italian roots, you must also go beyond skeletal pedigree charts and family group sheets. It would help if you learned what it was like for your ancestors to leave their homeland and settle in America.
This is where census records can be particularly helpful. They can tell you the place of birth, and if your ancestor was an American citizen, their naturalization date. They can also help you determine whether or not your ancestor returned to Italy before becoming naturalized in America.
Other types of census records, military drafts and notarial documents can also be helpful when researching your Italian heritage. A good grasp of the Italian language can also be useful. Many Italians who immigrated to America spoke only a little English, and their handwritten documents might need reading help.
Records from Other Countries
It’s important to remember that your Italian-American ancestors lived in tightly-knit communities of family and friends. You may be able to discover vital information from people who know them, like great-aunts and second cousins. Ask them about their ancestry, birthplace, and the details of their emigration to America.
Tracing your ancestry through Italy can be complicated because it was a unified country in the late 1800s. Before that time, church and government records were kept on the local township or commune level. This makes them more difficult to research than American records.
Understanding the complexities of these historical epochs can help you decipher the records you find. It’s also helpful to learn about the customs of the region in which your ancestors lived. This will allow you to understand better the circumstances that influenced their decisions and help you trace their story in a way that reaches across generations.
