How to Find your Italian Ancestors
Tracing your Italian ancestors can be the start of an amazing personal journey that can lead to unexpected discoveries about your ancestors. Even if you have little knowledge of your Italian kinship ties, the Italian language, or where your ancestors came from in Italy, don’t worry because you still may be able to find your ancestors birth place and perhaps even your Italian cousins who may have information to add to your tree.
1. Talk to all your relatives
Your first step is to talk to all your family members to find out what they know. Talk to everyone: parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Even your siblings may have information about your family that you may not have. The goal is to try to find out the names of your ancestors, when they emigrated from Italy, if they become naturalized citizens, what ports they arrived at, where they lived after arrival, what churches they attended, what were their occupations, and of course their vitals. Make sure you record all the details, and if possible, create audios files of the conversations you have with your relatives.
2. Begin searching
After you have gathered up the information, now is the time to begin searching. Locate documents that evidence the events and places in your ancestors’ lives. Online genealogical databases are a good start. You can search the internet as well because other people, your more distant cousins, may have or are now tracing, the same family members you are.
3. Find your immigrant ancestors home towns
The most important step in developing your Italian genealogy is to find the exact place of birth of your ancestors. You need to find out which Italian communes (towns) they were born in. Keep in mind that the place they migrated from isn't necessarily their place of birth. This is what you can do to discover the places your Italian ancestors were born:
Look into family documents: birth, marriage, death, as they may show where the person was born. A child’s birth record might show the birth place of the parents. Marriage and death records may show where the person was born and even who their parents were. Census records may show places of birth. If you don’t have those records, look for them in online databases or order copies of them.
Passenger departure and arrival lists, and immigration and naturalization papers may give place of birth and name of spouse and children. Ellis Island online is a good place to search. You can search and see the records for free, but if you want copies you have to purchase them.
Military records, such as draft registration cards may show the birth date the town and country of birth. Some also have the names of their spouse or parents.
Faith based organizations, such as churches, may have records for your ancestors. For example, a baptism record my record the parents’ names and where they were born.
Copies of original social security applications may also be useful. To obtain them you need to apply for copies via the Freedom of Information Act.
4. Searching for records in the home country
If you were able to identify the exact place of birth of your Italian ancestors it’s time to look for information in Italy.
The vital records for your family, if they still exist, would be in the commune and/or provincial archives. Each province has their own archives and most communes have them as well. Even if you don’t read Italian, most vital records are readily understandable. If needs be, Bing Translator makes generally adequate, if not perfect, translations. The Italian government did not require vital record collection until 1866, but most provinces and communes were already collecting these records. Most provincial archives, if not all of them are online, for example the State Archives of Venice. I have seen some that date to the late 1600's. There is also a general portal to the state archives on Antenati.
Many commune vital records are available for free on the Family Search website. They may lack indexing though so you have to search through many records to find the record you want. Some are only on microfilm so you have to order them through your local Family Search Center. Here is a link the Family Search Italian site.
Some small towns in Italy may have only one or two churches, so write to them both. If you are able to identify the church your ancestors attended, you can request records. Some churches have their historic records online so google the church. Some parish records are searchable though the database on the Parrocchie website. Likewise, some church records are also on Family Search website.
5. Check online resources
There are a lot of great online resources for Italian research! A few examples are:
Italian Genealogical Group
Italian Genealogy
Italian Genealogy Online
Cyndi’s List - Italy
Conclusion
Having worked on so many family trees, I truly believe that as you search your family history that you will make many interesting discoveries about your family. If after tying some of these ideas out you still need help with your Italian genealogy, please click this link to contact Ancestry Connections Genealogy for a free no obligation consultation.
