Tracing Italian ancestors requires United States records, family knowledge, and information from Italy. Many Southern Italian immigrants traveled back and forth to Italy before settling in America; checking multiple passenger lists is one way to uncover this important detail.
Birth Certificates
If you seek recognition of Italian citizenship through descent, you need certified copies of all Italian genealogy online records, including birth certificates. It is a “threshold document.” The birth certificate can help you locate the town (or comune) of origin. Each municipality in Italy has a registry office called the Ufficio dello Stato Civile. It is also worth checking US death records, as they sometimes include the place of birth. Also, older obituaries may list the hometown of the deceased. The same is true for marriage records, as couples often record their town of origin. You can also check passenger lists, as the names and ports of departure provide clues about where your ancestor was born.
Marriage Records
Italy today is divided into 20 regions broken down into 107 provinces with 7,926 comuni (cities/towns). Civil records, such as births, marriages, and deaths, are kept at the local municipality level. However, copies are deposited at the provincial archive in each capital city. These archives have been indexed and are searchable online. Some websites began working with the Italian government to preserve the country’s birth, death, and marriage records on microfilm. They were then digitized and made available online. Some websites can be searched by name or location, which is especially useful if you need to know the town your ancestor was born in. You can also find church records on some sites, including baptisms and marriages. Baptismal records can reveal your ancestor’s parents’ names and dates of birth, marriage, and death.
Death Records
Tracing your Italian ancestors can be a fun and exciting project. It involves interviewing family members, researching passenger lists, and reviewing census records. You will also need to retrieve birth, marriage, and death records. Typically, vital records were created at the municipality (Italian: comune) level. For this reason, knowing your ancestor’s town of origin is essential to finding the right record set. You will find links to online searches and digitized images of local records from each province in Italy. Also, some local papers have been indexed and can be searched using keywords. For example, Rogiano is the name of a small town in Italy, and if your ancestor’s last name starts with that letter, it will be easy to find it on the site.
Census Records
In addition to the United States records mentioned above, it’s possible to find a lot of information about your Italian immigrant ancestor from census records, ship manifests, naturalization papers, obituaries, and draft cards. All of these documents can provide a town of origin for your ancestor. Finding the correct city of birth is a key step in genealogy. It’s important to understand the naming conventions used for cities in Italy. Often the names of Italian towns start with a common name. Identifying this common name will help you find the correct record in the city of origin.
Naturalization Records
The ancestor’s path to citizenship offers clues about the family’s story. Naturalization is a lengthy process in which immigrants promise to renounce their foreign allegiances and support the laws of the United States. The federal court system has naturalization records dating back to 1906, while the INS (now part of Homeland Security) has them from the 1950s onward. Many states also have archives housing naturalization papers, especially those before 1906. Municipal, county, and regional courts and city, town, or village archives also might hold these records. The key to finding your ancestor’s naturalization record is knowing when they were naturalized and where they lived. Before 1906, an immigrant could begin the process in one courthouse and complete it in another so that they might have index entries in different collections. Also, witnesses swore to the immigrant’s good character in early naturalization records, and this information can be helpful in collateral research.
Passenger Lists
As the first step in immigration, passenger lists document your Italian ancestor’s journey from their place of origin to their new home. The records vary in information, but most will include names, ages, ports of departure and arrival, occupations, relatives traveling with them, and countries of origin. Start with a search for your ancestor’s name using the information you know, such as their surname and year of birth or arrival. If no results are returned, try removing information, changing the spellings of names, or broadening your search dates. Also, remember that immigrants often generalize about their hometowns due to heavy accents or a lack of English. A series of numbers near your ancestor’s name on a passenger list may indicate that he later applied for citizenship. This information can be confirmed through naturalization records. Also, look for a detainee notation if authorities held your ancestor for questioning or until relatives claimed them.
