Genealogical research in Italy
Italian Genealogy
Italy is a country rich in history and culture and tracing one’s Italian roots is always an exciting adventure! There are many record sources available for doing genealogical research in Italy. Our goal for this site is to help you learn more about the different sources and methods available for building your Italian family tree.
What we need to know about Italian Genealogy?
A colleague use to say that genealogy without documents is mythology, and it’s precisely there where our passion is targeted: to discover documents about our ancestors
First, we need to get information about the Italian documents where we could find records about our forbears, for instance: Civil Records, parish records, census, military records, titles of property, etc.
Going forward we’ll need to understand how the Italian Archives are organized, especially if we are thinking about a travel to Italy to search for records personally.
Every Italian region has suffered particular historical situations, generating their own type of documents. We are going to analyze every one of them little by little. For a better understanding of these documents, we need to know about the political and social changes on the age our grandparents lived.
Starting Your Genealogy Research
Finding the town of origin of Italian immigrant
The age of majority in Italy
Italian Genealogy Letters
First Steps
If one’s ancestors left Italy after about 1880, and their last place of residence is known, it is recommended that one write to the Ufficio Anagrafe (Registry Office) there and request a cerificato di stato di famiglia (family certificate showing the date and place of birth of each family member).
The next step is to write to the Ufficio dello Stato Civile (Civil Registration Office) of the towns where members of ancestral families lived and to request extracts of their birth, marriage and death records. When the above mentioned records are not available, one writes to the priest of the parish where one’s ancestors lived to request extracts of their baptism, marriage and burial records.
