New Website for La Memoria dei Sacramenti

In 2013, I posted the following:

"An exciting new initiative is making Italian ecclesiastical records more easily available and found.  The website is called La Memoria dei Sacramenti and is an interdiocese initiative to preserve these records and record where the original records can be found.

This is not a digitization project but rather a portal through which to find what records are available for a particular parish, gain permission to research the records on-site, or through which to order extracts, certified copies, or digital images of the documents.  Additionally, each one of the registers will be indexed by name and you can perform a search of the database for your ancestor's records.

The website also provides a means of searching for parishes and civil jurisdictions (pre-1901) by the name of a particular town which may help you narrow down what parishes may need to be searched.

Still in the beginning stages, there is much work to do.  Currently, five regions have records within their database:

• Liguria (currently only the province of Genova)
• Sicilia (currently only the province of Enna)
• Toscana (currently the provinces of Arezzo, Firenze, Grosseto, Livorno, Pisa, and Siena)
• Sardegna (currently only the province of Cagliari)
• Veneto (currently only the province of Vicenza)"

This site can now be found at: La Memoria dei Sacramenti  This appears to be a website they used before moving to the one referenced in 2013. However, there appears to be new entries.

Excitingly, some of these records are now being indexed and the indexes placed online! However, most just tell you what is in a parish's collection and where to find it. This can be a valuable resource in itself. An example of one of the entries listing available records is:

Abbadia di Gracciano - S. Pietro

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Battesimi 1628-1664 1640-1648 1650-1655 1664-1704 1704-1752 1752-1786 1791-1810 1808-1832

Matrimoni 1610-1704 1650-1655 1704-1752 1753-1777 1777-1809 1808-1832 1832-1884

Sepolture 1601-1669 1644-1648 1670-1704 1704-1752 1752-1784 1784-1794 1794-1810 1794-1809 1810-1828 1832-1863 1863-1902 1900-1916

Stati d'anime  1624 1631 1641 1644-1645 (2 unità) 1647-1651 (5 unità) 1653 1657-1658 (2 unità) 1661-1666 1673 1682 1686 1694 1714 1719 1721 1731-1732 (2 unità) 1740-1741 (2 unità) 1761 1796-1802 (7 unità) 1804-1810 (7 unità) 1815

A list of available parishes by town can be found here.

A list of available parishes by diocese can be found here.

Happy researching!

Update from Portale Antenati

On 12 December 2014, Portale Antenati made some changes to the functionality of their website, making the zooming features easier to use.

On 18 December 2014, over 2,000 registers for the Archivio di Stato di Prato were released and can now be researched.

They are making great progress on this project!

Clerical Errors in Italian Civil Documents

Above is the death record of Giuseppe Aglira'. Please note all of the corrections the civil records official made to this document. If one isn't careful, this document could be interpreted incorrectly.

They appear to have written a few pieces of information for the death of an abandoned child then did their version of crossing out information and inserting the correct information for Giuseppe Aglira'. Everything they wanted to cross out/change they circled. They then wrote “dico:” [meaning “I say” or rather the declarants said] followed by the correct information. Normally, when things were circled, they placed the correction in the margin and did not use the word “dico.” Only the insertion of the father’s name is found at the very bottom. All other changes were squeezed into the document text. I've abstracted all of the genealogically pertinent information below.

Number 655

Giuseppe Aglirá

Giuseppe’s death was reported to the Reggio Calabria town hall on 4 September 1920 at 12:20 p.m. The declarants were Carmine Aglirá, age twenty-two, a traveling salesman, and resident of Reggio Calabria as well as Antonia Crucitti, age twenty-two, a housewife, and resident of Reggio Calabria.

They declared that Giuseppe Aglirá had passed away on 11:00 a.m. yesterday in his home on Via Pensilvania. He was sixty-three years old, a traveling salesman [abbreviated], born in Gerace, and a resident of Reggio Calabria. His father was the deceased Pietro [Aglirá], a farm laborer, and resident of Gerace. His mother was the deceased Anna Palimeri [?], a housewife, and resident of Gerace. Giuseppe was married to the living Antonia Contadino.

The witnesses were: Paolo Festa, age twenty-four, and a farm laborer as well as Vincenzo Fulco, age twenty-two, and a farm laborer. Both of the witnesses lived in Reggio Calabria and were not literate.[1]

So how does this effect the quality of the evidence this document provides on Giuseppe Aglira'?  I'd say it brings nearly the whole document into question. While it is good genealogical practice in general, in this case it would be especially wise to verify the evidence provided with other documentary evidence.

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[1] Reggio Calabria, Reggio Calabria, Italy, “Atti di Morti [Acts of Death], 1920,” record 655, death record of Giuseppe Aglira; digitized image, Portale Antenati (www.antenati.san.beniculturali.com : accessed 12 December 2014).