Fortunato the Bastard Child

Sometimes the bluntness seen within the records surprises me.  Most times when you encounter the birth record of a child born out of wedlock they say he was abandoned, that his mother or parents were not known, that he was found on the "ruota" or wheel on which abandoned children were placed for the church or state to raise.  You don't often see the child called a bastard.

The record linked below is the exception.  This may be because his father claimed him but the mother did not.  This situation happened but not as often as the abandonment of the child.  Found in the civil records of the town of Ota, Corsica, the record reads, in part:

"...the act of birth of Fortunato, a bastard, who is hereby being presented and who was born yesterday at eight in the evening to Domenico Luciani, a resident of this town who hereby recognizes this male child..."

Birth Record of Fortunato, the Bastard

Would you change this word when translating it?  No.  If we change what these records say to meet modern sensibilities, could we not misinterpret the records?  

Understanding Your Itaiian Ancestors - Part I

There comes a time, when researching your Italian ancestors, where you  realize you will need to seek educational sources in order to more fully understand the lives that your ancestors left behind and why they left.  Family history is more than a bunch of names and dates on a chart.  Digging into historical books and scholarly offerings can really help you to understand their lives.

One scholar that stands out in researching Italians is David I. Kertzer.  He has written several books on a multitude of subjects and written many articles for different scholarly journals.  Use WorldCat to find some of the articles and order them through your local library.

One article I read years ago was published in 1985 in the journal Social Science History.  Written by David I. Kertzer and Dennis P. Hogan, the article is titled "On the Move: Migration in an Italian Community, 1865-1921".  There are a  several interesting parts of this article that furthered my understanding of the Italian culture.  The quote below is taken from this article.

Within the agricultural peasant class, one often sees families moving between a home in a larger city and a farmhouse in the country.  Sometimes there are citizenship (cittadinanza) records that are available by microfilm but these do not usually contain non-permanent moves.  How then does one research these moves?

"The possibility of obtaining a longitudinal view of migration behavior over the life course of individuals in nineteenth-centry Italy is afforded by the population register....a population register system was only mandated nationally with the emergence of the Post-Unification government in the 1860's ...Each commune was to undetake a census of its population and, on the basis of that census, it was to follow all changes in its population brought about by immigration, emigration, internal population movement [emphasis added], births, marriages, and deaths."

Here then we see that using the population registers would perhaps be the most direct way to track such migrations.  These types of registers were called Stato di Famiglia in some places and their survival rate is not high.  Some civil record's officals know what you are talking about when you ask for them and some don't.  Several civil record's offices in Italy that I visited last summer said that the old population registers [pre-1900] were destroyed with the onset of regular country-wide censuses.  One office, after telling me they were destroyed, remembered that they had been stowed in a back cabinet and pulled out a six-inch high stack of loose register pages for me to go through.  While the information was crossed out as they transferred the information to the 1900 census, I was still able to glean valuable information from these Stato di Famiglia records for my client.

More information will follow in future posts...

Researching in the Town of Cerreto Guidi, Province of Florence

The website of this town has a great guide to what is found in their "Archivio Storico", a town archives that opened in October of last year, and whose holdings are available for research.  It can be accessed at the link below:

Holdings of the Archivio Storico

They've divided their list of holdings by whether they were created before or after Italian Unification.  Some holdings of particular interest for genealogical researchers are:

Stato Civile ( civil records - birth, marriage, death, citizenship, miscellaneous acts, etc.)
1808-1909 (records after this date are available in their civil records office)

Censimenti (census)
from 1899
(census records are often hard to access so their advertisement of their availability is wonderful)

Anagrafe (registry office records)
from 1910
(This is the office that will prepare State of the Family Certificates when needed for your research.  Their holdings often contain town censuses in addition to the Censimenti)

Leva Militare (military conscription)
from 1865
(These are often found in a separate provincial millitary archives and not usually kept in the town archives)

....and many more types of records.  Check it out!

Archivio di Stato di Venezia - Digitization of Military Conscription Records and Ancient Maps

The provincial archives in Venezia (Venice) has begun digitization of the military conscription records of this province.  The military conscription project is several years underway but is not yet complete.  However, they have made a good start.

These records can be used to find the town of origin of your immigrating ancestor when all you know is the province they came from.  The high increase in requests for these records for dual citizenship purposes is indicated as the main precipitating factor in this digitization project.

Military Conscription Records

There are also some great, very old maps of this area of Italy available in .pdf form.

List of Available Maps

For those of you who may be engaged in deep scholarly study of this region's history there are a few other online resources available for you on their website.

Other Research Resources

Have fun!  Let me know if this information helps you in your research!

Tracking Emigration Using Stato di Famiglia (State of the Family) Certificates

State of the Family Certificates can be used to track the emigration of your ancestor (or their siblings and cousins).  Sometimes you will find that different family members emigrated to very different parts of the world.

Take for example the family of Guido Colotti.  If you follow the link by clicking on the title of this post, you will see the State of the Family record for Guido Colotti, son of Bartolo.  This family had no idea where this sibling went and would never have guessed that he emigrated to Russia.  Different members of this family dispersed to Russia, Switzerland, and South Africa, three very different places.  

These records have not always survived.  Multiple civil record offices have informed me that these records were destroyed with the onset of regular censuses. However, I would suggest you ask in case they are still available, and because the censuses are often much harder to access.

Leave no stone unturned.

A Look at Southern Italian Life in the 19th Century - Part III

"...Clothing differed as much from section to section among the poor in Italy from which our immigrants came as did language, housing, and culinary methods.  Its variations depended upon local traditions, the materials available, and the needs of the people as defined by occupation and climate.  Much of the peasant clothing, regardless of design, was made from sheep's wool, woven, and sewn in the home...Shepherds thus wore long hooded capes that fell below the knees and sheepskin leggings and trousers as such that adorn American cowboys.  Fisherman, on the other hand, used heavy breeches, woolen stockings, sweaters, and caps when out on the open water in cold weather; and trousers and shirts open at the neck, with feed bare, in the summer.  Peasants who worked in the fields donned trousers and coats or sweaters in summer, both coats and sweaters in the cold season.  Most of these work garments were dark colored, but the somberness was relieved at times by a bright scarf, and the cap, blouse, or shirt might be pink, green or light blue..."  

Rome Archivio di Stato's Blog

Looks like the provincial archives in Italy have forayed into the blogging world.  What a great way to help reseachers keep abreast of new acquisitions and to learn about new resources they didn't know existed. 

Have fun exploring Rome's blog (in Italian)!  Click on the title of this post to link directly to it.

A Look at Southern Italian Life in the 19th Century - Part II

"...Inability to provide children with shoes in South Italy became a contributing factor to irregular attendance at school. Old people say, when speaking of their life in Italy, that they never saw a child at school without shoes. Clothes of a certain standard as well as shoes were thought necessary for school attendance, and these were only too often beyond the purchasing power of a child's family.

Men had themselves shaved only once or twice a week by the village barbers. Since such manufactured articles as razors were very expensive, their possessors had almost a monopoly of the shaving business. In some Sicilian towns, the men had the peculiar custom of permitting one lock of hair to grow on the nape of the neck. Called the trizzi di donna (women's tress), it was never combed or cut, "and the owners think themselves fortunate in the possession of it, because they consider it a special gift -- a sign of being favored by Fortune.""

A Look at Southern Italian Life in the 19th Century

In 1938, Phyliss H. Williams, a research assistant in Sociology at the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University, published South Italian Folkways in Europe and America: A Handbook for Social Workers, Visiting Nurses, School Teachers, and Physicians.

This handbook is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Southern Italians, in Italy as well as in America after immigration. I will be posting exerpts from this handbook from time to time on this blog as they teach us much about our ancestors. Here's the first exerpt.

"Many South Italians who came to America around 1890 and 1900 settled in cities, whereas North Italians took up truck gardening or more extensive farming. This choice depended on the economic resources of the two groups. The North Italian more frequently brought money with which to buy land on his arrival. This the southernor lacked, and by the time he had saved enough to go back to farming his American-born children insisted upon remaining city-dwellers. These second generation southerners constitute the bulk of Italian urban population.....Families of the same local origin in Italy (paesani) tend to live in the same parts of town and generally speaking North Italians lived in sections distinctly separated from those of the southerner. Great prosperity and success, however, often cause members of both group to penetrate the more generalized America quarters of the towns."

Stillborn Births in Italy

There was no one way of recording the death of a stillborn child in Italy. Most times you will see only a death record created (and not a birth record) and it will note that the child was born "senza vita" or "without life."

Occasionally, stillborn births will be recorded separately, often amongst the death records of town residents who died elsewhere. Below is a death record created for a stillborn birth whose form was pre-printed for this purpose. I have not come across pre-printed stillborn birth/death records very often. The title reads "Atti di Morti Nati" or "Act of Dead Birth".

Death Record for Stillborn Female Child of Nicolo di Sergio and Rosa Latuno

What I find fascinating is the fact that normal procedure was to present a child at the civil record's office to have it's birth recorded. When someone died the civil record's official often came to the person's home to visually verify that the person was dead. One has to wonder whether they carried the body of their baby to the town hall or if the civil official came to their home as would have been done for any other death.

The Death Record of Saverio Arturi

Sometimes you come across the most interesting records when doing Italian research. Below is a link to the image of a death record of a Calabrian soldier "gunned down in the public piazza" in Isnello, Sicily in 1863.

1860-1870 was a time of much unrest in Italy and in Sicily, in particular. Italian soldiers were sent to quell the uprising of the Sicilian people against yet another ruler who made promises they did not keep. Some towns in Sicily have records that are missing during the 1860-1864 time frame.

Death Record of Saverio Arturi

FamilySearch Posts a Guide to the Records of Order Sons of Italy

This new book posted by FamilySearch is said to describe the manuscript collections of the main office and Grand Lodges held in the Immigration Center in Minnesota.

The call number of the book is 973 A3and and can be found in the US/Canada section of the Family History Library.

New Building for the Provincial Archives of L'Aquila

As many of you know, a 2009 earthquake devastated the provincial archives in L'Aquila.  See this link for a look at their new facility!

Archivio di Stato dell'Aquila a Bazzano

Stato di Famiglia Storico - Historical State of the Family Certificate

Don't overlook this valuable resource as you research your Italian ancestors. The State of the Family Certificate shows a whole family unit with much of their vital information included. Such vital information often includes the father's given name, birth date and place, death date and place, where they immigrated to, notations regarding citizenship, and sometimes when, where, and whom they married.

You can write to a town's civil record's office for these certificates. There is usually a fee of 2 1/2 - 5 Euro per individual on the certificate. Don't forget to send a self-addressed envelope for their convenience.

Also, if you're lucky, the town may send photocopies of a few of the vital events noted in the certificate! I have had this happen a few times.

Indice Annuale - Annual Indexes

Anyone familiar with Italian microfilmed civil records will have used these indexes. These are most often found annually at the beginning or end of a register. However, there were also 10-year indexes created which are particularly helpful when searching for multiple offspring of an ancestral couple.

Do you check these indexes when pulling the records of your ancestors? I've used the indexes to clarify a name abbreviated in the text of a document, to verify titles given to family members, and to verify the spelling of surnames. I have even seen children designated as "d'ignoti" or "of unknown parents" in the actual record yet the index gives the name of the child's mother or father.

So, don't overlook this resource. They could be helpful!