Picture Wednesday - Palermo, Palermo Province, Italy

Picture Wednesday - Palermo, Palermo Province, Italy

Annotations in the Margin of Civil Death Records - Birth Record of Carmela Catanese

Annotations of marriage and death are often found in the margin of a civil birth record.  Sometimes, like in the record above, the notation was not made on the copy found in the Archivio di Stato [Provincial Archives]  but was made on the copy that is kept in the Comune [Town].

The documents available through FamilySearch were often microfilmed or digitized at the provincial archives, although some are becoming available that were found in the Comune or Tribunale [District Court].

The death record of Carmela Catanese, found on a FamilySearch microfilm and microfilmed at the provincial archives, contained no annotations in the margin.  However, the copy above that was found in the records of the Comune of Isnello did contain annotations for both her marriage [top left] and her death in the United States [bottom right].

I find it interesting that her U.S. death was recorded on this document. The marriage noted here was her second marriage which ended in divorce. She then went back to the U.S. [she'd immigrated before] and married a third time.  She lived nearly twenty years after she returned to America.  She must have maintained close ties with someone in Italy who cared enough to report her death.

The Riveli

Riveli are a type of census taken by the church for the purpose of taxing property and animals. If you've ever worked with these records they are amongst the hardest Italian records to understand. They can reveal interesting and surprising things about our ancestors. Let's take a look at a record for Francesco Catanzaro from Termini Imerese, Italy.

This record was found in the 1815 Riveli for the city of Termini Imerese in the Palermo Province. This record set has an index in the beginning so I was able to see that there was a record for a "Capn." [capitano or captain] Francesco Catanzaro. However, these records were not numbered nor recorded alphabetically. They were recorded as the individuals presented themselves and Francesco appeared on 25 September 1815.

Sometimes the names (and ages) of whole family groups are included, other times just the name of the landowner or the head of the sharecropping family is given.

Abbreviations were often used in these records, making them more difficult to translate and evaluate. As you gain experience, you'll know to look for certain words. The name of the subject of the record is often found on top. In this record, we see that this Riveli entry was for land in the contrada [hamlet] of DoVarita.  Francesco Catanzaro did not own the land but was share cropping it.  The names of the landowners are given also.

The title "Capn.," given for Francesco Catanzaro in this record, was the first indication that this ancestor may have had military service.  Further research showed a nine year gap between the birth of his second child and the birth of his third, another indication that he was absent from this family unit. One small notation on a Riveli, led to this possible revelation about this ancestor.  You never quite know where you will find that golden nugget of information!

Civil Records of Northwestern Italy

The civil records available for this area of Italy through FamilySearch can be random and unpredictable.  They certainly are not currently as abundant as those from southern Italy and Sicily.

Some of this has to do with the inconsistency of how civil registration was kept in this area and access to records in the initial microfilming process.

I wanted to highlight a record set for this area, found within FamilySearch's catalog.

Estratti dei nati, notificazioni, e morti per varie regioni nel nord-ovest di Italia (Extracts of birth records, marriage banns, and death records for various regions in northwestern Italy)

The towns included are:

Imperia province - Borghetta di Arroschia, Dolceacqua, Camporosso, Isolabona, Pontedassio,Triora, San Remo, Ventimiglia

Cuneo province - Demonte, Roccavione, Limone Piemonte

Torino province - Lanzo Torinese

Novara province - Briga Novarise

Bergamo province - Carona

The records are in Italian and French and can be found on microfilm 1,075,768, Item 3.  A future post will discuss a few records from this record set.

Italian Immigration to Philadelphia

A good source to understand this topic is the journal article "Aspects of Italian Immigration to Philadelphia" by Joan Younger Dickinson.  It was published in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 90, No. 4, October 1966, pp. 445-465.

You can purchase it from JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20089965.

Can we find useful genealogical information in a journal article like this?  Here are a few subjects covered in this article that I think would be helpful for those researching Italians from this city.

1.  The names and opening years of the first Italian parishes in the city.  Helpful to determine which parish your ancestor might have attended.

2.  Where in the city and surrounding areas they congregated.

3.  Immigration waves and provinces of origin.

4.  Information on fraternal and other organizations whose goal it was to help Italians get established.

5.  A frank discussion on the padroni system.

6.  Information on living conditions.

7.  Occupational percentages.

8.  Citations pointing to other valuable sources of information.

These are but a few of the valuable subjects in this article and I encourage you to purchase and read it, even if your ancestors settled in a different part of the country.  Some of the information is universally useful, such as that on the immigration waves.

Online Database of Available Ecclesiastical Records - La Memoria Dei Sacramenti

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)

Happy searching!!!

Annotations in the Margins of Italian Civil Birth Records

We often see annotations in the margins of civil birth records.  These annotations record the child's death and/or marriage.  Did you ever wonder how or if the second original set of these records were annotated?  This second set is held in the Tribunale or District Court for 70 years, then transferred to the Archivio di Stato of the applicable province.

The records of Santeramo in Colle, found on FamilySearch, provides a unique glimpse into the process.  Within their records they have a set of records they titled "Annotazioni di Morti 1866-1900" or Annotations of Death for the years 1866-1900.  These records show the document that the town civil record's office sent to the Tribunale.  From this record you can get not only the person's death date but often their birth date and/or the year and record number of the birth record.  The image below shows the request for annotation of death for a person born in Santeramo in Colle who died in the town of Acquaviva Delle Fonti.



Order Sons of Italy Death Benefit Enrollment Cards

The image below shows how much information about an ancestor can be derived from this resource:

The deceased was Lauranna [?] Teresa Cerminara who was a member of the Figli della Liberti Lodge.  She was the daughter of the deceased Antonino Cerminara and was forty-nine years old at her death on 18 October 1977.  She was part of the family of Giuseppe Cerminara (likely her husband), age fifty.

These records are available via Ancestry.com.

Order Sons of Italy Death Benefit Enrollment Cards

Birth Records in Trentino, Italy

There is a new website where a database of the birth records of Trentino, Italy are being posted.  It is still under construction but the project is exciting and will be very useful to those with ancestors from this town. 

Between 1815-1923, the parishes of this town kept the birth registers.  These records are what is being used for this project.  Versions of this webpage are available in Italian, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and others.

I've included a link to the project below!

Nati in Trentino - 1815-1923

Act of Birth on a Sea Voyage

While working in the region of Calabria, I found a new civil document I had never seen before, an Act of Birth on a Sea Voyage.  There isn't much to the pre-printed portion of the document as they left a very large section in the middle open to write in the specifics of the birth.

Malvito, the town where this record was found, is quite some distance from the sea.  Therefore, why this type of record was necessary is interesting.  Perhaps that is a question for those who have studied the history of this town or region.





The Inheritance by Marianne Perry

There is a new historical romance novel set in southern Italy in the region of Calabria.  The author, Marianne Perry, is a genealogist and writer and was kind enough to provide a few words about her book and the impetus behind it.

"Discovering my ancestors’ stories matters to me and my paternal grandmother, Caterina Spagnuolo Andreoli Perri, was my genealogical research starting point.

 

Mystery shrouded my grandmother’s early life. She was born in Calabria, southern Italy and immigrated to Canada as a young unmarried woman in 1913. Why had her parents not emigrated with her? What was her family history? What had life been like in Calabria? Why had she left? I began seeking answers to these questions and the compelling facts I unearthed inspired me to write The Inheritance.

The Inheritance is a historical romance set in Calabria from 1897 to 1913; the years my grandmother lived in the region. The land was subject to earthquakes, superstition clashed with religion and a rigid class system ruled the people. The Inheritance tells the story of an atypical woman rejecting social norms, a priest seeking redemption and a family disintegrating from conflicting loyalties.

The Inheritance is not a recount of my grandmother’s early life but genealogical research did help me craft an authentic tale that explores many of the issues she may have indeed confronted. For this reason, I named the heroine, Caterina, in her honor."

I am looking forward to reading this novel, copies of which can be purchased on her website or through several other means.  See her website for full details.  Let's support this artistic creation by one of our own.

Purchase The Inheritance

 

 

The Microfilmed Records are Damaged - What do I do?

 

The image above is an example of a damaged record from the town of Malvito in the Cosenza province.  Precious little is visible.  I can see it is a transcribed birth record, meaning that the original had been damaged before and they had to reconstruct the documents. 

 

 

 

If you feel you have the correct document, your first step would be to pull what information is visible from the document.  This child was named Filomena [unknown surname], was born in May of 1864, and her birth occurred "today."  Filomena married in Malvito in 1904, knowledge of which is due to the marriage notation, written sideways in the margin, which is partially visible.  I know from what microfilm I was using that the birth occurred in the town of Malvito.  

 

 

The Italian civil records that you will find on microfilm were microfilmed at the Archivio di Stato [provincial archives] and is the copy that originally was held in the Tribunale [district court].  A second copy of these documents were made and are kept in the town's Stato Civile [civil record's] office. 

 



 



Most times these offices won't give you a photocopy of the document, but rather will provide an extract or certified copy.  However, if you tell them the other copy is damaged (or you go to their office or send someone on-site) they are more apt to make exceptions.  

 









Double Surnames - Tracking the Changes

Double surnames for Italian ancestors can be an evolving thing.  They are often seen on just some of a families' records and not others.  One family I worked on in Sicily had four variations of their surname: Alberti, Aliberti, Pompa, and Alberti Pompa.

The intent with double surnames was to differentiate between several families in a town that had the same surname, yet were not related in any way.  Most times the base surname will be found last, but it can also be reversed.



In the town of Marano di Napoli, I found five families with the same base surname.  In working with double surnames, this seems like an unusually high number for a single town.

Carandente
Carandente Giarrusso
Carandente Escole
Carandente Perreca [SP?]
Carandente Sieco [SP?]

Be careful as you work with the records of these ancestors.  Track the changes carefully to make sure you don't climb the wrong family tree!

FamilySearch Adds New Italian Records!

On their blog, FamilySearch announced today that thousands of new document images have been added to their collection.  They aren't indexed but they are available to page through!

Italy, Benevento, Benevento, Civil Registration (Comune), 1861-1929	0	31,541	Added images to an existing collection.
Italy, Catania, Diocesi di Caltagirone, Catholic Church Records, 1502-1942	0	554,541	Added images to an existing collection.
Italy, Napoli, Barano d’Ischia, Parocchia de San Sebastiano Martire, Catholic Church Records, 1671-1929	0	3,182	Added images to an existing collection.
Italy, Napoli, Panza, Parocchia di San Leonardo Abate, Catholic Church Records, 1670-1929	0	2,127	Added images to an existing collection.