Hit a road block and need advice?

Question

My mother and I are trying to trace our family back as far as we can. We've hit sort of a road block. Here's the problem:

My family has been in the US for 5 generations. We can trace those back very easily. We know the names of the last born in Italy (they are the one's that came here). We can't find anything farther back. I know there has to be a way of looking it up on the internet without having to buy a ticket and fly to Italy ourselves.

Can anyone, please please please, advise me on how to look farther back than what we have already? This is a present for my grandmother and we really would like to surprise her. She's not 100% sure of our family's history that far back and asking her questions would give away the surprise.

Answer 1

my grandfather was able to trace our family through church records from the area our family moved here from...

i do not believe he went there in person when he was first researching...but i don't know how he found the church.

if you know the area i would start there and see what churches are there and how far back they date...they may have records of births and deaths you could request.

good luck

hope this was a little helpful

Answer 2

I can tell you a method that works.

1.  Have someone with you who speaks Italian and English and knows what you want accomplished, the name of your ancestor, complete background of what you know/don't know

2.  Contact the international operator for that country.

3.  Ask for as many listings as you can get from that town with that last name.

4.  If you're told there are none, ask again if there are any close spelling variants.

5.  Call one of these individuals, and explain the name/time of emigration, and that you're searching for your people.  You WILL get help if you do this.  My family did and it opened a treasure trove of relationships, visits to my ancestral home, and some incredible stirring memories and knowledge.  My best to you in your search.

Answer 3

ancestry.com has an international search engine that you can trace back European heritage! it is a pay site though. best wishes

Answer 4

the Ellis island website has genealogy info on immigrants. you might have to pay

Answer 5

My mom has gone back 800 years on one side of our family.  She has a lot of methods, but I know she uses Ancestry.com and subscribes to the European version as well.  It's very expensive, but very effective.

The best would be if you could find a friend who already has it and use theirs.  Check with your local library, too.  Otherwise, maybe you can get the whole family to help pay for it, then everybody can use it.  It's good for a year.

Answer 6

I have a friend whose mother came from Calabria and father from Sicily.  She says she has found the National Archives in Washington, D. C. a treasure trove of information.  She said when you first go there you have to go through a lot of rigamarole to register and get a name tag, but once you get your name tag, from then on out when you go back all you do is present your name tag.  She stated there are volunteers there to help.

Also have you checked church records. They keep registers on baptismal, first communion, confirmation, marriages and death.  These you will find parent information .  In our Diocese they periodically send the registers to the Chancery to be microfilmed.  Usually a contribution is appropriate in consideration of their time in looking up the information and providing it to you.  Actually when a child is confirmed, they are given a little card with their confirmation name on one side and their baptismal information on the other.  The card is taken from each confirmand as they are confirmed and that card is used to post the parish confirmation record and then it is mailed to the parish of baptism where they note in the baptismal record that a person was confirmed in such and such parish on such and such date.

Answer 7

That's so great that you are working on that.  It can really be a lot of work, especially when  you get so far back on the family tree.

I would suggest going to an LDS geneology center.  They have a lot of people working on geneology, and may have some of your ancestors documented.  It is free to anyone interested.  (The Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints...just call one of the churches near you and they will tell you where the geneology center is.)

Answer 8

Why do you assume this information is automatically available on the internet?

Answer 9

>> I know there has to be a way of looking it up on the Internet

You may be wrong there. The Internet is quick and easy but it is not omniscient. Someone may have pored through dusty old church records in Italy and transcribed them for the greater good, but then again someone may not; or the records might have been destroyed in the war, the fire, the flood . . .

The Mormons have the largest free site in the world:

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/f...

RWWC is second in size for free places:

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.c...

If one of your cousins has "done" the family tree you might find something there.

Italy isn't unknown, and the Catholic Church was pretty good about recording who got born, married and buried, but don't assume every fact they ever wrote down in the little church near the olive groves made its way to the Internet.

Answer 10

when i was doing our family history, i actauly had to learn Italian and fly to Italy.  It wasn't so bad though.  I got to research my family heritige in the country my family was from.  Major Bonus

Answer 11

Get on the Message boards and Forums for ITaly

Like Genforum and ask about people who actually live there.

They can help at looking up records for you there.

Answer 12

It is dependent on identifying the location in Italy. Two places that you may be able to find this are immigration records, which are offered at ancestry.com, and naturalization records. Again..ancestry will have census records, and this would show your year of immigration. ALL depends on exactly when they did come over, and if that particular ship record is indexed/ online.

Ancestry.com does have a fee- I think it is reasonable, considering what you can find. No guarantee, but there never is, in genealogy. If you post the name of the 1st generation here, with date and place (US), it is likely someone will do a courtesy lookup for you.

Naturalization papers won't be online at all.

The 2nd option is networking.. here is one site-

http://www.italiangen.org/

Networking SOMETIMES will lead to a contact person overseas, who can offer better tips as to where the exact records will be found.