<\/p>
Percy Shelley praised Italy as \u201cthou paradise of exiles\u201d. But migration runs\u00a0in both directions. In the past 150 years or so many native Italians have left the peninsula. Italy has only been a unified country since 1861, and the post-unification period marked the beginning of mass emigration, with later waves occurring during the build-up and aftermath of the First<\/a> and Second World Wars<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of the estimated 18 million Italians who emigrated between 1861 and 1985 in one of the biggest migrations in history, a relatively small percentage settled in the UK<\/a>. Many who came here were musicians, artists or craftsmen, or were lured by specific job opportunities.<\/p>\n Fortunately, you can research your ancestry for many of Italy\u2019s 107 provinces from the comfort of your own home. What\u2019s more, many civil birth, marriage and death records are available for\u00a0free online.<\/p>\n Italy today is divided into 20 regions that are further broken down into 107 provinces with 7,926 comuni (cities\/towns). Civil records (atti) are recorded and kept at the local municipality (comune) level, with a copy deposited annually at the state archive in each provincial capital. You will find birth, marriage and death records beginning in 1809, with a few exceptions dating to 1806, and they are organised by province and town at the time of the event. This means that you\u2019ll need to know the town where your Italian ancestors lived to pinpoint which archive will have the records.<\/p>\n In 1975, free genealogy website<\/a> FamilySearch began working with the Istituto Centrale per gli Archivi (the Italian national archive) to preserve the civil records from each provincial archive. Microfilms of the birth, marriage and death records for each town were painstakingly created.<\/p>\n These records have now been converted to digital images, which can be viewed on FamilySearch<\/a>, and are gradually being indexed. FamilySearch and Italy\u2019s Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism are making the searchable indexed images available to everybody on the website Antenati<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the images are published on Antenati, they are \u2018locked\u2019 on the FamilySearch website, becoming restricted to users at a Family History Center or an Affiliate Library, or who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n There are three main types of Italian civil record you can access: birth, marriage and death. In each case the name of the individual is listed, and usually their parents\u2019 full names. Sometimes the grandparents\u2019 names will also be listed as an identifier for the family.\u00a0The date and time of the event is included. The street name and sometimes house number where the family lived is noted, along with the occupations<\/a> of each individual.<\/p>\n Baptism, marriage and burial records kept by the Catholic Church will be needed if you wish to take your Italian ancestry research back further. Again, you will need to know where your ancestors lived to find records of their parish. Once you know the town, Communi-Italiani<\/a> is a useful website for finding local churches. You will need to make an appointment if you wish to visit the church archive or employ a local researcher.<\/p>\n Some church records are held at diocesan archives (archivio diocesano). Look for a status animarum (also called stato d\u2019anime). These were family books kept by parish priests, a kind of church census, and can be a genealogical goldmine with information about many generations living within a household. As Italy used them for tax purposes they were updated and can help to track down when people left a household, perhaps to emigrate.\u00a0Ancestry<\/a> also has some useful Italian collections.<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Rosemary Collins Published: Wednesday, 13 April 2022 at 12:00 am Percy Shelley praised Italy as \u201cthou paradise of exiles\u201d. But migration runs\u00a0in both directions. In the past 150 years or so many native Italians have left the peninsula. Italy has only been a unified country since 1861, and the post-unification period marked the beginning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":15245,"template":"","categories":[1,19],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-scaled.jpg",2560,2019,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-300x237.jpg",300,237,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-768x606.jpg",768,606,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-1024x808.jpg",800,631,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-1536x1212.jpg",1536,1212,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2022\/04\/how-to-research-italian-ancestry-2048x1615.jpg",2048,1615,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Rosemary Collins Published: Wednesday, 13 April 2022 at 12:00 am Percy Shelley praised Italy as \u201cthou paradise of exiles\u201d. But migration runs\u00a0in both directions. In the past 150 years or so many native Italians have left the peninsula. Italy has only been a unified country since 1861, and the post-unification period marked the beginning…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/15244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Italian civil records<\/h3>\n
Italian Catholic records<\/h3>\n
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