Finding your Italian ancestors

First, find the comune

There is no national index of Italian births. Every record was written in the comune (town) where the event happened, so the name of the town is the key to everything else.

Civil records: from which year

Civil registration (stato civile) did not start at the same time everywhere, because Italy was unified in stages. The records are continuous across the whole country only from 1866.

In the South the series is unbroken from 1809: for example, the State Archive of Avellino keeps the provincial registers from 1809 to 1865, then the Italian series from 1866. In the North, the Napoleonic registers stop in 1815 and parish priests took over the records again from 1816.

Each register was written twice. One copy stayed in the comune; the other went to the local court and is now in the State Archive (Archivio di Stato) of the province. That second copy is the one you can read online.

Read them free on Portale Antenati

Portale Antenati is run by the Italian Ministry of Culture. It holds more than 140 million images from 93 State Archives, free to view, with a name search and a browse-by-register view.

• Births are shown once they are more than 100 years old; marriages and deaths after at least 70 years.
• Besides civil records, many archives also publish military conscription lists (liste di leva, ruoli matricolari): useful for men born in a known year.
• Not everything is indexed by name. When the search finds nothing, browse the registers of the right year for your comune.

Before civil records: the parish books

Catholic parishes had to keep registers from 1563 (Council of Trent), and most have books from about 1595: baptisms, marriages, burials, and the stati delle anime (household lists). They are written in Latin, often into the 20th century.

The originals stay in the parish; duplicates, where they exist, are in the diocesan archive (curia vescovile). Write in Italian, addressed to Il parroco di followed by the parish name.

Ask the town hall for a record

Write to the Ufficio di Stato Civile of the comune, in Italian. Two kinds of document exist:

• Estratto: an extract with the parents' names and the time of birth. This is what to ask for.
• Copia integrale: the full copy of the entry. It is issued only to the person concerned; others need a court authorization.

Many comuni issue these documents free of charge, but practice varies. For older records, the provincial State Archive also holds a copy; certified copies from an archive may carry stamp duty.

Write my letter in Italian

Italian emigration in numbers

About 26 million people left Italy from 1876, and roughly a third came back. The main destinations were the United States (about 6 million), France (4.5 million), Germany (2.5 million), Brazil (1.5 million) and Canada (over 0.5 million). The peak came between 1898 and 1914, with about 750,000 departures a year.

By area, from 1876: more than 10 million from the South and the islands, about 5.5 million from the North-East, about 5 million from the North-West and about 5 million from the Centre.

Regional figures: Istat data as reworked in G. Rosoli, Un secolo di emigrazione italiana 1876-1976 (CSER, 1978), as published by emigrati.it.

The pattern shifted over time: the North, led by Veneto, dominated before 1900; Sicily and Campania took over after 1900. If your ancestor left after 1900, a Southern origin becomes much more likely.

Sources