Ciao Italianista contains affiliate links and is a member of the Amazon Services LLS Associates Program. If you make a purchase using one of these Amazon links, I may receive compensation at no extra charge to you. See my disclosure policy for more information.
How To Start Finding Your Italian Roots From Home
Do you want to start researching your Italian ancestors but have no idea where to start? Or are you returning to ancestry work after a long break and wondering what you should do first?
Searching for our ancestors is a journey. And it is something that we pick up and put down throughout our lives.
I have been searching for my Italian roots my whole life, and in the last two years, I finally had a major breakthrough in solving the puzzle.
Whether you are starting out for the first time or returning to your search after some time off, identify your why, get tips to discover the birth town of your ancestor, and learn basic Italian research on your journey to trace your Italian family tree.
Get comfortable, and let’s dive in to start finding your Italian roots from home!
Know Why You Want To Trace Your Italian Roots
Knowing your why is key to finding your Italian roots. This will keep you motivated when you reach a brick wall or discover you’ve been going down the wrong path.
Why do you want to find your Italian roots?
- To fulfill a longing you’ve felt all your life to know where your ancestors came from and why they left?
- To get Italian citizenship through jure sangunis or “by right of blood”?
- To learn about the food and traditions of your ancestors?
- To understand better your own identity?
- To feel part of a cultural community?
- To meet living descendants?
- All of these things?
Finding your Italian roots starts with imagining your why. I wrote about my why when I was searching for my great-grandfather and again when I found my great-grandmother in the records.
Next comes figuring out the exact town, or comune, where your ancestor was born.
How To Figure Out The Birth Town Of Your Ancestor
Your goal is to identify the exact Italian town your ancestors were born in. Records are kept at the local level in Italy so you have to know the name of their hometown to unlock your family history in the “old country”.
“Somewhere in the Alps” was all I had to go on to figure out where my ancestors came from. This was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I did it and so can you! Try these methods:
- Ask living relatives anything they know that will help narrow down the region of origin.
- Use this Italian Names Map to figure out where people with the same last name came from.
- Search the paginebianch.it (white pages) for people with the same last name in or near your ancestor’s hometown or region to find living descendants. Call or write them and, who knows, you might get a response and a nice surprise.
- Join Italian genealogy Facebook groups. There are two kinds of groups. One is for questions on genealogy about people from the past. You can ask people to help you find your ancestors and they do!
- The other kind of group is the town’s Facebook group for living connections. People in these groups are helpful and you get an idea of the town for when you plan your visit.
- Type your ancestors’ names into the name search on Portale Antenati. Antenati is the best website for Italian research. It can be accessed through FamilySearch, but it has more records if you search it directly. Read more tips on using Portale Antenati.
Start With What You Know On Paper
Your next step to finding the exact Italian town your ancestors were born in is to start with what you know and get it down in one place on paper.
Talk to any living relatives you have to start gathering information. Gather any physical documents your family members have. Learn the general area where they came from in Italy.
Start creating a family tree on paper beginning with yourself. Go backward directly up your lineage until you arrive at the family members who were born in Italy and emigrated.
Write down or type all the important dates, names, and locations in a pedigree chart. You can find free charts online.
It is good to have a paper version of your tree so that when you start an online one, you don’t get overwhelmed by all the possible matches.
Begin An Online Family Tree in FamilySearch
Family Search is a free, online genealogy service to help people discover their family history. Create an account and start building your tree.
Start with yourself. Then add your parents and grandparents going back as far as you can.
You will start to get hints and matches. Be careful not to get overwhelmed and use the paper copy of your tree to help you stay focused.
A huge wave of Italians left Italy from 1880-1930 and unfortunately, they left little trace of their hometown. However, you will find lots of information about them in their new country in these records:
- Census records
- Marriage certificates
- Birth certificates
- Baptism records
- Death certificates
- Naturalization records
- Passenger lists and ship manifests
You can access these documents through FamilySearch or other websites. Scour these records to find clues to where your ancestors came from in Italy. Be meticulous and don’t jump to conclusions.
My great-grandparents both came from Italy but they got married in New Jersey. Their marriage certificate contained a huge clue for me because it had the names of their parents on it. But the names were in Latin which confused me for a long time.
Look for all the clues you can in the documents from their lives in their new country to see if they lead you back to their hometown.
Do The Basic Italian Research Course On FamilySearch
Watch this video on Basic Italian Research on FamilySearch. This will save you tons of time and give you hope that you actually can trace your family history using Italian records.
Do this course before or after you have identified your ancestor’s hometown. But, once you know the town they were born in in Italy, you can really start having fun!
The video is an hour long and covers everything from how history affected Italian record keeping, to explaining the major record types and what can be found in each one, to how to use other websites and resources to get started.
How History Affected Italian Record-Keeping
The history of Italian record-keeping is fascinating. Record keeping in Italy has been around for a long time through wars, earthquakes, and floods. When records were destroyed, people lined up to reconstruct the records orally.
Church records have been kept by all the local parishes since 1595 with no interruptions. If the records aren’t online, you can write to your ancestor’s parish and ask for the records.
Civil registration records began in 1804 when Napoleon came to power and organized the country into regions, provinces, and communes. He required the local authorities (comuni) to keep civil registration records.
This lasted from 1804-1815. When Napoleon was defeated in 1815, civil registration ceased in most areas of Italy but not in Sicily.
In 1866, Italy was finally able to defeat all the foreign powers and became a unified country. Civil registration started up again either in 1866 or 1867 depending on the province.
Types of Records And What Is In Them
If your ancestor’s town has been filmed, it might be easy to find them online. These are the main types of records:
- Civil Registration Records (the best starting point)
- Church Records (Catholic Church parish records are a wealth of information)
- Military Records (every 18 man was drafted, dead or alive, so all their names should be there)
Most of the civil records are indexed. Look for your ancestor’s name in the indexes of different categories including Births (Atti di Nascita), Marriages (Matrimoni), Citizenship Records (Cittadinanze), Deaths (Morti), Supplemental Documentation (Allegati).
You can also try writing to your ancestor’s comune and asking for a Stato di Famiglia, which is similar to a census record.
Some church records can be found online. Otherwise, you can write to your ancestor’s parish and ask for records. Church records include baptism, confirmation, marriage, and death records. Ask for an Estratto, not just a certificate.
How To Read The Records
Reading the documents seems overwhelming and impossible at first. The Basic Italian Research video explains key phrases to look for. Once you learn how to spot the key phrases, you will be able to find names, dates, and sometimes addresses in the documents.
The cursive writing also takes some time to get used to. There are guides on FamilySearch to help you decipher the old writing.
I wish I had watched this years ago instead of figuring out all this by myself! Watching this video will inspire you and will save you so much time.
Use Ancestry To Find More Documents
Ancestry.com is a paid subscription-based genealogical website but might be worth it since it has the world’s largest online collection of family history records.
You can sign up for a free account, but to see certain parts, you need to pay. However, you can often get free access to the paid part from the public library and from FamilySearch centers.
Ancestry and FamilySearch collaborate and overlap but each contains records that the other doesn’t have, so it is good to access both of them.
Search Portale Antenati
Antenati is the “gold standard” of civil records from all across Italy. Much of Antenati is searchable on FamilySearch, and Ancestry, but searching directly on Antenati is more comprehensive and deeper.
You can try a name search. But don’t despair if nothing comes up. You must know the city, town, or parish to find your ancestor in Italy. Search the town or comune in the registers and look for your ancestor in the Indexes under all the different years.
You have to be very organized and meticulous, cross-checking dates, names, names of parents, and names of spouses to be sure the person you found is your ancestor.
Because of Italian naming patterns, many people in the same town had the same name. You will get excited many times only to check the dates and realize things are not lining up. At some point, you might hit a brick wall and decide you need help.
Hire A Professional
There may come a time when you choose to hire a professional to help you find your ancestor. For example, if you discover your ancestor was a foundling, or orphan, it will be impossible to find out anything more without hiring a genealogist.
You might also consider hiring a professional when you take your trip to Italy to knock on the doors of churches and municipalities.
You can write in advance and try to arrange appointments yourself, but a guide, interpreter, or genealogist can definitely help make the experience more successful and enjoyable.
If you do write to the municipality or church, make sure to write the letter in Italian. FamilySearch has letter-writing tutorials.
Consider Doing An Ancestry DNA Test
Before you do a DNA test, learn what it is and isn’t. It might help you find living relatives but it won’t tell you if you are “Italian”. Italian DNA does not exist and you will end up disappointed to discover you are less Italian than you thought.
This is because there is a long history of migrations into Italy and within Italy. Also, Italy didn’t even exist as a political reality until 1866. Before that, it was a collection of kingdoms with Austrian, French, and Spanish people in power all adding to the DNA pool.
But if you do decide to do it, have your parents and siblings do one too. Then contact the strongest DNA matches with big trees.
Never Stop Doing Italian Genealogical Research
Researching your Italian roots is so interesting that it can take over your life. So remember to stay focused on your main goal of finding the exact town your ancestors came from.
Don’t worry about taking a break from it. New records are always being added, so the next time you come back to it you might make an amazing discovery.
Eventually, you’ll figure out exactly where they came from and then you can start planning your trip to visit your Italian ancestral homeland and continue your research in Italy.
Read More Of My Best Genealogy Tips and Stories:
- How To Use Portale Antenati To Find Your Missing Family Member
- What To Know About Italian Parish Records
- Search For Giuseppe – My Lifelong Quest To Find The Italian Birthplace of My Great-Grandfather
- Finding Angela – My Italian Genealogy Research Reveals An Amazing Discovery
- Is Hiring A Genealogist Worth It In Italy?
