How And Where Do I Start?

How and Where to Begin Your Search

For those that wish to research on their own, the most frequently asked question is “How and where do I start?!”. Genealogy can be intimidating because there’s so much information! Where do you start? How do you organize everything? What resources do you need along the way?

Don’t worry! Sicilian Family Tree is here to help with guidance and tips to help you on your journey. Follow the steps below at your own pace and you will soon find that your tree is expanding and you are encountering family stories, ancestors and maybe even living relatives you never even knew about!

The first thing a budding genealogist must do is determine how they want to save and record all the information they are about to start collecting. The old-fashioned way is to use handwritten family tree charts and forms (and a BIG filing cabinet!). However, while forms and charts are still available and easy to use, they are not the easiest to store, share and pass down to later generations. Thankfully, technology has come to the rescue!

There are several great genealogy software programs available as well as websites that allow you to build your family tree. Each has advantages and disadvantages that are important to consider before you decide which to use. We will touch on several of the options below and you can learn more by reading these reviews and/or these reviews.

Genealogy Software

Websites Where You Can Build A Tree

Now that you have a place to store the information, you are ready to start recording what you personally already know. Starting with yourself, record your full name, birth and marriage dates and places (be specific with city, county, state, country, in that order). Add your spouse and all of your descendants and then add information for your siblings, their spouses and descendants. Move up a generation and add the birth, marriage and/or death information for your parents and their siblings, your cousins and their descendants. Do the same for each set of grandparents. Continue in this manner, adding information that you personally know about each generation going back as far as you can. Remember to be as thorough as you can with dates and places.

Now, consider this: do you have any documents that confirm the information you just recorded? For example, your birth and/or marriage certificate, vital records for any other family members, funeral cards or obituaries for deceased family members, old passports, pictures, or anything of that nature? If the answer is yes, record those documents, pictures and records as sources in your family tree file. Every genealogy program and family tree website will have a spot to do this and it is vitally important that you save the sources for the information you enter. Remember, at some point far in the future, someone else might be looking over your family tree and will not have first-hand knowledge of the people and events to know whether or not the information is true.  If the source is listed, they will know where to look to verify the information.

Ask family members, especially and particularly those in the oldest generation, about anything and everything they can remember about themselves and the generations past. This is important to do right away, because sadly people do not live forever, memories fade and old photos and documents are sometimes thrown away or given away to someone else that you may not see or know.

Make sure you get names, places, dates, and be very specific! Don’t leave out items such as burial places or funeral homes if they are remembered. Compare what they told you to what you remembered and check for discrepancies. Ask if they have documents and/or pictures they are willing to share with you. And be sure to ask other things that are not so obviously genealogical, such as things like schooling, occupations, places of work. These personal details and family stories are meaningful to your family but they may also hold clues to the pieces of your family history puzzle. Now, one note about this information you have collected: be prepared that some if it will not be accurate! Not all of those old family tales are entirely true so keep an open mind as you research.

You probably have a fairly decent sized family tree by this point. Congratulations! Now it’s time to review what you have recorded in your tree and look for areas that need to be filled in. For example, are there blank spaces in your tree such as missing birth, marriage or death dates or places? If so, this may be a good place to start your actual research. Alternatively, here are some questions to ask yourself that might help you decide what to work on next:

Now that you have recorded and reviewed everything that you already know and you’ve decided on a goal, it’s time to start searching for new information. Let your research goal guide you. For example, if your first goal is to find the place of origin in Italy for your family, seek out records that can provide you with that information, such as ship manifests, naturalization records, and World War draft registrations. If you want to fill in blank spots in your more recent family tree, use the websites that focus on US records to help you do that. And if you are already know the town of origin for your family and you want to dive right into the Italian records, skip ahead to Step 6.

Below are some of our favorite major genealogy websites that you can use to fill in blanks in your family tree and expand what you already know using US records as well as records from around the world. A little further below, you can also connect to the Research Links pages of Sicilian Family Tree, where we have curated lists of websites that can help you find more information in specific categories.

Ships & Naturalization

Link to pages with ship manifests for various US, South American and Australian ports. Also links to help you find naturalization records and learn more about obtaining Italian Dual Citizenship.

United States Research

Link to vital records databases that are kept by cities, counties and/or states, many of which can’t be found anywhere else. Also links to cemetery records and newspaper archives.

Italian Culture & Genealogy

Links to Italian American foundations, Italian nobility records and websites that help you find any Catholic Church parish in the world.

Italian History, Facts & Maps

Learn about Italian and Sicilian history and every town in Italy and Sicily, the government offices and archives, maps, postal codes and the Italian white pages.

Now that you have filled in all of the more recent information for your family tree and you know where your ancestors came from in Italy, it’s time to start using the excellent Italian vital records. To better understand the Italian record system and what is available, it’s necessary to have a very brief Italian history lesson.

                                       

Prior to 1809, all vital record information in Italy was maintained by the Catholic Church. From about 1809-1815, when Napoleon Bonaparte controlled large parts of Northern Italy, towns began creating civil records, now called Napoleonic records, of birth, marriage and death. When Napoleon was defeated and Northern Italy went back to being an assortment of Kingdoms and Duchys, most towns stopped making civil records and reverted to having the Catholic Church maintain vital information about citizens. Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, which extended from roughly Naples south through Sicily, civil records were begun in 1820 and continued until 1865, when Italian Unification was in full swing and the entire country was beginning to be united under one flag. At that point, all towns from the north and the south began making civil vital records in very similar formats. From 1866-1874, they are entirely handwritten, but after 1875, pre-printed forms were used and they continue to this day.

So, in brief, northern towns may only have civil records for 1809-1815 and then from 1866 to the present. Southern towns, including those in Sicily, have civil records from 1820 to the present. Catholic church records for all of Italy generally extend from around the mid-1500s (after the Council of Trent) to present. Now, how do you know what’s available online and how do you access them?

FamilySearch and the Italian State Archives have partnered together to make a large portion of civil records available to the public, entirely for free. Catholic Church records are also available for some towns.

Obviously, all of the Italian records on the State Archives website and FamilySearch are going to be in Italian or Latin (and occasionally French!). If you don’t have a good understanding of these languages, it’s important to have some resources to help you find the correct documents and understand what the documents are telling you about your family. Below are links to websites with genealogical word lists and translation help plus sites that help you decipher the old handwriting you are going to encounter. Also below are four books that are highly recommended, particularly for beginners. The first three provide in depth information on how to use the Italian records, including translations of the types of documents you are going to encounter. The last recommendation is a dictionary, which will definitely come in handy.

Finally, if all of this still seems too overwhelming, we invite you to consider using Sicilian Family Tree’s Research Services. For over 20 years, we have been helping people learn more about their families at an affordable cost. Follow the link below to learn more about the Research Services we offer.

Sicilian Family Tree participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. The links above are affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, Sicilian Family Tree will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.

At a certain point in your research, you may find that you need to go straight the source. That is, you need to contact a church archive or vital records office in Italy or Sicily to get what you need. This usually happens when you need a document that is not available online or maybe you need a certified document to be used in a legal proceeding, like a Dual Citizenship application. You can write directly to the town and request what you need. It’s easier than you might think and doesn’t cost too much money.

Most towns are pretty good about responding, especially if you provide accurate information about what you are requesting. And sometimes they will even write back via email with the document attached. We’ve also had towns pass our letters along to relatives of the people we were asking about, which has been exciting and fun too. However, there are times when towns don’t respond in a timely manner or don’t respond at all, especially if you are asking them to search without an accurate name or date. We’ve had the best success by sending our request simultaneously in two formats: by email and by fax and then following up in about 6-8 weeks if we have not gotten a response. If there is still no response after that, you might want to request the assistance of a researcher in Italy/Sicily to help you.

Below are some resources to help you write your own request letters. To find addresses and fax numbers for the vital records office of your town, select the Comuni Italiani link below, follow the links to your town and look for where it says “City Hall”. We are also including contact information for a great researcher in Sicily, Giovanni Montanti. We’ve worked with Giovanni for over 20 years and have found him to be reliable and trustworthy. He speaks, reads and writes English and usually responds very promptly. We use his services all the time for church records and other records not available online.