research problems with church records in italy

[mezzogiorno62]

as we all know,civil records only go back to 1820 in sicily and 1809 on the mainland. research going further back depends on accessing parish records. and therein lies the problem. first off,unless all your italian ancestors originated in a tiny comune with only 1 parish,and that parish has been in existence for over 200 years,there's no way to determine which parish will contain the desired information. example: my paternal grandfather was born in luogosano(avellino)population barely 1000. just 1 parish. and the only parish record i ever recieved from there was the 1803 marriage of my 2nd great grandparents. my paternal grandmother was born in barcellona pg(messina),a fairly large city and home to many parishes. i got lucky and was able to get her baptismal record.that was it. thats only 2 parish records accessed in 20 years of research. another problem is having no approximate dates to work with. once you get back 200 years or so,you can only guess approximate time frames regarding births,marriages,or deaths. we usually know when our grandparents were born,as well as where, as that information can be found in records here,but going back further involves lots of educated guesswork,with no exact or even approximate dates to work with. and most parish priests are not inclined to lookup requests for records where there may be many years of possible research. they may check 5 or 10 years(and thats doubtful) but anything more than that is very unlikely. add to all these obstacles damaged or missing records. thats why it amazes me when some researchers claim success in tracing lineages back over 200 or more years. some even claim 300 or more years. considering the uncertainty of guessing approximate time frames,the problems of even finding the correct parishes(regarding cities),and the general unwillingness of parish priests to cooperate, the few successful searches into pre civil registration parish records are nothing short of miraculous. its amazing anyone can get back into the early 1800s,the time frame of our great and great great grandparents,never mind further back. on the other hand,i've had great success with my maternal french canadian ancestry. records of birth,marriage,and death began in canada(quebec) upon the arrival of the first settlers ca.1608. the plus there was that parish records doubled as civil records from the beginning-no separation. basically 1 set of records spanning 400 years. theres a database at ancestry called the drouin films. in 1940 all the vital records of quebec as well as surrounding areas with a french population were filmed. now this collection is available at ancestry online. and this is a searcheable database. you can literally enter a name,adding search criteria such as approximate dates,and locate an ancestor. covers approximate years from 1608 up to 1940. maybe 10 or more generations can be quickly compiled by rearching this collection. and the original ancestral places in france are found with the earliest arrivals. nothing remotely similiar to this in italian genealogy. its either research the lds films/database,which only go back 200 years( film lending ended in 2017),or write endless letters of inquiry to the ancestral comunes(if we even know them),or worse yet,letters of inquiry to unresponsive parishes,even if we know them. if only italian genealogy were half as fruitful as french canadian genealogy. and i'm long experienced in both. i have 273 charts documenting virtually all births,marriages,and deaths in my french canadian lines,going back into the late 1500s and early 1600s,as opposed to 1 incomplete chart for my italian lines,barely going back into the early 1800s. 20 years of hard research and 1 incomplete 5 generation chart. one can only hope the italians will take up the challenge. the drouin collection was a collaborative effort and agreement between quebec genealogists and the regional archives. for that to happen in italy,genealogists there would need the cooperation of the various state archives and local comunes. can you imagine that ever happening? even lds and the www.antenati@beniculturali.it site are having problems with cooperation regarding the release of records for the public. all kinds of issues regarding rights,licensing,etc. and we're talking about records well over 100 years old,which in no way affect anyone's privacy. the italians are a much larger group than the french canadians,but there's no comparison in how one group values their heritage over the other. the facts speak for themselves.

[brogie62]

I’ve been fortunate in that half of my Sicilian Ancestry comes from the Catania region and all those church records are available at FamilySearch. Working through those records I have come to appreciate that parish churches may have their records held at another, mother church. I have also found that people do not necessarily go the their town’s parish church for all rites. The rural, in the 18th century, area between Aci Catena and Giarre, a distance of more than 10 miles, a lot in those days, had no mother church until 1752. My ancestors lived between the 2 and I would find births in Giarre, marriages in Aci Catena and Aci Sant’Antonio. It has made for an frustrating search.

I don’t know if it was like this on the mainland as well but having access to records certainly doesn’t make it easy, but you can’t succeed without them.