Italian Family Search

[Caligrafee]

Hi everyone,

I am new to the forum but hope someone will be able to help/point me in the right direction.

I have decided to start researching my family history, and have decided to start it in the most difficult place, with my Italian grandmother's heritage. The problem is, I'm struggling with a couple of things (and google is being less than helpful).

My grandmother's surname was Balenieri (I'm sure this is the spelling but without access to my Dad's birth certificate or any other documentation I've been unable to confirm this, so it's mainly based on 'phonetic' spelling). Is this a genuine Italian name and is the spelling correct? She was, as far as I know, born in Rovinj around about 1928 (ish) but grew up in Gorizia and Trieste. She moved to the UK around about the 1950's after marrying a British soldier. I know she had a brother who moved to Australia, where he died at a young age. Now, my main issue is I don't know where I'm looking for her records - i.e. am I looking in Italy (as she was Italian) or am I looking in Croatia, since Rovinj is in Croatia?

Thanks in advance for any tips/advice. Genealogy is totally new to me

Caligrafee

[mimoalessandro]

Balenieri sounds of course Italian, so I think the spelling is right. Anyway I would say that is a very uncommon surname. In familysearch.org there are no records for Rovinj (in Italian Rovigno) at the indicated year, unfortunatly. The only things I found is the brother emigrated in Australia, but maybe you already know. You can find him (i think it is him because there is just one, and he was born a plausible year) by searching for Balenieri in this form:

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/Scripts/ ... Search.asp

It was Bruno Balenieri, born in 1922 and arrived in Australia with the ship TOSCANA, leaving from Trieste in 1954.

Do you have more infos, like the surname of the British soldier (which should be your grandfather, right?). What was the name of your gm?

[monke]

Maybe i can help you. with research