Welcome back to Genealogy TV and this is another footnotes episode. I call them
footnotes because it's footnotes where the real sources are. Today's real
source is Margaret Fortier, she is certified from the Board of
Certification for Genealogists and as a member of the APG, which is the
Association for Professional Genealogists. She's an expert in several
areas such as French Canadian and Portuguese ancestry as well as
Immigration and Naturalization, but today we're going to talk about one of her
favorite subjects for which she is also an expert in and that is how to get
started with your Italian research. We're gonna jump into that interview in just a
few moments but before we do, I'd like to remind you to subscribe to Genealogy TV
on the YouTube channel and ring the bell so that you get notified of every new
episode I upload. And now on to our interview with Margaret Fortier. I'm so
glad you're here because I know nothing about Italian genealogy. I don't have any
Italian that I know of in my tell us tell us where if we're just discovering
that we have it Italy in our background. where do we start? Well you start here in
the United States that's your basic
workflow for any immigrant because you want to find out as much as possible
about them here before you jump the pond and the reason for that is because Italy
has no none zilch nada no national databases mm-hmm so if you do not know
the town you can't really look over there so you want to mine the records in
the United States to get as close to the town as possible before you look in any
Italian records so they don't have any national
archives online. Oh boy oh they have archives but they are by province and a
province has many many many towns and there isn't like a provincial index.
You have to know you have to know the town. Okay that sounds very familiar with
a lot of jumping the pond kind of research we avoid and for Ireland I know
even for myself I have Danish ancestry you kind of have to figure out the towns
here and we can do that through a lot of different records here in the United
States once they emigrated here somewhere in
those records it's going to say where they're from beyond just the country so
well that's good to know. All right so if we know this say we know the town of the
province...Province is like a County right? District maybe? Yes yeah. Okay and so once
we know that then what do we do? Well if you know the town mm-hmm
Then there are several websites you can go to look for the Italian vital records.
Family Search has a number of them and that's good because they're free. mm-hmm
Ancestry has some of them, and there's a wonderful site of the Italian provincial
archives called Antenati, which currently has about a little more than
half of the ninety-five archives online so you can't go to that site and it
actually has an English version so you don't have to... all right... the Italian and
...put that link in the show notes too for people watching... and the thing there that's a
little bit difficult is it it will tell you well here are births for these years
and then you go into a folder and you have the year and you kind of have to go
page by page. Sometimes there's an index right not but if you but if you
no the year within a year or two if you can find it. The the more difficult thing
is figuring out the handwriting. Yes I am familiar with that from my Danish
ancestry. And here's a tip so on Facebook I managed to find friends in Denmark
when I was doing Danish research so I imagine you could do the same thing... that
would translate for me. So I'd say hey I don't understand this little loop in the
handwriting can you tell me what that is? And they would write back and tell me so
I've met cousins that way actually using DNA research to that our descendants you
know we have common ancestor so there in Denmark so if you're fortunate enough to
have or discovered cousins in Italy I would imagine you could do the same
thing. Yeah there's actually a Facebook group called genealogy translation and
people go in and just post you know a snippet or a record or something like
that and there's guarantee be guaranteed to be someone who can translate it for
you. Well that's that's a new tip for me too because I had heard that you know
one of the things that I've discovered beyond just the normal Google Translate
which is on Chrome, is the Google app have you seen that, the Translate app? So
if you're traveling Italy right and you have the Google Translate app on your
phone you can hold it up to a sign a road sign or you can in it translates
you'd like just immediately. My husband showed me that yeah that's
pretty nice. Well alright so what's next for us? If we are now... tell me again the
name of that website? Antenati. So I'm imagining that not
everything is online. No, no. If we are fortunate enough to travel to Italy
where would we go, obviously... You go to the town hall for the vital records
mm-hmm and they would probably have them. You can also go to the Catholic Church
in the community for the baptism and marriage records. You can go to the
provincial archives for the military records because every male in Italy
after born about after about 1860 or so... right... was registered at birth for the
military draft for when he was 18 so they didn't have any of this show up
when you're 18 they had you from birth and if you are if you weren't there like
you had emigrated because many many young men emigrated at that time they
would have a notation emigrating we've got to the United States you would have
the provincial archives for that kind of records and if you wanted to go further
there are some areas that have censuses and other kinds of things but that's a
little more advanced you know if you if you get the birth marriage and death
records that gets you started because like all of the most of the European
records it will give you the parents the mother's maiden name and then you can go
back. I think of them like Russian nesting dolls you may find one record
you do it and then there is oh there's more and then you undo that you can keep
going back. Well that's that's what you want yes right... yes... that's awesome. Yeah.
Is there any nuances with the family clusters the family groups? I imagine you
know back in the day like many of the countries lots of family groups live
together in small quarters or you know farming villages where there's you know
aunts and uncles and cousins all living in the same place? Actually many of the
Italians from a certain town all moved to a certain area in the United States.
In fact there are some u.s. towns that can trace directly to the Italian town
because so many of the people went there. Because don't forget it was a huge huge
emigration you know I mean and... What time period would you say that
the biggest part of that immigration was happening? 1900 to 1924 because the
immigration act in 1924 greatly reduced the number who could come over. Okay so I
know from some of my immigration classes that there was a push or a pull. Either
people were leaving the country for a reason or they were returning or you
know they were they were seeking something better...
What do you think the case is with Italy and the migration no I don't know the history
very well... so admittedly I'm naive. There there are so many reasons I mean there
was the poverty semi-starvation there was there was no public education no
required mandatory public education in Italy until 1911.
Well if kids got to the age of 8 they went to work in the fields were lots of
natural disasters earthquakes there was a tsunami and Sicily that followed an
earthquake that wiped out like 250,000 people in the early 1900s. Wow
be enough yeah there were cholera epidemics typhoid because in southern
Italy you've had long hot dry summers followed by wet winters just the perfect
conditions for mosquitos to you know transmit these and then there was just
the the structure which was really practically a feudal structure where you
couldn't get ahead you know the land owner owned everything and if you were a
peasant you had your little home and you walked to your fields it would could be
like an hour away and then you walked home for lunch
and they know back and you know it was just there was no your lunch with you
know to the field right and then the military draft you know when you were 18
and from 18 to 21 you could be conscripted for up to three years and in
the nineteen hundred's Italy was very active
in Ethiopia and other areas so you could be sent far away for many years you know
so I think a lot of people just said you know this is not going to get any better
and so let's take a chance and go. Okay so all right so let's pretend for a
moment that we know somebody is immigrating to the United States where
would you suggest they go to find those travel records and/or the immigration
naturalization records? Well for the passenger list you can look on ancestry
and I believe family search. What I would recommend is actually using Steve
Morse's site he hasn't won a link for that too he has a one step website that's
kind of like a front end to the other ones that makes it allows you to search
more broadly so you can for example search by the place they came from
mm-hmm not something that you can normally search for an ancestry or
whatever and this is where you have to be really flexible with your spelling
some of the listings you know they didn't get it right or they you know
part of those last names blotted out or whatever right not to look for the
passenger manifests and don't assume that they came in through New York or
they came in through Boston unless you know for certain just do a very broad
search. Okay all right good to know good to know. And then when you get the record
if you're lucky enough they came late enough that the manifest will tell you
who they left in Italy mm-hmm who they're going to in the United States
and you always want to take those names and find out about them because the
person that they're coming to in the United States
they had to have come over at some point and you want to find their record and
sometimes it will say it's a friend but if you go and research it you actually
find out it's a cousin or something. Part of that chain migration yeah you know
that's I'm constantly talking about almost in every video it seems lately
about you know the concept of cluster genealogy or Elizabeth Shown Mills FAN
research. Yeah so yeah so that's a good tip that's another set of rocks that we
need to be turning over as far as doing our cluster genealogy. Do you want to
jump into these slides and take a look at what you sent over. You see that? Yes I
do this is my great-great-grandfather who was born in 1852 and I'm just
thrilled that I have a picture I know I know he was I think he was about 70 he
was coming from Buenos Aires Argentina to New York
that's this immigration card and the reason I say on the slide that my
ancestor was not Italian is because when he was born
there was no Italy it was just a collection of states Italy wasn't
unified completely until 1870 so he would have said he was from Avellino
which you can see over there in the right with the red star which was in the
Campania region he would have said he was Avellinese. He wouldn't have
said he was Italian. The Italians became Italian when they
came over to the United States really. Well isn't that interesting I who knew?
Yeah. Wow. Well still this document right here is just... I know.. You were probably
doing a dance around the house when you found that one. Yes and it was so
interesting because it was the second wife of his grandnephew who had kept all
this stuff and gave it to me at a family reunion about 10 years ago because
she she knew it was important and she just wanted to give it to the family
history person in the family and there I was and I was just thrilled. That is just...
that's... well the photograph just is... right now is blessing for sure
alright I'm gonna move on the next slide here tell us about what we... I think I've
got that centered up pretty well. Yes. The naming patterns in Italy there was a
very strong naming pattern as it came as they came to the United States it was
followed less and less but this is why your grandfather has five cousins named
Vincenzo because then Jen's oh and Maria get
married and they have three sons Antonio Pietro and Luigi. So Antonio has two
daughters first and he names the first daughter Maria after his mother.
The first daughters always named after the father's mother. Then he has a son
who he names after his father Pietro gets married he has a son he names them
after his father. Luigi gets married he has a girl names her Maria and then he
has a son names him Vincenzo. So now you have three Vincenzo's born in the space
of six years, with the same surname, in the same town This is why you have to be
really careful you have the right Vincenzo and he could have more sons who
could have more sons this is just three. So it's important to know and understand
this it's not always followed but it is followed more often than not. Wow. All
right very very good to know all right so anything else on this slide
the only other thing is that in the Italian naming pattern you never named a
child after a parent unless the parent had died. So a child could be named after
the parent posthumously if the mother died
child words of the father had died before the birth, and that's the only
only... They had the same ten or twelve names running around all the time. Yes but
they're not not as bad as the Irish names were I think they took four names
and just recycled them forever. Right Wow. Alright let's see what it was there
anything new that you didn't discuss on this? This is just the the pattern that
the first son after the father's father, the second son the mother's father, the
first daughter the father's mother, and the second daughter the mother's mother.
Excellent alright so the last slide that you have here I can't quite go ahead.
This is a picture of the pasta eaters in Naples in the early 1900s and think of
these as like the the food trucks we have today where they would have vendors
set up and you were well-off you had a plate of pasta with sauce and maybe a
little meekness sauce you know you had to be pretty well-off for that okay look
quite so well-off you had a plate of pasta maybe with a little oil in it and
if you were poor and this was all you could afford you had the pasta water the
water the water the pasta had been boiled in that had some starch in it and
that's what you had and to me that illustrates the the poverty better than
all the stats in the world Wow Very good story . Anything else we need to
talk about? I would just recommend if somebody really wants to explore the
Italian genealogy a book that came out last year by Melanie Holtz, The Family
Tree Italian Genealogy Guide, which is very useful there really hasn't been a
good guide for U.S. research into Italian ancestry and its
Melanie does exclusively Italian research she
travels there and it's it's a wonderful resource. Well that is a great tip I will
put a link for that in the show notes - are you speaking anywhere soon? Yes
actually I'm speaking at the at the end of January at the Merrimack Valley
Chapter of the messages Society genealogists in Georgetown mass on
Andiamo Finding your Italian Family. Awesome well
I know that you are experienced in other areas as well so hopefully we'll get you
back on to talk about some of your other other areas you want to tell us about
those real quick? Yes I do French-Canadian, I speak speak read write
French I also do some Portuguese American and because I'm in Boston I do
Irish because they're here. Well if anybody wants to find you how do they go
about finding you? My profile is on the APG the Association of Professional
Genealogists website and I'm on Linkedin and Facebook and I assume I can give you the
link for my email. Absolutely, I can put all of those links on the show notes if
you wish I can certainly do that. And I appreciate you taking the time right
after the holidays here to to talk to everybody about doing their Italian
research. Thank you so much...Thank you so much. Well that was great fun. I know I learned a
few new tips along the way. As always look in the show notes for the links
about the things that we discussed in that video. Be sure to sign up for the
Genealogy TV newsletter... Links for that are also in the show notes. If you found
that helpful please "like" this video and share it. You know sharing is caring and
it always helps everybody with their genealogy research. Lastly don't forget
to subscribe and ring the bell so that you'll get notified of all those
videos. Until next time keep on climbing your family tree.
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