Discover Your Ancestral Hometown's History

My earliest family tree breakthroughs came from municipal websites. I was impressed, 15 years ago, by how many small towns in Italy had an information-packed website. Today, you may find a website for almost any town or township anywhere in your country or your old country.

I remember being very interested in my most recently discovered ancestral hometown. I went to the town's website and decided to send an email to the webmaster. To my delight, he wrote back to me with documents for the births and marriage of my great grandparents.

With the explosion of interest in ancestry, town webmasters may not be so generous today. They'd be overrun by requests!

Still, there's a lot you can learn by finding these town websites. My favorite thing to do with Italian town websites is search for their history (storia) page. Here's what I learned about one hometown: Sant'Angelo a Cupolo.

• The name of the town comes from (a) their patron saint, Michael the Archangel, shortened to Sant'Angelo; and (b) the fact that it sits up on a hill, or dome (cupolo). So, it's the town of St. Michael the Archangel which sits up on a hill.
• The first mention of the town is in a document from the year 1065!
• The most sacred landmark in their neighborhood is the statue of the Madonna del Rosario. The name of the church where my ancestors were baptized and married is Santa Maria Santissima del Rosario. The statue must be inside the church.
• The convent I saw on a distant hill on my first visit to the town dates back to 1775. That means every ancestor I can name also saw that building up on the hill.
• The typical dishes of the town are tagliatelle, cecatielli, fusilli, stuffed peppers, and tripe (eww).
• The main religious holidays for my great grandparents' neighborhood are the feasts of San Biagio and San Giuseppe (the name of their piazza).

Your ancestral hometown website can give you a taste of what it's like to live there, and how it was for your ancestors.

There's also information that's important to people who live in the town today:

• Photographs of the town.
• The town's elected officials. You may recognize some last names.
• Local businesses.
• Resolutions and ordinances.
• Local organizations.
• Places of worship.

Whoa! That last fact may have helped solve a long-standing mystery about my 2nd great grandfather, Antonio Saviano. I have a 1925 photo of him in his coffin, and there is a ribbon pinned to his jacked. It's hard to read, but it seems to match the name of the church in one of the town's neighborhoods. Maria Santissima delle Grazie translates to holy Mary of the graces. Maybe Antonio was a supporter of the church from his new home in the Bronx.

Let's try a U.S. town now. I lived in Southampton, Pennsylvania, for many years. Like many U.S. town websites, Southampton offers:

• A way to reach its different administrative departments.
• Meeting minutes from the town council.
• A calendar of upcoming events.
• The town's history, which began in 1685—ancient by U.S. standards.
• Historic photos.
• A list of townsmen who fought in the Revolutionary War. Very cool!

Hometowns across the United States are highly likely to have a website featuring a bit of their history.

If you don't know much about your ancestors' hometowns, it'll be a real treat to browse their websites.

What if your town doesn't have a website? My family tree contains the town of Spondon, Derbyshire, England. When I searched, I didn't find a town website for Spondon. What I did find is a bunch of websites providing some of the same information as the town websites.

• Wikipedia can give you the town's statistics and history.
• The FamilySearch.org wiki also has information about the town. Plus you get a list of the town's documents available on FamilySearch.
• You can find photos and maps for your town in your search results.
• Scour those search results for more insights into the town.

An image search for your ancestors' hometown may show you landmarks from their time.

I want to make sure my future visits to my ancestral hometowns happen on one of their feast days. That way, I'll have the chance to see many more townspeople than I have before. Find out about your town's attractions and their history before you visit. Or search for photos and feel as if you're there.

Give it a try!

How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives

Updated on 30 May 2022. Be sure to read Tip 4!

I was in a panic when the Italian genealogy website, Antenati, changed completely on November 15, 2021. But I'm here to help you cope.

First, the bad news:

• The new site does not allow us to easily save a high-resolution image of a document. But users are smart. Someone figured out an easy solution, and I will share it with you.
  

Here are 5 tips for using the new Antenati portal.

Tip 1: Use the Site's Improved Search Function

The homepage of the Antenati site has a slightly different URL than before: https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it. The first thing you'll see is a search form. Click the Italian flag at the top right of the page, if you like, to translate this search form to another language. I always leave it on Italian because it isn't a lot of words.

You can use this search form to quickly get to a particular town. Type the town's name in the first box (Località), click the yellow-highlighted suggestion, and click the Cerca (Search) button.

The Antenati group is always working on indexing vital records so you can search for a person. Instead of the default "Cerca nei registri" (search in the registers), choose "Cerca per nome" (search for a name). Enter a first name, last name, town, and year (click the down-arrow on those last two for more options).

I searched for my grandfather, born in Colle Sannita in 1902. Antenati has indexed the person's name, both their parents' names, and their date of birth, death, or marriage. It's pretty impressive.

You can click the view button for any search result to go to a page of text. Then click what will not appear to be a link, but is. It'll be beneath the word Atti, and when you hover your mouse over the words, for example, "Atto di nascita 10 Ottobre 1902," you can click that link. You'll find yourself on the exact page of the document you wanted.

There are 3 ways to see all the page numbers and get around the register.

Tip 2: Find a Province, Time Period, and Town

If you prefer the old method of drilling down to your town, you can still do that. In the top menu of the website, click "Esplora gli Archivi" or Find the Archives. I don't find the map helpful, but scroll below it to see the good-old alphabetical list of provinces.

Click your province of choice to go to its landing page. You'll find two buttons:

• Cerca nei registri (Search the registries) gives you a list of all the registers for the town. You can sort these from oldest to newest, or vice versa. Click the Vedi il registro (View the register) button for any book you want. You'll now be in a register viewer, able to turn the pages of the book.
• Esplora i fondi (Explore the fonds—not a typo) is closer to the old format. I'll warn you now that you're better off with the first button to search the registries. But if you want to see the old way, click the button to see the three time periods, now displayed in alphabetical, not chronological, order:
  • Stato civile italiano—the latest time period, usually from 1866 on. These are the years after Italy became a unified republic.
  • Stato civile napoleonico—the earliest time period, usually from 1809 through 1815. These are the years when Napoleon was in charge.
  • Stato civile della restaurazione—the middle time period, usually from 1816 through 1865. These are the years after Napoleon, but before Italy became one country.
• Click a time period, then choose your town. And whaddaya know? You're right back where you were when you clicked Cerca nei registri. That was a waste of time. So maybe the new site helps us get where we want to go faster.

Tip 3: See Thumbnails or Pick a Page to View

At first glance, it seems as if you can only page your way through a register one image at a time. If that's the case, imagine paging through a 100-page book to get to the index pages.

Luckily, there are several other ways to get around. Start by looking at any page of a register. Then:

• Method 1: Click the icon to the top right of the viewing area that's meant to look like a window. Change your view from Singolo to Galleria.
• Method 2: Same as above, click the icon at the top right, but this time, click Right. (Why is that in English?) Now you have a scrollable list on the right with all the page numbers. You can click any one of them.
• Method 3: Click the hamburger menu the 3 stacked horizontal lines). Then click the third icon down that looks like five stacked lines of different lengths. Now you can see a list of all the page numbers. Or you can choose to see them as thumbnails.

Click any page number to go where you want to go.

Tip 4: Saving a Record's URL and High-Res Image

This section is new as of 30 May 2022.

The Antenati site no longer gives us a button to download a high resolution image of the document we want. But here's a solution for you.

Start by going to the page you want within any register book. As you click from page to page, you should notice that the last section of the URL (after the last slash) in the address bar of your web browser changes with each page. Copy that last section and paste it into this template URL that you will keep in a safe place, replacing only the word TARGET:

https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/TARGET/full/full/0/default.jpg

For example, I'm looking at a document and the URL ends in 5K6QgbP. If I paste that into my template URL, replacing the word TARGET, I get https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/5K6QgbP/full/full/0/default.jpg. If you click that link you'll see the document all by itself. You can click the image to enlarge it. And you can right-click and save that wonderful high-resolution image.

This may seem like a pain, but wow is it easier than the method I was using!

Hang in there, my Italian researchers. The Antenati site was never the easiest in the world anyway. I've heard that some towns now have more recent documents than they did before. Today I learned that my uncle's town is finally online, and I can expand his family tree!

Be sure to also read How to Make the Best of the New Antenati Website.

Look Back to See How Your Genealogy Hobby Is Going

If you spend any time on social media, you've seen them. The before-and-after images with the words "how it started" and "how it's going." Usually the joke is that things are not going very well at all.

What if we apply the same idea to our family tree research? How it started for me was a 1989 conversation with my Grandma Leone and a hand-drawn tree of her family. How it's going is a family tree with 32,000 people from all my grandparents' hometowns.

Then I had a conversation with my Grandpa Iamarino. He told me a bit about his sisters. I'd known nothing about them! Now my family tree has his sisters, their children, and generations of their husbands' ancestors.

"How it started" was a 1989 conversation and a scrap of paper. "How it's going" is a treasure trove of documents and family history.

Fast-forward to 2002 when my husband-to-be and I were planning our honeymoon in Italy. I wanted to know more about where my ancestors came from. I started with the EllisIsland.org website. I found ship manifests for my two grandfathers. When I noticed that everyone named Iamarino came from one town (Colle Sannita), I took out a notebook. I filled tons of pages with facts about every Iamarino emigrating from Colle.

My husband bought me Family Tree Maker software with a subscription to Ancestry.com. He thought it was time I graduate from the slips of paper I was laying out on the floor to simulate a family tree.

"How it started" was a notebook filled with info from ship manifests. "How it's going" is a collection of 505 digital manifest images.

I did indeed graduate. I found my extended family in the census records. Not a single one of my ancestors had come to America before 1890. Our roots here are still so shallow.

My next how it started / how it's going began in about 2006. I learned I could visit a Family History Center at a local church to view microfilm of Italian vital records. For five years, I viewed and documented EVERY vital record (1809–1860) from my Grandpa Leone's hometown of Baselice. I chose his town because I knew almost nothing about his family.

I started this project by finding his parents' birth records in 1850 and 1856. Now I knew their parents' names.

The only way to know my relationship to other Leones in town was to piece together all the families. So I brought my laptop to the Family History Center and typed a line in a text file for each record. Here's an example:

• Pasquale Maria Cernese b 1 apr 1809 to Giovanni di Saverio 35 (bracciale) and Battista di Giovanni Colucci

That's a birth record for Pasquale Maria Cernese, born on 1 April 1809. His father was Giovanni Cernese, a 35-year-old laborer, and the son of Saverio Cernese. His mother was Battista Colucci, daughter of Giovanni Colucci.

"How it started" was viewing barely-legible vital records by appointment. "How it's going" is a family tree more than 32,000 strong.

With this type of shorthand, I created a text file that's 29,864 lines long. After each long session at the microfilm viewer, I'd go home and try to work everyone into a Family Tree Maker file. I found a connection to about 15,000 people from the town.

During the entire five-year process, I was yearning to do the same for my Grandpa Iamarino's town. But the visits to the center were a pain. Then, everything changed in 2017. The Italian government published digitized vital records for tons of towns online. Now I can see clear images of the vital records I'd struggled to read on crappy microfilm viewers. Plus, the records don't end in 1860. They go way, way beyond.

And Grandpa Iamarino's hometown vital records are online for me, too! As are my great grandmother Caruso's hometown records. My Grandma Leone's parents' town has very few records online, but they are helpful. And when I discovered two other towns where I have roots, I found their vital records online, too.

Much to my horror, the Italian website completely changed their format today, making it seemingly impossible to download a high-resolution image of your ancestor's document. This stinks! UPDATED: How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives.

For my research, how it started is the five years of squinting at microfilm with a computer in my lap. How it's going is my searchable database of records from my Italian hometowns. And a family tree of more than 32,000 people that's been growing by almost 100 people a day lately.

Why so much growth? Because how it started was asking Grandma and Grandpa about their siblings. How it's going is piecing together the thousands of unions from my ancestors' towns. For instance, I can find the marriage records for my 3rd great grandparents. Then I can find the births of all their children, who their children married, and which kids they had. It adds up fast.

It helps my cause that all my people came from such a tiny footprint on the Italian map. In 2005 my cousins showed me the exact spot where Grandpa Iamarino's house once stood. They pointed out that I could see Grandpa Leone's town in the distance.

A man from one of my towns could meet and marry a woman from one of my other towns. In fact, my 3rd great grandfather Francesco Liguori did just that. He lived in Circello—my one real connection to that town. But he married a woman from the neighboring town of Colle Sannita. They had eight children in Colle, introducing his last name to the town. And that meant I had to explore Francesco's extended family in the Circello vital records.

How did your interest in your family tree start? Think back on your origin story and then ask yourself, "How's it going?"