Simple Tips for Understanding Italian Birth Records

Someone sends you a birth record for your ancestor. You can hardly wait to open it! And then it hits you. It's written in a foreign language.

Don't ever say "I can't read this language." You don't have to read the whole document. You have to pick out names and learn to decipher numbers written in longhand. You can do this!

Most birth records tell you several basic facts. The rest is formal boilerplate language. Do you care who the mayor was on that date? Or do you want to know the name and birth date of the baby and the parents' names and ages?

Here are the must-have genealogical facts on an old Italian birth record:

• Date. The document begins with the date a father declares his baby's birth. The baby may have been born days earlier. I'll show you how to find that date.
• Town and Province. These may be different than they are today.
• Father's Facts. The key facts are the father's name, age, occupation, and address.
• Mother's Facts. You'll find the mother's name, and it is her "maiden" name. Italian women keep their father's last name for life. You may or may not find her age and occupation.
• Baby's Facts. You'll find the baby's full name, date, and hour of birth. You may also see the baptism date.

The "boilerplate" I mentioned above has non-critical facts:

• The name of the sindaco (mayor) or other official.
• Two male witnesses. Sometimes these men are relatives, so look for words like zio (uncle) or avo (grandfather).
• Signatures or crosses. The father and witnesses must sign the record, but if they're illiterate, they'll make a cross. The clerk will write their names next to their marks.
• The mayor's signature.

Let's dissect a few different types of Italian birth records so you know exactly where to look.

Example 1: A Short Birth Record

You don't have to know another language. You simply have to recognize a few keywords.

This 1812 birth record has very few pre-printed words on the page. The printed words help you find the handwritten facts you need.

#1 Get the Date and Town

The first line tells you the date the father declares the birth of the baby. It says:

L'anno milleottocento dodici a due del mesi di Gennaio
The year 1812 on the 2nd day of the month of January

All you need to know:

• anno = year
• mille = 1,000, ottocento = 800, dodici = 12, so 1812
• due = 2
• mesi = month
• Gennaio = January

Bookmark this outstanding list of Italian genealogy words, including all-important numbers and months. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Italian_Genealogical_Word_List

After the name of the sindaco (mayor), look for the words comune (town) and provincia (province). On this record we see names that changed over time. The town of Colle later became Colle Sannita. Its province was Molise, but now it's Benevento.

#2 Find the Father

Next, look for the printed word comparso (appeared). It's followed by the name of the person presenting the baby. It's usually the father, but it may be the levatrice (midwife) or avo/ava (grandparent).

In this case, it says comparso Giovanni Zeolla (the baby's father), di anni quaranta (40 years, or age 40), di professione contadino (profession farmer).

Next is the word domiciliato (domiciled or living in). Giovanni lives in questo comune (this town), followed by the street name (Strada li Tufi).

#3 Find the Date and Time of Birth

The next pre-printed words say, ed ha dichiarato (and he declares). What follows is the gist of what Giovanni has to declare: "on this date, at this time, a baby was born."

Here it says oggi (today) ad ore tredici (at the 13th hour, or 1 p.m.), a baby was born in Giovanni's home.

#4 Find the Mother

After the time and place of birth, we see who the baby was born to. It says: born to Maria Isabella Palmiero, sua moglie legittima (his legitimate wife), d'anni trenta (age 30), una femmina (female baby) che ci ha presentato (that he presents to us).

All that matters is: the mother of the baby girl is Maria Isabella Palmiero, age 30, Giovanni Zeolla's wife.

#5 Find the Baby's Name

No matter now many words may follow, find nome (name). This record says they give the baby the name Maria Vincenza.

Finally we have 2 witnesses (names, ages, occupations, addresses) and signatures or crosses.

To sum up:

• find the date
• get the father's facts
• see when and where the baby was born
• get the mother's facts
• find the baby's name

I hope you've noticed that some words are very similar to their English equivalents. You could have guessed what professione, legittima, femmina, and presentato mean, right?

Example 2: A Longer Pre-Printed Form

Some birth records are more verbose. Find those keywords to get to the good parts.

This 1837 birth record contains a right column that tells you where and when they baptized the baby.

The left column contains a lot more pre-printed words than our first example, but it's the same drill.

• It begins with a date (1837, 1st of January)
• After the word comparso comes the father: Francesco Saverio Pilla, a contadino (farmer) who lives in this town
• He presents a female baby who was born to Brigida Verzino, his wife, age 23
• The father's age comes in the next sentence. After the word dichiarante (declarant) we find his age: anni ventitre (23 years)
• The baby was born nel giorno primo (on the first day) del mesi di Gennaio (of the month of January) anno corrente (this year) alle ore dieci (at 10 a.m.)
• The baby was born nella casa di propria abitazione (in the father's home) at Strada li Tufi
• They name the baby Anna Maria Filomena

The baptism column of this type of record can be tricky. The format is, "On date #1 the parish states that on date #2 we recorded the fact that we baptized this baby on date #3." Yikes, right?

With this format, the date closest to the baby's name is the baptism date. If you see 3 different dates, remember, they can't record the baptism before they perform it.

Example 3: A Completely Handwritten Birth Record

A completely handwritten foreign-language birth record? You know the drill!

This type of document may have seemed overwhelming before. But now you know how to pick out the facts you need.

Once again, this document begins with a date (1867, 19th of January). Find the word comparso, and there's the father, Vitangelo Pozzuto. I love this type of document because it names the baby's 2 grandfathers. It says Vitangelo Pozzuto di Pietro Giorgio. That means Vitangelo's father is Pietro Giorgio Pozzuto. We also know Pietro Giorgio is still alive (the word di tells us that).

Look for anni (years) to find the father's age and occupation. In this case we see anni trentotto (38 years old), contadino. Now look for words to tell you when the baby was born and its sex. Here we see the bambino di sesso maschile (male baby) was born on il giorno diciotto (the 18th day) at ore ventuno (the 21st hour, or 9 p.m.).

Now look for the mother's name. You may see the words lui moglie (his wife) before her name. Here we see Giovannangela Basilone fu Fedele. The word fu (as opposed to the word di) is very important. It tells us that Giovannangela's father Fedele Basilone is already dead. I would record his death date as Bef. 18 Jan 1867. Giovannangela is 38 years old and lives in the town at Contrada Piano. (A contrada is a neighborhood.)

Finally, look for nome (or nomi, in this case) to find the baby's name: Onofrio Antonio.

I chose this record because it has a priceless bonus in the column. On 20 October 1890 in the same town, Onofrio Antonio Pozzuto married (find the word matrimonio) Maddalena Zeolla. If you find Maddalena's birth record, it should have the same note. This confirms you've connected the right people—even if there is no marriage record.

I hope you see that you don't need to be able to read every word on a foreign-language birth record. All you need to find are some keywords (comparso, anni, moglie, femmina/maschile, nome) and proper names. And keep FamilySearch's Italian genealogy word list handy!

Focus on the keywords, and the handwriting itself will be the only thing to slow you down. Then, all you need to get over that hurdle is practice. Or as they say in Philadelphia, "We're talkin' practice!"

And speaking of foreign-language records:

• How to Read an Italian Birth Record
• Step Out of Your Genealogy Comfort Zone
• Don't Let Latin Church Records Scare You

Your Family Tree Checkup/Tune-up List

We've all heard our fellow genealogy fans say it. "I wish I'd written down sources when I first started my family tree." By now I hope we're all being more thoughtful about our family research as we do it.

When I find a new document for my family tree, I follow all the steps to make sure nothing slips through the cracks:

• Crop or enhance the image if needed.
• Save it using my preferred file-naming convention (LastnameFirstnameEventYear).
• Add a title and source information to the image's file properties.
• Drag it into my family tree and add the source citation to the new facts.
• Put it in my to-be-filed folder so I can make my weekly backup copies before putting it in its proper folder.

But sometimes we can get too busy or distracted to do a perfect job. That's why we all need a checkup/tune-up list for our family tree.

Keep your family tree healthy with regular checkup/tune-up tasks.

Top Tune-up Tasks

Here are several items to review in your tree right now to see where you were going too fast for your own good.

In your desktop software:

• DATES. Sort your index of individuals by birth date. Scroll to the bottom to see who's completely missing a year or an estimated year (see When to Use Estimates in Your Family Tree).
• PLACES. View your list of places to see if anything looks wrong. Sometimes I press Ctrl+v to paste in a town, but I paste something else that I forgot I copied.
• MEDIA. Check your media files for any uncategorized items. If you aren't using categories, they're a big help as your tree grows.
• SOURCES. See if your list of source titles has unlinked citations at the bottom of the list. This week I found a very surprising 77 unlinked citations. I have to view them one at a time to figure out what happened. In some cases I need to attach the right source to a fact. In other cases, I need to delete the empty citation.
• NAMES. The other day I found a man in my family tree named Innnocenzo with 3 Ns. If your list of people isn't too long, scan it for obvious typos.

Make it a routine to spot-check these aspects of your family tree.

In your online tree:

• NAMES and DATES. Find the "list of all names" feature. On Ancestry.com you'll find it in the Tree Search panel. You may not be able to sort the list, but you can scan it for missing births, missing names, and typos. I found an "unknown" at the top of my list, but when I viewed the person in my desktop family tree, he had a name. It turns out I'd accidentally marked his name Private in Family Tree Maker. The only way I could have discovered this is with the online list of all names.
• GEDCOM. Export the latest GEDCOM file for your tree so you can use Family Tree Analyzer to give it a proper review. FTA has wonderful error-finding features (see How to Work Out Errors in Your Family Tree).

In your folders:

• LOOSE FILES. Everyone has their preferred way to store digital family tree files (see 3 Rules for Naming Digital Genealogy Documents). Some people store items by family name, and others use elaborate color-coding. My method is to have a folder for each major type of document, including:
  • census
  • certificates (vital records)
  • draft cards
  • immigration
  • naturalization, etc.
  Do you have any items waiting for you to file them away? I check my to-be-filed folder each Sunday morning before I do my computer backup.
  
  If you're a paper person, how's that pile of documents on your desk doing?

Use Safeguards

I moved to a new computer a couple of weeks ago and made some changes. I have access to 1 Terabyte of cloud storage on Microsoft OneDrive. All the files I keep on the cloud are also on my hard drive, and they synchronize automatically.

It gives me peace of mind to know all my family tree files uploaded to the cloud all the time. That means my old computer, which I plan to take along when I travel, will always have access to the latest files.

For more safety, I copy my newest files to two external hard drives each Sunday morning (see Quick and Easy Family Tree Backup Routine). It's a ritual.

Upgrade your backup plan to protect your family tree research.

Why go to all this trouble? Well, have you ever spent a marathon day adding new info to your family tree? Like a bunch of 1950 census pages? I have those marathon days at least 5 days a week. How would you like to lose your most productive day of genealogy research?

I hope you care enough about the tremendous work of art you're creating to give it all the attention it needs. It may sound like a pain in the neck, but when you make it a routine, it feels natural. And you'll see it's worth all the effort.

How to See Your Cousin Connections More Clearly

My 1st cousin Nick tested with AncestryDNA and appears in my match list as my 1st cousin. He's in my mother's match list as her nephew—exactly as expected. My mother and Nick's mother are sisters.

But Nick found someone very unexpected in his DNA match list. My dad! Hearing this, I checked Dad's match list. There was my maternal cousin Nick, listed as Dad's 5th–8th cousin.

How on earth is my maternal-side cousin connected to my dad other than by marriage? I know Nick's paternal grandmother Carmela came from the same town as my paternal grandfather. There must be some connection in the town of Colle Sannita.

This has been a mystery for a few years now. I've done extensive research on Nick's paternal family tree. But I never found a blood relationship to my dad. I couldn't catch a break in solving this mystery.

Until now.

Two weeks ago, the NYC Municipal Archives put their vital records collection online (see 'How to Make Your Own Genealogy Correspondence Database' for the link). The majority of my relatives in America lived in New York City. So I had plenty of documents to gather.

As I worked through my NYC relatives, one document held a big surprise for me. It was the 1927 death record of Raffaele Cocca. Raffaele is Nick's great grandfather—the father of his paternal grandmother Carmela.

This newly available NYC death record rewrote my cousin's ancestry.

The surprise on this death record was Raffaele's mother's name. I expected it to be Carmina, but it was Bellangela. We know death records can be unreliable because the informant may not know the right details. But I had to investigate.

I have all available vital records from Colle Sannita on my computer. I renamed the files to make them searchable (see 'Make Your Digital Genealogy Documents Searchable') by a person's name. Did I have a Bellangela Cocca in my records? I did, and she was the only person with this name. I had her marriage documents.

My mistake was instantly clear. It all came down to one wrong choice I made a long time ago. I had given Nick's grandmother Carmela the wrong father! Carmela's father (Nick's great grandfather) was not Giovanni Raffaele Cocca. He was Raffaele Luigi Cocca. That's who died in the Bronx in 1927. That's who was the son of Bellangela Cocca.

This correction completely altered the ancestry of Nick's grandmother Carmela. Could I find that mysterious DNA connection between Nick and Dad now?

Using the Relationship Calculator

One of my favorite features of Family Tree Maker is the Relationship Calculator tool. FTM shows the relationship of every person to the root person beneath their name. But sometimes there's more than one relationship. The Relationship Calculator spells out all possible relationships.

I used the calculator to see who had more than one relationship. I started with Nick and myself, but it showed only the expected 1st cousin relationship. Next I compared Nick's father to my father. Gasp! There were 2 relationships. It showed their brother-in-law relationship. But there was a 2nd, more complicated relationship.

FTM's Relationship Calculator, and especially the Relationship Chart, are crucial for understanding complex relationships.

Granted, this doesn't sound like the relationship I was hoping to find. Nick's father is the 1st cousin 3 times removed (1C3R) of the wife of my father's 3rd great uncle. Clear as mud.

When you see a crazy relationship like that, you need a visual. Click the "View Relationship Chart" button in the Relationship Calculator. The chart helped me follow the path from Dad to my uncle. It showed me that:

• My father's 3rd great uncle was Onofrio diPaola, born in 1807.
• Onofrio's wife was Donata Viola, born in 1815.
• Donata's aunt, Carmina Serafina Marinaro, was the grandmother of Raffaele Luigi Cocca who died in 1927.

This still sounds like more of an in-law connection and not a blood relationship. But when I look at Onofrio and Donata in my family tree, things come into focus.

Onofrio is my 4th great uncle. And we've seen his wife Donata's relationship to Raffaele Luigi Cocca. That means Onofrio and Donata's children are cousins to Dad and me, and cousins to Nick and his father.

They illustrate the shared DNA that put Dad on Nick's match list. But they are not the answer.

Using Color-Coding to Visualize Connections

To visualize these family connections, I turned to Family Tree Maker's color-coding feature (see 'Using Color to Understand Your Family's Last Names'). I've been using colors to highlight my direct ancestors for a long time. I use four colors to tell me which of my grandparents is someone's descendant. I know that yellow=Pietro, magenta=Lucy, green=Adamo, and cyan=Mary.

I added a 5th color, orange, to Nick's father's (my uncle's) direct ancestors. Then I filtered my tree's index to show only my direct ancestors. I wanted to see if any of them now show orange. They do not.

Next, I made my way up to my uncle's earliest known ancestors from Colle Sannita. I color-coded all their descendants dark blue. No one—not a single one—was one of my direct ancestors.

What I did find was two blue or orange color-coded people who married a cousin of mine. One of these people was Donata Viola whose relationship I explained above. The other is Nick's 2nd great grandfather Giuseppe. His 1st wife was my 2C5R. But her children have no direct connection to my cousin Nick.

Then I noticed an unusual case: Maria Teresa Iacobaccio. She is a direct descendant of the same Marinaro ancestor as Donata Viola. She carries only the blue color-code, so she is not Nick's ancestor, but she is his 2C5R. Maria Teresa married the son of Nick's 4th great grandfather. All 6 of their children have the blue color-code, so they all have a connection to Nick's ancestors.

Here's the unusual part. Of Maria Teresa's 8 great grandparents:

• 6 are my 7th great grandparents
• 2 are Nick's 6th great grandparents

Without the color-coding, I may not have found this.

Some extra color-coding in FTM is the only way I was able to find the unusual case of Maria Teresa.

Maria Teresa is not THE missing link between Nick and Dad because she isn't either one's ancestor. But she is a textbook case of how a long family history in one town can turn our DNA into a stew (see 'The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About').

Drawing a Conclusion and Making a Plan

I've wondered for years what sort of relationship Nick and Dad have. The answer is: distant. They are, after all, a 5th–8th cousin match. They share only 11 cM, or less than 1% of their DNA. So it always made sense that if they shared a common ancestor, that person might be from the 1600s or earlier. Without access to church records, I can't document that type of relationship.

But I can document relatives who might pass along some of the common ancestor's DNA. With deep roots in one town, countless Colle Sannita descendants share some amount of DNA. Families in that southern Italian town intermarried for centuries. One person in my family tree had 36 different relationships to Nick's grandmother. Every single one of them was an in-law connection.

The unusual case of Maria Teresa Iacobaccio is the best I can do for now—but I'm not finished trying. I've been working on my genealogy masterpiece to connect EVERYONE from Colle Sannita in one family tree (see 'Why My Family Tree is Exploding in Size'). I may find fresh facts that point to a closer relationship between Nick and Dad.

With new color-coding in place, the next unusual connection won't get lost in the shuffle. Can this type of highlighting help you spot hidden relationships?