The goal of GenTracer is to discover the personal history of our clients and their ancestors in the towns of Italy.
Most Italian genealogical records are not available in published or compiled records on the Internet or elsewhere. Research must be done in the original birth, marriage, and death records of each town. So it is necessary to know the name of the town before research in Italian records can start.
That can be done by following the trail of US census (1900-1940) which gives the year of immigration and naturalization, to the naturalization record (when available) which states the name of the ship and the date of arrival and the port of entry, to the passenger manifest which (frequently) gives the hometown in Italy. Other approaches are through the marriage record of the immigrant in the US, which MIGHT name the town in Italy, or the church records here in the US. Once we know the town, we can go into the birth, death and marriage records to learn more about your family. So many folks in Italy have the same names that it is necessary to determine the hometown to be sure you have the right family.
If you are interested in dual citizenship (US (or another nation) and Italian), we can assist you in obtaining the necessary documents. Please see www.gentracer.com/citizenship.html for more details.
While many of the records in America used creative spelling for the name of an immigrant, an experienced genealogist will search all possible spellings. The correct family can usually be determined by the location and the names and approximate ages of the members of the family.
Here at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, we have access to the above records, plus the microfilmed birth, marriage, and death records of most Sicilian towns (see www.gentracer.com/towns.html for a complete list and links) from 1820-1929 and most mainland Italian towns from 1809-1910. We can frequently locate the birth of the immigrant in that time frame which will confirm the names and give the ages (usually) of his parents. We can work back from there locating their marriage, births, parents, siblings, etc. back (usually) two or three generations (sometimes more). To see some comments from clients, please see www.gentracer.com/references.html.
The fee for a level 2 research project in the Italian records is $300 - usually yielding 4-9 documents and/or sources and includes translations, research log, pedigree chart, and copies of documents. Projects are completed in 4-8 weeks. See www.gentracer.com/samplemicrofilmreport.html for a sample microfilm research report.
Rates are payable in advance, payment can be made through the PayPal icon below:
Or, payment can be made by sending check or money order for $300.00 (US) to:
A level 1 research project (2 research hours) can be completed for $150 in about 4 weeks. Payment can be made through this PayPal link:
A single document project can be completed for $75 in about one week. Payment can be made through this PayPal link:
The Catholic church records for some of those towns are available here (Salt Lake City) on microfilm, but usually the bulk of my on-site research trip time is spent reading church records which haven't yet been microfilmed. For more details about my on-site research trips, please see www.gentracer.com/onsite.html. Many towns have church records going back to before 1600 (the Council of Trent instituted record keeping of births, marriages, and deaths in each Catholic church parish in 1543). Landholding families have some civil records back even further, currently held in the provincial archives (not available on microfilm, yet). Another common on-site project is obtaining official copies of those documents necessary for Italian citizenship (birth and marriage extracts). For more about my research trips to Italy, see my pages at www.gentracer.com/lastrip.html, www.gentracer.com/nextrip.html, and www.gentracer.com/newsletter.html.
There are some links to sites with information on individual towns, as well as general Italian information, listed on my page at www.gentracer.com/italylinks.html. So many of the sites I'm linking to contain such a variety of locations and topics that you may want to search each of them for the information you seek (like travel, hotels, food, history, economy, etc).
If you send the specific dates and place(s) of birth of your immigrant Italian ancestors, I can send you a more specific research proposal based on which records are available.
If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask through the email link below. I look forward to hearing from you.
Kathy is scheduled to present at an assortment of conferences and meetings in 2024, see www.gentracer.com/schedule.html. Descriptions of family history presentations are located at www.gentracer.com/presentations while WWII presentations are at www.gentracer.org/wwpresentations.
My book on CD titled Sicily, Part 1 and Part 2 and is now available on 2 CDs. With a file for each town (plus many other files), it relates the history of Sicily as reflected in the photos, records and festivals of its towns.
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