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This is a question many people ask me. The answer is………no matter what your ethnic background, your family history story will begin with information and materials you can find within your own family. “Home sources”, meaning what you can learn by asking questions of your relatives, and rooting in family attics is the first step.
Your project will later proceed to original research that you will conduct at government offices, archives centers, libraries and historical societies. If you begin in the correct order, the research will proceed one step at a time, from the known to the unknown. Your family tree will eventually begin to grow. It will be accurately documented with each step, before proceeding to the next earlier generation.
You may choose to start by researching only your father’s side, and later on begin your mother’s line, or vice versa. Or you may choose to work on all lines at once, but only one generation at a time, since you can’t skip to earlier generations without a solid well-documented foundation. For the inexperienced beginner, I would recommend choosing one single line to research until you gain some experience, or maybe until you get that line back to the immigrant generation.
Your specific goals will get revised along the way. Types of records needed will change as you get back into earlier time periods. You will study the local history of many different towns that are part of your family’s story, including eventually towns in a foreign country. Many people seek the help of a professional researcher when they hit this point, especially if they don’t know the foreign language necessary to read the documents.
Genealogy research can be very time consuming. A professional can do it faster than you can get it done yourself, even if you are capable of reading 19th century documents written in Italian. Busy people may not have time to search microfilms, choosing to spend what little free time they have with their family. The Pallante Center has the experience and a network of contacts in Italy to build your family tree in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it yourself. Here are some guidelines for beginning a research project on your family history.
1. START WITH YOURSELF – proceed from “known to unknown” in correct order.
2. INTERVIEW RELATIVES – especially the oldest living generation
3. ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW – TECHNIQUES
*Don’t press on sensitive issues that may upset people. Don’t publish ,or share, details on living people without that person’s written permission !
4 . PROCEED TO OUTSIDE RESEARCH –Names and dates must be verified with official documents. Review your information and decide what is missing. Set a goal for something specific you want to try to find.
First check to see if someone else has already researched these people.
*Caution: If you find a published genealogy, you must still find the actual documents that support the information. You cannot trust that this person’s research is accurate.
Next check sites such as Ancestry.com for census records, ship records, etc. – the actual image is often online. This saves you from needing to make a trip in person to the National Archives, or a county historical society, especially if it’s an out-of-state trip that would be needed. But eventually you will need a record that is not easily available online. It’s possible that you may be the first person to do the research on the line that you need to document.
If a birth record is needed only for the purpose of genealogy, an unofficial version may be found on microfilm or issued from a government office for a reduced fee. Beyond certain dates may be at the county archives building vs. the active Department of Vital Records. A primary source document is the actual record that was created at the time of the event (a birth, baptism, marriage, death record, will etc.) These types of records can sometimes be gotten by mail from the town hall or county archives building, if you don’t live nearby. Information about costs and the mailing address are usually displayed on their official website. There are also genealogy websites that compile genealogy related addresses and online databases by state and county, such as http://www.usgenweb.org/
“Secondary source” materials such as newspaper obituaries could be at your local town library, or the county historical society. Save yourself some trouble by first asking relatives if they have saved any obituaries of family members in a scrapbook. Remember that information given in an obituary could contain errors. It depends on the person who wrote it and how far removed they were from facts they are writing about. If written by a grandchild or a spouse they may not have known for sure some details as well as a son or daughter (but maybe those of closer relationship were no longer living at the time it was written). There may be some things in error, but it may also provide much valuable information.
Tombstone engravings are also often with errors, as they are sometimes added years after the death, and anybody can put whatever they want without it being verified. These things are to be used as “clues” to lead you to primary source materials.
Detailed descriptions of all the various types of sources that genealogists use to conduct their research, and how to understand each one and get the most out of them, is something for a more advanced discussion. This brief overview is intended for the person just beginning or thinking of beginning and wondering where to start.
If you have done your research in your own country and have reached the point of documenting your story up to your immigrant ancestor, you will now need to find specific types of resources that will reveal your ancestor’s town of origin in the old country. In some families, there may be an older relative who knows this information. But if you have to do original research to learn the answer to this question, here is a list of sources where you may find at least some clues about your ancestor’s place of birth (which may differ from his/her last place of residence before leaving the old country). Some sources listed below are easily available through Ancestry.com Most pertain to immigrants who entered the USA during the years of peak immigration through Ellis Island and other ports of entry in the late 1800s and very early 1900s.
*In general, if the source of information is something that the person would have filled out themeselves, such as a marriage application, draft card, or Social Security application, it is more credible than sources where a realtive supplied the informtion (and may have been in error) such as a death record, tombstone or obituary. (I will post some examples of actual records that show an Italian immigrants place of origin shortly.)
Copyright 2012 Debora L. Hill, All rights reserved.
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Due to privacy laws, the Pallante Center can accept your case for research pertaining to items needed that are at least over 75 years old (some towns may have a 100 year limitation). In Italy, the law is the same. If you need a document from Italy that is more recent than 75 years, we can sometimes obtain the record if we can provide your signed letter of permission and your photo ID with the request. We do not encourage this type of request, unless it is needed for dual citizenship and something you must obtain for purposes other than genealogy.
Likewise, in the USA, we prefer to pick up your research project beginning with your immigrant ancestor, or as close to the immigrant as you can get, after you have collected documents in the pocession of relatives, and sent for any documents that fall within privacy law. We can usually figure out the town of origin in Italy, if you have provided enough background information about as many people as possible in the early family, even if some projects may take longer than others to discover the place of origin.
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along with details about the line to be researched, including copies of birth, marriage, death, church documents etc. that pertain to your direct line ancestors involved, as well as obituaries, tombstone photos or any other materials you may have to show the linking of your earliest person beyond privacy laws to the immigrant.
Please provide as much background information as possible on the immigrant family.
Names of children of the immigrant can be important if they followed the Italian naming custom, and may aid in recognizing the correct family of the earlier generation. Spouses of the immigrant’s children may also provide insight to the larger story, if marriages were kept to people from the same village, or at least “Sicilian” vs. northern Italy etc. Names of children can also aid in finding hard to find census records, where the immigrant’s name is badly mispelled.
Rather than speaking in confusing narrative with terms such as “my grandfather”, it is best to use actual names. It also helps if you sketch out a pedigree chart in diagram format, even if just handwritten on paper to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. Upon studying your starting information and documents, and verifying research already done (not to be repeated), we will investigate resources that exist for your ancestral town in Italy, and plan research strategy (which may not necessarily be shared as sometimes this involves proprietary information regarding our special contacts in Italy and what they can do).
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It is important to state in advance if possible, whether you will want a full family tree, eventually resulting in a spiral bound family history book, or only a limited number of months–modified smaller project.
This will affect how the research is done from the beginning, especially for research that will be done by microfilm. In this case, each time a film is searched, if doing a full tree, all people by one surname will be extracted each time (even if some may not be able to connect to the tree until much later on in the project) to avoid needing to search the same film over again later. Otherwise, if you are only doing a one month session, the research will focus on finding only the specific people requested.
If you have questions about what to send in to begin a research project with the Pallante Center, just email me at : Debora_Hill@yahoo.com
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Congratulations to Sheri Mignano of Petaluma, California is our newest winner. She has won a cash prize of 100 euros, and a free genealogy document request! Sheri’s ancestors came from Borgetto in Province Palermo, Sicily. Her family handed down a recipe called Cuccidatti’s. It was submitted for the St. Joseph’s Day holiday.
You can view the winning recipe entry at this link:
http:/www.pallantecenter.wordpress.com/recipes/recipe-contest-winner-may-2012/