Italian Family Tree

0208 2021 - What is the best source of Information? Your older relatives of course!

To date I have concentrated on the technical aspects of preparing your family tree and glossed over the best source of information being your older relatives.

If you read an earlier post, I suggested that if researching your family history, think beyond simply preparing your tree.

Assuming you have older living relatives or extended family, not only can they get you started with key information (and save you a great deal of time, they will have stories and recollections that, unless recorded, will be lost forever.

One of the most pleasing outcomes of researching and documenting our family history, was the fact that every family member with whom I shared the results, commented that they learnt something new about their family.

To put things into perspective, I'm talking about 30 to 40 people (aged between 15 to 85) who each said the same thing.

I can provide so many examples of how my family assisted in my research. The following are 2 examples that come to mind.

The examples both relate to old black and white photographs that my sister was storing.

The first example relates to photo of an older lady taken sometime between the 1920's - 1930's. There was nothing written on the back of the photo, indicating identity of this person and my parents were not alive to ask.

By chance, I visited by 84 year old Aunt and showed her a number of photo's including that of this older lady. Without hesitation she told me it was her Great Grand Mother (ie. my Great Great Grandmother )who was born in 1859.

So I was extremely fortunate to perhaps ask the only person alive who could tell me the identity of the person in the picture. This is now recorded for future generations of our family (attached is the photo to which I refer linking us back some 162 years).

The second example relates to one of my grandfathers. Those close to me know that one of my regrets is that I never asked my grandfather about the time he served in the Italian army and as a prisoner of war in the United Kingdom.

This regret was my main motivation to research and document our family history. Amongst the various records I reviewed were photographs of my grandfather's time as a prisoner of war, sent as a postcard to my grandmother in Italy.

I'd seen the photo's many times but again, never thought to ask my grandfather when he was alive. When looking at the postcards, I noticed a reference to "POW Camp 60" Great Britain.

I wondered whether I could find where POW Camp 60 was located. Within 10 minutes of internet researching, I found out that POW Camp 60 was the shortened reference to Overdale Camp, Skipton in the County of Yorkshire.

Whilst this may not be particularly significant to readers, it was a significant piece of my family history that I was able to record and partially answered my questions that I thought I would never discover. The second image is one of the photo's (and address details) that I used to discover where my grandfather was interned.

The purpose of the post is straightforward. Hopefully you will be motivated to go and speak to your relatives before details of your family history are lost.

0108 - 2021

Reading old Italian script

This blog sets out some tips in reading (deciphering) old Italian script. I do not profess to be an expert in reading old handwritten text, but rather I'd call myself a "self taught amateur who continues to learn".

So I thought I'd give readers some tips and tools in trying to understand and translate the old Italian handwritten civil records you will come across when researching your Family Tree.

Tip 1 - Cross your fingers and hope you have access to clear script.

This is not so much tip but rather a hope for you.

In researching our family history, I had to access records from 3 different Italian regions covering approximately 100 years. I not only encountered many missing records, but also copies of text that was too faint to read as well as records that showed significant signs of water and smoke/fire damage.

So I hope in your journey of discovery you will not encounter many of these problems. I have attached extracts of examples of a difficult to read (faint text) document as well as a clear written document you may encounter.

Tip 2 - Tool for commonly mentioned terms.

If you have no knowledge of the Italian language, your task in translating key information to english will be harder. Not only are you trying to translate an unfamiliar language but this will be compounded by written script that differs from the hand writing style of today.

If you are able to access an Italian speaking older relative or friend of the family who comes from the same region in Italy, this could be an invaluable source on information.

Besides being able to read Italian, these people would know the common surnames of the particular village / town. This proves useful when trying to decipher difficult to read script as they will be able to look at the letters in the script and relate it back to the people they know or knew.

I also recently discovered that Family Search has entered English translation of some commonly used Italian text in civil records.

Readers may wish to bookmark for future reference (or see the attached images)

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italy_Handwriting #/media/File:Sample4.jpg

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italy_Handwriting #/media/File:Sample5.jpg

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italy_Handwriting #/media/File:Sample6.jpg

Tip 3 - If unsure look for other references in the same record

As already mentioned, when you first start our reviewing old Italian records, you may encounter difficulties in reading (and translating) the writing style. The more you read, the easier it becomes.

If you are unsure what letter of the alphabet is used (especially for names), try to identify similar text in the same record to try to establish a "clear word" that makes sense. In addition, refer to the index of names (assuming there is one) to assess whether this assists in interpretting / translating what you have read.

Attached as an image is an example of a possible error in trying to apply writing styles of today to historical Italian records.

Image 5 - On first observation, if you are not familiar with the surname, you could come to the conclusion that the person specified on this record is "Giovanni Beale".

However, the surname is actually "Reale". If you review the index of this birth record under surname beginning with "R" you will be able to deduce the surname to be Reale.

I hope these tips are of some use will help.

Before I sign off, this blog is just about to close in on its first 100 followers.

As promised I'd like to case study a volunteer who would like their Italian heritage family tree completed and are happy to share the journey with followers to this blog.

If you are interested or know of anyone that it interested, e-mail me at [email protected].

Keep searching and discovering

John