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Genealogy Personalized: The Sicilian Connection

(With references to the British Isles & the Azores Islands)

Bob Testa, SIR Branch 116

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Ancestral Stories

• Great Hobby

• Challenging

• Rewarding

• Unfinishable Puzzle

• History, Mystery, Culture, Self-Discovery

• Ancestors become family

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Have Specific, Focused Goals

• Who? Luigi Marrone Luigi Marrone

• What? Birth Record Census Record

• Where? Palermo NYC

• When? 1868 1920

• If one part missing, establish goal that will help provide it

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Records

• Keep track of what you do!

• Organize what you find!

• Make no blind assumptions!

• Don’t believe everything you see!

• Documents closest to event most accurate

• Family Cluster vs. Direct Ancestors Only

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Availability of Records-Italy

• Italy easier than most; must know City• Italy as a country is only 125 years old• No standardized recordkeeping early on• Council of Trent in 1564: Record the

Sacraments• Napoleon in 1809: Napoleonic Code• 1825 a key date• Since 1865• Indexes

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Names

• Name Changes

• Italian Naming Customs

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Sources Beyond the Obvious(89% of Italian immigrants arrived 1876-1922; bulk between 1900-22)

• Ellis Island Website (1892-1924) (ellisisland.org)

• Census Records• Naturalization Records• Ships’ Passenger Lists• Family History Center (familysearch.org)• Stato Civile (1825-date)• Churches (1564-date)

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Language & Other Barriers

• Undecipherable Records/Poor Penmanship/Fountain Pens

• Old Style Handwriting/Erroneous Transcriptions• Damage• Abbreviations• Foreign Languages (including Latin & local dialects)• Gaps in the records• World War II• Unknown Parentage• Variations in Spelling• Recycled Gravesites

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Limitations

• Geometric Progression

• 1940 birth: >500,000 direct ancestors at the time of Christopher Columbus

• Common Ancestor

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Actual City Record-1880

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Actual Church Record-1851

• Marriage

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Actual Church Record-1825

• Death

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Personal Successes: Sicily

• Sicilian side: 12 Generations before me, all born in Sicily• 111 of the 4,095 Sicilian ancestors identified• Earliest marriage: 1622; parents identified; births in late

1500s • 8 generations/one role of microfilm/one Sicilian town• 44 different Sicilian surnames• Many females identified only by first name• Several duplicate surnames in different branches• Some identified as to profession

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Personal Successes: Azores, Ireland, England & Scotland

• Azores Islands (Portuguese) Ancestry (earliest marriage: 1670)

• 9 Generations before me, all but two born in the Azores Islands.

• 63 of the 511 Portuguese ancestors identified.

• Wife’s Irish, English & Scottish Ancestry to 1700

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End Products

• Individual Records

• Charts

• Books

• Addendum to Books

• Thanks to “Family Tree Maker” and “Word” software

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Have Fun, Give It a Try, You…

• …will keep a mind active

• …will learn something new

• …will leave something meaningful behind

• Someday, someone else will pick up where the effort left off and they … (see bullet #1 above)