Beyond Births & Marriages: Using Italian Military Records for Your Sicilian Ancestors You’ve traced your family through civil registrations and perhaps even dipped into older parish records. But what happens when you hit a roadblock? What if you can’t find a birth record, or you’re unsure if you have the right person? It’s time to […]
A Beginner’s Glossary for Reading Sicilian Genealogical Records You’ve successfully navigated the archives and found a document with your ancestor’s name on it—an exhilarating moment! But as you look closer, you’re faced with a new challenge: the document is written in ornate, cursive Italian, filled with unfamiliar terms and abbreviations. Don’t let this stop you.
“Riveli di Beni e Anime”: Using Sicilian Census Records to Break Through Brick Walls What do you do when the trail of civil records runs cold around 1820? How can you leapfrog a generation back when parish records are missing or unreadable? For researchers with Sicilian roots, the answer may lie in a unique and
Palermo, Catania, or Messina? Finding Your Ancestor’s Province in Sicily One of the most common starting points in Sicilian genealogy is also one of the most challenging: your family knows they came from “Sicily,” but nothing more specific. Without knowing the province, let alone the exact town (Comune), your research is at a standstill. Sicily