Finding Your Italian Ancestors

The Years 1880-1920 were record years for Italian immigration to the United States; most came from Southern Italy. Italian immigrants often identified closely with the town or province from which they came. Italian records will be in Italian(civil) and Latin (church), but you may find records in Spanish or other European languages, depending on which nation dominated a particular area at the time the records were created. The earliest civil records begin in 1804, although not all regions began keeping records this early. Civil records are kept in the archives for that state. Civil records at the national level began as early as 1860 and as late as 1871, but in most areas around 1866. Church records, of course, began much earlier than civil records.

Italian Genealogical Records: How to Use Italian, Civil, Ecclesiastical & Other Records in Family History Research. Trafford Cole. Ancestry. 1995

Finding Italian Roots. John Philip Colletta. GPC. 1993

A Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your Italian Ancestors. Lynn Nelson. Betterway. 1997

A Short History of Italy. Harry Hearder. Cambridge University Press. 1990

Our Italian Surnames. Joseph Fucilla. GPC. 1996

Andrea Malossini. Cognomi Italiani. aVallorid, 1997.

Information on the state and provincial archives

Italian Ancestry is a good place to begin your research.

Also check out the Italian-American Network for genealogy

To begin your work in the LDS library, use their Research Guide for Italy.