Have you reached a “brick wall” in your genealogy research? Onsite genealogy research in Italy may just be the key to extending your Italian ancestry. We have genealogists in Italy that can help!
Challenges in Italian Genealogy Research
Family history research in Italy relies primarily on civil registration and Catholic parish records. In many places, Catholic records in Italy can extend back to the 1500s. However, while many of these records are digitized and microfilmed, many other records are held only onsite—in diocesan archives, in little parish churches, and in government repositories. In fact, even when the records have been digitized, they are infrequently indexed and therefore cannot be searched by name. An exact hometown must therefore be known before research can proceed. In most cases, successful Italian genealogy research will ultimately require a Legacy Tree researcher to visit in person but even when we arrive, record access restrictions can vary by location. If your ancestors migrated away from Italy, it will usually be necessary to complete research in that destination country first. This can take some time, depending on when your ancestors arrived as immigrants and what records they left about their origins.
Our Team of Professional Genealogists Can Help
If you have Italian ancestry, our professionals can help track down the town of origin of your ancestors, determine where that location is today, and identify where the records for that place are currently kept. We can also do the preliminary research in immigrant destination countries to learn the Italian hometown, if necessary. For those areas that don’t have records available online or on microfilm, our onsite agents can visit that location to obtain any documents that are available.
Onsite Archive Access in Italy
Our onsite genealogy researchers have access to the following archives, repositories and libraries in Italy to help track down the records you need to extend your Italian family history:
- Archive of Potenza, Italy
- Diocesan Archives of Teggiano, Italy
- Lamezia Terme a unit dependent on the State Archives of Catanzaro
- Local Civil Offices [Comune]
- Provincial Archives [Archivio di stato]
