Italian Genealogy

Italian Genealogy, what is it?

The definition of Genealogy, according the Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘the study and tracing of lines of descent’.

A simple sentence that conceals a fascinating and compelling journey through the past.

Who were your ancestors? Which part of Italy did they come from? What did they do? How have they influenced your family’s behaviors and beliefs? To find the answers we can use a mixture of family stories, written records, old photographs and knowledge of the times they lived in.

Family Stories

Almost every family has stories about relatives that have been passed down through the generations as facts. These can provide a good starting point for your Italian Genealogy journey. Although research may prove them to be just stories, or sometimes true but about another family member or a different generation!

Initially, it’s a treasure hunt looking for real and often hidden facts. Finding them is exciting especially when they have been checked and re-checked and the story is true. A handful of facts leads to the next stage which is more like a jigsaw puzzle. You have some pieces to your Italian Genealogy, but don’t really know how they fit together or what the final picture is going to look like.

A variety of trails leads to more facts. Some may be happy, some sad and thought provoking. To learn that your great great grandmother had ten children and only five survived to adulthood can be really difficult to deal with. However, when set against what was happening at the time and learning that there was a cholera epidemic in Naples that impacted on nearly every family in the surrounding areas, seems to make it easier.

20th Century Change

Around the turn of the 20^th century the world changed dramatically huge industrialisation was providing thousands of ‘new’ occupations. Travel on railways and steam ships meant people could leave the hard lives their ancestors had had for hundreds of years for new and better opportunities.

Millions of Italians made journeys of thousands of miles. Some of them more than once – returning to Italy with money and sharing big dreams. Encouraging their relatives to join them in their new shiny bright lives. The reality was not always that shiny and bright with many of them facing overcrowding, pollution, poverty, language barriers, racism and terrible weather!

Male family members would usually go first, the females followed later. Thousands travelled by ship with some signing on as crew to cover the cost, others literally walked across Europe.

The ability to travel away from home seems to have created a number of families who find a previously unknown branch of their family tree with half- brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles.

Discoveries

A happier discovery for your Italian Genealogy may be that you are the latest member of a long line of singers, musicians, seamstresses or have a natural ability with languages. You may come from a line of military men, which accounts for your warrior attitude to life!

The tenacity and resilience of our grandparents and great grandparents has enabled us to lead comparatively comfortable lives. We would probably all like to discover that we have aristocratic ancestors. For most of us, will learn that our ancestors were ordinary ,honest, brave, hardworking people. People who wanted to provide a better life for their descendants the best way they could and did something extraordinary to make sure they did.

A word of warning, if you don’t want to find a skeleton you probably shouldn’t go looking in cupboards!