Italian State archives are online! Files from their State Archives include records dating back to the early 1800s and also include military documents. Take a look and see what you can find!
(The page is in Italian. Click here to use Google Translate to translate).
Digital pictures of civil status acts List of institutes and archives reproduced, sorted by location. Each image is accompanied by the archive data that indicates the name of the background / archive (SCN = Napoleonic Civil Status; SCR = Civil Status of the Restoration; SCI = Italian Civil Status); Types of Act (Born, Weddings, Deaths, Indexes, Attachments , etc.), date, eventual reference number of the archive unit (envelope, log, file, etc.).
To browse through the archives and browse the document images, visit their "Sfoglia I Registri" (Browse Registers) page here:
1) Istituto di Conservazione (Institute of Interest) 2) Fondo (Municipality / Location) 3) Istituto di Conservazione (Civil status fund of interest) 4) Tipologia di Atto (Type of file) 5) Anno Inizio (Interest Period - Anno Inizio (start) and Anno Fine (end)
6) Then press the "Serca" button, to Search. The images are presented in the sequence of the original source.
To search for a name in the archives and browse the document images, visit their "Trova I Nomi" (Find the Names) page here:
1) Nome (Enter the first name of the person you are looking for) and/or Cognome (Last name) 2) Tipologia di Atto (Type of Act: Nascite (Births), Matrimoni (Marriages) or Morti (Deaths))
3) Comune/Località (select the municipality / location (optional)) 4) Anno Inizio (Year start) and Anno Fine (Year end)
It is possible to search by name in the documentation of the following State Archives:
Asti, Bari, Bergamo, Brescia, Caltanissetta, Campobasso, Cremona, Enna, Forlì-Cesena, Genoa, Grosseto, Imperia, L'Aquila, Mantua, Modena, Mondovì (Cuneo), Naples, Padua, Pescara, Prato, Ragusa, Reggio Calabria, Rieti, Salerno, Savona, Taranto, Trapani, Udine, Urbino and Viterbo.
More information about the Project:
Translated from their page "Come fare ricerche anagrafiche e genealogiche" - (How To Do Family Genealogies)
Where to start? Searching for a person's personal data must start from geographic, time, and parental relationship (parent, spouse, child) by going backward. Initial data constitutes the access key to search information in the complexity of the documentary sources useful to delineate the master profiles. When doing research then we need to distinguish between Marital Status and Registry. The Civil Status covers birth, death and marriage registrations, while the Registry (from the Greek verb enroll, record) covers population movements, residences and their changes, censuses, immigration and emigration.
The following is translated from their page "La pagina Le fonti documentarie degli Archivi di Stato per le ricerche anagrafiche e genealogiche". (The State History Archive and Family History Documentary Resources page)
Where are the sources? Civil status and registry Italian civil status has a short but significant precedent in the French one, also known as Napoleonic because it was introduced to Napoleon in Italy from 1806 and survived in some regions even after the French defeat of 1815. Immediately after the Unity of Italy , with the first national census (1861), the status of civil status becomes a necessity: it is necessary to know the sex, social condition and level of education of Italians to form electoral lists, municipal councils, to fulfill the obligation of military leverage, to demand taxes; so a decree of 1864 attributes to the Communes the task of recording demographic movements, without however compelling a mandatory character, so not all municipalities comply with them. A second law of 1871 makes the compulsory registry for all municipalities that from this date forward are responsible for keeping the registers of birth, marriage and death of the resident population. Martial status registers include records of births, marriage, marriage, death and sometimes citizenship records; they are therefore the primary and primary source for genealogical and genealogical research and can also contain significant data from a social point of view, such as the profession of parents or the degree of literacy possessed (by signing). Therefore it is always advisable to start searching from the archive of the Municipality of origin; For the purposes of submitting requests for certification to the Italian Municipalities, the site http://www.comuni-italiani.it is useful, which contains telephone and fax numbers, mail contacts and websites. For the period before September 1, 1871, the functions of the Civil Registrar were carried out by the parish priests, who are in charge of writing and keeping the records of the baptized, weddings, deaths and states of the souls systematically and uninterrupted by the second half of the sixteenth century (as a result of the provisions of the Council of Trent), but earlier some parishes cured the compilation of these registers. Therefore, for the period prior to 1871, it is necessary to apply to the parish of birth and residence - if different from the first - to obtain the certificate of the master (a useful search engine for the parishes of Italy is the site: www.parrocchie.it) ; among the projects for the protection and enhancement of Italian historical-historical sacramental registrations (parish records of baptisms, marriages, burials and the state of the souls before 1901), the database of The Memory of the Sacraments (http: /registriparrocchiali.weebly.com), to which many parishes have joined.
For descendants of Italian emigrants From the last decades of the twentieth century the desire to rediscover their origins is felt as a strong demand especially by the descendants of Italian emigrants resident abroad, along with the increasingly pressing need to obtain the necessary documents in the administrative authority to obtain Italian citizenship "iure sanguinis", such as the extract of the birth or marriage act of their ancestors. The State Archives have no jurisdiction over the registry but retain serial sources to locate the Ascension Birth Communities, to which they are required to obtain the necessary certifications, while for the period prior to 1871, parishes must be contacted. In the archives produced by Prefectures, Police Headquarters and Courts, which are transferred to the relevant State Archives after 40 years of exhaustion, it is also possible to find sporadic documentation regarding passports or expatriation permits.
Translated from their page "Le fonti degli Archivi di Stato" (The sources of the State Archives):
The serial sources stored in the State Archives for genealogical and genealogical research are mainly identifiable in two types: 1. Civilian States, which date back to the beginning of the nineteenth century; 2. Military Documents (Leverage and Role-List Roles) maintained from the first half of the nineteenth century onwards.
Napoleonic, Restoration, Italian Civil Status Napoleonic Civil Status (SCN) was introduced in Italy since 1806, following the annexation of many regions to the French Empire, and remained in force until 1815; the keeping of civil status by the Communes of the time produced a series of records of birth, marriage and death records, whose original double, after various events, according to places and times, came to the State archives of the respective provinces. Along with the registers, there are numerous attachments to acts that bring interesting information and can not be found elsewhere, such as paternity and maternity, or consent to the marriage of the contractors, allowing them to go back to previous generations lived in the second half or late eighteenth century. During the Restoration, the registration of demographic movements - as it continues to be exercised by the parishes - remains in the competence of civil authorities in some regions. The marital status of the Restoration (SCR), about the period 1815 - 1865, is mainly present in Southern Italy (civil status of Bourbonity in the Kingdom of Naples), but also in some northern areas (estense civil status in Modenese) ; In other cases there is a mixed system: part of the competence remains to ecclesiastical authority, but under the strict control of the civil authority (Tuscany). The product registers, similar to type and structure to those of the French period, are also accompanied by attachments, together with which they are included in the State Archives.
With the Italian Civil Status (SCI), established with R.D. November 15, 1865, no. 2602, effective from January 1, 1866, the production of birth registers, citizenship documents, marriage, marriage and death publications, which are always in original originals, one of which remains while the second is sent to the Tribunal in charge of territory and subsequently to the State Archives for permanent retention.
The registers are accompanied by annual and / or ten-year alphabetical indexes that allow a quicker search for individual acts; they also report civil status records registered with other municipalities or other authorities, including abroad, concerning Italian citizens resident in the municipality itself. In this case next, there are the Attachments, which contain first-hand data such as medical certificates relating to birth or death, as well as a variety of transcripts and annotations relating to records, marriage publications, marriages, to citizenship. These Annexes are in original only kept only at the Tribunals and are subsequently transferred to the State Archives. Compared to records compiled for military purposes, or religious communities, civil registers concern citizens of both sexes and of any religious confession, as well as atheists and non-baptized people.
Military Leverage Lists Almost all of the State Archives retain, albeit to varying degrees, the Leverage Lists, drawn up annually on a daily basis, by the duplicate Municipalities containing the alphabetical list of all the male population resident in the age of military visit ( between the seventeenth and the twentieth year of age, in the manner prescribed by law). A copy was left to the Municipality and one was sent to the existing Liaison Office in the provincial or district capital for further selection and recruiting. During these operations, the Extracting Lists (random order lists of the same, but on a mandatory basis) were produced and the summary records of the decisions of the Liaison Council concerning the fate of each individual conscript. Alongside the data already indicated by the Municipality for each name, the Leverage and Extraction Lists contain the data recorded during the visit: literacy, profession, somatic and anthropometric characters (color of the eyes and hair, shape of the nose, measurements of the stature and the chest circumference), as well as the outcome of the visit itself: "skilled enrolled" in one of the three categories envisaged, "revisable" to the leverage, "reformed", "renitant". The leverage of the Kingdom of Italy was governed by the Piedmontese law of 1676, 1854, extended to the rest of Italy from the years 1860-1862; the concerned birth classes are therefore initiated, depending on the places, from 1840 to 1842 or later following the process of territorial unification. This does not exclude the fact that even older classes can be traced in many areas (beyond the Sardinian Kingdom), where the State Archives also retain the acts of leverage of the last preunitary period. After the 1911 reform (last class 1891), the Extraction Lists or the Summaries Registers were no longer produced. Leverages and Extraction Lists are handed over to the State Archives for a territory that has passed 70 years since the year of the lever.
The military matrix roles Often alongside the leverage records, the State Archives keep the Matricular Roles compiled by the Military District Military Service, which is responsible for keeping the official documentation of all services rendered to the state by the military and of all the facts that change them they change the position during the time it stays in the roles. Every soldier is uniquely identified by a progressive number, the "novelty", which is related to the enrollment class (which may be different from the birth date), the military recruiting district and the category of membership (as long as it has existed) . For each soldier the role includes: serial number, body, date of enrollment, degrees, any honors, or sanctions imposed, or deserts. Matricular sheets, which summarize all this information in an extremely synthetic way, are bound by a serial order in records relating to the various classes. In these annual registers, only the enrolled, ie those who have actually provided military service, are included; therefore there are no reformers (judged unfit for service for health reasons), exempted persons (usually for family reasons), renitants (those who did not attend the escort call or call for recruitment). The military roles of the Military Districts, accompanied by alphabetical lists, which constitute the fundamental instrument for conducting the research, are paid to the State Archives of the province pertaining to the end of the seventeenth year of the enrollment; here they can be consulted in compliance with the rules for the protection of the confidentiality of personal data. More complete information on matricular roles, which is the synthesis of them, can be found in the Military Records, equally produced by Military Districts and occasionally paid to the State Archives. They are divided into two sections: troops and non-commissioned officers, and contain official documentation concerning the single military.