Customer Reviews

A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Italian Ancestors (Genealogist's Guides to Discovering Your Ancestor...)

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One of our PIEsani has just published a book.
Lynn Nelson has written:
A Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your Italian Ancestors.
The book focuses on "using Italian vital records to climb your family tree".

146 pages of Lots of where to start and what to look for, and how to compare documents for validity.
Included is a history of Italy, and has tables with the Regions, Modern Provinces and the Pre-Unification Names, as well as maps.
She discusses Italian naming traditions.
There is a typical day in the life of a 19th century peasant.

A chapter focuses on how to determine your ancestors hometown using Census Records, Ships Passenger Lists, Naturalization Documents, and others.

Another chapter depicts the best tips for using the Stato Civile, deciphering Italian handwriting, reading and understanding the Atto di Nascita, marriage, death, marginal annotations, etc.

How to use the Family History Library is detailed.
There is an Italian letter writing guide, Italian-English word list (occupations, months of year, numbers, genealogical terms...), and all the addresses of the Italian Archivio di Stato (8 pages).

My favorite is a step by step example of researching a relative, through verbal interviews, FHL records, a checklist, and other research tools. Highlights include side by side comparisons of original Italian documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc) with the English translations.

Well written and a good research tool, now in my arsenal of books.
WELL DONE LYNN!!! (except you forgot to list PIE - oooopppps)
Even has a web page with forms (FREE) to download.
http://www.erols.com/lynnn/dyia/main.html

Tony Cimorelli
Webmaster for PIE
Pursuing Our Italian Names Together In Email

In one concise, well written book, Ms. Nelson has made researching an Italian family possible by giving simple, yet to-the-point directions to finding, reading, and understanding the documents and thought processes which will help you find your family.It helps make the past make sense,and is sized so that you can carry it with you to your research sites.

It has been one year since I started researching my Italian Ancestors and this was the first book I purchased. It was so easy to follow and helped me tremendously in reading the birth certificates, to write letters in Italian and to understand where to search.

The book takes you step by step throught the process of how to read, decipher, and understand the vital records of Italy. Great examples of how to translate and understand birth, marriage, and death records. Word lists and examples are extremely helpful to both the beginner and veteran. It has become my handbook.

I love this book! It was so helpful in my search for my Italian ancestors. It is great. You should definitely check this out if you have Italian ancestors! =)

It goes through all the steps you need to uncover your past. It has pictures and really interesting things about using Family History Centers. I barely knew anything about genealogy before reading this, but this really helped me. They give you a little history to keep things in context, then they go into the provinces, etc. of Italy, then they tell you about Italian vital records, and they tell you how to write letters in Italian. They also give you a glossary of common Italian words in the back. Take a look at this book!

I've been using this book for several years along with Trafford Cole's book about Italian records. Without these two books, I would not have had nearly as much success extracting information from reels of difficult-to-read records on microfilm. They are especially helpful dissecting the different types of records and the distinctive handwriting. There's tons of other indispensable information you'll need to know when embarking on any serious study of your Italian ancestors.

Whether your family came from Italy itself or the Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland, you will find this book gives you HEAPS of detail on how to approach the tricky matter of researching across cultures and languages (assuming that you speak only English!) It also gives a sound understanding of the national Italian approach to archival material. Researchers making their way through all the paperwork need this - plus the text gives you a good feel for what you have to do once you're actually there in person trying to contact the people who hold the records with the information you want to access.

This book is a MUST if you do italian genealogy. I refer to this book often. All samples of italian documents are provided in italian and english. A complete list of terms. This has been a valuable part of my research.

This book is a gold nugget in the form of countless bits of information for anyone searching for their Italian roots. I have been using software to look for my ancestors and was having no luck until I read about women traveling without their husbands traveling under their maiden names. Low and behold I found the passenger list with my great-grandmother traveling with my grandmother from their 1916 trip from Italy to the US! Thank you!

This book is very informative about the history of the immigrations of Italians. The how to read Italian records alone is worth the price of this book. I am going to suggest this book to my genealogy class.