Anglo-Italian Family History Society

Links

Family history beginners

Cyndi's list of genealogy sites on the internet
Genealogical research portal. Includes beginner's guide and section on Italy.

Familysearch
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides a huge resource for genealogists. This includes research guides, indexes and a network of Family History Centres through which their extensive library is made available. Library includes some microfilmed Italian parish records. Website includes 1881 UK census index and IGI.

Getting Started in Genealogy and Family History
From GENUKI UK & Ireland Genealogy.

Italian Family History - general

ItalianAncestry.com
Calling itself 'the essential jumpsite for all things Italian', with a good set of links.

The Italian Genealogical Group (IGG)
An American-based international group, which organises many events, and has started putting databases of records online. Of limited use to UK-based researchers, though there is a useful article based on a talk by Trafford Cole, introducing Italian records.

ItalianGenealogy.com
Italian Genealogy website that includes forums. Appears to be American based. Includes two databases and general guides to Italian genealogy such as reading Latin documents, Italian dialects,.

Italian Genealogy Online and all things Italian
This is an excellent American web page prepared by Paula Nigro, well worth visiting. Full of information, links and tips on how to write letters to Italy.

Italy Events and Time Periods
This guide to researching Italian family history is from the Latter Day Saints' FamilySearch.

Italy Gen Web
A site created to assist in genealogical research in Italy. Includes some transcriptions. Mainly from a US perspective.

Italian Letter-Writing Guide
This is from the Latter Day Saints' FamilySearch.

Pursuing our Italian Names Together (POINT and PIE)
A well-established Italian-American genealogy site, of most use to those with family that went to the US, though the FAQ section contains some simple material about Italian records which is of general interest.

Anglo-Italian history and culture

The Arandora Star
Lists Italian POWs lost when the Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk in 1940.

The Arandora Star Campaign
Campaign to publicise and seek an apology for the events leading up to the sinking of the Arandora Star in WWII. Links to information about the Arandora Star.

BBC Legacies: Immigration and emigration:
Bedford's Italian question

The Edwin C. Bolles Collection : a digital archive on the histoy and topography of London
Collection of digitised books, maps and images on the history of London from its founding to the 19th century . Includes information about the lives of Italians in London in the 19th century.

The history of the Italian Chapel
On Orkney, in Scotland, a chapel was built by Italian prisoners of war. Continues at http://www.thecryptmag.com/Online/23/prisoners2.html

The Ice House : the ice well, ice trade, ice cream, and related history
London Canal Museum. London's ice cream history involved many Italians and Swiss Italians. Website includes the full text of a novel, Ragazzo, about Victorian London and the Tichinese community including Carlo Gatti.

The Italian Chapel (Undiscovered Scotland: The Ultimate Online Guide)
Background and history of the Italian Chapel on Orkney, Scotland. Includes photographs and information about Italian prisoners of war, Scapa Flow and the Churchill Barriers.

The Italian Job
BBC programme looking at the vibrant and colourful Italian community in Bedford, presented by Roberto Perrone. Includes audio recording and links to other BBC Italian pages.

Italians in Clerkenwell: Rosa Lusardi by Olive Busagni
A story from Moving Here : 200 years of migration to England.

Little Italy
Liverpool Italian community near Scotland Road . More about Liverpool Italians on Terry Cooke's page. (from Scottie Press, community newspaper for Vauxhall area)

Manchester's Ancoats Little Italy by Anthony Rea
Memories of the Italian colony of Ancoats

scotsitalian.co.uk
Scots Italian website dedicated to preserving the history of the many Italian families and their generations that have made Scotland their home.

Italian organisations in British Isles

Amici Val Ceno Galles
Organises social and cultural events in South Wales for Italians and Welsh Italians living and working in Wales. Has strong links with Bardi in Val Ceno.

Associazioni Emiliano-Romagnole a Londra
Italian cutural association in London. Includes associations for Valceno and Valtaro. Site is in Italian.

Bristol Anglo-Italian Circle
Arranges talks and events throughout the year on various subjects on Italy and Italian life and culture.

British Italian Society
A forum for lovers of Italy and Italian Culture founded over sixty years ago.

The Embassy of Italy in London
Includes current information about Italy and Italian activities in the United Kingdom. Also lists some Italian genealogy websites.

Italian Cultural Institute Dublin: Istituto Italiano di Cultura
Ireland. Fosters cultural links between Ireland and Italy.

Italian Cultural Institute in Edinburgh
Promotes Italian language and culture in Scotland and Northern Ireland organising a wide series of events.

Italian Cultural Institute
London. Official Italian government agency for the promotion of cultural exchanges between Great Britain and Italy.

The Italian hospital Fund
Includes a brief history of the Foundation established with funds from the closure of the Italian Hospital at Queen Square, in London.

The Italian Society of Bedford
Organises talks for anyone interested in Italian culture.

St Peter's Italian Church : Chiesa Italiana di San Pietro
Thriving Italian church established in Clerkenwell in 19th century. Includes news, projects, brief history and events.

Church records British Isles

Catholic Central Library
Lists UK Mission Registers.

Catholic Family History Society
UK

Catholic Record Society
Lists their publications including register transciptions

Links to Irish RC Records in the Liverpool Area
Information about Catholic registers in the Liverpool area from a Liverpool Irish family history website.

Civil records British Isles

FamilyRecords.gov.uk : Your official source for family records
Government site to help locate the government records and other sources you need for your family history research.

FreeBMD
Free Births, Marriages, and Deaths. FreeBMD provides free Internet access to the Civil Registration index information for England and Wales. Not all years are covered yet.

London, Edinburgh, and Belfast Gazettes
Several legal notices are required by law to be published in the official newspapers of record in the United Kingdom. Includes naturalisations. Includes digitised issues for both world wars.

London Look-up Exchange
Census lookups for the London area by volunteers. Links to some directories and several other important records. Worth taking a look at if you cannot get hold of the census records yourself.

UK BMD : Births, marriages and deaths on the Internet
Lists web sites providing on-line information for genealogists researching births, marriages and deaths in the UK.

Immigration/emigration

Dictionnaire des musiciens à Dunkerque
Dunkirk, France. An index of musicians, dancers, and musical instrument makers born, domiled or passing through Dunkirk between 1700 - 1914. Includes many Italians. Records indexed include census, marriage and passports and migrant declarations.

Italian History

The Catholic Encyclopedia
Part of New Advent Catholic website. Includes history of Italian dioceses

Centro Studi Emigrazione Roma
The Centre for Migration Studies (CSER) was established to study the sociological, historical, political, theological and pastoral aspects of national and international migration movements. Includes bibliographies, and details of their library.

Finding Your Waldensian Ancestors
Information about Italian protestant family history.

Giuseppe Garibaldi
Includes the list of names of the '1000' that were with Garibaldi.

Italian History Index
The Worldwide Web Virtual library. Internet resources on the history of Italy, whether from Italy and abroad, in both Italian and other languages.

Italy
History and politics of Italy

Church records Italy

Accoglienza nelle diocesi d'Italia
Map of Italian church dioceses. Click to see within each region.

Civil Records of Selected Italian Comunes
List of websites with transcribed Italian records. E.g. includes some records from Calabria, Campania, Sicilia, Basilicata, etc.

Diocesan Directory
RCNet. Links to dioceses and their parishes in Italy.

Parrocchie
An Italian Parish look-up. If you are looking for a comune that starts with San or Santa, use S. before the name of the parish.

Parrochie (Chiesa Cattolica Italiana)
Searchable directory of parishes in Italy.

Civil records Italy

The ARCHIVI portal
Italian Archives English language portal. Gives addresses of most of the State "Provincial" Record Centres in Italy. (In Italian). Includes details of what each "Provincial" Record Centre holds.

Civil Records of Selected Italian Comunes
List of websites or email addresses that represent the transcription of hundreds or thousands of records.

Comuni.it
Directory of municipal information for Italian towns, useful for addresses of town halls.

Finding Italian Records
D'Addezio.com. Explains where to write to obtain copies of civic family records and provides addresses for each Comune. You need to write to the Comune (municipality) of the city or town from which your ancestors came. If they came from a small town you must write to the Comune of the city having jurisdiction over the frazione (hamlet).

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mostly in Italian. Includes information about historical archives of documents created in its offices in Italy and abroad, including Kingdom of Sardinia (London 1730-1860). Hint: try using Google to help translate.

Italian geography and maps

Listado de Comunas y Frazioni
Lists all frazioni (hamlets) within communi (towns) and Provinces. Useful for tracking down place names. (In Spanish)

Mappy
Provides street plans of Italy etc

Research guidance: Italy Map
From FamilySearch. Includes Italy Under Napoleon 1812, After Napoleon 1815, Present Day , Present-day Provinces

WHKMLA Historical Atlas : History of Italy
Historical maps of Italy

Italian surname lists

AIFHS members' interests
Surname interests of members of AIFHS

The Arandora Star
Lists Italian POWs lost when the Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk in 1940.

Cognomi italiani fra il 1800 e 1900 (Italian surnames)
A collection of links to pages of transcribed material containing surnames. E.g. birth/baptism, marriage and death/burials; census, military lists and books. Broader date range than implied by the title, e.g. indexed data in one linked site includes events in 1600s.

Genealogie delle dinastie nobile Italiane
Information about Italian noble families. The site aims to be comprehensive. Has a large bibliography of secondary sources but does not cite specific sources for each person.

Gens
Search for your surname in the box labelled Cognome and see its distribution across a map of the regions of Italy.

Links to Surname Websites
D'Addezio.com. This link allows you to browse the names that have been submitted directly to the site or search for websites that feature the name that you're looking for.

Websters' Instrument Makers Database
Includes, e.g. Italian barometer makers

Italian names

Everything you want to know about Italian Given Names Steve Russo's pages gives an introduction to Italian names, and also separate lists for male and female given names, common and rare.

First Name Translator
D'Addezio.com. A simple program translating names between Italian and American.

Italian Given Names and their English Equivalents
Ken's Genealogy Home Page. A simple alphabetical list.

Italian Naming Traditions and their Ramifications
An extract from Lynn Nelson's book 'A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Italian Ancestors' discussing Italian naming traditions and the ramifications of Italian first names.

Italy Surname Distribution Map
Just enter your surname and this will show you the spread and density of people with this surname living in Italy.

Origine dei cognomi
Origins of surnames. Written in Italian.

Italian Addresses, Postal codes and Telephone numbers

CAP e Prefissi Telefonici
Postal & Telephone Codes for all the towns in Italy.

Esercito Italiano : I DISTRETTI MILITARI
Addresses of Italian military districts.

Pagine Bianche
The official white pages for Italy. You must enter a surname (Cognome) and at least a province.

Pagine Gialle
Italian yellow pages, with the option of translating the search page into English. Useful for locating Italian churches and businesses.

Pronto
Another white pages for Italy.

Italian language helpers

AltaVista Babelfish
Translation Service. Input a URL for a web site or a block of plain text and this site will translate for you from Italian to English or from English to Italian.

Free Translation
Includes ItalianTranslations.

Google language tools
Automatic translation of portion of text or whole page. Also searching in selected language.

Italian Language
Guide to Italian language with links to lessons, history of the language, etc.

Italian Occupations A-Z and the English Equivalents

Italian to English Vocabulary To help with family history documents
One page of definitions arranged alphabetically

Systran
Translation software that provides automatic translation to and from Italian. Helpful for understanding pages written in Italian.

WordReference.Com
Provides translation using Collins Dictionaries. Includes Italian.

Latin helpers

Fagan Finder > Translation Wizard
Includes Latin translator

Latin Genealogical Word List
Latin words with their English translations

Latinized Given Names
List of latinised forms of English names. This does not necessarily include all latin forms of Italian names but may help interpret older church records.

Miscellaneous transcribed records

AIFHS Resources
Includes transcriptions from UK census.

Borgotaro e la Valtaro raccontati da Giacomo Bernardi
Personal website about Val di Taro. Includes record indexes for a few years for Borgotaro ("Genealogia") and information about what records exist for upper Val di Taro ("Special Borgo").

Centro Studi "Nicolo Rusca"
Baptism records for Como. Go to Archivio Diocese (on left-hand) then select ricerche anagrafiche (also left-hand side). Once the new screen opens you will see that at the top of the page there is a magnifying glass ....... press. You can try using Cognome (surname of child) and below Cognome (surname) mother, godmother and godfather. These records include the date of the parents marriage.

Conseil Général des Alpes-Maritimes
Archives site that includes part of France that used to be in Italy, e.g. Nice. Low on the left side Under "LES ARCHIVES départementales en ligne," click on Actes d'état-civil. Give village and approximate years to access lists of people baptised, born, married or died in those years.

Italian records
A database of Italian records contributed by site visitors. Started with records from Sicily.

Thunders Of White Silence : the Protestant Cemetery of Florence called 'The English Cemetery'
Complete register, with photographs, of the Protestant cemetery in Florence.

San Cataldo, Caltanissetta, Sicily
Marriage and death index for San Cataldo, Caltanissetta, Sicily.

Vizzini, Catania, Sicilia, Italia Genealogy
A resource for people whose ancestors came from the town of Vizzini, located in Italy.

Italian researchers

Italy / Italia : Professional Researchers, Volunteers & Other Research Services
From Cyndi's list. A list of organisations and individual researchers.

Professional Genealogists and Genealogy Research Services for Italy
Genealogy Pro. A directory of genealogists offering research services for Italy, some US based, others based in Italy. Good descriptions of their specialisations. Most other countries are also covered on this site.

Last updated 1 June 2008