Genealogy Work
As you may have read before, I had a good amount of help before I even started. my aunt had been working on the family genealogy for many years before I was involved. Back in 2001, she had asked me if I wanted to get into genealogy and like a doofus, I declined. I really thought I wouldn't like it. Now I think it's great! I'm excited to find new pieces of the puzzle, newspaper articles, divorce papers (lots of divorces), so much more than just the civil records you'd expect to find.
I did have to find all of the information from Italy. We knew numerous great grandparents were all born in Italy, but only knew where GGF was from, Sant'Arsenio. Following the instructions I found online, after making my appointment with the consulate, I sent off for his birth record, or Estratto dell'atto di nascita.
I had some names for the next generation up and wanted to find more. These weren't necessary for my application, but I was more curious as I found more stuff. I knew from the civil records I had found that my GGGF was 60 years old when he passed in Pennsylvania. I knew he came to America when my GGF was in infant. With that info, I figured he was born around 1864. Like any good, young, Catholic Italian, I presumed he'd get married around 1884. I also knew that my GGGM's last name "Aromando" is very rare and is most likely from Sant'Arsenio where my GGF was born. So, I started looking through the book on familysearch and on page 9 I found the names I was looking for! Amazing!
The first image here to the left is the publicazione di matrimonio, or marriage publication. Very similar to the one we put in the newspaper. Finding this let me know that my GGGF was from Corbara. I have yet to find info on that, but I'm still digging. There's a lot more information here to unpack and use as clues to find other family stuff.
The next image is the Atto di matrimonio, or the actual marriage recording. If memory serves, the books from the comunes are broken up into different sets of whether they are births, marriage publications, marriages and deaths, all split up by year. The ones I've seen also keep an alphabetical index so you can find the pages easier. I think I was lucky with this too, I just started looking beyond the publication date, (milleottocento ottantaquattro, diciesette di Maggio) May 17, 1884, in the same year.