Rabbit Hole Genealogy Fun - Death Record of Irene Albina Marano in Capestrano, Italy

 I had a free hour this morning to have some genealogy fun, and I wondered if FamilySearch had records for my grandsons Italian ancestors.  They are all in the FamilySearch Family Tree, and in my Ancestry Member Tree, and also in several other Ancestry trees.  But I was looking for records of birth/baptism, marriage, and death/burial for sourcing to original records for the persons involved..

When I clicked on my grandsons' 3rd great-grandfather Carlo Giuseppe Cerasoli (1840-????) of Capestrano, L'Aquila, Italy,  profile in the FamilySearch Family Tree, I clicked on the FamilySearch search link to find records for him.  One of those records was the death record for his wife, Irene Albina Marano, in which he was listed as a spouse.  Here is the index record for the death record of Irene Marano:

The source citation provided by FamilySearch is:

"Italia, L'Aquila, Stato Civile (Archivio di Stato), 1809-1865, 1911-1943," database with images,   FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QK1T-SWPZ : 17 March 2018), Carlo Cerasoli in entry for Irene Albina Marano, 14 Dec 1914; citing Death, Capestrano, L'Aquila, Italy, certificate, archivio di Stato di L'Aquila (L'Aquila State Archives), Italy; FHL microfilm 100523126.

This record states that Irene Albina Marano died 14 December 1914 in Capestrano, L'Aquila, Italy at age 76, and her husband was Carlo Cerasoli. It shows that Irene's parents are Giandomenico Marano and Giustina Cerasoli.  

The original image of the record is not available to me at home in the FamilySearch record collections or in digital microfilm, but it is available at the local Family History Center in the Family History Catalog as digital microfilm.

Then I remembered that the Italian Civil Records for this time period are on the Antenati website (https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/) - could I find it?  On the Antenati site, I searched by her name, Capestrano and 1914 and was rewarded by:

And there is the actual page with the death record at the bottom of the image above:

Irene's death record is the first record on this page.  Here is my first attempt at a source citation for the image:

Gli Archivi per la Recerca Anagrafica, indexed records with record indexes, Portale Antenati (https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/ : accessed 30 November 2021), Archivio di Stato dell'Aquila, Stato civile italiano > Capestrano > 1914, Morti, page 15, Irene Albina Marano death entry, 14 December 1914.

Italian death records are wonderful because they give the husband's name and usually the parents names. The real finds here are Irene's death date and her parent's names - Giandomenico Marano and Giustina Cerasoli.  I also found Carlo Cerasoli's death record in 1911 in Capestrano in another record not listed in the FamilySearch database for some reason.

The death record for Carlo Giuseppe Cerasoli in 1911 says his parents were Emidio Cerasoli and Anna Trolla.  It appears that he married his cousin of some degree (likely a first or second cousin).

I need to have more genealogy fun like this every day!  Sometimes you get the rabbit and sometimes the rabbit gets you - this time, I won.

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Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver

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Finding 1838-1859 Italian Records for My Grandsons' Ancestors

They say that "luck is the residue of design."  One of my favorite genealogy things to do is "research down a rabbit hole."  The design issue here is Ancestry Hints, which include not only records but Photos and Stories submitted by researchers to their Ancestry Member Trees.  I got lucky because Ancestry provides these hints, and so I went down this rabbit hole (again) for a whole evening.

1)  Last week, I had a half hour of free time, so I decided to check out the "Photo Hints" in my Ancestry Member Tree.  One of the Photo Hints was for Maria Ferrari (1841-1911), who is my grandsons' 4th great-grandmother.  I knew the name from the family records for the San Francisco families on the Sturla side of my grandsons' tree.  The information I had was that their town was Varese Ligure in La Spezia state  in northern Italy (it's on the coast, east of Genoa).   They migrated to the United States in around 1880 and settled in San Francisco.

For the Hint, I clicked on the link to Maria Ferrari in the submitter's Ancestry tree, and found genealogy and record images of birth, marriage, and death records for the 1838-1859 time period in Varese Ligure in La Spezia state.  The submitter also had 1837 census record images for some of the families.

Here is the 1859 marriage record for Francesco Figone and Maria Ferrari (my grandsons 4th great-grandparents) in Varese Ligure:

The submitter conveniently put the web link to this image in the description of the image - it is 
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+La+Spezia/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Varese+Ligure+Parrocchia+di+San+Giovanni+Battista/Matrimoni/1859/3923/101472234_00009.jpg.html.  I never would have found this record without this link!

That is the bread crumb trail for the record on the Antenati website which collects records for the State Archives in Italy.

2)  Getting to this particular record by starting at the Antenati URL was a challenge, but the bread crumb trail helped:
Home › Sfoglia i registri › Archivio di Stato di La Spezia › Stato civile della restaurazione › Varese Ligure (Parrocchia di San Giovanni Battista) › Matrimoni › 1859 › 39.23 › Immagine 9

Once you get to the "Varese Ligure (Parrochia di San Giovanni Battista)" page, then you see that they have "Matrimoni" (Weddings), "Morti" (deaths), and "Nati, battesimi" (births, baptisms) sections:

For a marriage, I chose "Matrimoni" and opening that page showed me the years available for this specific town:

I chose "1859" from the list, and then selected "39.23" from the next screen, and saw the list of 19 images for Varese Ligure marriages in 1859:

The Figone-Ferrari marriage was on image 9:

The records in this Antenati database are, apparently, not indexed.  They have to be searched one state, one town, one record type, one year, and one image at a time.  It helps to know where the ancestors were in the 1838-1859 time period in this case!

3)  The Ancestry Member Tree submitter's name for the record above is Ray Boyd, and he has a significant family ancestry in Varese Ligure.  He has worked thousands of hours finding records, defining families, downloading and attaching images, and transcribing the records for those family members, and building his family tree.  It is an awesome family tree!  

My grandsons' line in Ray's tree goes down to their 2nd great-grandparents.  We corresponded via Ancestry messages and found that he and my grandsons are probably distant cousins (probably 7th or 8th cousins from common ancestors in the 1700s).  

4)  But what does the record say?  How do I find the dates, the names of the wedding partners, the names of their parents and witnesses, etc. if I don't speak Italian?  

Well, the FamilySearch Wiki has help to understand these forms on the "Italy Church Records" page:

• Italian Birth Document Translation
• Italian Marriage Document Translations
• Italian Civil Death Document Translation

The form that matches the above marriage record is the "Post Unification Marriage Act" form:

The English translation (with blanks and underlined text to fill in) is:

Isn't this a wonderful aid for those of us who can't speak or understand a word of Italian? 

5)  This has been a fun break for me from my usual genealogy work.  Rabbit hole work is real genealogy fun for me.  You never know what you're going to find!  Here is the pedigree chart for Maria Figone, my grandsons 3rd great-grandmother, and daughter of Francesco Figone and Maria Ferrari:

Before this study, I knew the names of the persons in green, but not the persons in black.

6)  If you have Italian ancestry in the 19th century, then you could go on Antenati and on FamilySearch to see if there are records for your family.  It really helps if you know a birth, marriage or death year and a birth, marriage or death place for your person.  Search for your last known person's name on Ancestry and FamilySearch Family Tree, and see if someone else has found records like these that could help you.

These are not the only Italian family history records, of course.  Some are online, but records back into the 16th century may be available in the local church archives or in state archives.  I also realize that Antenati probably has more records than I know about at this time!

I have more Italian records to find for my grandsons' ancestry in other states, and hope to entice them to help me with the searches.  I definitely will send them, and their father and cousins, a copy of the records that I have found.

My thanks to Ray Boyd for all of the hard research work he has done on these families and records, and for permitting me to include them in my research.  

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The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2019/11/finding-1838-1859-italian-records-for.html

Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.