What's New At SicilianFamilyTree.com?
Recommended Book of the Month!
Many clients I have worked with have had foundlings in their family
ancestry. Foundlings were children that were abandoned at birth, usually at
the "receiving wheel", which was a sort of revolving door usually located at
a church or foundling home. The birth of the child would usually be reported
by the woman in charge of monitoring the wheel. It has come to my attention
that someone has written a historical novel about The Lady of the Wheel
Great links from Mrs. Blizzard's 5th grade class!
Today I received an email from Mrs. Blizzard, a 5th grade teacher at Pinewood Elementary. Apparently her class used my website as a resource for doing their genealogy and family history projects. Mrs. Blizzard emailed me with some links that the students had found helpful but that I did not already have on my site. They were so great, I thought I would share them right here with all of you! I've also added them to the appropriate pages on the Research Links pages. Thank you to Mrs. Blizzard and her 5th grade class! :-)
Italian Records on FamilySearch!
The FamilySearch site has some amazing record collections for Italy available. Basically they are digitizing and indexing their entire microfilm collection and that, of course, includes a lot of records from Italy. There is currently a large collection of Catholic Church records for towns in the Provinces of Palermo, Catania, Treviso and Vicenza, and there are almost 4 MILLION images for towns in Bologna, Napoli, Genova, Salerno and 14 other provinces. To access these collections, go to the New FamilySearch. Best of all, these databases are FREE!!
I've also found that they have digitized records for the new site that they do not even have available on microfilm! Make sure you check this site regularly as they are adding new information literally every single day. They also have records for a lot of other countries that saw Italian immigrants like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia and they even have New Zealand Ship Manifests. Be sure to check it out!
Search All of SicilianFamilyTree.com
I've built this search engine that will allow you to search all of the pages on SicilianFamilyTree.com. Have fun exploring the site--search your surnames, your town names, or quickly find information on what you want to learn about such as Italian postal codes, naturalizations or ship manifests. Just use the search box below!
How and Where to Begin Researching?
I get many emails from people who are just starting their quest for their
Italian or Sicilian family heritage. For those of you just starting out, I
suggest you visit the Research Links page. There
you will find loads of information about how and where to start. One item I
consider a MUST-HAVE for anyone who is researching their Italian or
Sicilian heritage is the book called
A Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your Italian Ancestors: How to Find and Record Your Unique Heritage
City of Palermo Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes ONLINE!
If your family hails from the City of Palermo, you are in luck! You can now find the city of Palermo marriage index (1820-1895) and the city of Palermo birth index (1896-1905) ONLINE! The Deaths index is being added slowly. This online index is courtesy of the wonderful Hugh Tornabene, who has used his skills and a bunch of high tech gadgets to bring this valuable genealogy resource to the web. Thanks Hugh!
Thank you to Maddalena Cassata DeLorenzo, Tom Russo and Caroline Ilardo Jaworski for the pictures they have contributed for use on this site!
