Paolo DiStefano abt. 1844-1895. Italy. Translation help. We Have Birth/Death Records! More Sources needed

Question

We have his death & Birth record but can’t translate. I can translate some of it but some words I can’t understand to put into a translator properly. He is my 3rd great grandpa. He married Teresa Spampinato marriage to: Teresa Spampinato Belpasso, Sicily Circa June 17 1865. We need help with his profile updating it with categories and sources. Any help is appreciated. Thank you wikitree family.  Kind regards

Comments

Here's his marriage record (right side of the page, beginning halfway down) in Latin:

"Italia, Catania, Arcidiocesi di Catania, Registri Parrocchiali, 1515-1941," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9BYH-BVX?cc=2013622&wc=MDX2-XNL%3A286686401%2C286686402%2C286697801 : 20 May 2014), Nicolosi > Nicolosi > Matrimoni 1620-1895 > image 1683 of 2144; Archivio di Arcidiocesi di Catania (Catania Archdiocese Archives, Catania).

17 June 1865, to Teresa Spampinato, daughter of Antonini and Angela Giuffrida.

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Wow your good at this lol! I wish I can give you 3 best answer stars! Thank you Frank!  your awesome!!!

Answer 1

Looks by the death record like he died 9 Aug 1895 (the record is dated 10 August but says he died the previous day), age 54 (which may or may not be accurate). Both parents were already deceased but Theresa (his wife) was still alive. He was a farmer.

Here's a rough translation, starting from the important part (i quali mi han dichiarato):

"...who have declared to me that at 8:33 PM yesterday in a house located at Via (?) number (?) died Paulo DiStefano, age 54, farmer, resident of Nicolosi, born in Nicolosi, son of the late Giuseppe and the late Pietra (?), husband of Theresa (?)."

The second image you have on Paolo's page is not his birth record. It is the birth record of a girl, Paula Distefano, born 1 December 1897

Comments

Thank you! This helps so much we can eliminate the record of birth as not his. I wonder whose child she is. Interesting! Everyone’s help is very much appreciated. It’s so difficult once we go into our Europe roots with the language barriers etc

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Her parents were Giuseppe DiStefano, age 26, and Grazia Pistorio(?), daughter of Salvadore.

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Here is what looks like his baptism from the Nicolosi church records online (I'm very jealous and wish my ancestors' town church records were digitized as well). He was baptized 30 May 1843 and I think according to the baptismal record was born the same day (baptizari infantem hodie natum):

"Italia, Catania, Arcidiocesi di Catania, Registri Parrocchiali, 1515-1941," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GB1H-FGR?cc=2013622&wc=MDXK-TZQ%3A286686401%2C286686402%2C286686403 : 20 May 2014), Nicolosi > Nicolosi > Battesimi 1797-1884 > image 710 of 1752; Archivio di Arcidiocesi di Catania (Catania Archdiocese Archives, Catania).

The record number is #47, on the right side of the page in the middle. The names are in Latin (Jospeho/Petra/Paulus), rather than Italian (Giueseppe/Pietra/Paolo) so don't let that throw you. The sponsors/godparents were Salvatore Nicoloso (son of Antonino) and Domenica Leonardi (daughter of Antonino).

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Well this is amazing we now have the birth marriage and death records!!! Your right it is rare to get such good records! Amazing Frank! Wow

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The good news for you is four-fold:

1. Nicolosi has church records online going back many centuries.

2. People didn't move around that much in those days, so it's very likely that the DiStefano ancestors were all from Nicolosi.

3. DiStefano isn't as prevalent a name in the Nicolosi records as some others.

4. Nicolosi was a small place and the number of births/marriages/deaths each year is reasonable to manage since the church records aren't indexed (although I did find some indexes in browsing through, just not very consistent, and they're not digitally indexed - the indexes are scanned.

The Nicolosi Stato Civile records are in Family Search but not Antenati yet that I can tell, but only from 1866 onward. But those records (birth/death/marriage) typically have annual indexes so they're fairly easy to manage, you just have to get good at deciphering the handwriting. I would recommend these pages to help with your translation efforts for Italian records:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Extracting_Information_from_Italian_Records

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italy_Genealogy

Italian Stato Civile and church records tend to be very formulaic - once you understand the context it's easy to pick out the names and figure who's who in each record.

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Thank you Frank! This has put everything in motion on the right track. Excellent resources.

Answer 2

Andrew,

I found this great translation APP. It is called Reverso. It has multiple lanuages to translate from and to.

Good luck,

Stephen

Comments

Thanks ! I’ll try it