Puzzling Italian.

Question

Question 1. Where can sources in Italy for birth and marriage (parents and spouse) be found? Anything available online?

Question 2. What about the last name? Della-Znana or della Zuana or something in between? Several other people exist in Swedish sources with the last name Della Zuana without the hyphen.

Question 3. Anyone feel for helping Project Sweden to start sorting out the profiles in this category sourcing the Italian side and adding relatives? https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Italians_in_Sweden

Answer 1

Italian Records --found there and at familysearch. It is pretty much necessary to narrow down your field of search to some specific location though. 

Example here https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/842764/seeking-ancestry-filomena-caruso-abt-1848-abt-1931

By knowing a location I was able to find his ancestors BC with parents included etc...

Comments

A quick search of the site for all Della Zuana's produced results that seem to confirm the location of birth in the profile. No Valentino seen with same birth date. Closest I saw was :

Tadio Valentino Della Zuana Padre : Pietro Della Zuana Madre : Maria Riva Apri

Comune/Località : Maiano, Udine, Italy Data : 14 Nov 1889 Tipologia di Atto : Nascite

Answer 2

This is all I found on findmypast 

Valentino

Last name Dellazuana

Role Arrival Port Relation (Friend) To:

Others Passenger: Pietro Asto

Sex Male

Year 1914

Departure port Genova

Arrival place New York

Ship name Regina D Italia

Country United States

NARA publication number M237 and T715

Record set New York Passenger Lists & Arrivals

Category Travel & migration

Subcategory Passenger Lists

Collections from Americas, United States

Answer 3

Answer 1: There's always Familysearch and of course Antenati. I'm not sure how the records are for Maiano. You'll have to look into it. 

Answer 2: Della Zuana appears to be common in the north part of the country as soon here: https://www.italianames.com/italian-last-names-maps/DELLA_ZUANA 

That might help narrow down this guy's location. But, you again may want to check out Antenati or contact the commune office.

Answer 3: I wish I had time to help. But, that link would be useful for the Italy Project.

Comments

For some Italian civil records on FamilySeach you must be at a Family History to use them.

Answer 4

As others have answered, FamilySearch and Antenati have many records available (birth/marriage/death), but several huge caveats:

1. To narrow your search, you need to know the province and town (commune) that your ancestor came from. This information may be available on immigration records, church marriage/death records in the country they migrated to, or civil vital records in the country they migrated to. (Or from talking to family members!)

2. The vast majority of the online records are scans only and have not been digitally indexed. So doing a search on either site for a name is only going to be looking at less than 5% (my estimate) of the available records. However, many of the scanned records have either annual or 10-year indexes available (handwritten). But you have to search them with your eyes.

3. Spelling of surnames was very fluid in most records in the 19th century as few people were literate and scribes tended to write by what the name sounded like. So there will be a great variation in names. If you know the region where your ancestors came from, use the site Indettaglio to search surnames by region. You can search surnames in whole or in part.

Buon Fortuna!

Comments

I do not know if it's a problem, but there is, here in WikiTree, a whole category of "Italians in Sweden", holding about 380 profiles, mostly created back in 2009 in some sort of collective effort, by scouring a few CDs with 20th century death records and censuses for Sweden for Italian names/birth places. Apparently there are very few cases where the profiled persons have descendants active in WikiTree. Most of them are unconnected and have not been worked on since 2009.

Edit: ah, I see the category link was included in the original question.

Answer 5

I just thought I should put the Swedish sources that people in Project Sweden found for Valentino this morning, when we discussed it in the Google group, on to his profile.

I also found a transcription of his birth record at FamilySearch. It has the same date and place of birth as he has in the Swedish records, so it ought to be for the right person.

Comments

I added the link to his actual BC which has a few additional tidbits beyond the transcription.

---

Beautiful!

---

It was only practical time-wise because YOU had done all the groundwork

Answer 6

Finally got around to taking that walk to Västra kyrkogården ant take a shot of his headstone.

Comments

If you're interested on going back further, here is the marriage of Valentino's parents in 1890:

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Udine/Stato+civile+italiano/Majano/Matrimoni/1890/7428/007019448_00011.jpg.html

And here is the start of the marriage allegati package, containing baptismal extracts of both spouses:

http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Udine/Stato+civile+italiano/Majano/Matrimoni+allegati/1890/511/007261448_00055.jpg.html

---

Thanks. I may use that once I get to correct his Last Name at Birth.