How to read and harvest Italian genealogy records



     <sarcasm>Let me begin with a healthy dose of sarcasm, explaining just how important it is to be fluent in Italian. Just look at the document shown here. Without a good, solid command of Italian, you would have no clue what it could be, right?<sarcasm>



     If you know French, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish or another Romance language, that will help you, even if you never studied Italian. Consider the opening line of a typical record, L’anno milleottocentoquarantacinque which means El año mil ochocientos cuarenta y cinco. The Italian word avo is more similar to the Portuguese avô than to the Spanish abuelo and way more similar than the French grand-père. Having said this, the website freetranslation.com and a good Italian-English dictionary will prove to be useful from time to time, especially for beginners.

Where to find the records on line

General form of the records

Harvesting the records

Crunching information with RootsMagic 7

Adding information to FamilySearch