As I was explaining in a previous post, I had the fortunate chance to be involved in the creation of a documentary about emigration, thanks to the documentary maker Joseph Péaquin.
This video narrates 3 stories of emigrants from the Italian mountain region Valle d’Aosta to South Africa.
I appear in the initial part, introducing the first story, that of my customer Ariane and her ancestor Pierre Fromage.
The premiere was held on March 14th in Aosta, at a cinema hall with about 250 people, which was quite embarassing for me, as I am a shy person.
The cinema hall in Aosta: in a few minutes, it will be fully crowded
Anyway, forget about me and enjoy the three stories narrated in this excellent documentary!
My customer Ariane, who is the star of this video!
The documentary is subtitled in English and there are English-spoken parts, too.
The first story is that of Ariane’s great grandfather, who left Italy at the beginning of the 20th century and emigrated to South Africa: a very uncommon destination for Italian emigration!
Valle d’Aosta is a small, mountain region situated in North-West Italy, at the border with France and Switzerland, and the main language spoken in the region is French.
Today, it is a destination for mountain sports lovers, as Italy’s top peaks are in this area, but along with new business, the production of traditional products is still one of the main activities: the cheese, lard and wine from Valle d’Aosta are Italian excellences!
As you will see in the video, one of the emigrants from Valle d’Aosta exported the cultivation of wine grapes to South Africa.
This post will hopefully reply to some of your questions about Italian passports, and if it won’t I hope it will be an interesting read, at least.
In the next chapters I will share with you everything I discovered about these important documents during my research at the Genova State Archive: I will tell you how they looked like, how they were obtained, which info were reported and also if a passport research is possible.
Let’s start discovering them!
A NECESSARY PREAMBLE
The Italian Nation was born on the 17th of March 1861, which is the date when the new Kingdom of Italy was proclamed, following the unification of the country as a consequence of our Independence Wars.
Before that date, the Italian peninsula was politically split in many different States.
The map above shows the different States just before their unification into the Kingdom of Italy.
Just to make it simple, here is an approximate conversion table.
Present region/province
Ancient State
Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Liguria, Sardinia, part of south/west Lombardy, part of southern France along the coast, French region Savoy
Kingdom of Sardinia
Lombardy, Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia
Lombardian-Venetian Kingdom governed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Provinces of Parma and Piacenza (present Emilia Romagna)
Duchy of Parma
Province of Modena (present Emilia Romagna)
Duchy of Modena
Province of Bologna, region Romagna, Marche, Umbria, Lazio
Papal States
Province of Lucca (present Tuscany)
Duchy of Lucca
Rest of Tuscany
Granduchy of Tuscany
All the remaining territory in Central and South Italy
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Veneto and Friuli merged with the Italian Kingdom later (1866-1870), and there were mini-states that I did not mention, but it is not the scope of this article to get into these details. If you wish, you can check this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_states_of_Italy
What I wanted to highlight is that if your ancestor emigrated before 1861, he did not have an Italian passport!
His passport was emitted by one of the States listed above.
The other important detail to remark is that before 1861, people needed a passport to travel to the other States. Persons travelling from Milan to Genova needed a passport, as well as from Tuscany to Rome, or from Bologna to Naples.
HOW A PASSPORT LOOKED LIKE
Forget the modern booklets with a hard cover and multiple pages, here is how a 19th century passport looked like
It was a single big sheet (bigger than a Letter format) and it was supposed to be folded the size of a pocket.
I also found an example that still carried part of a cover and the ribbon that was closing it
WHICH INFO IT REPORTED
The passport carried, on its top third, a grandiloquent crest and introduction.
In this example, the writing in big letters declares “in the name of His Majesty the King of Sardinia”: it was 1858 and Italy was not yet unified.
The central part reported the name of the passport holder and the destination.
In the example above: Sir Falletto from Villafalletti, who was going to travel to Switzerland, Germany, Lombardian-Venetian Kingdom and France.
Here below another example where the passport was extended to the entire family: “Carlo Gerardo son of the late Marcello with his wife Marina aged 28 and their children Lorenzo aged 8”.
They were travelling to Austria, Italian States, France, Switzerland and England.
The bottom part reported the place and date of the passport emission and the documents that were provided to obtain a passport.
More about the required documents in the next chapter.
The left part is dedicated to the “photo” of the title holder. Of course, photos were not in use in 1858 and so, this margin is for the physical description.
The details which are reported are: age, height, hair color, eyebrows, eyes, forehead, nose, mouth, beard, face shape, skin tan, distinguishing marks.
The word “Condizione” meant profession: in this example, the title holder was a merchant, which makes the request for a passport plausible.
At last: birth place and domicile.
HOW A PASSPORT WAS OBTAINED
The passport was issued by the Questura, the central police station, on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Usually, it was necessary to show a “Nulla Osta” (no impediment), which was issued by the local Assessor to the Public Safety (Assessore di Pubblica Sicurezza). In this document, the Assessor declared that he was not aware of any obstacle that would prevent the applicant to obtain a passport.
For men, a note was added about their military status, whether they had served in the army. This was, of course, to avoid draft evaders to flee abroad.
In Genova, I had the chance to browse throught a few hundreds documents to request passports and I realized that, despite being the Nulla Osta the standard certificate needed for this request, in many cases alternative documents were provided: for clergy people, a reference letter from their superior was the rule; in one case, a woman obtained a passport by showing a heartfelt invitation letter from her husband to join him in America; foreign people who had been living in Genova for a while obtained a passport by giving back their expired, foreign passport (or at least, this is how I understood it).
In the first example, Sir Falletto from Villafalletti was eventually a privileged: he did not provide any document or Nulla Osta and he obtained the wished passport because he was “personally known”.
HOW IT WORKED
The logic behind 19th century passports was different from today’s. In a way, they were more similar to a visa because they listed the places where the holder had in plan to travel, and also because they had a very short validity: 1 year.
Theoretically, the owner of a passport had to give it back to the Questura at his return from the travel mentioned in the passport.
Of course, this was not always done, especially if the passport was used to emigrate steadily and never come back.
IS PASSPORT RESEARCH AN OPTION?
The answer is in the few lines above: people who emigrated and did not come back to Italy, did not return their passport to the Italian Questura.
And also, as I said above: the passport was a single sheet of paper.
No copies, no duplicates.
If your ancestors emigrated overseas, the most probable place where the only one example of their passports can be is a drawer in an old relative’s house… if it’s still existing!
There are no copies in Italy, unfortunately.
So, what did I search, in Genova, exactly?
The Genova State Archive stores a collection called “Matrici dei Passaporti 1858-1873”: passport stubs from the year 1858 to 1873.
The time lapse is very limited, only 15 years, but every year contains the traces of approximately 1200-1500 passports! So it’s a big number anyway.
As just seen, the passport was a single big sheet. These sheets were bound in a register which contained 100 passports each.
For each sheet, the stripe that was along the binding of the register was the stub of the correspondent passport, which had to be compiled with the same data.
So, although it is very unlikely to find the real passport, it may be possible to find the stub reporting all the info, including the birth town, which is sometimes a brick wall to tear down.
The oldest registers were organized in a different way: instead of compiling the stub, the Questura Officer was attaching the documents supplied to obtain the passport, hence the Nulla Osta or the reference letter, or even an old passport.
Browsing through this miscellaneous collection always opens up to surprises: if you find the document about your ancestor, you may discover where he was travelling to, when, and for which reason. You may discover other family members he was traveling with, or sometimes info about his military service such as the place where he served the army and which gave the authorization for the passport.
From a researcher’s point of view, it is hard job but very interesting.
So, if finding your ancestor’s passport may be just as probable as being hit by a meteorite while jogging in the park, the chances of stumbling upon a Nulla Osta, a passport stub or another document are much higher.
Here are some amazing examples.
Together with the Nulla Osta, this man had to prove that he had accomplished to this military duties and he provided therefore a certificate stating that he was exempted by his military service for being the only son of a man older that 50: additional info that you would never expect to find in a passport collection!
This is a crop of a nulla osta that I found by chance: he was the ancestor of another customer of mine, not the one who hired me to search for passports. I stumbled upon him and I was very surprised to discover that he was going to Marseille and Calcutta, because we only knew that he was a sea captain going back and forth Italy and South America.
Besides this, a note about distinguishing marks revealed that he was “vajuolato”, hence that he had had smallpox and survived, but his face showed the typical smallpox scars.
I never expected to find such detailed info about an ancestor!
This was the authorization to issue 5 passports to people who were not from the Kingdom of Sardinia: I think that they were in transit, heading to their final destination Alessandria, in Egypt, but eventually they needed to have a passport, and the Questura of Genova issued it.
They were a merchant from Vicenza, an owner from Padova, a student from Rovigo, a trader from Cremona and another merchant from Udine
Here is another case of a multiple request to obtain passports: in this case, they were seamen and they needed the document to be able to sail to Messina, where they were going to reach the vessel they were working on.
This is really a document that tells a story!
A passport that was returned to the Questura after the journey: this document actually traveled around the world in his owner’s pocket.
Its folds, its tears, all the stamps and notes tell the story of an adventure!
IS ONLINE RESEARCH POSSIBLE?
After seeing the conditions of these documents, I bet you are all wondering if there is a quick way out: were these documents scanned or indexed?
Last time I went there (March 2024) the staff of the State Archive told me someone is going to scan the documents and put them online. No date knowm, which means that it may take 1 year, 10 years, or perhaps the project will be canceled.
Anyway, a part of these documents (indexed!) is already available online on the following website, even if I am not able to tell which years are included.
I am planning to write a series of articles about a few archives which I visit quite often, explaining why they are so important for me.
I will start with GENOVA and its amazing CITY ARCHIVE: the Archivio Storico del Comune di Genova.
This archive stores info about the people who were actually living in the city of Genova, excluding the surroundings and the province.
It may seem a very limited range of people, but actually I ended up searching in this archive many times, and not only native Genoeses.
In fact, people from the whole province often moved to Genova for job and lived there for a few years, making it possible for us to discover something about them.
Stop with chatting, here are my favorite documents collections.
THE CENSUS (Registro di censimento)
There are census registers for the years 1808, 1827, 1856 and 1871
The two oldest ones are sorted out by hamlets, while the others gather the entire population of Genova.
Here is an example of the census of the year 1856: for every inhabitant of Genova, it reports surname, name, paternity, profession, birth year and more
The census of the year 1871 is actually an index that links to the register of population: 4 reference numbers will allow to find an entire double page dedicated to your family!
THE REGISTER OF POPULATION (Registro di Popolazione).
Every double page is dedicated to a family living in Genova. The info included in this very rich document is:
about the residence: hamlet, parish, complete address (street, number, house, staircase, floor)
about the people: surname, name, paternity, gender, relationship with family head, birth place, birth date, status, date of entrance in Genova, legal residence, actual residence, previous residence, date of exit from Genova, death date, changes of status.
Isn’t it a real goldmine?!
With a bit of luck, it is possible to identify exactly the house where an ancestor was living… and visit it!
There is another important register: the Register of Variations
If the family changed address in Genova, the change is reported in this register and the reference to this page is transcribed on the corresponding entry in the census.
The different addresses are listed chronologically.
If your ancestor was born in the city of Genova, other two very important resources are:
THE PARISH RECORDS
The Archivio Storico Comunale stores the copies of all baptism, marriage and death records from 1828 to 1854, for all the city parishes. Great, isn’t it?!
LIST OF BIRTHS
OK, I never searched these but I have been told about it from a very reliable researcher, so I trust they are there and I am just waiting for the right occasion to search them:
List of births, boys only, from 1786 to 1795 (but only for surnames starting with A-M, the other register was lost, I fear)
List of births, boys and girls, from 1795
MILITARY DRAFT LISTS
They have a database which is accessible from their computers, where all Genoese boys due to serve in the army are listed. The info is taken from the copy of the draft lists which were issued by the Genova Town Hall and sent to the military district. The info included are almost the same as that reported on the copies for the military district which are stored at the State Archive, but sometimes they include important additional info, such as the parish where the boy was baptized (for births before 1866).
Sometimes, it is enough to hit a brick wall!
Of course there are many more documents and collections, but I did not discover them yet: maybe another article will follow.
The Archivio Storico Comunale is inside Palazzo Ducale, in the main Genova square.
The metro station De Ferrari is very close.
You can access from Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 10 or from Piazza De Ferrari.
Climb the big marble staircase facing the entrance gate from Piazza Matteotti (it’s on your right after the bar if you enter from Piazza De Ferrari), then turn right and go up the other flight of stairs.
At the top of the stairs turn right, cross the balcony and the City Archive is in front of you.
I am so happy that I had a small role in this documentary about the emigration from the Italian region Valle d’Aosta to South Africa!
I am very grateful to the film maker Joseph Péaquin for involving me in this amazing job!
Here is the trailer of the documentary, whose preview will be in Aosta on March 14th, 2024.
It all started with serendipity: I was doing genealogical research at the Diocese Archive in Aosta last year and I told the archivist that my Customer’s ancestor emigrated from Valle d’Aosta to South Africa.
The archivist told me that a documentary was going to be made about emigration from that region to South Africa, and that the Producer may have been interested in my Customer’s story.
One year later, both my Customer and I appear in the same video!
Despite my shyness and my absolute embarassment and inadequacy in front of a video camera, it was a great experience!
Don’t miss the other documentary about emigration from Valle d’Aosta to the USA, which was made last year.
Premetto che non ho nulla a che fare con il Comune di Chiavari e che – per ora – non ho neppure visitato il loro archivio.
Tuttavia, in vista di una ricerca che dovrò fare, ho richiesto informazioni e soprattutto un INVENTARIO dei fondi custoditi, che sono stati recentemente restaurati dopo essere rimasti abbandonati e inaccessibili per 60 anni!
Ecco l’inventario che mi è stato inviato. Si tratta di 3 documenti in Excel:
L’inventario del piano terra è composto al suo interno da 3 fogli
L’inventario del piano ammezzato è composto al suo interno da 4 fogli
L’inventario del piano secondo è composto da 1 solo foglio
Per ulteriori informazioni potete contattare la gentilissima ed efficientissima responsabile:
After writing a post about the most beautiful archive found so far, here is a selection of the WORST ARCHIVES I had the chance to work in.
It is just for a laugh, not to criticize. For this reason, I made the places not recognizable (I hope) with a strong post-processing and effects-addition on the original pictures, so that nobody would feel bad about it.
These three parish archives are in Piedmont.
THE REGISTERS ON THE FLOOR
I swear it was not my idea, it was the parish cooperator who pulled them out of the furniture and laid them on the carpet, because all other surfaces were covered with a variety of different stuff.
So, I mostly worked on my knees on the floor.
I can confirm that the carpet was very soft and the registers did not suffer any mishandling or damage!
THE BEDROOM
When you are in a very small town with a very small parish and a very small priest’s house that hosts a parish archive, where is the archive?
In the kitchen? In the bathroom? Of course, neither of them is suitable.
It’s in the bedroom!
Fancy a nap?
WORKING WITH A VIEW
OK, this was another archive without a table, without a chair, without a bed, without a surface to put the registers on. No carpet this time, and the floor was filthy.
The best solution was to use the windowsill, after having roughly cleaned it from dust, pieces of concrete, spider webs and dead stink bugs (and I was lucky that it had just stopped raining).
I was inspired for this series of posts by the many requests for help that are posted on Facebook groups, where assistance in understanding handwritten records is asked.
Handwriting can be an issue, and not only for foreigners. Sometimes, even Italians struggle with unintelligible words and sentences.
Well, believe it or not, in some cases it is possible to bypass the handwriting problem.
We could call it…
INVESTIGATE INSTEAD OF INVENT
Here is my third post and it is dedicated to FAMILY NAMES
The previous ones were dedicated to PLACE NAMES and FIRST NAMES, here are the links, if you missed them:
I am not going to teach you how to read a particular calligraphy. I am going to give you some hints which may be helpful to interpretate the correct name.
INFO AND SOME TIPS ABOUT FAMILY NAMES
In the Italian rural society of the past, families were usually deeply rooted in their town of origin. For this reason, some surnames were very common in a specific town and absent in other towns. If you cannot figure out the correct spelling of a family name, browse other pages or possibly the INDEX of the register: you may discover more occurrences and find out the correct spelling. Do not limit your search to the index of the same register you are browsing: if the handwriting of the record is bad, that of the index may be the same one. Search for a better index, even many years before or after: as said, families were rooted in the town and so, you may find the same names reported also in the usually clearer 20th century registers.
2. If this is not possible, check if the surname is still present in town.
Unless other online telephone guides, providing results only if you input the correct surname, this one shows you the list of all surnames in town.
This is very useful especially if you did not catch the initial letter of your surname: check all initial letters and you may find the correct surname.
Procedure:
Select the province
Select the town
Select the initial letter
This website is based on search entries, not only on surnames, so you may find entries like “hotel” or “taxi” (besides a lot of annoying ads, I am sorry).
3. If the researched surname is definitely not specific of that town, you may double-check the surnames of the surrounding towns: people were not usually moving to distant towns, so it is possible that the person you are searching for was coming from a nearby one.
To find out the neighboring towns, use the Italian version of Wikipedia: digit the town and you will find them listed on the right margin (Comuni confinanti).
Choose indexes written in a readable way and browse through the surnames.
4. Check if your ancestor signed at the bottom of the record: his handwriting may be clearer than that of the clerk or priest (and you also win a copy of your ancestor’s autograph!)
5. Just like I explained for first names, Italian family names follow the rules of Italian grammar, so some combinations of letters are more likely than others. Here are some basic rules to help with the correct spelling. The letters C, D, F, G, L, R, S, T, V and Z are not preceded by M, they must be preceded by N. Examples: Bianchi, Conti, D’Angelo The letters P and B are not preceded by N, they must be preceded by M Examples: Colombo, Campi.
Surnames usually end with a vowel, like the majority of Italian words.
Only in a few cases they end with a consonant, and this is usually N (especially in Veneto and North-Easter Italy), R, S, T or L.
Surnames ending with other consonants (Kovac, Martinez) hint at a foreign origin.
6. Many Italian surnames derive from patronymics, hence referring to an ancestral patriarch: De Luca, De Angelis, D’Adamo, De Bernardi etc. If the surname you are struggling to understand starts with De or Di, maybe the following word is a first name (in Italian or perhaps in Latin). In many cases, the De is omitted, and the surname is resembling more closely a first name: Bernardi, Mauri, Tonietti (from Antonio), Tommasini
7. Surnames deriving from toponyms are also very frequent. They refer to the ancestral place of origin of the family: a nation, a region, a city, a town or even a hamlet of a town. It’s the case of surnames like Spagnoli, Pugliese, Siciliano, Romano, Milano, Messina, Gissi (my surname and also a town in Abruzzo). If you have doubts about the correct spelling of your researched surname, you may find inspiration on Google Maps! Perhaps it originates from the name of a nearby place.
8. If you are struggling to spot your family on registers written in Latin, consider that the family name may have been translated into Latin! For example, Rossi may have been recorded as Rubeis. The following image shows the Latin version of the surname Della Casa Grande (meaning: From the Big House, hence the orphanage. It was a typical surname for foundlings) Della Casa Grande was translated “De Domo Magna“, which has the equivalent meaning in Latin, but it’s not so easy to catch if you don’t know both languages.
(Don’t despair! Even if you do not know the meaning of the researched surname, and you wouldn’t be able to translate it into Latin, I must admit I stumbled upon this circumstance only occasionally).
I hope these few tips were helpful and I wish you good search!
Genealogical research = registers, archives, folders, records, shelves…
Genealogical research in Italy = all the above, in an ancient baroque chapel!!!
This is the brand new Vigevano Diocese Archive, so far the most beautiful I ever visited.
Besides being pleasant for your soul and mood, working in this archive is also perfect in terms of efficiency: parish registers are at hand, there is no limit to the number of books which is possible to collect and – last but not least at all! – the staff is extremely nice and helpful! Thank you to everybody!
I will soon post a selection of the worst archives where I worked, so that you do not start thinking it’s always like this.
I was inspired for this series of posts by the many requests for help that are posted on Facebook groups, where assistance in understanding handwritten records is asked.
Handwriting can be an issue, and not only for foreigners. Sometimes, even Italians struggle with unintelligible words and sentences.
Well, believe it or not, in some cases it is possible to by-pass the handwriting problem.
We could call it…
INVESTIGATE INSTEAD OF INVENT
Here is my second post and it is dedicated to FIRST NAMES
(the previous one was dedicated to PLACE NAMES, here is the link, if you missed it:
I am not going to teach you how to read a particular calligraphy. I am going to give you some hints which may be helpful to interpretate the correct name.
INFO AND TIPS ABOUT FIRST NAMES
Italian names follow the grammar rules for the Italian language.
For example, the letter T is never preceded by M: it should be preceded by N.
The following transcription, for example, is wrong: the right name can only be Costantino.
Also, the letter Q is always followed by U. The below name cannot exist is Italy, and its correct spelling is Pasqua.
Some random rules, then: the letters C, D, F, G, L, R, S, T, V, Z are not preceded by M, they must be preceded by N.
The name Amleto is an exception because it is imported from a foreign language.
The letters P and B are not preceded by N, they must be preceded by M (Ambrogio) except in the first names which are composed by Gian + another name: Gian+Piero = Gianpiero; Gian+Paolo = Gianpaolo.
2. The great majority of Italian given names are always the same. Inventing new names was very rare among our ancestors. So, do not crash your head for something new, as it is probably a very common name. In the following example: Feresa does not exist, the name is surely Teresa.
The same for this hard-to-believe Anibragio, which can only be Ambrogio
3. Check a list of Italian first names, for example
or other similar websites. I am sure you will find the mysterious one of your ancestor!
4. It was very common to honor relatives or godparents giving a newborn their same name, so a first name is often repeated in the family: check other relatives to figure out if the mystery name appears in other occurrences.
5. In some areas of Italy, though, the tendence to give a newborn a brand new, unique name was very common. In Toscana and Emilia Romagna, for example. In these regions you may actually stumble upon very strange first names. In the following case, the son was baptized as D’Artagnan (parents were eventually fans of the Three Musketeers!)
6. If the name looks – or actually is – very peculiar, check the protector saint of the town, or the saint to whom the parish is dedicated: it can be a clue.
In the following example, the name is Genesio: very peculiar, but absolutely common in the town of origin of this person. Saint Genesio (whoever he was) is the town protector.
7. Two names were often joined together to form a composed name:
Maria+Anna = Marianna
Giovanni+Luca = Gianluca
Michele+Angelo = Michelangelo
8. In handwritten records, names were often abbreviated:
M. or M.a for Maria
G.ppe for Giuseppe
Gio.Batta for Giovanni Battista
D.co for Domenico
Ant.o for Antonio
Vinc.o for Vincenzo
Cat.a for Caterina
9. Sometimes, calligraphy required the first, capital letter of a name to be written in a more sumptuous way, which is today hard to understand. If you can’t get a clue about the name, disregard the first letter and try to identify the name basing on the other letters.
10. In Italian, Don is no name: it is a title of respect for a noteworthy person in town, or for a priest. The same for Donna: it is the feminine version of the title Don.
11. Of course, if you can, check multiple records containing the same name, including signatures
Remember: the correct spelling is always Giuseppe!
The spelling Guiseppe is wrong!
The same for Giulio (correct spelling) who is not Guilio.
The website ABBANEWS published an article based on the research job I had done on the Italian origins of the US actor Christopher Meloni, for the TV show Finding Your Roots (Episode Feb. 2021).
Thank you very much to the author of the article, Maria Teresa Sanguineti!
E. G. ANCESTRY RESEARCH 
