I am more than happy to share this beautifully written post by Justine Forelli, creator of the blog
http://www.ciaoitalianista.com
and Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/italianrootstravel/
No need to add a single word about the subject: she explained everything perfectly!
Enjoy the read of this article and also her other amazing posts about genealogy and Italy!
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!
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.
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
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.
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”.
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.
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!
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 hope you found this article interesting. Leave a comment if you did, and feel free to tell me your experience about old Italian passports.
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).
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:
https://egancestryresearch.com/2022/02/15/how-to-understand/)
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.
Examples: Concetta, Sandro, Angelo, Enrico, Anselmo, Antonio, Enzo.
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
http://www.nomix.it/nomi-italiani-maschili-e-femminili.php
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.
For names of saints – even the most unlikely – check: http://www.santiebeati.it/nomi/
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.
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 the first post dedicated to PLACE NAMES
In the above record, the writer was probably confident to be smart and to create something artistic in his bureaucratic job, thanks to this fancy calligraphy.
Just the opposite, 150 years later these words are hardly readable (and the blurry scan doesn’t help).
Now, I am not going to teach you how to read this particular calligraphy. I am going to explain you the
TIPS TO UNDERSTAND
the most important info about places.
START
If you can’t understand a place mentioned in the record, start from what you know, i.e. the town of the record (if you have the record, you should know which is the municipality or church that issued it).
At first, try to isolate some letters composing the “mystery place”.
In the above record issued by the municipality of Castel San Giovanni (province of Piacenza, region Emilia Romagna) other two towns are mentioned.
The first “mystery place” starts with Borgo, but there are hundreds places starting with BORGO, in Italy. Which is the right one?
Second example from the same record: this place name is a long name, ending with “GO” and having a “O” as a second letter. Can you understand more? That’s even better!
FIRST TIP
Use WIKIPEDIA
Go to the Italian page of the known town – Castel San Giovanni, in this case – and check its hamlets under the section FRAZIONI (right column) as well as the neighboring towns in the section COMUNI CONFINANTI.
Very often, the mystery place falls into one of these two options.
Ok, the place from the first example is surely BORGONOVO, a neighboring town. Can you read it now?
Checking the hamlets of all neighboring towns is also very useful, if this first attempt fails.
The place from the second example does not look like anyone in this list, though. We must go further.
SECOND TIP
Use ELESH (http://www.elesh.it/storiacomuni/cercacomuni.asp)
This site provides info about all Italian towns and cities, both existing and no longer existing.
Digit some letters of the “mystery place”, the ones you understand, and you will get many records sorted out by region and province. Usually, the “mystery place” is close to the known place.
For example, by digiting simply “GO” and filtering by region Emilia Romagna and province Piacenza, you will get the following results
GOSSOLENGO is the town that matches with the place mentioned in the record. A quick check with Google Maps will help you discovering that it is very close to Castel San Giovanni.
You can use this site to search any town name in Italy, even if you don’t know where to start from.
For example, if you have a non-Italian record mentioning the town, without any clue about where it is situated, try with Elesh and you may find the correct town name.
THIRD TIP
If you can’t find a place which has been transcribed, try reading it on the original, handwritten record: it is better to search a place knowing only a few correct syllables than a full name which is wrong.
FOURTH TIP
Use GOOGLE MAPS
Perhaps the place mentioned in a record was a very small area within a town.
Especially in rural areas, Italian towns were often made by several scattered hamlets or areas that were called Località XXX, or Contrada XXX, or Regione XXX.
Search the known town followed by Via (street) and the mysterious toponym: usually, the old area was re-named as a street and it is now called Via XXX.
In the following map, the ancient Località Cabella is today Via Cabella.
REMEMBER!
In Italy, very often people were not travelling far. They usually moved to nearby towns in search of better working conditions, so your mystery town is probably situated close to the area you already know.
If a person mentioned in a record was coming from very far, its place of origin was often described with more precision.
So, do not wear your eyes out by trying to read difficult handwritings, and do not invent town names basing of what you think to interpretate, but investigate among existing towns and toponyms.
I hope you found this post useful.
I will be back soon with the second post of this series:
HOW TO UNDERSTAND FIRST NAMES
Cosa sono le visite pastorali?
Sono i viaggi che ogni vescovo organizzava periodicamente per visitare tutte le parrocchie della diocesi al fine di controllare lo stato dei beni ecclesiastici (luoghi di culto, opere d’arte, reliquie), per accertarsi che la situazione contabile fosse ben gestita ecc.
Quando si effettuavano le visite pastorali?
La frequenza è variabile, solitamente l’intervallo tra una visita e la successiva è di qualche anno.
L’obbligo per il vescovo di visitare le parrocchie a lui sottoposte è stato sancito con il Concilio di Trento, quindi i primi documenti risalgono alla fine del 1500 circa.
Che cosa sono i documenti delle visite pastorali?
Tra i documenti si trovano i rapporti stilati dai cancellieri, che riportano i dettagli della visita (l’itinerario, le parrocchie visitate, i beni e le reliquie che il vescovo ha controllato ecc.), le schede biografiche di tutti i preti e gli altri ecclesiastici, nonchè i rapporti che i parroci erano obbligati a redigere con l’indicazione dei beni, dei debiti e crediti, e delle eventuali problematiche concernenti la parrocchia.
Dove sono conservati questi documenti?
Presso gli archivi storici delle diocesi e arcidiocesi
QUALI INFORMAZIONI UTILI ALLA RICERCA GENEALOGICA SI POSSONO TROVARE IN QUESTI DOCUMENTI?
Le finalità per cui questi rapporti venivano stilati non avevano nulla a che fare con la genealogia o con le famiglie in generale, pur tuttavia vi si trovano elenchi di persone e questo potrebbe permettere, con un po’ di fortuna, di trovare informazioni preziose su un antenato.
In pratica, i documenti delle visite pastorali potrebbero essere una fonte alternativa dove cercare informazioni quando si è di fronte ad un ostacolo, oppure quando si desidera approfondire la conoscenza del proprio antenato.
Le informazioni più consistenti sono ovviamente quelle relative ai religiosi, che possono rivelarsi utili nel caso in cui il religioso facesse parte della famiglia che stiamo cercando.
Inoltre, la ricerca in questi documenti può essere un valido aiuto per capire qual era la parrocchia di riferimento, che in caso di paesi molto piccoli poteva anche non trovarsi in loco: nei documenti si potrebbe quindi scoprire che l’oratorio del paese A si appoggiava alla parrocchia del paese B, e risalire quindi al luogo dove sono conservati i registri parrocchiali relativi agli abitanti di A.
Qui di seguito ecco alcuni esempi.
Con la speranza che possa essere di aiuto nella Vostra ricerca, auguro buon lavoro e buona fortuna!
Elena
P.S. Se volete, qui sotto potete scaricare la versione in PDF di questo articolo.
A foundling who was named after an island
A man who fought with Garibaldi
A woman who said she had fought with Garibaldi (in fact, she was interned for that)
An ancestor who was killed by a man
An ancestor who killed a man (well, a different case than the one above, of course)
A family who emigrated for the sake of a train
An ancestor who died for the sake of a train
A woman who had 16 children
A man who had 40 grandchildren (at least)
Many ancestors who died because they ate too much polenta
Many ancestors who fought at our Independence Wars
An ancestor who rescued people under an avalanche
An ancestor who was in a secret society (you may wonder why I know that, if it was secret…)
An ancestor who, 400 years ago, was living in a house that was 400 years old (and it’s still standing and inhabited, by the way)
And then farmers, smiths, builders, beggars, merchants, soldiers, inn-keepers, shop-owners, stone cutters, artists, Carabinieri and a few nobles, too.
A new, amazing experience was offered to me by Bob Sorrentino and his blog www.italiangenealogy.blog/ as I was proposed to record a podcast together with my friend Traci Stevens Callister from Utah.
Use the link below to listen to the amazing story of Traci’s research of her ancestor – the mysterious Lady in Black – how this brought her to an adventurous journey to Italy and to unveil her genealogy as far back as 1600!
You will also discover how this unknown Lady born in the 19th century tangled with my destiny and changed my life forever!
Thank you to Bob for hosting us and giving us a voice to tell our story!
If you have an interesting story about genealogy to tell the world, get in touch with him!
E. G. ANCESTRY RESEARCH 
