Tips for finding birth parents for children left for adoption in Italy in early 1900s.

jps1123

Any tips for finding the birth parents for my great grandmother who was born in 1901 in Collecchio, Italy and left for adoption? She was lucky to be adopted by a good family in Roccaprebalza, Italy, but I am trying to find information about her birth parents. Thanks

joseph99929

Legal adoption did not really exist in the modern sense at this time, so adoptive parents were never legal parents and will not appear as such on any Italian records.

If the child was a true foundling (as most of these cases were), they will always be indicated as having no parents. There is no way to identify biological parents in any record, only by DNA testing. Even so, DNA testing is unlikely to work because very few Italians from Italy participate or even care about genealogy at all. Any DNA matches will exclusively come from those branches of the family that wound up abroad, Italian-Americans, Italian-Canadians, etc, and this limits the available pool of matches.

On the other hand, if the child was adopted because they were orphaned, then their birth record and all other vital records (marriage, etc) will name the birth parents as per usual for Italian genealogy.