Lost in Napoli
Hello, I am looking for the birth certificate of a person in who claimed to be from Napoli. Unfortunately, I don't have the district or town, just "Napoli". Also, the birth year is blurry since all the certificates we have from his children show inconsistent ages. So, I have Napoli, his name, the name of his parents and a date spanning 12 years from 1838 through 1850 for his birth year. So far, I have been looking records in Antenati one by one on multiple districts without any luck. Assuming that this person did not leave Italy before his 18th birthday, what would be a smarter way to look for his birth town?
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That's a recipe for madness, since Napoli is both a city (with 20+ separate registration offices) as well as a province with something like 90 comuni, each with its own set of records, and very few are computer indexed. So I would try as much as possible to find other ways to narrow down the possibilities.
- Have you DNA tested? Try to see if your matches have more information about their ancestors' towns of origin.
- Less scientific: Use the indettaglio and cognomix tools to see if your person's surname is common or not, and identfy comuni where that surname is found today.
- Look for other written evidence. Immigration, naturalization, records of friends and neighbors or those who came over on the ship with him.
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Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing that either. For my small ancestral comune where people married others from neighbouring municipalities, that would take forever. FamilySearch trees can help if the person maintaining them is knowledgeable about the people and area. Search for the surname with the general location and see what happens.
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Thanks for the comments, the last names I am looking for are "Coppola", and "de Angelis", both quite common in Napoli.
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2 - Thanks, checked that and I already looked into the top 5 results for Napoli. Gonna keep looking though
3 - All evidence we have, shows only Napoli unfortunately but you gave me an idea, maybe finding records of the godparents or witnesses of his kids would give a clue.
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