Locating Birth and Death Record
We are looking for a birth and death certificate for Luigi Ricciardi. We know the approximate year of his birth (1845) and his death (1908 -1913). Both Catanzano (in the province of Catanzano) and Sulmona (in the province of L'Aguila) are possible places of birth/death. Naples could also be a possible place of birth. We have included a link for Antonio Ricciardi's (his son) birth certificate from Catanzano so you can see when and where he was born and who his mother and father are. Does anyone have any ideas how we can locate this information or know of anyone that does.
Thank you
Patricia Richard
Lorraine Ricciard
Respuestas
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This is a tough one because your ancestor was a "commesso viaggiatore", a travelling salesman or business employee. This means that he and his family may have travelled quite a bit around Italy!
I would recommend first searching for his marriage record, or if that fails, his death record. The reason is that a birth record will not name the wife, and so it'll be impossible to know if you've got the right individual, or just someone else with the same name and roughly the same age. On the other hand, both the marriage record and death record will name the birthplace and the parents' names, and thus make it very simple to find the birth afterwards.
By the way, I noticed that on the bottom, he signed his name as "Luigi Ricciardi fu Antonio" (son of the late Antonio). This is a useful hint.
My recommendation would be to start by assuming he married and died in Catanzaro, and so search the marriage and death records there. If that fails, then search for additional births and/or deaths of his children. This can be useful, because if one of Luigi's children died in Catanzaro but was born somewhere else, that death record will include the child's birthplace and thus tell you where the family lived prior to moving to Catanzaro.
Most Italian civil records are online, either on FamilySearch or on Antenati, but only a tiny fraction of them are indexed, so all research must be done manually. Cases like this where the family can be from literally anywhere are therefore extremely difficult and time-consuming to solve! I do wish you the best of luck with this!
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UPDATE:
I saw the documentation you posted for your ancestor Antonio Riccardi, incredible that your family still owns his papers from the early 1900s, truly fantastic!!
The 1913 passenger list is clear, the father Luigi is his next-of-kin, living in Sulmona, so don't bother searching for Luigi's death in Catanzaro. The other advice to search for his marriage or for the births and deaths of other children all remains valid though.
By this point though, Luigi would be quite old, so it's unlikely he'd still be moving around. Therefore, it's quite certain his death will be in Sulmona. The 1917 draft registration indicates that Luigi is dead by that point, so 1913-1917 is your most likely range. Very unfortunately, Sulmona civil records are not online after 1865. The records themselves have not been given over to the state archives yet, so they are unavailable even for in-person consultation. The only way to proceed would be to request a death certificate from the comune of Sulmona itself.
There are a couple of people who have your ancestors in their Ancestry trees. It could be worth checking their information, but do be wary of accepting any information you cannot verify independently. See: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=luigi_ricciardi&name_x=1_1&spouse=_alfano&spouse_x=_1
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