Help with finding correct church for records
Hi,
I am trying to find any information I can on my Great Great Grandfathers Italian origins. His name was Oreste Castagnari.
The only info I have on him is that he was born in or around 1868 in Italy. Ancestry claims Oreste was born in Formegan, Belluno, Veneto but I have no proof of that.
According to Google, Formegan was/is a small hamlet that is connected to the town of Santa Giustina in Belluno province.
There are two churches in Santa Giustina, but I’m not sure which one could hold any records on Oreste such as his baptism if he had one, or his parents marriage records (Orestes father was called Giuseppe but that’s all I know. I don’t know if his name would’ve been Giuseppe Castagnari).
Oreste emigrated to the United Kingdom some time before 1895, and I have zero info on him before that time, other than this year of birth and possible area of birth. His birth location was never listed in U.K. sources as anything other than “Foreign Sub (Italy)”.
I would like your guys expert opinion on which church in Santa Giustina I should be trying to contact to obtain these Italian records.
It would mean a lot to me. I’m at a dead end otherwise. Thank you so much.
- Stuart
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I see the trees on Ancestry that indicate this birthplace as well. It's definitely curious, I strongly recommend you contact all Ancestry members that have this information to ask why they think the birthplace is Formegan.
It's important to exercise caution when bridging the gap from your UK ancestor to Italian records. Without a definite link between your ancestor in the UK and a specific place in Italy or to 2 specific parents in Italy, it's dangerous to assume that any Oreste Castagnari you find born in Italy is the correct person and not someone else with the same name by coincidence. Due to naming traditions, names get repeated a lot in Italy. Therefore, you really do want to have some justification as to why this town, Formegan, is correct. The more information you can extract from UK sources, the better! This is why it's so important to verify why these Ancestry members think the town of origin is Formegan. They can't have pulled that town out of a hat, there must be some source in UK records that actually indicates this.
In any case, having no local knowledge myself, I can't be certain, but I believe Formegan would fall within the parish of S. Giustina proper as it's the closest parish church geographically. See: https://goo.gl/maps/hBEXDNGE4rzwYBzc7
That said, before getting into church records, there are two additional sources you should probably look at first, and those are:
- Civil records: Unfortunately, civil registration in Veneto only began in 1871, so your ancestor is a bit too old to appear here. All the records from 1871 onwards are available on Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.it/search/collections/1896/). Although your ancestor is a bit too old to appear here, any siblings born after 1871 can be found. More importantly, if he was still an Italian citizen at the time of his marriage in the UK, there is a strong chance he opted to register his marriage in his Italian hometown as well. Many Italian emigrants did this for legal reasons. If this was done, you will find the marriage record in the records of Santa Giustina in the years following his marriage in the UK. If you find your ancestor's marriage record in Santa Giustina, this would prove the connection beyond all doubt! I therefore highly recommend you study the civil records of Santa Giustina closely!
- Military records: Since your ancestor is a male, he will have been registered in the draft list of boys born X year in his town. He may even have served in the Italian military, depending on how old he was when he went to the UK. If he emigrated to the UK before the age of service (18-20 years old normally), his draft list record would say that he emigrated and where he emigrated to, proving the connection beyond all doubt. If he did serve in the military, the draft list and/or military service record would still be useful because they'd give an exact date of birth as well as parents' names. Draft lists (liste di leva) and military service records (ruoli matricolari) are conserved at the Archivio di Stato di Belluno and can be consulted in-person there, or by email if your request is specific enough. See: http://www.archiviodistatobelluno.beniculturali.it/
By the way, if you are only using Ancestry for Italian research, you can consider subscribing to Ancestry.it which is only 10 euro per year.
Good luck with this!
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Hi Joseph,
Thank you so much for your kind, considerate and very knowledgeable answer!
I've been trying to contact all the Ancestry members that have this information to ask why they think the birthplace is Formegan, but the ones I've been able to speak to said Ancestry suggested it based on other peoples trees. Some peoples trees are private and I'm unable to contact the owners, so it's possible that whoever did list Formegan is uncontactable.
That being said, I looked at one of the Italian surname websites to see regions of Italy that feature the name Castagnari and thankfully due to it not being too common, it gives me some ideas of where to look. It also features a hit in Trento which is right next door to Belluno.
Without any hard evidence to prove Oreste was born in Formegan, I'm definitely wary about bridging the gap between my UK ancestor and his Italian records. Especially as I was considering looking into the possiblity of Jus Sanguinis through Oreste one day, so it would need to be a verifiable and undeniable connection.
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The only information I've been able to uncover from speaking to other UK sources who are distant relatives of Oreste is that he was a waiter, he may have been living in Naples at some point, he spoke three languages and he had a brother who may have been a doctor (but I cannot corroborate any of this with hard evidence).
Thanks for the church recommendation. There were two I found in Santa Giustina and I contacted the one you didn't link before and they ignored my letter. Perhaps I got in touch with the wrong one. I will attempt to contact the church you linked instead this time.
Do you know why Italian emigrants would've registered their UK marriage in his Italian hometown? You mentioned legal reasons but I'm curious to know why. I've not had any hits show up on FamilySearch or Ancestry by just searching Oreste Castagnari with regards to Marriage records outside of his UK marriage unfortunately.
I contacted the the Archivio di Stato di Belluno previously and they told me, I'd only be able to search for Oreste's records if I had some sort of ID card for Oreste (which sadly I do not have). Do you know if I was given incorrect information? Or perhaps they meant they'd want to see my ID instead.
I really appreciate your help and although I've not been able to turn any new info up, you've been an inspiration to carry on. It's quite demotivating to get stuck like this. I wish I had a time machine to go back and ask him all this info.
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This is the big problem with Ancestry trees and shared trees in general. The information gets copied around and it becomes impossible to determine its origin! The information may even be totally false, a mistake that the original researcher since removed or rectified, but the damage will already have been done! Nonetheless, keep going at it, and hopefully you can find out where the information came from.
I'm not 100% sure why emigrants opted to register their foreign marriages in their hometowns, but I suspect it was to make things simpler for them or their children if they ever chose to live in Italy again. If your ancestor was not naturalized, his children would be Italian citizens too with the right to return to Italy. Of course, if your ancestor naturalized before his marriage, he was no longer Italian and as such, there is no chance his marriage would be noted in the hometown. Note that it's not a second wedding, it's that they copied the marriage details (spouse, date, etc) into the Italian civil registers for convenience. This was done typically 1-10 years after the fact. The Italian consulate abroad normally handled this and forwarded the details of the wedding by mail to the comune of origin who would then record them in their registers. It was not an automatic process though, and was only done on the specific request of the Italian emigrant. It's quite common though, I'd say it was done 50% of the time.
Very important, when researching Italian vital records, you cannot simply type the name into FamilySearch or Ancestry and get anything. You must absolutely browse the original images manually. In your case, the records are only on Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.it/search/collections/1896/), so you will need a membership (Ancestry.it Italian edition is just 10 euro per year). You'll browse the marriages for Santa Giustina from 1895 onwards and hope that Oreste Castagnari and Mary Eliza Ford appear!
You can do the same for his death, searching from 1932 onwards, though death records abroad were much less likely to be recorded, and I imagine your ancestor naturalized by this point.
While you're at it, you can also search the births from 1871 on to see if Giuseppe Castagnari has any children in Santa Giustina. If yes, that's not definitive proof as it could be a random Giuseppe Castagnari with the same name, but it is a solid clue.
With regards to the Archivio di Stato di Belluno, the only pertinent documentation they would have would be military records as explained in my previous comment. I don't see why they would need your ancestor's ID because any records older than 70 years are public under Italian law! If you go in person, you can access them with no restriction. They might need a copy of your ID to open a file for research by email, that is certainly possible. You can certainly try them again, asking them if they have a military service record (foglio o ruolo matricolare) for an Oreste Castagnari born in Santa Giustina around 1868, or if there is any mention of him in the draft lists (liste di leva) of Santa Giustina for the class of 1868 or other nearby years. If they have the draft list at in mentions him living in the UK, then the connection is confirmed! Even if not, just finding an Oreste Castagnari born about 1868 in this town is a very solid piece of evidence, though not absolute proof, since there could be multiple people by that name in the whole country of Italy.
Last thing to mention, you might consider DNA testing. I personally have no experience with this, so I can't offer any specific advice, but of course if DNA testing finds a 4th or 5th or 6th etc. cousin who is Italian or Italian-descendant from the town of Santa Giustina (likely the latter since Italians in Italy do not normally do DNA testing for genealogy), then that DNA evidence combined with the other circumstantial evidence you can find builds a very solid case.
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