Can someone help me? I am desperate
In order to apply for dual citizenship, I need certain documents. I believe I have all documents needed except for two. I am looking for the birth certificate (or information such as commune, date, name, parents name) for my great grandmother, Maria, and her marriage certificate (or information such as where, date) to my great grandfather (Rocco). I will provide an overview below. If you and/or your team need additional information or want to see the copies of the documents I have, I am more than happy to send them to you.
Information about my great grandfather (all of which is correct and known)
Name: Rocco Antonio Antico
Birthdate: 23 November 1872
Birthplace: Terranova Sappo Minulio
Parents: Domenico Antico & Salvadora Caridi
Date of death: 18 February 1946
Location of death: Pittsburgh, PA
Information about my great grandmother
Name: Maria Donada Di Filippo (however, spelling of the last name is not consistent among documents)
Birthday: 18 March 1879 (that may be incorrect)
Birthplace: not sure (her boat ship manifesto says Forenza or maybe Consenza, due to poor writing)
Parents: Lucia (?) and Francesco Di Filippo
Date of death: 10 February 1943
Location of death: Pittsburgh, PA
Departure Port: Naples, Italy
Arrival date: 8 July 1907
Ship Name: Principe Di Piemonte
Arrival Port: New York, New York, USA
Other information
Rocco entered the US on 4 March 1903. He last indicated his most recent residence was in Cosenza.
When Maria emmigrated, she had a few children with her, who were all born in Cosenza.
I think she may have been married in Cosenza, based on her first daughter's age and Maria's age?
Possible first points of research could be Cosenza, Forenza (in southern Italy), and Terranova Sappo Minulio
Maria and Rocco also had Sons of Italy policies, which may prove helpful as well.
In order to get an official copy of her birth and their marriage license, I need information such as the commune (place), date, parents name. For the marriage certificate, I need to know where and when. I believe if the marriage certificate is found, it should also contain Maria's birth information (or I hope so).
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Hello,
Unfortunately, as you probably know, FamilySearch's records for Cosenza city as well as for Terranova Sappo Minulio are only accessible at the Family History Center, so I would be unable to assist directly with the research. See: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/ to look for records.
If you know for sure that Rocco was born in Terranova, then it's possible his wife was as well. If she was, the birth and marriage should be identifiable, though the exact dates may vary somewhat from what you know. However, if his last place of residence in Italy was listed as Cosenza, I'd think that he would have moved at some point in his life and probably married there. Marriages were traditionally done in the bride's hometown, so it's possible that Cosenza is her birthplace too.
The trouble is that Cosenza is both a city and a province. In theory, the family could have lived in any town in Cosenza province! Given how much this means to you, you could potentially scour every single town in Cosenza province, but of course this is a very time-consuming endeavor! I would ignore Forenza completely, it's too far from Rocco's birthplace to be likely.
Now, I see you have Rocco and Maria's children's birthdates, and so you may be able to check the records in Cosenza city to see if they truly were born there. If yes, then the marriage ought to be there too.
Good luck with this!
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I've tried that and nothing was found :(
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Supposedly this is one of their daughters' birth in Cosenza city: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/GZ14-KXG
I assume you've seen this one. I can't actually see it myself since you have to be at a Family History Center to see it.
If the daughter was really born in Cosenza city, then the marriage of the parents really should be there or in Terranova. I will also encourage to check not just the "matrimoni" records but also the "pubblicazioni/notificazioni". Matrimoni only include marriages actually celebrated in town, whereas pubblicazioni will include all marriage entered into by any resident of the town, regardless of the location of the marriage.
Would you be able to attach here a photo of Rocco's birth record from Terranova as well as any children's birth records you own, just in case there are some clues?
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This website (https://www.postercosenza.beniculturali.it/) contains a database of all births, marriages, deaths in Cosenza province 1809-1865 and all military registrations for men born 1848-1889. You can search with wildcards using the % character.
I searched thru all males born 1870-1889 with surname %filip% to see who their parents were, and there were definitely many Francesco Di Filippo / De Filippis / other variants having children in Cosenza province in this era, but none married to a Lucia.
My hope was to find a Francesco + Lucia Di Filippo to give you a clue as to your Maria Donata's town of origin, but this was a failure.
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Another suggestion is of course DNA testing, ideally on the closest living descendant of Maria Donata. Obviously, this is useless for citizenship purposes, but by looking at close cousin matches and where in Calabria they hail from, you could gain a valuable clue as to the town of origin.
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Hi,
Yes, I do know about Grazia and her birth. Her BC does not list a father on it, so it doesn't help too much.
I could not find anything about Maria in Terranova or Cosenza for BC or marriage, so that is why I do not know where to look next.
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It is interesting that Grazia's birth mentions no father. This would imply that Rocco and Maria cannot have been civilly married at that point in time, though they still may have been a couple and married in church. However, their civil marriage would have to be after that date, if they even married civilly at all.
Note that during this time period, Italian law did not recognize church marriages as valid. Most couples would do 2 marriage ceremonies, a church marriage and a legal civil marriage. Of course, the civil records we're consulting only show us the civil marriages. However, some couples preferred to marry in church only, and to punish this, their children would be marked as illegitimate, either having no father at all, or sometimes having a father or mother "who cannot be named", or sometimes having both parents but with a mention that the parents were not married. To better confirm this, you could study the entire birth register of 1901 in Cosenza city and if there are an abnormal number of children born with no father, you'll know that that clerk/administration reported these cases (church-only marriage) in that way.
All this to say, perhaps your Rocco and Maria were married in church only. Being that church records are not online, this turns your situation even more challenging!
At a minimum though, you can know that if they did marry civilly it'd be sometime between the birth of Grazia and the departure for the USA, which narrows your search window a bit.
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Hi Joseph,
Interesting, thank you for providing insight into that. I did not know that.
Are the church records online for all communes somewhere? Is it possible to do a marriage search (church records) and see if it pops up? I'm assuming that it (and Maria's birth) occurred somewhere in southern Italy, since that is where the husband is from and Cosenza is located.
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Church records are not online, and can only be consulted in person, with permission from the parish priest. That said, it is always possible to write the parish church and request a search of their records, but getting a reply is not guaranteed. When it comes to cases like this, professional help in Italy is recommended. A broad nationwide or even provincewide search is completely impossible, even searching just 1 town or 1 parish is already difficult!
The civil records are all online on FamilySearch, but even with these, there is no way to do a broad nationwide search. The only option to search these is to browse each town's records individually page by page or year by year, as you're no doubt aware.
All of this is of course a real problem, because if we don't find the records we expect where we expect them, then they could literally be anywhere! This is why I offered the DNA suggestion, since by looking at the places of origin of cousin matches, you can possibly at least get a clue as to possible towns of origin to narrow the search.
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How was the DNA thing work? Is it expensive?
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I don't know much about DNA genealogy. It is not at all my area of expertise, having never done it myself. This is not really the right forum for that, so I strongly recommend getting specific advice and opinions from someone more knowledgeable, see: https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/85-genetic-genealogy-research
The gist of it though is that they compare your DNA with that of others who have participated to find distant cousins (DNA matches). You can then cooperate with these matches and compare family trees to figure out the source of the relationship. It's not an exact science nor is it guaranteed to give results, but in cases where we can't proceed with conventional records, then DNA is a last-resort option that exists.
The hope in your case would be to find a match that descends from a particular town in Calabria that none of your known ancestors descend from. This would prove that one of your unknown ancestors (ie Maria and her family) must also descend from that town.
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Thank you Joseph!
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