If you are eligible to claim Italian citizenship by descent, the next steps involve assembling the documents to make up your application. Compiling the necessary records can sometimes feel overwhelming and daunting. You may wonder what records are required and in what format they should be in. Also, what records are needed from Italy and how do you go about retrieving them? This article will outline how to locate your Italian ancestor’s vital records and the procedure to acquire the copies that will be suitable for your dual citizenship application.
All about vital records
Applying for Italian citizenship by descent requires addressing your local Italian consulate, a local Italian municipality or, in other cases, petitioning the Italian courts with a “1948 case”. However you are applying, vital records relating to the individuals in your Italian lineage will be needed to make up a successful citizenship application. This includes birth, marriage, divorce and death (if applicable), as well as your ancestor’s naturalization records or proof they never naturalized. It’s also important to note that originals or photocopies will not be accepted; records need to be “certified copies” and in the “long-form” format. Vital records issued from outside of Italy must also be legalized with an apostille, which authenticates them for use in another country (in this case, Italy).
US
Vital records in the United States can usually be obtained from the US Department of Health in the state where the event occurred. In some instances, the records are located at the town or county level, especially for marriage and divorce records, or possibly in a state archive, if the record is from an older year.
Italy
Italian vital records are held in the municipality where the event took place, not at the regional or provincial level. Therefore, it’s important to know the exact municipality or town (comune) where your ancestor was born or married in Italy. However, you may be unsure of their exact place of birth, possibly only knowing the region or that they were born “near Naples”. In fact, Italy is comprised of 20 regions, which are all divided into provinces, containing many municipalities (comuni). Naples, for example, is currently comprised of 92 comuni, which all hold their own registries of vital records.
Conducting genealogical research can help in locating your ancestor’s exact place of birth. For example, if you are able to locate the ship manifest for his/her arrival to the United States, possibly from the Ellis Island passenger search database, you may be able to discover their exact town of birth. Ship passenger lists often indicated the last place of residence and place of birth, as well as other helpful details from a research standpoint, like marital status and destination in the US. Also, if your ancestors were married in Italy, it was common back in time for them to marry in the town where the wife was from. Furthermore, if they were both born and married in Italy, they oftentimes came from the same town, or at least from the same province.
How to request Italian vital records
After confirming the relevant details pertaining to your Italian-born ancestors, you can continue with retrieving copies of their vital records from Italy. Vital records are requested from the registry office (ufficio di stato civile or ufficio anagrafe) in the town hall of the municipality. If the record is not available there, such as for very old records, it may be available in the archivio di stato (state archive), of which there is one located in each province. Also, in some instances, the record may be held by the Italian courts. While you may locate a baptismal record for your Italian ancestor, these are not generally suitable for your citizenship application. Certificates of baptism can only be used if the birth registries did not exist when the birth occurred.
The format that is suitable for your citizenship application is the “certified extract of the birth record” (estratto per riassunto dell’atto di nascita). The details found in the birth registry book are transcribed into this standardized format, including date and place of birth, parents’ names and the number of the volume and page of the registry where the information was extracted from. Similarly, for an Italian marriage record, the format is called a “certified extract of the marriage record” (estratto per riassunto dell’atto di matrimonio).
First, you will need to contact the registry office in the municipality, either by phone or email, depending on their preferred procedure, and submit a request for the records. Usually, this is in the form of a letter, written in Italian, detailing the nature of your request, the records you need and in what format, along with a copy of your identification. Depending on the municipality, the letter is either sent by certified or registered mail, or email. In some cases, there is also an administrative fee and they may require that you include a self-addressed postage-paid envelope in order to mail back the records. By law, the municipality has a maximum of six months to issue you the certificate, but the processing time can vary depending on the town’s size and current workload.
Discrepancies
After you have received your Italian vital records, it’s important to check them for accuracy and consistency with other records you have retrieved. It was common for Italian immigrants to anglicize or change their name, but it’s crucial to have consistent and coherent details, including names and dates, throughout the documents in your citizenship application. To address a discrepancy, you can request a certificate from the Italian municipality, certificato di esatte generalità, which certifies that the individual named on the records is one and the same. Some municipalites may issue a positivo-negativo, which states that yourancestor was the only individual born with that name on that day.
Conclusion
Vital records, particularly Italian vital records, are integral to building your Italian dual citizenship application and proving an unbroken chain of citizenship from generation to generation. This article has explained how to locate your ancestor’s Italian vital records and request them from the Italian municipality. Should you have further questions or need assistance retrieving records for your citizenship application, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@italiancitizenshipassistance.com.
