Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
I usually talk about the primary genealogy records you should all look for: births, marriages and deaths. They are the foundation of genealogy research. For many of our ancestors, they are the only biographical information we have. And for many researchers, those three record types are more than enough to keep them busy.
Lately, I have been working with a record type that you may never need, but you ought to know about. These records might solve problems you have had for a while. They are called “Atti Diversi.”
It sounds like “random stuff.” “Stuff that doesn’t fit the other records.” “Found these in a shoebox under the bed.”
But actually, Atti Diversi records contain three key categories of information that we may need access to. Keep in mind that Atti Diversi were started in the 1810s and continued through unification in 1865. Starting with 1866, these records were integrated with the regular births and deaths. So if you have not yet gone back before 1865, you may never have tried to look at these. But you might have seen them in the catalog for your town.
Atti Diversi records go by year, and have three different types of records for each year before proceeding to the next year. So you have to check all the records for one year before you jump to the next or previous year.
In the regular birth records 1866-1929, you will sometimes see births that tell us that this baby was born without life “senza vita.” In that situation, there is no death record for that child. One document takes care of both birth and death, and they put that document in the births. In the atti diversi, the stillbirths are in their own section. “Atto di Morti Nati.” Your town might combine these with the regular births even before 1865, but frequently they do not. I guess they figured no one would be looking up these babies for any reason. You will notice on the Atti di Morti Nati that there is no name of the infant. There will be the parents’ names and the baby’s gender, “maschile” or “femminile,” and in the middle of the document, will be the date this baby was stillborn. So you may need to search all stillbirths within the Atti Diversi looking for your ancestors as the parents. You may find none, or you may find several. I found a few where one twin was stillborn and the other survived. The stillborn is in the Atti Diversi and the survivor is in the Atti di Nascita records.
Why would you look for stillbirths? These children obviously didn’t grow up and get married and have children of their own. But if you want to see the complete family of your ancestor with all children, you should look for the stillbirths starting with the year they married and keep going until the mother is well past 40.
In the course of going through these stillbirths, I noticed that the same mother usually has another baby within the year. Nobody was telling these couples to wait before trying to conceive again, and if they were told this, they didn’t often listen. I found one couple who had a live birth 9 months after a stillbirth.
This is a fantastic resource that I did not think to look at. These are death records for adults who were born in your town, but died elsewhere in Italy for one reason or another. You may never guess that this 26 year old brother of your great-great-grandmother died in a completely different province in Italy. I found death records in the Atti Diversi for a number of people who were born, never married, and never died! Now I have the death record. These records usually tell you the name of the town they died in, the date of death, and the record number in the death records for that town. So you can try to go back to that town’s death records and get a copy of the official record. The Atti Diversi copy is better than nothing, but it would be a more primary source to go back and find the actual death record, now that you know when and where it is.
After 1866, these records might be at the end of the deaths for that year, in the “Parte seconda” or in the “Allegati di Morti” if your town has them. You may find a lot of these when there was a war going on, and soldiers were being killed far from home.
Record Type #3: Births of children whose parents are unknown
These usually do not include babies born to an unmarried woman and that woman’s name is recorded. Those would be in the regular births, mention the mother, and mention “Naturale.” When a baby is born and the parents are not identified at all, the baby might be left at the Church or at City Hall. If you are a fan of the TV series “MASH” there is an episode when a baby is left at the camp by a mother who could not take care of it, and they take care of the child until it must be put in the “wheel” at the local monastery. I cannot speak for how it was handled in Italy, but I imagine it to be similar.
So if you find a record of a father, mother or child “genitori ignoti,” you may not find that child in the regular birth records. If you look in the birth index for a particular year and find no one whose parents are “genitori ignoti” then your next step is to check the Atti Diversi births. These records have no title at the top but they should be “Nati di Proietti.”
These records can be long and drawn out, describing the clothing the child was wearing, what they looked like etc. If the baby’s mother decides to try to reclaim the baby once she is married and can take care of the child, the document helps identify the child despite not having the name. The exact birth dates of these children are rarely known, so they will estimate the age of the child, usually 1-2 days old. Near the bottom of the page, or the beginning of page 2, they will give the name of the child and then assign a surname.
My great-great-grandfather was a foundling whose parents were not known, and I finally found his birth record after a long frustration because I did not know the Atti Diversi might have his birth in it.
If you are lucky (or unlucky) to have an ancestor whose parents were unknown, you can still find the birth in the Atti diversi, but you will probably never know who the parents were. Your ancestor chart will always have an empty space where this child’s ancestors should be.
I have not had any luck yet using DNA to find cousins who might be related to one or both of the two people who created my great-great-grandfather, but it might be your only chance of finding that ancestor line.
So I urge you all to look for ancestors who are “genitori ignoti” in either the regular births after 1866, or in the Atti Diversi before 1866. At least you will find an approximate birth date and you will know there are no further ancestors for that line, at least for now.
If you have any questions on how these records work, please send me an e-mail at italianroots@comcast.net and please put “Fra Noi” in the subject.
