The many benefits and drawbacks of indici decennali

In some of my recent columns, I have discussed some lesser-used resources, mostly because A) I have discussed the “most-often-used” resources a lot more, and B) I am finding out how useful these lesser-used resources can be. A recent example was the atti diversi, the records of stillbirths and orphans, with occasional deaths of adults in other towns that you might never have found otherwise.

Today’s column concerns something very simple but very necessary sometimes. It is called the “indici decennali.” These are indexes for each town that cover a ten-year period.

As we have gone over before, in every commune, each year’s births have their own index. So do each year’s marriages and deaths. So to find all members of one family, you need to go to each year starting with the year the parents married, and then search every year until the mother is about 50. This will cover the family completely. If one of your ancestors had a child after age 50, please recheck that record to see if it is an error.

So why do we need a ten-year index if we have indexes for every year? There are many reasons.

Reason 1. The index for a particular year was missing, or just was not filmed.

Reason 2. The ten-year index might have parents listed, when the annual index might not.

Reason 3. It’s a lot more convenient place to go through all ten years

Reason 4. The ten-year-index is usually sorted by surname, rather than just putting all the letter “C” together like they do in the annual indexes.

So your next question, based on those cool reasons, is “Dan, why didn’t you tell us this before?” Well, there are a lot of drawbacks as well.

Drawback #1: There are no ten-year indexes before 1866. I have not seen any after 1910.

Drawback #2: Many indexes are simply missing. When they microfilmed the records, the index was missed … a lot!

Drawback #3: This was someone’s “busy work” project, and often they got bored and made mistakes.

So let’s go through these Reasons and Drawbacks.

Reason 1: Use the ten-year index when the regular annual index is missing.

This seems obvious, but if you didn’t know about the ten-year index, you would waste a lot of time reading through the entire year of births to find one record you need. The ten-year index might save you a lot of time.

Reason 2: The ten-year index might have the parents listed.

The annual index after 1866 is usually grouped only by the first letter of the surname, OR the first letter of the FIRST NAME. And more often than not, it is just a name and a record number. So if you need to find all children of Vito Raimondi and Maria Di Cintio, you have to check every Raimondi in each year to find if Vito and Maria had children that year.

With the ten-year index, at least you might get the father “Vito” and that will reduce how many records you need to check. Yes, it could be a different Vito with his wife, and you can rule that one out. But you must check it to be sure. So by only going through the few records with the father, or with both parents in the ten-year-index, it’s a major time saver.

Reason 3: It’s is more convenient to go through the ten-year index in one place, rather than ten separate one-year indexes.

Of course, it’s a time saver. You will eventually have to go through each film/folder on FamilySearch or each year on Antenati, to get to the actual records. But you can make a list of what you need and skip the years that don’t have any children of that family.

Reason 4: Sorted by surname

I think they ultimately made these indexes for themselves! Good for us! These are so much easier with surnames grouped by surname, then by year, then by first name or sequential record number. It depends on the person who made the index. I have been working on records for the city of Bari, where there could be 2000-4000 births per year, and the indexes are in terrible shape sometimes. Having to only search for the surname “Casadibari” instead of reading ten years of annual indexes, every person whose name starts with “C”, is a huge time saver. Also, when the annual index is sorted by FIRST name, and you don’t know the names of the children you are searching for, you have to go through every name in that index to look for “Casadibari” because the first name could be anything.

This sounds awesone! What could be wrong??

I mentioned three drawbacks above – let’s get some of you prepared to be disappointed.

Drawback 1: No ten-year indexes before 1866, none after 1910.

I cannot speak for every town or province in Italy but I can take liberty that other parts of Italy have the same problem as Bari. Actually, it is very inconsistent whether there is a ten-year-index or not. Some are lucky. Montrone, for example, has indexes to Births 1866-1895. Marriages 1866-1895. Deaths 1866-1905. That’s as good as I have seen. They are also microfilmed very haphazardly. You might find 1866-1885 on one film, 1886-1895 on another, then 1896-1905 on the first film. You have to hunt through the catalog. And the indici might be at the province archive, so it might be in the catalog under the province rather than the comune.

Drawback 2: Many ten-year indexes are simply missing.

Check the comune and the province before giving up. Nothing more to say.

Drawback 3: There can be mistakes.

If someone asked you to go through a file cabinet and make a spreadsheet with an index to each document, and which folder it can be found in, well, after the first few hours, you might get bored and accidentally enter the wrong folder, or copy and paste bad information. I found this while looking for Nicola Casadibari of the city of Bari. The ten-year index had him listed under someone else from 1867 with a ditto mark under the year, but when I went to the 1867 Bari births, he was not that record number. I checked all the letter “C” in the 1867 annual index, and he was not there. I had to check the 1868 and 1869 annual indexes before I found him in 1869 with the same record number as was listed in the ten-year index for 1867. So the ditto mark was wrong and I had to go down the proverbial rabbit hole looking for the error. But I found it. It took a couple of hours. AND it made me write this column!

I would say that there are more ten-year indexes for births than for marriages or deaths. But if you don’t know a marriage or death date, the ten-year indexes can at least tell you “Well he didn’t die in Alberobello between 1866 and 1885” Much easier than checking 20 annual indexes.

If you have had good luck using these records, please e-mail me at italianroots@comcast.net and please put “Fra Noi” in the subject. I’m curious how lucky you have been using these forgotten records.