The Great War

Today I reached another indexing milestone on the Omignano records on FamilySearch.org - I've completed indexing the deaths from 1897 - 1917.  The last few records were heartbreaking, as they were records of deaths outside Omignano reported back to the town of soldiers who died in World War I.  Word was sent to the town in 1917 about the deaths of three soldiers that had occurred in the summer of 1915.

One of the deaths recorded in 1916 is that of Giuseppe Cammarota, my first cousin 3x removed through his grandparents (my 3x great grandparents), Giuseppe Cammarota and Antonia Petillo.  Giuseppe served in Italy's 48th infantry regiment.  He was injured with an abdominal wound at the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo, in Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy.  After his injury, he was transported to the hospital at camp 79, where he died of his wounds.

Prior to this, I didn't know of any blood relatives involved in WWI - only in-laws.   But now, with a blood relative on the field, this part of history became more important to me.  The death record, of course, does not indicate that my cousin participated in the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo.  Learning of his death as a soldier at Gorizia on 3 Nov 1916, I did a little research on WWI to find out what was going on at that time and place.  The Italians fought the Austro-Hungarians along the Isonzo river throughout the war.  The conflict occurring Nov 1-4, 1916 was termed the 9th such battle.

According to the death record, Giuseppe was buried in an Italian military cemetery in Gradisca, Italy.  I may need to visit someday!

Two citizenships are better than one?

As I was putting together my Italian documentation for my research win with Lo Schiavo Genealogica, I noted that one of the other services they provide is helping people apply for US-Italian dual citizenship.  So I did a little digging, and it looks like I am eligible for Italian citizenship.

According to Italian Law 91 of February 5, 1992, one can have Italian citizenship by descent or bloodline, known as jus/jure sanguinis.  Following some specific guidelines, and assuming no one renounced Italian citizenship along the way, many individuals of Italian descent living elsewhere can have their birth right of Italian citizenship recognized by proving the direct line of descent.

My paternal great grandfather was born in Italy and immigrated to America in 1889, which is after 1861, when the present-day country of Italy was formed.  Once in America, he did not become a naturalized US citizen - he completed an Alien Registration file in 1940, and his death certificate from 1950 showed his citizenship to still be Italian.  Therefore my grandfather was born in the US to an Italian citizen, making him a citizen of the US and Italy.  And that right of citizenship passes through my grandfather to my father to me.

There are numerous businesses that provide services to put together the paperwork required to have Italian citizenship by descent recognized by the Italian government. Official birth and marriage records for all generations between you and the Italian immigrant, proof of non-citizenship of the Italian immigrant in the new country when descendants were born, translation of all non-Italian records into Italian, and an apostille (a type of legal certification recognized internationally) for each are required as part of the request package.  The more generations back to Italy, the more paperwork - there is always red tape!

Citizenship in Italy includes a number of benefits, such as the ability to apply for an Italian passport and travel as a European Union citizen in Europe, access to education and health care, and less hoops to jump through to acquire property in Italy.

There are also potential drawbacks, however.  The Department of State has some warnings about dual nationality, including potential law conflicts as well as making it more difficult to protect US citizens abroad, especially when in their other country of citizenship.  If you are looking to hold a job that requires a US security clearance, having allegiance to a second country, or worse, actively seeking it, is perhaps not the best move.

So, it is something to consider.  Since I currently don't possess the NYC birth and marriage certificates for my grandfather's birth and my great-grandparent's marriage, not to mention the official Swedish birth certificate for my Swedish great-grandmother, it is a moot point for me at the moment.  But it is still cool that I *could* claim Italian citizenship. 

Keep On Keeping On

Today I completed the indexing of the 1875 - 1896 image set of death records for Omignano.  YAY!  To truly call that image set complete, I still need to index the completely handwritten 1866-1874 records, but I made it to the end of the set and will call that a major milestone in the process.  I have been busy with other things this last few weeks, so it's good to get back to this genealogy project and make some headway on it.

I plan to finish out the remaining death record sets (Morti 1897-1917, Morti 1918-1929) using the forms before venturing back to the handwritten death records.  Then there are 3 sets of birth records, three sets of marriage records, and three sets of marriage banns records, with the 1866-1874 records all being completely handwritten in the first set of each.  Still a long way to go!

Winning Week

This past week has been an excellent one for genealogy wins.  Last Tuesday I was notified that I won the €100 worth of publications prize from Eneclann's RootsTech drawing.  And Saturday at the Fairfax Genealogical Society Spring Conference I won 5 hours of Italian genealogy research with Lo Schiavo Genealogica.  It must be my birthday week!

Now for the hard part - choosing my Irish publications, and determining what Italian information I want to focus on for my research.  I don't know where in Ireland my ancestors came from, so I don't have specific counties or townlands from which to request data.  And now I have quite a number of Italian ancestors to choose from for further research in Italy!  Decisions, decisions...

March Madness - Genealogy Style!

That Geneaspy, J. Paul Hawthorne, caused a March Madness explosion on social media yesterday.  He decided to create a 5 generation pedigree chart in Excel using just the birth locations, and then color each location with a different color.  And then he shared it with everyone.  :)  This led to much lively discussion and colorful feeds across many social media platforms, and it was all good!  Not only does this activity gain involvement for all ages, but the potential for "You have relatives from there, too?" is better than average.  Connections on many levels happening here.

Here is my contribution to the game:

Birth Location 5 Generation Chart

Many posts out there were entirely filled with US states.  I've only got one line still in the US in 5 generations, and that 6th generation will turn it green for Ireland like the rest of that branch.  My family has not been here that long!

Want to make your own?

• Paul's original 5 Generation template  
• Dear Myrtle's updated 6 Generation template

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match....

A Smart Match on MyHeritage has led me to my first Italian cousin, as opposed to the Italian-American cousins I have been connecting with up to this point.  In my experience, MyHeritage, being an Israeli-based company rather than US, attracts more European users.  So if you have European ancestry and want to connect with living cousins, put a tree out there.  Unless your ancestry is the British Isles, in which case Find my Past is probably the better bet.  If I ever find Irish townlands of origin for my Irish lines, I might finally spend some time on Find my Past, but I'm not there yet! 

I've connected with many Swedish cousins on MyHeritage (lots of cousins of Buzz Aldrin!), but had not updated my Italian line recently.  Adding in some of the recent Italian discoveries from my Omignano focus the last couple of months brought up some new hits.  I sent a message via the web site to contact my potential cousin, and a couple of weeks later, she replied!  And even though I don't speak Italian, and she doesn't speak English, we've traded emails and exchanged pictures of our Italian Giordano ancestors.  So now I have a cousin to visit when I finally get my Italy trip plan together.  And maybe local feet on the ground to hunt down records, especially if they are OUR family records and not just MY family records.  :)

Working through the Omignano records is reaping benefits!  Time to get back to it....

OMG No! The Saga Continues....

I have been continuing to index my Omignano (OMG, No!) records, in between hunting down family of DNA matches.  Every time I locate a record for one of my DNA matches, I add that record to my index, so even when I'm chasing matches I am still indexing!  So I have some indexing that is done by year and other runs by surname.  I've filled in a few more of the deaths for 1866-1874, completed the deaths for 1875 through part of 1889 and the births for 1866 and 1899. 

The DNA match tree building has yielded some results - the Mobius strip twists further!  I've managed to connect two sets of DNA matches (a woman and her nephew; a man, his first cousin, and his nephew) to one set of common ancestors, Francesco Giuliano (1808-1869) and his wife Carmela La Palementa (1815-1875), making the woman and man 4th cousins 1x removed.  I've just merged a couple in my tree that I added from two completely different line building exercises (Francesco's parents via his sister Carmella), so now I am connected to those DNA matches via one marriage instead of two, but I'm not there yet.  :)

I have a few potential connections that I have no paper trail to support.  How many Nicola Chiariellos can there be in Omignano?  In records that list only a father, that name appears alone.  In records that list both parents, there is a Nicola Chiariello and his wife Luigia Giuliano.  My suspicion is that those are all the same Nicola, which would connect two more siblings to the two with the known mother of Luigia, but given the number of name repeats in this town, I don't think I can make that claim yet.  Maybe I will find another Chiariello record in the set to make those connections.  <fingers crossed>

The index spreadsheet is definitely helping with the DNA matches.  Being able to filter on surnames and find all the children from a particular couple is definitely a great time saver!  At least, when they are all entered.  The data entry continues....