Hoboken, undoubtedly, is a town with a rich tapestry of Italian heritage. Whether you’re buying fresh mozzarella from one the city’s many Italian delis or snacking on a bag full of powdery zeppoles at the summer feasts of the Madonna Dei Martiri and St. Ann, the traditions of Italy are firmly entrenched in the city’s local flavor.
Well aware of this great lineage of Italians, Bianca Ottone, the founder of “My Italian Family” (www.myitalianfamily.com), a company specializing in Italian genealogy, has set up shop here in Hoboken.
Ottone said Wednesday that researching and discovering family roots has become a very popular hobby during the past decade. She added that she started the company three years ago, in Rome, to satisfy people’s “genealogy bug.”
“Following the huge interest in genealogy spurred by the Internet,” said Ottone Wednesday, “I realized that there is the ability to make contact with people and swap information quickly and that [the Internet] has the greatest impact for people tracing their roots.”
While “My Italian Family” is an Internet site, Ottone said the work involved in tracing one’s heritage goes beyond what can be done online.
According to Ottone, Italy is characterized by a great abundance of records that are not available online. Because there is not a real genealogy database in Italy, all the research is conducted in the country by a network of professional researchers, historians, and archivists covering most of the Italian regions, and they are able to research a family’s lineage back to the 1600s. “Right now we have network of 20 researchers working for us throughout Italy,” said Ottone.
Ottone said that researchers, once the Italian town of origin is known, go to the civil vital registration officer at Town Hall, or to the parish priest of the city’s mother church, and request access to their archives. Civil vital records for birth, marriage, and death date back to 1870 with the unification of the country, and are prepared and maintained by the Office of Vital Records of each community.
Aside from civil records, said Ottone, Catholic parishes situated in each hamlet and town maintain their own birth, marriage, death, and state of the souls records, registered as early as the 1600s.
There are also university records that date back to the 1200s, notary acts, and military, conscription and Census records located in the archives of each province.
More than just facts
“Genealogy is not just about names and dates,” said Ottone. “It’s about creating a family book and a history book that you can have for generations to come.”
Depending on how far back in time the research goes, $500 to $2,000 will buy a history book that includes an array of information about the selected family. It contains copies or extracts of the original documents issued by the local municipality with a translation of the information researched, and any other information that can be found in a day or two of research.
Ottone said even though the service is relatively new, there have already been incredible finds, such as antique tiles from an ancestral home, and vintage photographs of past generations hidden in church archives in the basement of relatives the client didn’t know existed.
Another service “My Italian Family” provides is setting up guides for customers on family trips to Italy. According to Ottone, the trips are for people researching their family tree and wishing to experience in person their ancestors’ regional lifestyle, or for those trying to reconnect with lost family members. This service provides bilingual researchers who will spend a full day or more with the client, visiting the Town Hall and the church to perform genealogical research, or research additional family documents.
While each visit is personalized, according to Ottone, the research done on-site is often concentrated on finding living relatives who might have remained in the town. After the research, the service often attempts to arrange a gathering of living relatives in Italy.
For more information on “My Italian Family” visit www.myitalianfamily.com or call (888) 472-0171.