FamilySearch Full Text Search added approximately 21 million Italian records on 1 and 2 December. That’s over 90% of the additions so far this month. It includes about 4.5 million births/baptisms, 11.5 million marriages, and 3.5 million deaths/burials.
These cover the entire peninsula, but there is a heavy emphasis on:
- The South (Mezzogiorno): Sicily (Catania, Messina, Palermo, Agrigento), Calabria, Campania (Naples/Caserta), Puglia, and Basilicata.
- The North: Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto, Liguria, and Emilia-Romagna.
- Central: Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, and Marche.
Several collections are indexed under pre-unification state names, before 1861:
- Kingdom of Sardinia (covering Piedmont/Sardinia).
- Two Sicilies (covering Southern Italy and Sicily).
There are several Italian collections (Emilia-Romagna, Veneto) with massive record counts explicitly listed for 1955 or for close ranges (1951-1952). It may be that they recently cleared a 70-year privacy embargo.
My husband is from the Lazio area and I have used the records previously. I belong to the Cassino Italian Immigrant facebook page which covers not only Cassino but small towns and communities in the Lazio region. For those searching in Italy it can be different than Canadian searches so any webinars or blogs on searching in Italy really help. For me I sat my mother-in-law down in 1984 when I started my family history search. She was able to tell me about my husband’s line back to his great-grandparents. Connecting with others from that region I have the Lanni, Matrundola on his mom’s side and Di Mambro on his dad’s side back many generations now. Thanks for the update in information