"Being a Native American, we believe that our life is not complete if we do not remember ALL of the old ones that went before us. "Perche'", if we don't remember them and pass on the stories of their life, our lives and our children's lives will not be complete"This story begins in the present, with Gemma, on the left with husband Bob, on the right with her parents, Cesare Fiamma and Katrina Doolittle, "full blooded Native American", writing a message on Abruzzo 2000 Guestbook "Grandfather Domenico migrated to Lucca, Toscana in late 1800's. Desperate to find Fiamma family." Since she updated the information later on, adding that her grandfather was born at Sassa, L'Aquila, here in Abruzzo we (Abruzzo2000 genealogy team) got personally interested, not only because Sassa is just round the corner, but also because the maternal grandfather of two of us came from there
The municipality of Sassa releases an extract of birth for Domenico, with the names and ages of his parents, Antonio, 42, and Emidia, 37
Collection of information
It is important to have all possible elements to start with. Gemma finds her granfather's passport, released from the city of Lucca, Italy, in 1915
On the cover (see picture on the left) we read "Passport released to Fiamma Domenico, son of Antonio and Dionisi Emidia, born at Sassa (AQ) on 3 January 1868, domiciled in Lucca, province of Lucca, baker".
On page 3 (see picture on the right) of the passport there is an authorization to leave Italy "this passport is released for San Francisco, California and is valid for three years. Lucca, the seventh of March 1915" Domenico's wife, who also emigrated, had her own passport, as anybody who was over 21 ought to.
The search in Municipality archives
Now something must be explained on how archives work in Abruzzo (and most of Italy):
from 1866 to the present all acts are still kept in the municipalities (more than 300 in Abruzzo) and "delegazioni" (when the municipality is very big): to get a certificate it is necessary to have name and, at least, year of birth. Registers cannot be consulted by the public, so when you get a negative response, it is not certain that the info was not there, but maybe that the appointed clerk did not find it. Moreover, some municipalities are very
tight about privacy, and require a statement from the person requesting the certificate. When the municipality does not cooperate, it is still possible to go to the church (if the area is small, but only in L'Aquila there are more than eighty parishes) and look for baptism acts.
From 1810 to 1865 all records from all municipalities are kept in a central provincial archive (so there are four archives in Abruzzo) and microfilms are also available in the USA. Before 1810 churches were the only repositories for births, marriages and deaths, with the exceptions of aristocratic families with pedigrees or other information that might be found in public sources, in connection with great events.
