Genealogy Workshop: In Search of Your Roots

The experience

Dear friend, have you ever felt the desire to embark on a journey to rediscover your family’s past?

If you are looking for a strong sense of cultural belonging, if you are curious to understand the history and culture of your origins, if you want to preserve your family memory to pass on values, if you want to connect with your distant relatives, if you want to understand the cultural differences between the country where you live and the Italy of your ancestors, know that we can give you a hand.

Your Italian roots are a treasure waiting to be discovered, and genealogical research is the passport to open the doors of the past and connect you with your origins.

Imagine going back in time, walking through the alleys of the Italian towns from which your ancestors emigrated to the New World. These places tell stories of courage, hope, and determination, and you have the chance to discover every single chapter of this epic adventure.

Pre-Laboratory: the first steps of research

To start this process, it will be essential to initially dedicate yourself to collecting the right information: names, dates, places and old photographs will in fact be the clues that will guide you through your search.

You’ll want to take the first step by having a conversation with your older relatives, listening to their stories, and jotting down every detail they can share. Conversations with them are the gateway to an archive made up of precious memories.

Once you’ve gathered basic family information, you’ll be able to start learning via our Lab. Together we will see how your research can extend beyond the documentation available in situ also by taking advantage of online resources, such as sites dedicated to genealogy and digital archives, which preserve the traces of the past. In addition, we will learn to move through the different types of sources, civil status and ecclesiastical registry, states of souls, censuses and matriculation sheets. We will analyze official documents such as birth, marriage, and death certificates.

Of course, the further you go in your research, the more you will need to learn information that will help you find your way around.

Every step forward will be a piece that will be added to the construction of your family tree. Among the requirements for the realization of your research, patience will certainly be essential, and every discovery, even the smallest, can lead you closer and closer to your roots.

Even if we haven’t started yet, we can tell you right away that this genealogical adventure is like a puzzle, and every piece you find adds depth and meaning to your family history. Finding the pieces of the puzzle is a painstaking job that requires passion, curiosity but also knowledge.

Historical and geographical context

Before we start analyzing the tools you will need to build your research, we will provide you with the essential elements to understand the historical-geographical context in which the documentation was produced. What we now call Italy is in fact the result of the unification of several states, a unification that took place relatively late, that is, in the second half of the nineteenth century and precisely proclaimed on March 17, 1861. Later, in the 70s of the twentieth century, the creation of the twenty Italian regions of which Italy is still composed today took place.

During the pre-unification phase, the Italian peninsula was composed of a set of kingdoms, committees, duchies, and small republics, each with its own bureaucratic and administrative structure. So imagine looking for your great-grandfather’s birth certificate within this intricate labyrinth of territorial realities that gave rise to offices, archives and diversified document structures.

As the old Italian saying goes, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But that’s not the case if you know where the haystack is, if you know where to look for the keys that open it, and when you’re inside you know how to open the search drawer.

In short, part of this investigation work will be done independently with the right indications and suggestions; providing you with all the data of a professional expert in history and genealogy who knows how to move between documents.

Workshop: learning to search

Whatever your starting point or situation, you can take part in our workshop led by experts in the field. In our team we have the people who can teach you how to acquire the necessary tools to start your search, in case you simply want to understand how to move, or able to guide you in a more advanced state of the search, in case you have already tracked down some valuable information, and accompany you towards the next step to take. Get ready to let yourself be carried away by the charm of your Italian roots. The past is waiting to be revealed, you have the power to bring it back to life, and we can help you answer your questions.

We look forward to seeing you!