Researching Your Past

How much do you really know about your ancestors?  I'm not necessarily talking about 10 generations ago; few of us can go back that far.  But what about the last few generations, the relatives you grew up with?  In the last five years, my son Jonathan and I have done a lot of researching in order to obtain our (dual) Italian citizenship.  We needed to find records, get certified copies of them, get an apostile for each, and finally have them translated into Italian. It was an educational process to say the least.

The first major obstacle we encountered was that my grandfather's surname on his birth certificate in Italy was Di Giuseppe, however my birth certificate read De Joseph.  We had always assumed that the officials at Ellis Island translated his name there, but we discovered that my father's birth certificate also says Di Giuseppe, yet a few months later when my father was baptized (by an Italian priest in the Bronx no less), the baptismal certificate read De Joseph.  One could only assume that this was common practice for the time (the late 20s), translating European names to English.  However, the officials at the Italian Consulate in Manhattan wanted no part of that explanation; they wanted the surnames to match to prove lineage and therefore citizenship rights. After years of trying to get around this obstacle, I finally had to get a court order to change my maiden name on my birth certificate. Not only that, but all documents with my maiden name also had to be amended:  marriage certificate and birth certificates for both sons.

Another discrepancy came with my grandmother's birth date.  It seemed to be off by one year according to the birth certificate we obtained.  I guess she wanted everyone to think she was younger which apparently was another common practice.  (We also found out that my other grandmother 'stretched the truth' about her age by seven years!) 

Another discrepancy we found on my grandfather's birth certificate was that the date of his birth was 2 days off:  it read March 16th instead of March 18th.  All my life we had the 'March Birthday Celebration':  my father on the 9th, brother Michael on the 15th, Uncle Al on the 16th, St. Patrick on the 17th, and grandpa on the 18th.  I asked my great aunt about this and she knew the reason why.  Apparently grandpa did not want to share his birthday with Uncle Al so he changed it to the 18th.  I wish all official record keeping were really as easy as my Italian relatives made it out to be.  If you don't like it, change it!

Well this was fine and good for them, but I had to go and clean up all this mess.  Each amended document cost money and took time to correct.  After 4 long years of researching, amending, certifying, and translating, the three of us (Jonathan, Kevin, and I) finally received our official paperwork acknowledging our rights as Italian citizens last year.  EU passports followed which will be used on our next trip abroad.

So when you start researching your family tree, be prepared for what you may find.  And…if any of you are wondering where all these new documents are being stored… well in a nice white binder of course!