Tirano Records: Births, Marriages, Deaths

Italian records

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The FamilySearch wiki provides an entry for Italy Genealogy. The records of interest are the civil registration records, kept systematically since just after the modern state of Italy came into existence in 1861. Before that, the records were kept, parish by parish, by the Church.

The civil records maintained at the comune, by a local registrar. Two copies were made, with one copy kept in the comune and the other sent to the provincial center (in this case the town of Sondrio).

The birth records (for example) for a year were kept in a volume, with each birth record entered in sequence, and numbered. At the end of the year a name-number index was compiled, and written in the last pages of the volume.

The Tirano records on microfilm

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I first became aware of the records through an article Family history, a new resource for family historians: microfilms of vital records from the archivio tribunale in Volume 14, Number 1 of the Italian Historical Society Journal. The author, Alan Poletti, explained how these records for several provinces, including Sondrio, had been committed to microfilm by the Church of Jesus Chris of the Latter-Day Saints. To view them in 2005 he had to request that the physical microfilms were sent to a nearby Family History Centre of the Church.

The Tirano records online

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Clicking on the Sondrio, Lombardy entry in the civil registration page shows that on-line civil registration records are available through two paths:

• direct search. The link under section 2 of that page is a dud link. Going to the search entry on the FamilySearch homepage and entering Sondrio into Find a Collection will provide the correct link. Selecting, in turn, Browse Images, Sondrio, and Tirano, gets you here. There are 9 micro-film images, which can be viewed with a film viewer app.

• catalogue search. Section 3 of that page outlines a catalogue search that gets you here. There are 16 catalogue entries, of which 10 can be viewed on-line.

In either case, clicking on any of the available entries opens a film-viewer app. I find it convenient to select the Browse multiple images mode (selector on top left).

Indexes (sort of)

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There are nine microfilms, each represented by a data structure matching the sequence of images on the film. For example the record Nati 1866-1886 contains 1,579 images. One can click through these in sequence (exactly as with a microfilm reader) but of more use is the ability to directly access an image by sequence number.

An inspection shows that the 1897 volume occupies images 5 to 38, the 1898 volume occupies images 39 to 65, and so on. As I wanted work through most of the records I identified the location of each volume in the microfilm record. I also recorded the location of the annual index.

Matrimoni 1897-1910 Morti 1866-1902

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Registro degli Atti di Matrimonio

Registro dei Morti

Morti 1903-1910 Cittadinanze 1867-1910

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Registro degli Atti di Morte

Nati 1866-1886

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This is one long collection of 1597 images. It is the digital scan of 21 annual registers. In an annual register the records are carefully numbered in sequence; there are about 200 records each year. At the end of each register is an alphabetic index for the year, showing index number.

In my Family Tree I have recorded my grandfather’s birth as being recorded by Comune di Tirano, Registro degli Atti di Nascita, 1882, No 12 To find the birth certificate, check the index for 1882, namely image 1183 (or nearby). There are 3 records per image, so look in the fourth image. They start at image 1186, so look in image 1190.

Registro degli Atti di Nascita

Nati 1887-1910 Pubblicazione 1866-1871

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Registro degli Atti di Nascita

Nati 1910

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Pubblicazione 1872-1910 Matrimoni 1866-1896

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Pubblicazioni di Matrimonio

Registro dei Matrimoni