hi, am and looking for information any information stories anything on my great/great great grandparents
My GG grandfather was Joseph Giraldi or Gerardi (he is listed on some census as Giuseppe Antonio Gerardi )Born about 1864 in Rocca di neto(cosenza)??
G grandfather was JohnDe Basila( Or Depasquale)My Grandmother stated it was Depasquale though. he was born 1892 and my great grandmother was Rose Filomena Gerardi born1892, they supposedly immigrated in 1914 to USA. I have more information on them but nothing that would tell me about any other relatives that might live in Italy still whether its rocca di neto still or calibria ( are these places teh same thing?) Also I would liek to know How much % do you have to have blood wise in you to consider yourself italian. My grandmother was full my father half ( since his father was part welch) and then me. does that make me a quarter italian and can I claim that as my ethnicity legally or otherwise. I was born in america yes and I am american but I also feel like im Italian too because of my heritage nad my family background. Most of my family on my fathers side still live in NY where the family migrated so many years ago.
Any help to my questions/inquiries would be most appreciated.
Terry

Hi Terry, welcome to Gente!!


Riccardo, one of our members here, has a straight forward list of what you need to know if you would like to consider getting italian Citizenship


Liz

RaicesOnline

Hi! Welcome to the forum! Calabria is a region that covers the southern portion of Italy (except for the heel of the boot). Calabria covers hundreds of miles and 5 provinces - kind of like our states. The Provinces of Calabria today are Cosenza, Catanzaro, Vibo Valentia, Crotone and Reggio Calabria. Vibo Valentia and Crotone did not exist prior to the 1990's when Catanzaro province was split into 3 provinces. Rocca di Neto is (today) located in Crotone Province. Their website is here: www.roccadineto.net/
You say you have family censuses? Is this where you got the name of the town they came from? Were they all from there? Do you have their ship records? If you really want to find out relatives that may live there today, you need to know who you are looking for in my opinion. It must have been a really small town because there are only 6 microfilms for 100 years worth of birth, marriage and death records for the town in the LDS catalog. You can trace your family back then through those records and make a family tree so you know historically who you were related to then search all the surnames in the Italian phone book here: www.paginebianche.it/index.html Under "cognome" type surname, under "dove" type the town name.
You can look there now but until you know more about your family, any connections would be questionable.
If you need help finding manifests or anything else, let us know.

Hi Terry..

Welcome to the forum. Its nice to have you here. Your question about what per cent you have to be to consider yourself Italian is a bit complicated, I think.

You see, I was always told, you take after your father's nationality. So if your father was considered Welsh, because his father was Welsh then your primary nationality should be Welsh. But I don't think this is exactly a true or fair statement. You are what you are..you have Italian and Welsh blood and thats all there is to that.

My children are part Italian and part Czech because my husbands Dad was a Czech and his mother Italian. But he was born and raised in Canada by an English stepfather...my children believe they are Italian and thats what they tell people when they are asked.

I would say you are an American, with Italian and Welsh ancestry.

Hopefully others will be able to add their thoughts to this.

thank you for the info. i am going to look into this more. thanks
terry

Maybe a lot depends on what 'kind' of nationality status someone is looking for.


From the beurocratic point of view a child will 'take' the nationality of the birth father - if legitimate. If declared illegitimate then that of the birth mother is taken.

From the genes bank point of view however it is quite different. With the advent of DNA we have all found ourselves in a totally different situation to that which has prevailed for centuries..... Once it/we always accepted the 'family history' and all the 'Story Tellers' accounts of where we came from.

To explain, take 'my' background on my fathers side. I know they (most recently) hailed from the east end of London and so they would all be of British nationality.... But the 'story tellers' in the family (so I'm told) said that they came over to southern England at the time of the Norman Conquest (1066). True? False? I don't know. But if that IS the case does that make me of French decendancy?

The same should prevail for people who consider that their 'nationality' is Italian. If they know their family hailed from (lets say) Sicily then current beurocracy says they are indeed Italian. But their DNA may show that their ancestors hailed from maybe north Africa, the eastern Mediterannean or even Outer Mongolia! Who knows.....

An interesting argument.