Sicilian Genealogy
by the History Editors of Best of Sicily

Personalized escorted visits of Sicily, with a special emphasis on family history in ancestral towns. Read about our Sicilian family history tours.

Firstly, you should speak Italian reasonably proficiently in order to communicate with people who can help you, and you'll have to be able to read the information they provide. The most useful records you can consult at provincial state archives (usually open weekday mornings) are vital statistics acts of birth, marriage and death between 1820 and 1860. Concentrate on acts of birth and marriage rather than acts of death, which do not provide as much accurate information which will advance a lineage. This presumes that you can read nineteenth-century Italian script and are familiar enough with Italian social history to understand the historical context of the information you are reading. (Sicilian weddings, for example, entailed certain traditional practices, and country life was different from city life.) You'll have to fill out a few forms to consult these records, and photocopying facilities may not be available.

The vital statistics office of the town hall may be able to assist with more recent records, but due to privacy laws usually will not allow you to consult these directly, and in larger localities the personnel might be too busy to help you very much. Parochial records, which are handwritten in Latin, are useful for periods before 1820, but pastors are often reluctant to grant direct access to these old registers, and in any event are not obligated to assist you; many are downright uncooperative. While it is never a guarantee of success, an offering to the parish is presumed if you hope to have access to the archive. It should be at least a hundred dollars or fifty pounds, sent in advance via courier or registered post. Tax census records (described in the chart below) can also be useful in some cases.

Until around 1880, some eighty percent of Italians (Sicilians as well as Lombards, Tuscans and Piedmontese) were illiterate tenant farmers, farm workers, and day workers. Most owned a house and at least a small parcel of land. About twenty percent were skilled craftsmen, scholars, jurists and other professionals. Except in the rare case of an aristocratic or professional family, your Sicilian ancestry will reflect these demographic realities.

In general, you'll be better off employing a professional genealogist to discover your family history, and costs are not usually prohibitive. But don't expect free services. If your heritage is worth anything to you, plan to spend at least €400.00 to discover it; our research indicates that no professional genealogist in Sicily will accept a project for less. A professional will also be more objective, better able to distinguish genealogical fact from family folklore, and is more likely to be able to produce accurate results, even if months or years are required. Beware of firms that sell coats of arms or attach one to a genealogy they've researched for you. Several "distinguished" research firms based in Florence are infamous for this practice. In Italy, only noble families (barons, counts, et al.) are entitled to coats of arms; nobody can ethically claim the coat of arms of a family with which he is unrelated just because he coincidentally shares a surname with that family.

Some people would like to visit Sicily to meet distant cousins, but telephoning people who happen to share your ancestor's surname in an attempt to foster ties with distant relatives is never advised. They may not be related to you closely enough to determine precise kinship, and they probably will not welcome your intrusion into their privacy. It's best to approach these folks indirectly by sending letters a few months before you go to Sicily, enclosing a clear, simple family tree (like the pedigree shown here) indicating lineage at least from the mid-1800s. For a fee, a competent genealogist can assist you in constructing such a chart. This should be a lineal tree showing descent from a single ancestor or couple in the direct male line, not a multilineal pedigree like the ones favored by the Mormons and most American genealogists. Telephone only those people who express a willingness to meet you.

You may find that Italian genealogical research is an eclectic subject. Don't believe everything you read in web sites, books and magazine articles dedicated to Italian genealogy, especially those published in English (even when these are published by genealogical organizations). Being written by foreigners or amateurs who have little genuine knowledge of Italian history, most of these works are full of historical misinformation and inaccuracies serious enough to impede your success in identifying your ancestors. Understandably, most of the folks who research their own family histories rely a great deal on the stories they've heard from their grandparents, but the discovery of genuine family history requires much more than this. (Some good books on Sicilian history are listed on our books page.) Best of Sicily is not a genealogical service. We do not undertake searches either for dead ancestors or living relatives. At best, we may be able to recommend a genealogist, but we cannot respond to personal queries of a genealogical nature or requests for free advice, such as "Can you help me find my uncle in Agrigento?" or "Please send me the genealogy of Giovanni De Carlo born in Enna on May 4th 1898." The right person for these tasks is a competent genealogical researcher, not a travel service or "family history travel consultant."

Genetic Research: Beyond actual documentary records, currently available genetic (DNA) analysis is useful in establishing kinship with cousins through the patrilineal line of ascent (i.e. your father's father's father et al.). As this corresponds with surname inheritance, its value to genealogical research is obvious. Genetic analysis in female matrilineal research (your mother's mother etc.) is less practical in genealogy, though it helps to indicate, in a very general sense, your ancestral affinity to certain Sicilian peoples. Because the DNA testing available commercially isolates genetic markers in only a few lines, its application is somewhat limited. Nevertheless, it's interesting to find out more about your genetic heritage, and microsatellite markers (as opposed to general haplogroups) can be very useful for determining relationships within a large haplogroup. It is important to recognize that genetic genealogy is often very general; for identifying recent generations there really is no substitute for documentary genealogy. The ideal genealogy might establish a documented lineage to about 1500, complemented by a basic 37-marker genetic identification (such as those used by Family tree DNA) to determine some ancient origins (by haplogroup) and more recent movements in the male line.

In considering genetic "genealogies" earlier than a family's documented history (i.e. when the family assumed a surname which begins to appear in census and church records), in Sicily usually circa 1500, it is important to take a sober view of social history. Let's say, for example, that a documented history of a non-aristocratic family is traced to circa 1450, and a patrilineal (Y chromosome) marker implies, or suggests, a Norman ancestry. Does this mean that the family descends from a Norman knight who arrived in Sicily during the eleventh century? Perhaps, but it tells us nothing of the circumstances of that descent. (That's the role of "conventional" history.) While it is possible that early ancestors were descended from the noble family of a knight whose identity has been lost to time, it is equally possible that a medieval ancestress was simply raped by a Norman knight and bore his child (one of various historical phenomena defined as "non-paternal events"). In either case the biological ancestry is the same, yet the social and "familial" conditions differ greatly. Science is morally neutral; it does not pass judgement on history.

According to the research of Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza and other prominent population geneticists, migratory populations rarely supplanted completely the "native" populations they colonized or conquered. Instead, they arrived and --over time-- amalgamated with the population already present in a particular place. Were it otherwise, today's Sicilians would be genetically identical to their eariest ancestors, the Sicanians. In Sicily, one of the Old World's most conquered islands, amalgamagation (genetic admixture) is proven by genetic evidence which (through personal genetic testing) you can easily confirm on yourself.

While this map does not indicate the precise geographic or chronological origins of particular microsatellite markers during the last three thousand years (or over 120 generations), it may be used by genealogical researchers to ascertain, in a very general way, when particular markers broadly associated with populations of specific regions were most probably introduced into the Sicilian population's gene pool. (For our purposes an average historical generation spans about 25 years; this is the standard correlative measure usually employed by genetecists such as Cavalli Sforza and Spencer Wells.) In this sense, the map provides a historical (chronological) and, to some extent, cultural point of reference for socio-genetic origins and lineages. If, for example, a researcher of patrilineal Sicilian ancestry finds in his personal genetic profile a Y chromosome microsatellite marker statistically very frequent in Scandinavia (or actually Scandinavian in origin), he might reasonably conclude that it arrived in Sicily with the Normans or Lombards during the twelfth century. The same principle may be applied to markers more often associated with mitochondrial DNA (i.e. through matrilineal ancestresses). Thus haplogroup J2 (Fertile Crescent) as well as I1a4 (northern Europe) are both present in Sicilians. Of course, you have ancestors other than those through your father's father and mother's mother, but most currently-available DNA testing methods can isolate identifiable markers only in those ancestral lines. It is also important to consider the number of generations estimated for the origin of a specific genetic mutation (marker); hence the ability to distinguish between markers more likely associated with early-medieval Goths than with late-medieval Swabian-Germans (both Germanic peoples), or with Romans rather than Sicels (both Italic peoples). Remember that correlating markers to specific ancestral cultures is only a general methodology and not, strictly speaking, a precise science. There are no genetic markers for "Norman" or "Arab" lineages, merely those statistically identified with certain historical populations in certain regions during specified periods based on statistical frequency and an estimated number of past generations. See the history page for timelines and additional information which can provide a framework to your family's genealogy.

In general, studies of population genetics in Sicily tend to confirm, rather than refute, what we already presume to know about the various Sicilian peoples based on available historical, archeological and ethnological information. Here is a brief summary of a typical genetic study involving potential identification of Sicily's three "native" peoples correlative to genetic factors in the current population:

V. Romano, F. Calì, A. Ragalmuto, R. P. D'Anna, A. Flugy, G. De Leo, O. Giambalvo, A. Lisa, O. Fiorani, C. Di Gaetano, A. Salerno, R. Tamouza, D. Charron, G. Zei, G. Matullo and A. Piazza

- - - Annals of Human Genetics, January 2003 (Volume 67, Number 1, Page 42).    

The following chart describes important genealogical records sources in Sicily. The numbers in the column headed by an asterisk (*) indicate the relative level of expertise required to effectively use these records, level 5 reflecting the highest degree of training. Several descriptions link to images of the documents described, which will open in a pop-up window (please activate this feature in your browser's preferences).

Record	Description	Source	*	Consultation, Observations
Vital Statistic Acts 1860-present	Acts of birth, marriage, death, some adoptions.	Stato Civile office of the Municipio (city hall).	1-2	Public access usually restricted to ensure privacy, especially for acts after 1920. Better to request certificate for act that interests you. By post, send request (in Italian) enclosing €5.00 per certificate, asking for estratto (extract) if you want parentage indicated.
Vital Statistic Acts 1820-1860	Acts of birth, marriage, death, some adoptions.	Provincial Archive of State (Archivio di Stato), more rarely Municipio Stato Civile office.	2	Several volumes may be consulted each day at Provincial Archive of State; some have been microfilmed by LDS Church (Mormons).
Processetti Matrimoniali	Marriage background documents.	Provincial Archive of State for some (but not all) provinces.	3	These documents required for marriages before 1860 sometimes include acts of birth or death for spouses' parents.
Parochial Acts	Acts of baptism, marriage, death, some confirmation and parish census records.	Parish archive. Note that some towns had more than one parish.	3-5	Access usually restricted. Recorded in Latin script, sometimes in Greek for Eastern Rite parishes (in Greek & Albanian towns). Acts sometimes date from circa 1550. Paleography skills required, especially for acts before circa 1700.
Rivelli	Tax census records.	Tribunale del Real Patrimonio and Deputazione del Regno, retained at Archive of State of Palermo.	4-5	Similar to catasti of other regions, these registers date from late 1500s for some localities. Recorded in old script in Italian, Sicilian, some Latin. List residents, with ages for males, taxable assets. Paleography skills necessary for older acts (before circa 1670).
Atti Notarili 1500-1800	Notarial Acts	Provincial Archive of State.	5	Useful for searching dowries and land transfers, some wills. Catalogued by name of notary and unindexed. Page by page consultation is time consuming, often unproductive.
Heraldic & Feudal	Various records	Provincial Archive of State, especially Palermo.	3-5	For noble families. Presumes knowledge of nobiliary and feudal law. Some works published in book form as heraldic armories.
Medieval Acts	Various records.	Provincial Archive of State, especially Palermo.	5	Royal decrees, tabulari and other records relating to nobles, monasteries, etc. Usually in Latin. Genealogical value for all but aristocratic families limited but useful for some historical research.
Military Records 1800s	Service acts.	Provincial Archive of State. Rarely preserved.	2	Limited genealogical value.