Dual citizenship - Gg-grandparents born in Napoli

[jeannierivera]

Hello I first want to say how impressed I am with this site. I discovered you all yesterday and made my first post expecting to maybe get a reply oneday, but to my surprise and delight Vj replied so quickly and in jsut a few hours I gained so much insight and was able to fill in an incredible amount of gaps in my family history. Thanks so much.

The reason I am writing today is this: My gg-grandfather immigrated to the us in 1888 from Napoli (according to my grandfather) my g=grandfather was born in NY in 1889 = not sure if he ever naturalized but I am sure if he did it was way after my g-grandfather was born. In Census 1920 he is listed as an alien, my g-grandfather married in ny and my grandfather was born 1921 - then dad - then me,,,

According to what I have read it appears that I do qualify to apply for dual cit. as the the line does not seem to have been broken.

Now I do actually want to go to live in Italy...not immediately soon...but w/i a few years.

Does it seem to you that I do qualify?

[jeannierivera]

Am I understanding correctly? I believe that I need to locate my gg-grandparents birth records from Italy and their marriage record.
My g-grandfathers birth/marriage records from NYC - also my g-grandmothers birth certificate from NYC

My grandparents birth, marriage ( I have originals but I think I need to get certified copies) and my grandfather's death certificate.

My parents birth/marriage
My birth/marriage
My boys birth certificates.

MY PROBLEM: I have no concrete proof of my gg-granfather's birth being in Napoli and no actual commune I have hit a brick wall with this. I am considering just writing to Ufficio di Stato Civile di Napoli if I can find an address and see if they come up with something.

In addition I have looked in the italian white pages, there are 417 Davide listed in the phone book... I listed all the address and more than 1/4 are in Napoli and more than half left are in comunes in the province of Napoli so my grandfather may have had good information on where his grandparents came from.

any suggestions? advice? comments? need a bit of direction here

[mler]

It does seem you qualify. I had the same problem with my grandfather's birthplace. Everything said Napoli, but I couldn't be sure. It turned out to be------Napoli. So why not try Napoli first and see what happens.

[jeannierivera]

Thanks so much for your reply. Do you by any chance have an address to where you wrote to. I am searching the net now and am a little confused as to where to send a request and what to ask for.

I am looking at asking for a family certificate? Does that sound correct and do you think they will respond if nothing is found?

Oh one more question if you don't mind, I was reading some other posts a minute ago - what is the 1912 rule? regarding naturalization. Though I do not believe he naturalized ever, and of course would need proof of that I am trying to dot my i's and cross my t's as much as possible.

[suanj]

1910 United States Federal Census
about Davide Cordealeno
Name: Davide Cordealeno
[Davide Cordialino]
Age in 1910: 52
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1858
Birthplace: Italy
Relation to Head of House: Head
Father's Birth Place: Italy
Mother's Birth Place: Italy
Spouse's Name: Rose
Home in 1910: Brooklyn Ward 6, Kings, New York
Marital Status: Married
Race: White
Gender: Male
Year of Immigration: 1893
Neighbors: View others on page
Household Members: Name Age
Davide Cordealeno 52
Rose Cordealeno 52
Jennie Cordealeno 23
Joseph Cordealeno 20
Frank Cordealeno 17
Anthony Cordealeno 15
Loretta Cordealeno 12

--------------------------
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957
about Davide Cordialino
Name: Davide Cordialino
Arrival Date: 5 Sep 1888
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1856
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Port of Departure: Naples, Italy
Destination: New York
Place of Origin: Italy
Ethnicity/Race­/Nationality: Italian
Ship Name: Columbia
Search Ship Database: Search the Columbia in the 'Passenger Ships and Images' database
Port of Arrival: New York
Line: 20
Microfilm Serial: M237
Microfilm Roll: M237_524
List Number: 1204
Port Arrival State: New York
Port Arrival Country: United States

I believe that some error in the surname/first name....they are viceversa ....
before of anything better to know what is the italian surname and what the italian name of your ancestor....
regards, suanj

[jeannierivera]

Excellent information I didn't think to search it reversed... I had found a census for 1900 with my last name Davide/ and 1920 Davide / 1930 it was listed as David but I didn't have any info from 1910 thank you.

And this is the FIRST time I say any passenger list I have been hunting thank you so much.

Wow my gg-grandfather has had many many spelling of that first name - I am not even sure which spelling I should choose to use to request information from Napoli or where to send it of if I should send it as you can see I am a bit unsure of what my next step would be.

I am very interested in learning of italian relatives still living in Italy, as well as citizenship any suggestions?

BTW I looked at your website and read through the testimonials looks great would love some more information on your services - especially finding that birth place/comune if it turns out not to be Napoli

[jeannierivera]

Naturalization Records?

Any suggestions on searching and/or requesting Naturalization Records if any with several different spellings of my gg-grandfather's first name?

[whymse]

Your history is a lot like mine... My GG-Grandfather born 1857 in Salerno, left Italy ~1883, G-Grandfather born in Brooklyn 1887, Grandfather born in Bronx in 1919.

I will caution you that you are going to be needing _a lot_ of documents and you'll possibly run into issues like I did: My gg-grandparents had 7 kids in Brooklyn. They only reported the last child in 1897 to the city/state. I have baptisms for 4 of the 6 "unreported" births, but the city has no records.

Based on http://cognomi.sapere.alice.it/it_map.php and looking up both "Davide" and "Cordialino" I would believe that "Davide" is the correct surname from the Campania region, since there are no "Cordialino" surnames that turn up for Italy. Those records are current, but the lack of any names gives more confidence.

I trust you have seen http://italiangen.org (or Steve Morse as vj suggested) and used their vital record database?
Surname: Davide
Name: Cordialivio
Age: 62 y
Death: May 23 1922
Cert #:11494
County: Kings

If you don't mind spending the $10 you could request the cert online at:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/html/vi ... eath.shtml

For reference, I requested ~20 death/marriage/birth certs from NYC.gov and almost all came within 3-4 weeks (mid-July 2008).

I ended up requesting any cert for the immediate family. It ended up costing a fair bit, but it helped me find new spellings and I made connections, such as them all living at the same house for decades.

Lastly, I had contact with the Archivio di Stato di Napoli and they don't have their military enlistments digitized and they have incomplete records from 1842-1930, so they can't look up by name to find comune. One technique is to email the state archives and see if they can find the person based on birth year, but it doesn't look like Napoli can help you based on my email from them on August 12th. Salerno on the other hand was able to find my ancestor without comune, but they had him listed by his 2nd of two middle names.
If you can lock-down the year with high confidence then you can give the Archivio di Stato di Napoli a shot. They took about a week to respond to my email, which was in my broken Italian.

I dealt a lot with NYC/Brooklyn so I may be able to help with questions around that process.

[mler]

I'm sorry I can't help you with Napoli. I used a service because I was feeling really insecure about the process.

The 1912 law established jure sanguinis as the method for transmitting Italian citizenship. Before that date, jure sanguinis was custom rather than law. One consulate, SF, will not recognize that citizenship is transmitted before that date. This means that if an ancestor naturalized in 1910 and his child was born in 1900, the child would not obtain citizenship because the law was not yet in place.

It seems that as of this date, this is only an issue in SF.

[jeannierivera]

Our histories are incredibly alike aren't they? Thanks so much for answering me I am living in SC at this time and wish I was in NYC with the rest of my family to do some of this foot work myself.

I have to tell you I am impressed that Napoli responded to an email request at all...I can just imagine email someone in our government and actually expecting an answer HUH (ex-government employee here) LOL

I do have a month and year my gg-grandfather was born I am fairly certain April of 1857. It is definitely worth a shot to me to write to the Archivio di Stato di Napoli. Don't have anything to lose by doing so. Can you give me the email address that you wrote to? Also any suggestions on where I can start on translating my emails to Italian. I would not trust my Brooklyn school italian education to be able to write an email that didn't sound absolutely rediculous LOL

What did you ask them? What info should I include. sorry for so many questions the past two days have been very exciting... I have got more information in the past two days from new "friends" on this site then my whole life trying to pry info out of my family...LOL

[jeannierivera]

That 1912 law is kind of scary isn't it? In my case do you think it effects me... my gg-grandfather born italy 1857, immigrated 1888, (I don't think he ever naturalized) my g-grandfather was born in NY 1898 - I would have to apply through the Miami consulate.

[mler]

If your gggrandfather never naturalized, there is no reason for concern. In fact, I would not be too concerned unless I lived in the SF jurisdiction. I think your biggest difficulty will be getting the "no record" letter, which for some reason moves very slowly.

You're going back far--many documents. Best of luck.

Edited to add:

I used ICGS, a service, to get the birth certificate. I received it in eight weeks, but that was more than two years ago, and recently they haven't been getting good reviews. I think it's a good plan to write to them directly, but I would suggest snail mail as opposed to e-mail. You can then follow-up with an e-mail without seeming too pushy.

I'm sure some kind Italian on this board can come up with the right address and help you write that letter.

[jeannierivera]

I sure hope so. I am in for the long haul. This is important to me as I can pass it along to my children. My oldest son (9yrs) is very excited to be going to Italy, we are learning history, art and the language together and he is just thrilled. I think this is a unique opportunity for us to hand down our much cherished heritage and that I would like to move to Italy within the next couple of years or at least spend a few years there citizenship will greatly enhance my being able to do so.

I am blessed to have found this forum as I am more confident now that this is an endeaver I can accomplish with all of your help of course

[mler]

I am really excited for you. The nice thing about the process is that you will learn a lot about your family too, and this is also something you pass on to your children.

You may want to visit these two forums: www.myitaliancitizenship.com and www.italylink.com

These are forums specifically geared to those applying jure sanguinis, and you will find much information about Miami and its requirements.

[whymse]

First thing I would do is to get the ball rolling with NARA in NYC for a search of naturalization records. I provided all the information I had on my gg-grandfather, and they came back 10 business days later with "no records found". It turned out in my case that I later found an 1894 (7 years after the birth of my great-grandfather) naturalization from Kings County Courthouse. NARA didn't find it because the soundex was different, but I stumbled across the index on footnote.com.

Here is info on NARA: http://www.archives.gov/northeast/nyc/ and you can email them based on information here:http://www.archives.gov/northeast/nyc/f ... cords.html


Next if you can provide the Archivio di Stato di Napoli with full name and birthdate then they may be able to search their records for you. In my case I gave them multiple different spellings and a 3 year birth range and they came back a week later saying they couldn't help because the records aren't digitized. If I had provided a comune I think they would have searched for me.
Here is the page for the Archives: http://www.archiviodistatonapoli.it/asnaCMS/

I emailed the as-na address in Italian pieced together from http://translate.google.com. I basically wrote that I was looking for the registro di leva for my great-great-grandfather born X in the province of Napoli and would like to request his military enlistments to find his comune.

Here is information on the records you would be requesting:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilpip ... _recds.htm
They are known as the "registro di leva"

Good luck.