Vital Records

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skooter555
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Joined: 20 Apr 2013, 23:49

Vital Records

Post by skooter555 »

Hi,

I am looking to get copies of vital records for my Italian ancestors from Bagheria, Palermo, Italy. One of the records that I am trying to find is the birth record of my great-great uncle Silvestro (Silvestre) Albanese who was born in the 1870s son of Salvatore Albanese and Provvidenza Caltagirone. I am aware that familysearch.org has multiple collections of microfilmed vital records throughout the 1800s, but one question that I have is do these collections have some sort of index or alphabetical listing of the people recorded in them, or do you just have to look through the entire collection of images? If any response could be given to this question it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tyler Radtke
erudita74
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Joined: 27 Aug 2012, 20:26

Re: Vital Records

Post by erudita74 »

skooter555 wrote:Hi,

I am looking to get copies of vital records for my Italian ancestors from Bagheria, Palermo, Italy. One of the records that I am trying to find is the birth record of my great-great uncle Silvestro (Silvestre) Albanese who was born in the 1870s son of Salvatore Albanese and Provvidenza Caltagirone. I am aware that familysearch.org has multiple collections of microfilmed vital records throughout the 1800s, but one question that I have is do these collections have some sort of index or alphabetical listing of the people recorded in them, or do you just have to look through the entire collection of images? If any response could be given to this question it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tyler Radtke

Tyler
There is no overall index for these records. I just looked over the records for Bagheria and pretty much you have, for any given year, birth records, followed by marriage records, followed by death records. There is not always an index at the end of a year for a particular type of record. So I found birth indices at the end of the years 1871 and 1872, but none at the end of 1873. The birth index for 1871 starts with image 512 of 3111, the one for 1872 starts with image 818 of 3111. There are, however, no Albanese births in either of these years. I didn't see an index for the 1873 births which end with image 959 of 3111. However, there are over 500 births in any given year, so it is possible that there is an index somewhere in the middle of that year. The 1874 birth index is image 1238. There are two Albanese in that index, records #28 and #396, but neither has the parents you need. One is a Pietra and one is an Antonino. I didn't see an index at the end of 1875 which ends with image 1650. Again there may be an index somewhere in the middle of this year. The birth records for 1876 end with image 1924 of 3111, but I didn't see any index at the end of that year. The 1878 index is image 2267 of 3111 images. There are two Albanese. Stefano is image 2135 record # 193, and Ignazio is image 2259 of 3111, record 573. Neither of these have the same parents as the person you are searching for. The 1879 births appear to be missing, although there are marriage publications, marriage acts, and citizenship acts for that year. The death index for 1878 starts with image 2532. Record #220 for 1878 death is for a Francesco Albanese. After that index, the 1879 births should begin, but they are not there. The 1880 birth index is image 2983 of 3111 images. There are two Albanese in that index. A Giuseppe is record #330 and a Carmelo is record #339 (the number of the record is incorrect in the index), but neither of these Albanese have the parents you mention in your post. The 1877 records are separate and there are two Albanese in that index, but not related to the people you mention. Those are a Giuseppe, record #63, image 27 of 416, and Francesco record #433, image 148 of 416. I think the 1870 records are missing.

I know that FHL is trying to get volunteers to index all of these records, but it is a very time consuming project which will take years and years to accomplish, if ever. So, for now, you pretty much have to familiarize yourself with the format of each group of records and learn to guess at which image number might be an index for a particular group of records.

Erudita
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