Italian Orphans/Adoptions

[Biff83]

I've been helping someone referred by the local library and she raised a question for which I do not have an answer.
In the 1800s if a child became an orphan as an infant and was taken in by another family, would there have been any civil documents kept at the Stato Civile indicating this?

Biff

[suanj]

Hi Biff.
If a child was a foundling, the name of who raised it was written in the birth registration. Most often it was the name of the biological mother. It did not legitimize it but it raised it. Sometimes some poor families raised him to get help from the municipality. If nobody wanted this child instead, then he was sent to an orphanage. If subsequently the child was legally adopted, that is, he took the surname of the adoptive father, then there was an official notarial procedure, which was then sent to the municipal registry office and I believe that they drafted a new birth certificate, because the child abandoned the old identity, or the adoption was transcribed the adoption on the his birth registration. I personally have never found one. But surely the legal adoption was recorded in the notary's archive and at the municipality.

If instead the child passed the childhood in an orphanage then he could go to work and at times he was welcomed in the home of the employer, and for this orphan or foundling this family became his family.
The criterion is this: legal adoption is recognizable because the child takes a surname that is not that of birth, there are documents, instead the raising of a child in a family is not recognizable because the child retains the surname he had at birth and there are no documents of who raised it. Sometimes there are the resolutions of the subsidy in money paid by the Municipality, to a family, to make him grow up the orphan or the foundling. The resolutions when they exist are either in the municipal or provincial archives I don't know exactly but if they have not been destroyed there are. In this case, reading the resolutions of the years in which the child was raised, you can find out the name of the family that raised him. For example: Disbursement of 5 lire for the subsidy in favor of the family ... for breastfeeding and raising the baby .....
Regards,
suanj

[Biff83]

Thanks, suanj. Much appreciated.

Biff

[Italysearcher]

You can also reqquest information from the Brefotrofio (orphanage) where the child was sent.