Province of Agrigento church records published!

[meovino]

Hello everyone!

For those that are not aware, church records for the entire province of Agrigento in Sicily were just recently published online. An account is required, but it is free. Here is the link! Enjoy!

https://www.registriparrocchiali.archiv ... cesiag.it/

[suanj]

great! thanks!
suanj

[rp76226]

Keep trying to register. Keep getting nowhere.

[rp76226]

Finally got in. No descriptive titles on photos. No photo indexes. Must read every photo within each group of photos of documents which are in Latin or sometimes Italian (neither of which I can do). Not efficient, nor practical. Can't do copies of photos except by screen print, but some of the page is blocked by a big down arrow if you do a screen print. Might help experts with lots of time and patience, but not most of us.

[meovino]

It appears most of the towns have indices, albeit not very legible. Either way, lots of practice is definitely needed to decipher Italian Latin church records. I am more than happy to help you with any research!

[rlw254]

Finally got in. No descriptive titles on photos. No photo indexes. Must read every photo within each group of photos of documents which are in Latin or sometimes Italian (neither of which I can do). Not efficient, nor practical. Can't do copies of photos except by screen print, but some of the page is blocked by a big down arrow if you do a screen print. Might help experts with lots of time and patience, but not most of us.

How do you think records are indexed in the first place? All of us wish there was a convenient search bar for bringing a family tree back thousands of years but it requires hard work. Not even years, decades. The publication of these records is a valuable addition to the toolbox of any researcher working in the area and should not be looked at as an inconvenience.

[rp76226]

Matt, where do I find the indexes for the town of Racalmuto?

[rp76226]

rlw254, most Italian civil records have indexes and these were created each year by the civil servants. If church records were not indexed, then how did priests find what they needed to find? For example, priests needed to insure that first cousins did not marry each other. Without indexes to church records, especially in the centuries where there were no civil records, how could priests find enough time to check the records without indexes? They couldn't possibly have enough time to read every church record on the books each time someone got married.

[meovino]

If the index exists for a certain group of records, it should be in a folder called "Indicies". I'm not sure this would exist for every town and every "book" though.

[erudita74]

Personally, while I'm grateful to finally have access to church records in my ancestral province of Agrigento, I'm finding this website difficult to navigate. I do see indices in the towns of Menfi and Santa Margherita di Belice, which are two of the towns I need. I found a marriage record in Menfi I needed which indicated that the groom was from SM. I found his baptism record in SM, and also his parents' marriage record listed in the SM index. I then found their marriage record from 1711. It wasn't easy to find though, despite having their names and the folio number from the index. I finally realized it was the record at the very bottom of the right page. I enlarged it in an effort to read the abbreviated names, and can make out the first name of the mother of the groom, and the first names of both of the bride's parents. Enlarging it though just made it blurrier and blurrier and unreadable, for the most part. I can't decipher accurately the surnames of the mothers, or the groom's father's first name. There is no way to save an image from this website. Early this morning, I had no problem signing into this website, but now I keep getting a message that something went wrong. When I initially registered for this website, I kept getting blocked, first for 20 mins at a time, and then for 24 hours. I finally sent a message through the "contact" option on the website and was finally unblocked by someone administering the site. So now I feel I am not making any progress at all. I'm very disappointed, to say the least. I really would like to post the 1711 marriage on this website to see if anyone else on the forum could decipher the sections I can't, but I honestly don't know how to do so. So, if you've gotten access to this website, and can help, I'd appreciate it.

The marriage record is dated, I believe, Nov 16, 1711. For Giovanni Scoma and Anna La Barbera. Folio 319, image 194, Santa Margherita di Belice, very bottom of right page. Groom's father ?, deceased, his mother living Margherita (surname ?); the bride's father I believe is Giovanni and her mother Maddalena, surname -possibly Campiciano???)

[rp76226]

Did you try doing a screen print of what you want to save, and then saving it from there?

[erudita74]

I do have the screen print but don't know how to upload it to the forum but, even when not enlarged at all, it seems blurry and is very difficult to decipher.
Erudita

[suanj]

on the first page, home, it is clearly written that the project was born out of the passion of a lay person, in 1990, and did not respect the modern canons of digitization. Then in the year 2000 this hobbyist donated his work to the Diocese of Agrigento which holds all the rights, copyright, and which has completed the work with more modern tools, instruments or so.

So there is a bad digitized part and a good digitized part. To make up for this handicap, users are asked to report illegible, missing, or blurred pages through the form on the right. Regarding the fact that they are in Latin I remember to all, that Latin is the Official language of the Catholic Church, and at least in the old past they were written in Latin.

The ink and papers was certainly not comparables to the moderns, but it is a heritage of unspeakable value, it is a great gift to have it online. Furthermore, with regard to the indexes, they were drawn up according to the will of the individual parish priests, and we cannot judge why sometimes were not drawn up. Also in other countries of the world, the records of the Catholic Church, sometimes have the indexes and sometimes not, but it was another era and we must accept them as they are and we can only thank.

So thanks to the Diocese of Agrigento which at the same time asks for donations to finish and improve digitization.

[rp76226]

Once you upload a screen print to your computer files or first paste it to "Paint"(make sure you specify that the screen print be "JPEG") and then upload it to your computer files. Next you use the Attachment feature under New topic to upload your computer saved jpeg photo of the document to the Forum.

[mmogno]

Marriage record dated Nov 16, 1711. For Giovanni Scoma and Anna La Barbera. Folio 319, image 194