Family Search releases Italy, L'Aquila records from 1809-1865, 1911-1943

[Dbiv21]

Hello,

I'm looking for my ancestors from Chieti (Ortona) Italy. Yesterday Family Search released records from L'Aquila. I see that L'Aquila is the capital city of the Abruzzo region. Is it worth my time to search that directory? Thanks.

[saccolicious]

The city L'Aquila is in the province of L'Aquila. Chieti is its own province in Abruzzo and as far as I know, none of the records from Chieti are available online yet.

[lcmor]

Hi there! If you have information such as names and dates of birth it is possible to contact Ortona comune direct and get copies of birth/marriage/death certificates. But yes it is true that Chieti don't have the records online yet. That said, I'm going to the state archives in Chieti this week so I will try to find out if there is any move being made towards putting the documents online.

Who specifically are you looking for?

[Dbiv21]

Hello,

Thanks so much for the reply. My father's side of the family, surname is Cardarelli. All i know is my Great-Great Grandfather was Tomasso Cardarelli and his wife Maria. Both i'd imagine were born between 1840-1860 in Ortona.

My Great Grandfather was Albert (born 1882), his brother Giovanni (John) (born 1879 or 1880), both born in Ortona before immigrating to the US (Clarksburg WV, Warren OH) in 1905. I do have their records in the US, but nothing in Italy.

Supposedly they have another brother Nunzio that stayed in Italy. I actually have written Chieti and Ortona, but they were unable to find any records.

Also, do you know of any cemeteries out there? i've been looking on Google earth but can't find anything other than the WWII memorial cemetery.

Any help would be tremendous! I'm sort of stuck on that side of the family. And i'm getting nowhere on Ancestry.com.

My email is Dbiv321@gmail.com

-Dennis

[lcmor]

Hi again Dennis!

Cardarelli is not a name normally found in the province of Chieti...today there are only a couple of families living in Casalbordino with the name. It is definitely more prevalent in L'Aquila. That said, if you look up the surname on the Liberty Ellis Foundation site there are quite a few claiming their last place of residence as Ortona and they were heading for West Virginia. Today the name doesn't exist in Ortona. Do you think it is possible that the family moved there for work before heading on to the states? Cardarella is an extremely rare name that is found only in Abruzzo and Lazio. In Abruzzo it's only found in Chieti in a place called San Salvo, which is close to Vasto. It may be worth looking there too as it is only down the coast from Ortona. Let me know if I can be of more help. My email address is: info@abruzzowithlove.com Good luck with your search!

[lcmor]

Also, just to follow up, I did speak to the people at the archives in Chieti this morning and they said that the process has already been started to index and and digitalize the birth, marriages and deaths for the province of Chieti, but they couldn't give me a time frame for it. Possible years rather than months sadly.

[lmko213]

dennis
did you ever find any info? I have some. not a lot. Of course now more info online and yes they were in Ortona per the Italian records online Family search. Giovanni was my grandfather
Lynn