As a nation state, Italy has emerged only in 1871. Until then the country was politically divided into a large number of independant cities, provinces and islands. The currently available evidences point out to a dominant Etruscan, Greek and Roman cultural influence on today's Italians.
I have noticed that there are quite a few instances where a child is born to couples that are living together and at a later date they are married. Was this common it the 1800's? does it have anything to do with the laws regarding the church vs civil law?
I've made several cousin connections using ancestry.com. With many of them we will simply exchange an email here and there on ancestry.com and compare some notes. I find that most people go to ancestry.com mainly to have a DNA test, an aren't that interested in building a family tree, making connect...
