Appointment tomorrow in Miami - will give updates

[b738pilot]

Hello everyone,

To give back to this community that has helped me so much the past 2 years, my appointment is finally coming up tomorrow in Miami and I will be happy to share my process in hopes it'll help others.

I am going paternally back to my great-great grandfather. My "unusuals" that I will have are:

- Missing grandmother, great grandmother, great grandfather, great-grandmother's birth certificates
- Missing great-grandparents marriage certificate
- Church records available only for ancestor (great-great grandfather) accompanied by a "No records before 1866" from my comune (which I had to actually travel to in order to get these documents, but the priest gave very professional detailed documents)
- Baptism certified document for my great-grandfather
- No records found from Census Archives and naturalization USCIS

I know that's a lot but we'll see how it goes. Luckily I have a clear proof for lineage and no name issues whatsoever so I'm betting on that. I'll check this forum the rest of today for anyone who has any advice but tomorrow afternoon I'll update this forum and say how it went and the entire process I went through. Wish my luck, grazie

[b738pilot]

Well, it wasn't as bad as I thought, even though it wasn't the result I wanted.

Good news: they don't really care about the female side if you are claiming paternal sides. All they asked for "birth and marriage, birth and marriage, birth and marriage" that's it.

Bad news: Jennabet was right, Marriage certificate is a big deal to them in Miami. That was when the consular said you can't apply. However, he did understand the frustration of lost documents in New York in the early 1900's, he said do some more research and just get any bit of information that can prove they were married (death certificate was not enough).

Baptism certificates were frowned upon, but he accepted them. He said I needed an apostille for american baptism certificates and a stamp from the archdiocese from the church in italy for the italian baptism records and they'll be fine.

Another good news though is he said I didn't have to wait for another appointment. He said when I have more information on the marriage and the apostilles for the baptisms, bring them in whenever I want and just say I had an appointment earlier (they do verify you did have an appointment so don't think you can avoid an appointment by doing this method).

Overall though, they were very friendly, reasonable, and extremely helpful. I got the feeling they want to have us jure sanguirinis claimers as italian citizens, and although it was crowded, I only waited no more than 5 minutes to be called. I even arrived 10 minutes late on Miami time

Any other questions about Miami let me know I'll be happy to answer. But I'm hoping someone can assist me here with obtaining more information on their marriage document so I can finish this application finally.

[D'an Fam]

When you say they don't care about the female side do you mean they don't care if the grandmothers' birth certificates has an apostille or that you didn't have it at all? Did those documents still needed to be translated?

The document guide that I printed out says my maternal grandmother and my fathers birth certificate doesn't need an apostille. I'm going through my mother> grandfather>great grandfather.

[jennabet]

I think b73pilot he means that he applied through is father's line and they weren't interested in documents from his mother's line because he didn't apply through her line. In your case, if the grand-mother in question is in the direct line you're applying through, you will need her birth certificate with an apostille.

[D'an Fam]

My mother is the only female in my direct line. I'm going through her father and grandfather.