FamilySearch International announced free access to over 150 million Italian historical genealogical records—the largest online collection of its kind. The unprecedented initiative is the result of collaboration between FamilySearch, the Italian government, the Italian State Archives (Direzione Generale per gli Archivi or DGA), and many other archi...

Thursday, October 11 and Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 1:30 pm. Lewes Public Library - 111 Adams Avenue - Lewes, Delaware. Call to register: 302-645-2733. The popularity of ancestry research reflects a deep hunger for knowledge about self. Our ancestors endow us with more than genes; they help connect us to ourselves. Cultural inheritances are a re...

The US World Herald can exclusively reveal the 100 most common Italian last names in America. A team of Census researchers spent months going through data according to the lead author of the study. The ranking includes a diverse collection of names from Amato to Volpe. Coming out tops were 48,126 people registered as Russo. Arthur Himler, managing...

Genealogy conferences all over the nation almost always have a room set up for vendors to sell genealogy-related items such as books, maps, how-to manuals and old postcards. There are always vendors who sell T-shirts with humorous genealogy pun-laden sayings. The most common joke (I use the term loosely) is worn by about 20 percent of the attendees...

If not, here’s your chance to win a Genealogy Research Project! Contest begins October 1, 2018! In honor of Italian American Heritage Month, the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America (OSDIA) is holding a contest to win a genealogy research project donated by My Italian Family (valued at $2,000). Through the entire month of October, individua...

Most of us take for granted that we know who our parents are and where they come from. But that's not the case for children of adoption, especially when they weren't even born in the U.S. However, an area man's search for his roots have finally paid off. Dr. Kerry Sachetta came to the United States from Rome, Italy, just a few months after he was b...

The US Census Bureau's American Community Survey asks millions of Americans every year several questions about their economic, social, and demographic situations. One of those questions asks respondents to report their families' ancestries, from Italian to German to Mexican. Using that self-reported ancestry data from the Minnesota Population Cente...

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have come and gone, and many friends and family members posted photos honoring their parents, as did I. As a genealogist, I can tell from the photos people posted just how well they have preserved their photo collections. Some people have 20 clear sharp images of themselves with their father or mother over a range of y...

I’ve had more than a few good cries since my father passed away in early May. He lived a long life and he was busy and robust until the end, and I’m grateful for that. But in some ways, it makes the loss even harder to bear. Tears still flow over the smallest of things, like driving to Joseph’s Finest Meats for the first time without my dad’s sausa...

E poi si dice che ormai si è perso il ‘senso della famiglia’: nell’era dei social che – almeno virtualmente – rendono tutti vicini, anche se dall’altro capo del mondo, c’è ancora chi non riesce a fare a meno del ‘richiamo alle origini’ e fa davvero di tutto per riscoprire le proprie radici. Anche se le proprie radici sono in un paesino ormai quasi...