Church of Later Day Saints is a great source of records for Italy. You can set up to order records and go in to view them during their open hours. To order some records there is a small fee, but it’s amazing the amount of information you can find.
Pictured is the baptismal record for my Great Grandfather. He passed away in 1918 from the flu when my grandmother was only 3 – so she had no memory of him. I can try to translate, but my Italy is non-existent.
I am not able to translate this given that I don’t know Italian. I can make out some information and pick out things that I think it says. Things like that his father is Bernardo Moretto and that it lists godmother and godfather – dates, and that it was in Costallamente.
Stories I remember hearing were that my great grandfather was a small (short) man compared to my great grandmother. He came to the US to Clinton IN a little before my great grandmother and worked in the mines.
He was in the process of applying for citizenship in the US when he died. We don’t know very much information about him or his family. My grandmother’s oldest sibling was a teenager when he passed away, so they may have had more memories of him. Interestedly there are also records showing that my grandmother’s oldest sister Frances was born before my great grandparents got married. Frances came to the US with my great grandmother and two sisters – Mary and Maggie. She passed away in Clinton IN a few years after coming to the US.
I’m not sure what the atmosphere was like for an unwed mother in Italy in the early 1900s, but I assume it can’t have been ideal. I will probably never find out the full story of what happened, but it’s interesting to think of all the possibilities that could exist. My great grandmother was an amazing and strong woman. After coming to the US and having 9 children she lost her husband (while my grandmother – the youngest) was only a couple years old. She then raised the children and supported her family by cleaning houses even through the depression. In a country where they originally didn’t speak the language and had no family to lean on, she lost two children before losing her husband.