Austria (now Italy) Ancestors-Where to find them?

Question

I am looking for the ancestors of my great great grandfather, Henry Ciola (1845-1907). Henry is from the Austria-Hungary Empire (1867-1918). After WWI the land in which he was from became Northern Italy. I do not know the name of the area/city in which he is from. Family Search has it listed as Trieste? Henry came the the US in 1871 and worked as a groomer/horseman for a wealthy family (Stevens), of Hoboken, New Jersey.  I am assuming he may of grown up in that environment. On his death certificate, his parents are listed as "Cannot learn". His wife did not know of his parents either. The Stevens family (Mary Stevens Lewis) was kind to the family by leaving money for him in her will. I am also trying to find records of the Stevens family to see if Henry listed his parents anywhere in the Stevens family records. My question is where to find things from here. I have been searching for 10 years in Austria/Italy records and New Jersey records and have not had much success. Where would Austrian records be located after WWI? What else am I missing?

Comments

Have you considered that he could have been from the former Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia? This area was part of the Austrian Empire to Italy’s north, whereas Trieste was more northeast.

Civil registration in northern Italy apparently began in 1866, probably after the territory became part of the Italian kingdom. Prior that I would expect practices similar to the rest of the Austrian Empire, which means the churches.

Church records which are presently in Italy have limited accessibility, all that is evolving. Most, with some exceptions, are not at FamilySearch.

That said, unless you have something that puts your ancestor in a specific town, chances of finding him are not high.

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George,

Thank you so much for your reply. I will be looking that region to see if I can find anything. There are a lot of records to look through that are not indexed yet! I truly appreciate your taking the time to share your knowledge with me.

Linda

Answer 1

Hi Linda! Before WWI there were 2 regions of what modern Italy is, that were still under Austrian (Habsburg Empire) rule: Trentino-Alto Adige (Südtirol in German, South Tyrol in English) and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Both became part of Italy after WWI.

Region Friuli-Venezia Giulia was known as Trieste before WWI. It's a multicultural region, with people from Austrian, Italian and Slavic origins. Trieste city is now the capitol city of the region. From what I've read, there were terrible battles on the territory during WWI, and parts of it (Gorizia) were completely devastated.

The vital records in the Habsburg Empire were kept exclusively by the Catholic Church. I'm afraid that without knowing the town of birth of your ancestor, finding his birth record is a daring task (if you did, you could write to the local parish or Diocese Archive). There are some digitalized records here: https://www.italianparishrecords.org/search-by-region/friuli-venezia-giulia. Unfortunately, due to ideological differences between the Italian Catholic Church and the LDSC, there's no agreement to add more Italian parishes to the FamilySearch Database so far.

Comments

Cristina,

Wow, thank you so much for the information, I was unaware that Trieste was part of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region before WWI; The information is VERY helpful and well written. I will look into the link and begin paging through the records to see if I can find anything. The surname of Ciola is not common and that does help out sometimes. :) Again, thank you so much!

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You're welcome! Also, you may check in the future this project: Matricula Online . It only has the one parish in Italian territory so far, but who knows...