Italian Ancestry

Digital download

The Italian Records Kit: Find, Request & Read Your Ancestors' Records

$29 $39

Black-and-white photograph of immigrants standing on the steerage deck of the ship Friedrich der Grosse.
Immigrants on the steerage deck of the Friedrich der Grosse. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

Launch price in US dollars. The crossed figure is the list price we expect to test later, not a limited-time claim about a shop that is already open.

The kit is a practical bundle for people doing their own Italian family history. It collects the pieces that are slow to assemble yourself: the order of research, the wording of a polite request, the vocabulary on the page, and the logs that keep a long correspondence straight. It does not search the archives for you, and it does not tell an office to issue anything.

Who it is for

Buy it if you already know you will write to Italy, or if you are about to, and you want the Italian text, the English meaning, and a place to track replies. The free pages on this site teach the same method. The kit is the packaged version: templates you can edit, worksheets you can reuse, and a glossary you can keep next to a register.

Skip it if you only need one free example. The comune letterand the parish letter are on the site, and threeworksheets can be printed from the browser.

What is inside

Version 1 is a ZIP of PDF and DOCX files, delivered by the payment platform's download link after checkout is connected. A "make a copy" link for Google Docs and Sheets, and a Notion tracker, will be named inside the PDF. Those files are not in this repository yet.

  • Research guide

    A step-by-step PDF that starts from records in the country where the family settled, identifies the comune, checks Antenati and FamilySearch, and logs what is still missing.

  • Antenati walkthrough

    How to open a comune's registers, move by year and record type, use name search only where a register is indexed, and write a citation for an image.

  • FamilySearch walkthrough

    Catalog search, browsable image groups, and what to do when an image is limited to a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library.

  • Letter templates in Italian

    Editable requests to a comune's Ufficio di Stato Civile, a parish priest, and a state archive, plus a reminder and a fee question. Each has an English translation. Every request says the purpose is genealogical family history.

  • Italian and Latin glossary

    Headers, relationships, occupations, months, numbers written as words, and common abbreviations from civil and parish registers.

  • Annotated sample records

    Line-by-line notes on public-domain or family-owned examples of birth, marriage and death acts from more than one period. The samples are part of the paid bundle, not this web page.

  • Worksheets

    Ancestor profile, comune finder, record log, correspondence tracker, citation sheet and family group sheet.

  • Quick-reference cards

    One-page sheets for choosing a record type, reading Italian dates, and naming the usual register series.

What a request is allowed to say

The letters ask for an extract or a full copy per ricerca genealogica / storia familiare. That is a family-history request. It is not a request for a certificate for a court, a consulate, or any other legal use. If an office replies that it issues a different form, follow that office's instructions. The kit cannot override them.

Price and refunds

The launch price is $29. The list price written into the page is $39. Both numbers come from a comparison with other genealogy downloads and short courses, made while planning the kit. They are prices we intend to test, not a promise that this price will convert.

Once the shop is open, the refund policy is 14 days, no questions asked. Write to hello@italianancestry.org with the purchase email. If the download fails, we would rather refund than argue. Archive fees that you pay a comune or a parish are not ours to refund, because those offices are not part of this sale.

What you still have to do

You still have to identify the person, the town and the approximate year. You still have to look at Antenati and FamilySearch before you write, so you do not ask for a volume that is already free online. You still have to pay any fee the office names, in the way the office names. You still have to read the handwriting, with the glossary as a help rather than a translation of your specific page.

Screenshots of Antenati, if a later version of the kit includes them, have to be our own captures, and they have to stay within the portal's terms of use. This sales page does not reproduce register images.

Checkout

The button uses the checkout URL in the site config. That URL is empty until a Lemon Squeezy product (or another shop) exists and the ZIP is actually attached to it. Buying is not possible from this page today. The button states that, instead of sending you to a dead payment link.

Read the method first

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