F.A.Q.'s - Frequently Asked Questions
- What can I expect from posting in your (or other) forums?
- Do I have to register to post?
- What are the posting rules of your forums?
- Why was my post deleted?
- How can I protect my email address from spammers?
- I don'know the province of my ancestors. How can I find it?
- I am unsure of the spelling of the municipality or province. How can I get it right?
- I do not know the place but the surname is very common and the results in the Italian white pages were too many
- How can I research in the White Pages? I don't know Italian and don't understand websites in Italian.
- Where do I find timetables of trains or buses in Italy?
- Where do I find addresses for townhalls, parish churches, archives?
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A forum is like any other website, and all the posts are liable to end up being indexed by the
search engines. So be careful in writing your message, do not disclose items that you want to keep to a restricted circle, and pay attention to spelling, nobody likes reading things written slovenly, or incomprehensible. If you write a message today, the chances are that in 6-8 weeks, that post will have been indexed by the king of search tools, Google. That means that people will keep reading what you've had
to say for months and years to come, even when this forum is no more online, since Google but also other search engines will store it in their cache.
Therefore, if by posting your aim is to connect with relatives or find more information on any topic, if your email has changed 1-2 years from now, you will never be able to know if the reply to your posting arrived. It is good practice to avoid this to add at bottom of the message a kind of signature, like your name and surname and at least the city where you live, so that someone who - anywhere in the world, any time in future years - wants to contact you, will find a way.
Therefore, if by posting your aim is to connect with relatives or find more information on any topic, if your email has changed 1-2 years from now, you will never be able to know if the reply to your posting arrived. It is good practice to avoid this to add at bottom of the message a kind of signature, like your name and surname and at least the city where you live, so that someone who - anywhere in the world, any time in future years - wants to contact you, will find a way.
While you can read all the postings, registration is required for anyone wishing to post messages. We operated messageboards since 1998 without registration but now the amount of damage done to the forums by spammers and worse is too much. Registration is a safeguard for the forums and all serious visitors. We do not "collect information" on users, we do not sell or give away e-mail addresses of members. We do not send unsolicited e-mail.
Posts which have nothing to do with the forum will be deleted. Postings that are against our forum rules will be deleted. For more details read our FORUM RULES
The most effective way to avoid spam is to keep your email address to yourself. Spammers can't get your address if you don't make it public. Only give your address to friends, family and co-workers, and ask them not to circulate it. Don't add your name to Internet directories, and ask directories to remove your name if you are already listed.
However, your posting in a messageboard will be useless if other visitors who have the information you need cannot contact you. There are several different options that will help keep the spam away.
However, your posting in a messageboard will be useless if other visitors who have the information you need cannot contact you. There are several different options that will help keep the spam away.
- Use a spam block filter if your Mail Service Provider has this service.
- Use a second email address. If your ISP doesn't provide a second address for free, you can get one from a free email provider. This way, all the spam will go to the secondary address, leaving your primary address free for legitimate email. Then check your "public" email address always through Webmail (not downloading to your computer) and remove the spam. When it gets too clogged just discontinue it, register another and in case repost your message.
- Scramble your address. This practice, known as munging or spoofing, means adding extra characters into your outgoing email address, so that Cary_Grant@isp.net become Cary_Grant_spamblock@deletethis.isp.net. The software that automatically collects addresses for spammers won't know that the address won't work, but you can add a note to your signature telling how to decode the address, for those legitimate responses to your post.
Unfortunately spammer programs will soon find a way to decode any attempt of this kind.
THEREFORE THE ONLY WAY IS NOT TO PUBLISH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS.
- One of the following documents (which someone among your relatives may also have ...) might give you the place of origin
- an extract of death, to be requested from the administration (county etc) where your relative deceased
- the immigration manifesto or naturalization paper
- an extract of marriage, to be requested from the local administration or church where the marriage was celebrated - If the above documents are not available, proceed to find where your ancestor's surname appears in Italy. In this researhc consider that most emigration was from Southern Italy directed abroad and to Northern Italy and Rome, therefore the results you may obtain for Rome and Piedmont or Lombardy may not be reliable as indicators of a place of origin. To check where the surname you are researching appears nowadays in Italy, you can use Italian White Pages, where you can search throughout Italy or limit to a region or province, inserting your surname in the "Cognome" field, then leaving the "Nome" field blank, and inserting in the "Dove" field the name of the region, or the abbreviation of the Province, to search throughout a Province, or the name of the place, to see if that place exists. If you write the extended form of the name of the Province, for example Napoli, you will obtain only the results included in the capital town of the Province, that is the comune of Naples. If you write NA, the results will include residents of the whole Province. If you do not know the abbreviation of the Province, click here to open a new window, then close it to come back here. CLICK HERE FOR A MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION
Check in our lists of Regions and Comuni. It is possible what your parents or grandparents knew and told you is different now. Places that were municipalities in the past may now be included in another municipality, and some municipalities have changed province when new Provinces were established. Also a new region was formed (Molise), which was previously one with Abruzzo. We have a complete (we hope) List of "Comuni" for Italy, that you can browse by clicking on the label "Regions" in the top navigation bar.
If your ancestors came through Ellis Island, visit http://www.ellisisland.org/ and research only by surname. If you get a great many results, the website will tell you "Your search returns ##### records, please enter a first name or first initial to narrow down your search". At this point repeat the research with at least an initial (try with the most common: A, C, G, F, M, P, V). When you have the results, choose in the right column "Name of town - edit" and you will see a List of the places of origin in Italy. They will appear in alphabetical order, but some may have the correct spelling.
If your ancestors came through Ellis Island, visit http://www.ellisisland.org/ and research only by surname. If you get a great many results, the website will tell you "Your search returns ##### records, please enter a first name or first initial to narrow down your search". At this point repeat the research with at least an initial (try with the most common: A, C, G, F, M, P, V). When you have the results, choose in the right column "Name of town - edit" and you will see a List of the places of origin in Italy. They will appear in alphabetical order, but some may have the correct spelling.
Your research may not be so desperate as it looks, but will require time, precision and patience on your part. Try to get also the surname of the wife/husband of the individual you are looking for, and if possible surnames for both his/her grandmothers. Then prepare a chart with the 2, 3 4 surnames you were able to get, and repeat the research through the Italian white pages listing all the Provinces and Comuni where the surname appears. Then see if you have places where all the surnames you were able to find for your ancestors appear.
There is no need to understand Italian, the results will appear as addresses in the form:
surname, name
zip code, town, province - street and number
Telephone
surname, name
zip code, town, province - street and number
Telephone
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