How to use the albero genealogico coratino and the Database

HOW TO USE the family tree and the 'Database dell'Atelier Généalogique dello stato civile italiano')

The choice of an on-line site to consult our tree, and to create your own

The origin of the familytree and the database is a research conducted at the request of the late Francine Canepa (see on our website www.emigrazione-corato.org the section ‘Qui sommes-nous ?’ and ‘Résumé du projet’ (Summary of the project entitled 'A Tale of Two Twinned Cities: Corato and Grenoble'). After Francine took DNA tests in September 2015 with the American companies Ancestry and 23andMe, our Albero Genealogico Coratino grew to contain over 20,000 people by January 2021. Francine's 'raw DNA data' has also been transferred to MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, Gedmatch, LivingDNA and Geneanet, resulting in numerous DNA matches, with the result that the albero contains the trees of these individuals.

By examining the family tree, you may be able to save yourself hundreds of hours of research, if you discover that the tree already contains all or part of your family. In general, you have the best chance of finding your ancestry in the 'albero genealogico coratino' if you look for the name of a person born around 1850, or before.

To access the 'albero genealogico coratino' see the section 'Arbre/Albero/Family Tree' on our site. We recommend that you go to Ancestry, because our tree is updated in real time on this site, while this is not the case on the other addresses (notably Geneanet and MyHeritage, which can nevertheless claim to have more trees of European genealogists).

By registering on the Italian Ancestry.it site, you get 'basic' access to the other language versions of the site, and registration costs only €9.95 per year. In doing so, you will have the best possible access to family trees created both by Coratini who have emigrated to the USA, and by people who have taken a DNA test.

On Ancestry, creating an online tree is very easy, in terms of entering data, adding new people, finding matches with the trees of other people doing similar research: it is even possible to copy entire families and siblings, even if you have to check the authenticity of what you copy. With a single registration, you can create as many trees as you want. The Family Tree Maker software, linked to Ancestry, allows you to test hypotheses offline by creating experimental trees.

In our 'albero genealogico coratino', an asterisk after the first name means that the person is part of a line leading from a person who has done a DNA test (or, in some rare cases, simply from a person for whom a tree has been created) to a common ancestor with another person who has done a test. A tester has a suffix number in 'centimorgans' (cM), the measure of the total number of chromosomes he or she shares with Francine Canepa, the person for whom the tree was originally created.

To access the database (see the section 'database albero genealogico' on our site)

To search in the database, it is necessary to open a Google account (free) and to obtain a gmail.com address: https://accounts.google.com/signup/v2/webcreateaccount?flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=SignUp

Then, you just have to ask for an invitation to ateliergenealogique@gmail.com to be able to search in the database by entering a family name or a name and surname. If you don’t have a Google account, a consultation of the database will produce only a list of records.

The database will allow you to verify the authenticity of what you find in the Albero Genealogico Coratino. These are acts taken from the site of the Italian Stato Civile, Antenati.it, from 1809 to 1900; and from Familysearch.org, from 1901 to 1910.

On Antenati.it, the section 'Trova i Nomi' allows you to make a quick search in the birth records from 1878 (second part) to 1900 inclusive.

To access the registers on Familysearch.org, you have to search in Catalogue, then by Place: we have provided a guide with the file Locating indexes on familysearch (312.28 Ko) or Locating indexes on familysearch (546.94 Ko), which helps you locate annual tables from 1901 to 1910.

Since the Stato Civile records available online stop in 1910, if you are looking for the ancestry of someone born in 1924, for example, you may be able to find their parents' birth certificates, or their marriage certificate, before 1910.

When searching for a name in the database, be sure to try several spellings: for example, Menduni or Menduno (or even Mennuto), La Franceschina or Lafranceschina, La Marca or Lamarca, etc. Always look for the complete surname, the first 3 letters are not enough.

The list of surnames Liste des patronymes 202101 (158.19 Ko) or Liste des patronymes 202101 (138.67 Ko) will allow you to check the spellings of the names in the tree and in the database. If you download the Excel version of this list, by clicking on a name you go directly to the page with this name on Geneanet.

The references of the records

The references of each record are made in this way, for example :

N-1895-Corrado De Robertis-Corato-atto 984-vue 333

N = birth; Bapt = baptism ; M = marriage; D = deceased; Pub.Mar (French) = marriage banns ; atto (Italian) = record number; vue (French) = view number in Antenati.it or Familysearch.org.

The 'naturalization' files

The database also contains files concerning the naturalization of the Coratini in France: this collection was created from a consultation of the monumental work of Maurice Loisel, "Liste des personnes ayant acquis ou perdu la nationalité française de 1900 à 79", Ministry of Social Affairs and National Solidarity, Paris, published between 1943 and 1983.

To check if your ancestor was naturalized in France, search first in the 'cognomi cercati' file Naturalizzazioni cognomi cercati (33.71 Ko). This lists the surnames that have been searched, including those for which no naturalization has been found. A green box for a particular surname means that naturalization of a person with that name is present for a given decade. A red box means that no one with that name was naturalized during the decade.

The file "cognomi cercati" (surnames searched) does not include by any means ALL the Coratini included in the family tree: some surnames have not been searched. In other cases, there are no cases of naturalization of people with a particular surname.

When a naturalization has been found for a given decade, follow up with a search in 'cognomi trovati' Naturalizzazioni cognomi trovati (75.71 Ko)  and Naturalizzazioni cognomi trovati (49.05 Ko). This will find all cases where a particular surname is included in Loisel's work, either as the bearer of the surname or as a wife's maiden name. For example, "Balducci 1960b, De Palma, De Santis, Vangi, Mangione" will show you not only the main surname, Balducci, but also the surnames of the wives.

You can find the photo of the page where "Balducci 1960b" appears by searching in 'naturalizzazioni-cognomi' (to be found only on Google Drive). You will then find the number of the naturalization file on this photo: for example, 14524x29 for the wife Vangi of Vincenzo Balducci. This file can be found either at the Departmental Archives (AD38) in Grenoble or in the National Archives in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. To obtain the file in Pierrefitte, you can write to the Cercle Généalogique de l'Est Parisien: contact@cgep93.org.

When consulting 'cognomi trovati' (pdf version) on Google Drive (but not on our website), 'find' will highlight, one after the other, the occurrences of the surname you are looking for. As with the list of surnames, it is also possible to download an Excel version of 'cognomi trovati' from our website, to work offline. By using the 'filter' function in the Excel file, it is possible to list the occurrences of a surname for the decades from 1900 to 1979.

Finally, there are also a few photos of expired residence permits kept in the Isère Departmental Archives (AD38) in Grenoble. You can find a list of the cards in the database by typing ‘CS’. We hope to complete this list later.

Best of luck for your research!

James Smith, ateliergenealogique@gmail.com . Tel: 0033 (0) 689434343

Marseille, January 2021