This weeks’ search had two challenge’s.  Finding living relatives and taking the family tree back to the microfilms so Anthony could do some of his own research.

Castelliri is a small town on the border of the Vatican States and was formerly known as Castelluccio.  Since they were just over the border, and part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicily’s, their civil records began in 1809.  Unfortunately, the early records from 1809-1865 did not survive various wars and earthquakes BUT a master index of births, marriages and deaths did survive.  It is one of the more complete master indexes in the area.  In alphabetical order by surname and broken into years, with paternal and maternal names listed along with the date and number of the act.

Using just the indexes, I was able to take the family tree back to 1809 and provide Anthony with all the names, dates and act numbers he needs to retrieve actual copies from the LDS microfilms.  This will also help him to order just the films he needs.

Anthony had visited Castelliri as a young boy and remembered the names of some of his Aunts and Uncles along with the street address where they lived.  This made the second part of the search so much easier now all I had to do was knock on some doors and reunite the family.