I am embarassed to say that apparently I committed the above mistake. Initially, when I requested records for my family in Italy and Tunisia, I included all requests in one letter, i.e. birth, death, marriage, etc. How silly of me. After reading many posts on this subject I realized that novices do make similar mistakes.

Postage to Europe is not cheap but, I have since, separated my requests one letter at a time. Considering most of my family is in Tunisia and Italy, there was a lot of postage and time spent. Plus, having to send the requests to different agencies also compounds the problem. Especially in the case of the Italian family in Tunisia.

And of course the letters to Italy had to be in Italian and the letters to Tunisia had to be in both French and Italian considering what agency you were making the request to.

I would think there would be a simpler way to do all this. Email for me has not worked but only in one or two cases.

Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

lilbees

libees,

I feel for you. I know a lot of people who have done the same thing and gotten no responses because the workload had been too much.

Email hadn't worked much for me either and the only thing that has worked is one by one requests. Even now, I'm finding the response times to get my answers has really slowed down but its the only way I can think of that actually works. I hope someone else has some suggestions about this.

I think I need to make another trip to the FHC. Its been months now since I've been there ....

I wish I could go to the FHC but in my case no records have been microfilmed in the areas I need. Wouldn't that be great. The only luck I have had is a family member who married a man from Termini Imerese. Then I found lots of information most of which was related to his family other than the notation of marriage which confirmed what I had.

lilbees

Have you seen the site that has church records from Tunisia? There are mostly Italian surnames there. Here is the site: debono.club.fr/mariage...intro.html

lilbees wrote:

I wish I could go to the FHC but in my case no records have been microfilmed in the areas I need. lilbees

No records?? Is this Italy or Tunisia? What towns?

Cathy,

Thanks to Suanj and Peter Timber on the IG forum I have browsed that site. There are many family members in that listing for marriages. Births only go through the "L" but because of the marriages of some I was able to find many children born as well. I am most interest in making contact with the latest born children who of course would still be around. I finally resorted to emailing a hotel to see if they would copy a section from their phonebook and email to me. Again, waiting..............

The site is also how I found to make requests to the Church for records. The cost is not too much. About $5.80 per record. Waiting..........

James, the town I am researching family in is Roccapiemonte, Campania, Salerno, IT. FHC has not microfilmed anything in the Campania area at this time. At least the last time I checked. I know several others beside myself that would love to have those records microfilmed.

Absolutely nothing in Tunisia either. You can get historical information but not much else. As far as I know there is nothing for the Church there either. Although I understand they have filmed many churches around the world. Tunisia is not one of them.

lilbees

lilbees

Just a Note: the University of Pennsylvania is doing a study on the Italian Colony in Tunisia. They did give me some contact information a long time ago which I have pursued. They are having the same difficulties I am because of the French possession and finally independence. Some records are found with the French and some with the Italian Consolate and some at the local Registration office. Inquiries have to go in all directions.

lilbees

My family is from Salerno too and I have not found any microfilm for that either. However, in my last issue of the Italian Genealogy Group newsletter, it did say that some Salerno comunes have started to show up on microfilm. Maybe we will get our towns soon! I can't think of any other way than one by one requests by letter. Sorry!

Thank you all for your suggestions and solice. These problems make genealogy a challenge and yet fun.

lilbees