The request
The Onoma studio was contacted by F.M, who wished to find their relatives in the USA.
The client knew that their grandfather emigrated to New York in the early 1900s, and that there he established an Italian-American lineage.
More than 100 years later, F.M. began searching for their family in the USA, of whom they had no information whatsoever.
Sig. Angelo 
Il Sig. Angelo William 
New York City
The research
Thus the research began from the client’s grandfather, by retrieving his birth, marriage and death certificates. Unfortunately, all these events took place in Italy. The same was true for his wife. We decided to then focus on the lives of his children. For males, as usual, the traditional search for birth certificates is accompanied by the military search, in order to obtain more information.
We had the confirmation of moving in the right direction once we visited the State Archives in Salerno and went through the military draft documents until we found Nicola M.’s name. We learned that he was exempted from the draft for a peculiar reason: “abroad resident: New York”.
Ever since, the research was focused on the American archives, opposed to the Italian ones. The objective was to not only retrace Nicola M.’s life, but also that of his many brothers and sisters. Indeed, we soon discovered that his father had 15 children, and some of them were born in New York. Now, the new objective was to identify those who decided to live in the USA, and then identify their descendants.
Finally, months after we started our research, we find Anna Maria and her son G., who live in Staten Island. Anna Maria is F. Marino’s first cousin.
Their first meeting took place via video chat, and we hope that the cousins will get to meet each other in person as soon as possible.