How to get genealogical records

Here are some of the links that I have used to do my genealogical research.

New York City Vital Records at the Municipal Archives Information, links, and forms for obtaining vital records, i.e., birth, death and marriage certificates in New York City.

Short Forms and Long Forms If you are simply doing genealogical research, that is, you only want names and dates of your ancestors, a short form is sufficient. If you are collecting documents for international use, dual citizenship (see below), or will be getting an Apostille (see below), you will need a long form with a Letter of Exemplification attached. See this link for definitions.

VitalChek An online company through which you can order birth, marriage, and death certificates. As far as I can tell they do only short forms.

Office of the City Clerk--Marriage Records Here you will find information, forms, and on-line applications for obtaining records of marriages performed in the five boroughs of New York.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services The USCIS Genealogy Program searches its immigration and naturalization database for records related to specific immigrants. Once they locate a record you can order a copy of the record.

Social Security Death Index This free link through ancestry.com will allow you to search for a deceased ancestor.

Ancestry Go to Ancestry.com for all kinds of documents. This is where I got ships' manifests for all four of my grandparents. I was also able to get copies of census forms for 1920 and 1930, as well as US military registrations for both grandfathers.

U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Italy (The U.S. Embassy) Information, links, and forms on how to obtain vital records in Italy. I found this site very helpful.

Italian Embassy in Washington DC (The Italian Embassy) Information, links, and forms on how to obtain vital records in Italy, from the Italian perspective.

Comuni Italia When writing to Italy you will need to know the name of the comune and the provincia where your ancestor was born. Here is an Italian database with information on all Italian provinces and municipalities.

Comuni Italiani Another link to an Italian database of regions, provinces, and municipalities. Good links to city services.

Dual Citizenship and Citizenship jus sanguinis Here are various links related to Citizenship jus sanguini: US State Department information on Dual Nationality, Wikipedia, a Blog, another blog with good information. Do a Google search on "jus sanguinis." You will get a ton of hits. For some reason Italian Dual Citizenship uses the term jure sanguinis. I don't know Latin, but I think these two terms can be used synonymously.

Italian Dual Citizenship An online company that will provide documents and services to help you obtain Italian Citizenship jus sanguinis. It is very expensive to have professionals do work that you could do for a lot less money. But they do provide good information.

Italian Citizenship and Genealogical Services Another online company. Again, very costly to hire someone to do all this work, but a lot of good information.

Apostilles If you are serious about Dual Citizenship jus sanguinis, you will need to get an apostille (ă pŏs tēēl) for every US document that will be part of the application. This is a form of authentication, agreed upon through international convention (1961 Hague Convention), that allows countries to accept the authenticity and legality of foreign documents. It is like having a document notarized for international use. Here is a helpful blog on getting an Apostille for documents in New York State. US Department of State information on Apostilles.