Quilici Quest!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

A blog where I learned a lot about this process

This guy got his citizenship, documented the whole thing:

http://www.ghidinelli.com/italian-citizenship

Trouble at Vital Records

At vital records in Chicago yesterday, the clerk could not find a death record for Isabelle Quilici, he was convinced she must have died in another county. However, I found this on ancestry.com:

does anyone know any detailed information about her death? Otherwise I'll just try again next time I go.
Also, I have no date for their marriage, which I need to get the certificate

Naturalization papers for Enrico

I dont have an official copy yet, but found this image.
Oct. 12 1896, Cook County Court (Chicago)

Enrico and Annunziata visit italy with their three children

not pertinent to the citizenship process, but interesting. there's also records that Enrico went back alone once

1910 census, shows Belle Guiney age 12, and her whole family

the ship manifest for Enrico and Annuniata, Oct 1893

Ciao famiglia!

You are descended from the great Enrico and Annunziata Quilici who sailed to this country upon the good ship Werra on October 9th 1893.
Before naturalizing and forfeiting their Italian citizenship, they gave birth to Giuseppe Quilici, American citizen for being born here, and Italian citizen by blood. Whether he knew it or not, Joseph passed on that citizenship to his children, and whether they knew it or not, they passed it on down the line again.
Italy has no generational limit to jure sanguinis, citizenship by blood, so long as the complete, unbroken line can be proven.

So lets all pool our efforts! this is what we need to show the consulate that we have, in fact, always been citizens of Italy:

Birth, death, and marriage certificates for every person in the lineage, including spouses. Certificates of Naturalization for Enrico and Annunziata, which prove Giuseppe was born with citizenship. Divorce decrees if applicable. All doccuments must be translated, and all documents pertaining to the "Italian side" of the family must be apostilled (a certification proving authenticity to the Italian gov't). All birth certificates must be the more official "long form" which shows the names of the parents.

Once it's all gathered, it's presented to the consulate (once its in their records it can be used for citizenship claims by other family members, so we dont all need copies)
You must meet with the consulate in your city of residence, and meetings sometimes take a year or so to get, so schedule early.
searching for stories of people doing the same thing, it looks like the whole process, start to finish, is about 4 years.
But after that we're all passport-holding Italian citizens! Free to live and work in Italy or anywhere in the EU! And don't worry, this doesn't affect our US citizenship.
All we have to do is track down those documents, so lets do it!

Any information you uncover, just post it on this blog, it will be our centralized knowledge station

Pages