What the Comune Sends You, and What the Record Says
Two official documents about the same birth. One is a form with the blanks filled in. The other is what actually happened that morning.
Silvio Aitelli was born at Nocera Inferiore on 5 July 1894. He is the brother of our founder's grandfather. Both documents below are genuine, both are about him, and both are reproduced in full — we can publish them because this is our own family.
What the comune sends you
This is an estratto per riassunto — an extract by summary — issued by the Ufficio dello Stato Civile. It is a real certificate, it is legally valid, and for many purposes it is exactly what you need. Here is everything on it:
- Aitelli Silvio
- 1894, record number 369
- Born the fifth of July, at 08:00
- At Nocera Inferiore, in Via Corso
- Male
- Son of Gregorio, and of Suriela Francese
- The marginal annotation for a later marriage: blank
Nine facts. Now look at what those nine facts were summarised from.
What the register says
Act 369 itself, in the register at Nocera Inferiore. The same birth, written down the afternoon it happened. It adds:
- His name is Silvio Mario. The extract gives one given name. The register gives two.
- His father was twenty-five. Gregorio Aitelli, di anni venticinque — so born about 1869. The extract names him and tells you nothing that would help you find him.
- His father was a ligatore, a binder, in a town that had the trade.
- His father came in himself. He was the declarant, standing in the Casa Comunale at two in the afternoon to report a birth at eight that morning.
- The house had no number. Nella casa posta in Via Corso al numero senza.
- His mother was living with him — seco lui convivente — which in an Italian act is a legal statement, not a courtesy.
- Two witnesses, named, aged and placed: Michele Cioffi, fifty-one, a tailor; and Ferraro Boffardi, twenty-eight, a farm labourer.
- Gregorio signed his own name. Both witnesses could not. Avendo detto i testimoni essere analfabeti.
- The officiant: Cavaliere Aurelio Bosco Lucarelli, the mayor.
Why the difference matters
One line in the register opens a generation the extract closes. Di anni venticinque — twenty-five — places Gregorio's own birth around 1869. That is a year and a town, which is a search. Without it you have a first name and nowhere to look.
And an extract can be wrong in ways you cannot see. A second extract, issued by a different comune for Silvio's brother in 1899, reversed their mother's name — printing her given name as a surname and inventing a given name from it. Nothing on the form tells you that happened. The register settles it: Suriela Francese, given name first, written in 1894 by the clerk who heard her husband say it.
That is the whole argument for reading the act rather than ordering the summary. A summary is accurate about what it contains. It simply contains less — and where it is wrong, it is wrong silently.
What this has to do with your family
Every Ask Orso report is built from acts, not extracts. We read the register page itself and print what it says, in the act's own wording, with the citation — the archive, the register, the act number — so a certified copy can be ordered by anyone, at any time, from the office that holds it.
A report contains citations, not copies of the documents. The citation is the hard-won part. We can also request certified copies on your behalf.