Provincia di Isernia

Civil status is held in two distinct fonds with different origins.

Stato civile, 1809-1865, was transferred from the Archivio di Stato di Campobasso in 1972. It contains births, marriages and deaths; the preliminary marriage acts — processetti matrimoniali; the notification acts, that is the publications; and the atti diversi, drawn up from 1812. This is the copy that went to the competent territorial Tribunal, and it covers the comuni of the present province. Most of the registers have parchment covers.

Stato civile, 1866-1940, holds registers and allegati forming part of the documentation of the Tribunal of Isernia — the copy sent by the comuni to the tribunal. It was transferred from the Comune di Isernia, where it had been kept because the tribunal was housed until the 1960s in the former convent of San Francesco that also served as the municipal seat. The fond is held in buste and comprises registers of the several civil-status series together with their allegati.

The atti diversi in the earlier fond are worth requesting by name. They record what the three main registers do not: children who died before registration, corrections ordered by a court, deaths away from home.

Both fonds are fully digitised on the portal. For anything before 1970, check Campobasso as well — the provincial boundary is younger than the paperwork.

The Province of Isernia states that its official birth was 3 March 1970, following a campaign for provincial autonomy. Fifty-two comuni were separated from Campobasso to constitute it. That makes it one of the last Italian provinces created, and it means the institution is younger than most of the people whose records it holds.

The consequence for research is straightforward and easy to get wrong: every record made before 1970 was made under Campobasso, and for the region as a whole, every record before 1963 was made under Abruzzo, since Molise only became a separate region in that year. Three administrative layers sit on ground that has not moved.

The territory is the Alto Molise and the Mainarde, high Apennine country on the boundaries of Abruzzo, Lazio and Campania. Isernia itself is ancient — Aesernia, a Samnite town and then a Latin colony — and the province contains Pietrabbondante, the great Samnite sanctuary and theatre, which is the single most important surviving site of the people who fought Rome for a century.

Agnone, in the north, has cast bells since the eleventh century; the Pontificia Fonderia Marinelli claims to be among the oldest continuously operating family firms in the world, and its records touch families across the Alto Molise.

The province was bombed heavily in 1943 as the Allies pushed toward the Gustav Line, and Isernia town lost a large part of its centre on 10 September of that year.

Check the date against 1865 and 1970. The first tells you which fond; the second tells you whether Campobasso might also hold something, since these comuni were Campobassane until then.

For the earlier fond ask for the processetti and the atti diversi explicitly — they sit alongside the main registers rather than inside them, and the atti diversi in particular answer questions the birth and death books cannot.

If the family followed the tratturi, expect a parallel trail in Foggia province. Write ahead naming the comune, the year and which of the two fonds you expect to need.

Pietrabbondante — the Samnite sanctuary and theatre, the great site of the people who fought Rome.

Agnone — bell founding since the eleventh century, and the Ndocciata at Christmas.

Capracotta — among the highest comuni in the Apennines, and record snowfalls.

The tratturi — Celano-Foggia and Pescasseroli-Candela crossing the province.

Venafro — Roman, with its amphitheatre and an olive tradition documented in antiquity.

Isernia — Aesernia, and the Paleolithic site at La Pineta on its edge.