Provincia di Sassari

The Antenati directory entry for the Archivio di Stato di Sassari states that the institute holds none of the civil-status series the portal publishes, and records digitisation as Non prevista — not planned.

That is a statement about the portal, not a verdict on the records. The practical custodians are these.

The comune holds the first original of every civil act from 1866, when Italian civil registration began across the kingdom. For a twentieth-century or late nineteenth-century Sassarese act, the ufficio di stato civile of the comune is the correct and usually the only destination.

The parish holds baptisms, marriages and burials. For anything before 1866 this is the record, and in Sardinia many parish series are long — the Council of Trent's requirements were applied here as elsewhere, and some registers run from the later sixteenth century.

The Archivio di Stato di Sassari itself, approached directly, holds notarial, judicial and administrative fonds that can carry a family history a long way even without a civil series — notarial acts in particular, which record dowries, land transfers and inheritances by name.

No claim of loss should be made here. Nothing in the directory says these records were destroyed; it says only that this archive is not one of the portal's contributors.

The modern provincial lineage dates to the Rattazzi administrative reorganisation of 1859, which divided the Kingdom of Sardinia into provinces on the Piedmontese model — Sassari among them. That is two years before the Kingdom of Italy existed, and it is the institutional marker for the province.

What came before is the part that makes Sardinian genealogy distinct. The island was a kingdom in its own right — Aragonese, then Spanish, then from 1720 the possession of the House of Savoy, which took its royal title from it. Catalan and Castilian were administrative languages for four centuries, and Alghero has spoken Catalan since the fourteenth century, when the town was repopulated from Catalonia after the native population was expelled. It still does.

The north of the island has its own layers again. Gallura, around Tempio and Olbia, speaks Gallurese, closer to Corsican than to Sardinian, the result of centuries of movement across the strait. The Logudoro around Sassari and Ozieri speaks Logudorese, the most conservative form of Sardinian and the one closest to Latin of any Romance variety.

So a family from this province may have records shaped by Catalan, Spanish, Piedmontese and Italian administration in turn, and names recorded in more than one language.

Do not start with Antenati. For this province the portal has nothing, and time spent searching it is time lost.

Start with the comune for anything from 1866, naming the person, an approximate year and the act. Sardinian comuni are generally small and their offices are used to descendant enquiries.

For earlier generations write to the parish, and expect Latin. For Alghero, expect Catalan forms of names and places alongside Italian ones.

Contact the Archivio di Stato di Sassari directly about notarial and judicial fonds rather than assuming the portal's silence means the archive is empty. Say plainly what you are looking for and for which comune.

Alghero — Catalan-speaking since the fourteenth century, with bilingual streets and bastions.

Gallura — Tempio Pausania, Aggius and Calangianus, cork and granite country.

Castelsardo — the Doria foundation above the gulf.

Porto Torres — Turris Libisonis, the Roman colony and the province's ancient port.

Ozieri and the Logudoro — the conservative heart of the Sardinian language.

The nuraghi — Santu Antine at Torralba among the greatest of them.