Ships Passenger Lists From Italy

John S. asked Olive Tree Genealogy for help finding a ships passenger list:

I am having difficulty finding the arrival record of my great grandfather in North America.  I know that he lived in the province of Cosenza, Italy & departed Naples, Italy in the 1884 time frame identified as Napoleon Bellaspica Lepera.  Are passenger departure lists available for Naples during this time frame?

John - Ships Passenger lists for North America are best searched by arrival country or port, not departure port. The manifests were made at the port of departure, then turned in at the port of arrival.

You should be able to find your ancestor in ships lists on Ancestry.com. These manifests are indexed and linked to online images for both Canada and USA.

Be sure to use wildcards when searching as Lepera could be easily misspelled or badly transcribed. I would  search using L*P*R* to pick up alternate spellings. Also, upper case "L" can be mistaken for upper case "S" by indexers so you may need to try a second search using S*P*R*

Looking for an Ancestor in Italy

Carol asked a question about genealogy research in Italy

 I am unable to find records from Italy.  I am new to geneology and don't know how to continue.  I know the village from where my ancesters come from and I know last names.  How do I continue my research.  My ancesters are Ponzis and Pandolfis and were born in Campotosto, Italy in late 1800s.

 Dear Carol - I am not an expert in Italian genealogy research but I would start with FamilySearch catalogue online to see what Italian records they may have microfilmed or digitized.

Being curious I did a quick search for Compostoto Italy on FamilySearch and found they have the Civil Registrations starting very early!  You are looking for Campotosto (L'Aquila).

You may want to visit Italian GenWeb for a list of addresses for Compostoto