In Italy, the catholic church once required local churches to occasionally  perform and document a census of the parish. This census was known as a Stato delle Anime (Status Animarum, in latin). The priest or perhaps his representative would visit each household, identifying the head of the household and all residents. In addition to indicating the receipt of sacraments, there is wealth of other information in this document. It presents an opportunity to see the members of a family (actually household) at a point in time.  It demonstrates the relationship (spouse, son, daughter, mother, servant, etc) of each resident to the head of the household. It also indicates the birth date or year of each resident and whether married or single (researchers should note that the birth years given occasionally do not match exactly with civil records). The names of the fathers, for both the head of household and spouse, are  given. One such parish census was taken in Torricella in 1889, and is titled Stato di Popolazione 1889, and signed by Nicolangelo DeGregorio. The cover page and the next page of that document are shown above. It shows there were:

•  Families - 863

• Total population - 4211

  • Males - 2154

  • Females - 2057

These records are retained in the local parish church: Chiesa di San Giacomo Apostolo. In the future, we plan in conjunction with the church to provide a service to assist family researchers to obtain photocopies of church records. Proceeds will be donated to the church. If you may be interested, please contact us so we may help.

Then some years later (1931), an Italian civil census was taken. Unfortunately, that document was destroyed during the tragedy of World War II. Fortuitously, it appears that in 1932 Cosma Di Cicco (the local priest at the time), made a copy of the 1931 civil census, inserting the census information in the original 1889 books wherever there was enough white space. He also recorded a summary of it alongside the summary of the 1889 census. This summary can be seen on the cover page above, alongside the 1889 summary:

•  Families - 710

• Total population - 3189

  • Males - 1645

  • Females - 1544

Cosma Di Cicco also provided an index to his copy of the 1931civil census.

There were some annotations made to the census as priests sporadically recorded additional information in the 1932 stato throughout the 1930s and 1940s (eg: new individuals born or married into households post-1932 are added, marriage dates added).