Discover Italian family stories in St. Louis and beyond. Join fellow researchers to share discoveries, work through records and explore the places and traditions that shaped our families.
Help us get started
The Italian Special Interest Group launches on January 1, 2027, and we would love to hear from you. If you would like to help Kathy Mazzeo organize meetings and shape the group, email Kathy at ItalianSIG@stlgs.org.
Prefer to follow along? Send Kathy your email address and ask to receive updates when the group goes live. You are welcome to get involved whenever the time is right for you.
Meet with us in 2027
Our meeting plans include monthly Zoom gatherings and four gatherings during the year with both in-person and Zoom participation. Exact dates, times, topics, locations and access details will be posted when confirmed.
Zoom Research Meetings
Join us for an Italian genealogy gathering on Zoom. Bring a question or a discovery to discuss.
Dates and times to be announced.
In-Person Events
Meet fellow researchers in person.
Our kickoff meeting is on The Hill.
More dates, locations and topics to be announced.
Stories are better shared
Italian family history reaches well beyond names and dates. Neighbors, parishes, mutual aid societies and family tables all left clues about the lives our ancestors built.
Community
Compare neighborhoods, occupations and family connections with other researchers.
Church
Follow baptisms, marriages, sponsors and parish changes through generations.
Food & traditions
Preserve recipes, celebrations, photographs and the stories behind them.
Italians in St. Louis
Italians had settled in St. Louis by the mid-1800s, and immigration grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some families lived near Cole Street in the downtown area often called Little Italy, alongside people from many other backgrounds. They found community through parishes, neighbors and mutual aid organizations.
Italian families also settled on The Hill beginning in the 1880s, drawn in part by jobs in nearby clay mines and brickworks. Relatives and people from the same Italian towns followed one another. By the early twentieth century, St. Ambrose became an important parish for the neighborhood. As the city changed, many families moved from the older downtown community, while The Hill remained a center of Italian American life.
Today, The Hill’s churches, restaurants, markets and community celebrations keep that heritage visible. Baseball players Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up there, but the neighborhood’s history also lives in the everyday records and memories of its families.
Finding your St. Louis family
- Start with an address. Use census records, city directories, marriage records and death records to track the family as it moved. An address can help identify nearby parishes, relatives and neighbors.
- Check parish registers. Depending on the year and neighborhood, investigate St. Patrick, St. Bonaventure, Our Lady Help of Christians, St. Charles Borromeo and St. Ambrose. Baptismal sponsors and marriage witnesses may be relatives or people from the same Italian town. Check which years survive and where the registers are held.
- Follow burial clues. Search Calvary Cemetery records and the StLGS Fratellanza Society burial index. The Italian mutual aid society began in 1866; its burial arrangement ended about 1900, although its last recorded burial was in 1941.
- Identify the town in Italy. Look in naturalization files, passenger lists, church records, obituaries and relatives’ records. An Italian town of origin is usually more useful than the country name alone when moving on to records in Italy.
- Search flexible names. Try spelling variations, anglicized given names and women’s maiden names. Compare the original document with any index entry before deciding that a match is yours.
Research starting points
- StLGS: Italians in St. Louis — local history and further reading.
- StLGS: Fratellanza Society burial records — a searchable local index.
- St. Louis County Library: Catholic church records — parish record guides and holdings.
- City of St. Louis Recorder Archives — marriage, probate and other city records.
