Writing your Italian Letter

After you've printed out your list of addresses, it's time to start writing your letter. I decided to write one generic letter in Italian and print out 20 copies of it. I’m not certain I should recommend this method or not. Some people might be put off to receive a rather form-like letter. Others might be so excited to have cousins in America writing to them that they don’t care.

My mass-mailing method did produce results: five days after I sent out my letters, I received two emails from the grandchildren of one addressee. I have not yet received a response from anyone else.

One other advantage of sending many letters at once is that it will really get people talking. In a town of several hundred, or even several thousand, people, word gets around fast when something out of the ordinary happens.

Writing the letter can be a challenge, if, like me, you don’t know much Italian. Having background in another language, like Spanish, French, or even Latin, can help when you’re deciphering Italian documents- but writing is a whole other story.

Fortunately, you can find form letters and phrases fairly easily. Discovering Your Italian Ancestors by Lynn Nelson is a great book to have on hand for tasks like this. Many web pages have lists of genealogically useful phrases as well. You can find a list of the most useful websites at the bottom of this article. I’ve also included a link to the letter I sent to my relatives. I can’t vouch for it’s grammatical accuracy, but it seemed to get the message through.

An Italian phrasebook can help you say simple things, such as where you come from, and other personal tidbits. When you are done, it’s a good idea to have someone proof-read your letter, just in case. If you don’t have a friend of a friend who speaks Italian, you can find an Italian scholar or student through a university or a local Italian American organization.

If the thought of writing anything in Italian scares you silly, consider hiring a translator. http://abruzzo2000.com offers reasonably priced translation services for a minimum of $10. I have not used the service myself, so I can’t recommend it from personal experience. I do belong to the Abruzzo Online club and have found the owner to be very helpful.

Include any photos you might have. These can be a great memory jogger. One of the people I wrote to was actually the man *in* one of those old family pictures I had. He had forgotten all about his uncle who moved to the US so many years ago, and had never had an address. It was that man who passed along my letter to his email-enabled grandchildren.

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