The full review is at http://bit.ly/ScambrayReview
Sicily existed as a nation from its creation in 1130 by Roger II, as The Kingdom of Sicily (Il Regno), the first 'modern' nation with a tripartite government. That nation and its successor, The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, comprised most of the peninsular 'boot', plus the island of Sicily, the combined region known as the Mezzogiorno, for its scorching noontime sun.
Before 1861, there was no nation known as Italy, except for a failed state formed by Napoleon in the northern peninsula: a French puppet state that existed for only nine years in the early 1800s. After Napoleon's fall, its components reverted to independent duchies and city-states as shown in the map. Note that there was no 'Italy'.
This is important to genealogical researchers because each of those states kept civil records differently, and early records, say, from Tuscany, were not the same as records for Modena or Sicily.
Because of its longer existence as a nation, and because it comprised territory much larger than the other states, Sicily's civil records were uniform from Naples to Agrigento. The 1836 birth record below is from Caraffa, in Catanzaro province, on the mainland.
This pre-printed form is virtually identical to my grandfather's 1836 birth record from Serradifalco, in Caltanissetta province, on the island of Sicily. That record can be seen at http://bit.ly/GaetanoConiglio1836Birth Note that the witnesses (testimonii) to the birth registration, in both examples, are described by the word 'regnicolo', that is, 'subject of the Kingdom' [of the Two Sicilies]. These forms were the same from 1820 through 1860.
Birth records for the same year, from Tuscany, Venice, or any of the other non-Sicilian states will be different in format, sometimes considerably so.
