Small Villiage In No. Italy?

Question

Recently I have discovered the towns my great grandparents came from while researching my family tree. My great grandfather, Bartolomeo Palvario came from Lugnacco in Turin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugnacco) in 1911. In 1914, my great grandmother, Domenica Peire followed from the port my great grandfather left from, of Le Havre. The town listed as her home is Barino. I cannot find any information about this location anywhere. Can you help. Thank you kindly. Also, do you have any ideas on how I would go about contacting the other Palvarios in that area? There are some listed. I look forward to hearing from you. Also I am having the harded time finding info on my Polish great grandparents since the last name was changed slightly @ E.I.

Answer 1

I could make an educated guess that "Barino" is a spelling error. But there's a wonderfully easy way to find out and get all sorts of great info on both Bartolomeo and Domenica. Each of them came well after the immigration reforms of the early 1900s. So each of them filled out extensive paperwork (which includes hometown and parents and siblings and everything you'd ever want to know about someone wanting to move to this country). These records come in pairs: the Declaration of Intent and the Naturalization Petition. And they're on file at the National Archives and Records Administration regional archives that handles the state where the couple lived when they filed for citizenship. Visit their site for the full lowdown on all of the other records they can also provide to you.

http://www.archives.gov/index.html

The issue of the Polish surname is probably not as bad as you think. Contrary to the popular misconception that names were changed at Ellis Island, the usual truth is that our immigrant ancestors were illiterate and couldn't spell their own names. Ellis Island didn't take their word for it that they were who they claimed to be. They were given a copy of the passenger list and everyone filled out their paperwork according to the name listed on there. If the person filling out the manifest slaughtered the name or if the person reading it had to guess at the handwriting, then that's where most of the changes originated.

I love doing Polish genealogy. If you want to post the names that your searching, where they settled and approximate year of arrival, I'd be glad to see what we can see.

Answer 2

rootsweb.com has extensive mailing lists for almost every country in the world, and many times, even the provinces (or whatever they are in Italy). You would certainly benefit from subscribing, since every person on the list would have an interest in Turin, for example. Some on the list MIGHT even live there... although the majority would be researchers from elsewhere.
Little trick that might work on the Polish name... try running it in google, and see if google comes up with "don't you really mean ". Alternative spellings are far more normal than most people realize, and you can try juggling it phonetically to come up with possibles.