If anybody has any information on Mazza's from Verscio, it would be very helpful. My great grandpa immigrated to Canada from Switzerland, and all we know of the family is his parent's names. Olimpio and Maria Mazza were my great-great grandparents, and my great grandpa was Andrea Mazza... his name in Canada was Andrew Antonio Mazza though... he had 4 sisters, but one died very young.
I too am descended from an immigrant from Ticino. Not much information on the web. However, the churches and city governments have tons of records back at least 200 years. I just returned from Bellinzona, where I obtained tons of info. It is worth the trip. If your family is one of the "patriarch" families in a city you will really be rewarded by going.
Does it make a diference if I don't know any italian or german or french??
did you write to Bellinzona first? Someone told me i had to write to them and ask for permission to seach for the names, then ask them to do the search and they would send me the info...
I would love to go to Switzerland and actually see Verscio for myself, but I don't think that will happen for a while.
Obviously Italian or German would help. I found distant relatives (an unusual surname helped) over there that went with me to the churches and called record offices. All the church documents are in Latin. The city Governments have tons of records, but it is difficult to find someone who really wants to help you. I don't know of any way to get information out of them from over here. Hopefully someday genealogy will become enough of a hobby there that they will get some of those documents on line.
My only problem with finding the family over there is that my great grandpa was the only boy, and so the surname went away with him. and nobody knows any of his sisters names.
Did you find any information from John A. Parker? I don't have the link to the site, but he sent me a bunch of information on how to reserach from over here...
What I did was found someone with my families last name with a website. Then when I wrote to him he referred me to an older relative that helped me. You might try this fellow or find similar website.
