Palermo, Sicily -How to find where deceased relatives lived, worked, church etc.

These are the online registries for Italian State Archives:
http://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/?lang=en

These are the communities for which the digitization of the archives have been completed:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/en/gallery

Palermo is among them (the digital archive has not been completed for every region in Italy):
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Palermo/

Do you know the community in which his grandparents lived? If so, you can search here:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Palermo/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/

Choosing one random town (Carini) in the Palermo region you can search here for births, deaths, marriages, etc:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Palermo/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Carini/

For example, there were 9 births in Carini in 1824:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Palermo/Stato+civile+della+restaurazione/Carini/Nati/1824/9/

These archives are searchable via the town and then years of civil events (e.g., birth, death.) Some of the completed archives are available in familysearch.org, perhaps with better search capabilities.

In this archive you can search by name, but Palermo is not yet among the searchable registries:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/en/gallery?g2_view=search.SearchScan&g2_form%5Bsearch%5D=name

Without this ability to search Palermo for a person's name, you could still search if you know a community name. If you only know a year (for example, his grandfather's birth year) you would have to search each community within Palermo for that year and look through each image of birth records. It would be time consuming. You've got a year, right??

Here is the search page on FamilySearch.org where you can search by name, years, life events:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/location/1927178

You'll need to create an account. You can also go to the LDS Archives in larger cities to search their databases for free.

jmrrsr25, we just visited Sicily earlier this year and did some family history research. It is not easy. You can't just walk into a municipal office and expect them to drop everything and search for hours for records. Our town was a smaller town near Palermo. We needed appointments and a guide/translator as no one there spoke (or wanted to speak) English. And they were not impressed by yet another group of American relatives coming in especially not knowing what they were looking for. Or what to ask for.

As far as records, there is no one "department of records". Municipal offices have birth records, marriage and death certificates, maybe emigration records. Birth certificate might show where your grandparents lived when they were first married. You might get lucky and find someone around the area who had local history knowledge of where a cobbler shop was.

We were able to get a new certified copy of a few birth certificates, and photocopies of old marriage certificates. But only because we had some old family records (their US immigration records, naturalization certificates, exact spelling of names, exact birthdates etc.) so we could pin it down. You'll be surprised how many people there are with the same names.

So, it would be hard to do that without a local guide who can do some of the research ahead of time and schedule appointments. Have you done a basic google search on sicily genealogy? There are tons of guides and groups in this business there. Try sicilygenealogy.com or best of sicily You can look at the listings of local guides at toursbylocals.com or tourguides.viator.com.

Good luck.

In his Sicily guidebook, Rick recommends a car service company owned by Salvatore Coppola - he has a team of English speaking drivers who can tour you around in the city finding family roots. You can email him for info at [email protected].