Corippo Ancestry- using Images on Family Search, 2025

In the 1990s when I first started researching my Scettrini ancestry, I was able to order a Corippo parish microfilm into the Family History Centre here in Palmerston North. 

I spent many evening/weekend hours going through that microfilm, writing out entries that I thought might be relevant, using my School Cert Latin to work out the basics. It wasn’t possible though to get very many images of the entries. Later I wrote out ancestral names and dates on numerous pieces of paper, and sorted them on the lounge floor so I could put together a family tree.

I was reasonably confident with my tree, and thought I had been careful in what I put together. But the parish register was all in Latin, and there were a few things I wasn’t sure that I had completely right. One of those things was that I thought my Giuseppe Scettrini’s grandfather, also a Giuseppe, had two marriages, both to a Maria Caterina Gambetta, but each of those women had a different father. The other confusion was that my 3X-grt-grandparents on the Scettrini-Scilacci line seemed to sometimes be using the name Beneda as part of their Scettrini surname, or even to replace it.

I was very fortunate quite a few years later to be contacted by Rae Codoni, from California, who had done extensive research into his Codoni family from Corippo, and as part of this had drawn up a huge draft Scettrini tree. He was able to confirm that yes indeed, there were two different women named Maria Caterina Gambetta who married Giuseppe Scettrini senior. And indeed, there were so many Scettrini families in Corippo, that some did start using other names with their surname to differentiate themselves from each other.
Rae Codoni was actually descended from the first marriage on 4 Feb 1788, of Giuseppe Scettrini to Maria Gambetta, daughter of John Jacob Gambetta. Our family is descended from his second marriage to Maria Gambetta, daughter of Joseph Antony Gambetta.

Then at some stage it was no longer possible to access microfilms via a Family History Centre, and none of the parish register information was available online. It was magic for me to find out the other day that these images from the parish register are now available via Family Search in the images search section!

The images from the parish register can be found on Family Search at: 

https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/search-results?place=3057713

In images search, you put in Corippo, Ticino, Switzerland, and then use the image group number 008342031 (Item 6 of 8) to find most of the records below.

However, the people from Corippo sometimes migrated to a pasturage level at a lower altitude closer to Lake Locarno and those records might be found at Vira (Gambarogno) https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/search-results?place=3060031&page=1

I found a baptism I was looking for in 008191155 (Item 3 of 6) which had baptism records from 1774-1826.

I intend to spend some time this year going through the images and documenting our Scettrini ancestry using them. Just as a taster- this is the baptism of my 2X-grt-grandfather, Giuseppe Scettrini- Joseph, son of John Scettrini and Maria Johanna Scilacci.