Source Information

Order Sons of Italy in America
Ancestry.com. Illinois, U.S., Order Sons of Italy in America, Lodge Records, 1925-1977 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
Original data: OSIA Illinois Grand Lodge Documents. Washington, DC: Order Sons of Italy in America.

About Illinois, U.S., Order Sons of Italy in America, Lodge Records, 1925-1977

This database contains documents from the Illinois Grand Lodge of the Order Sons of Italy in America from 1925 to 1987.

Historical Background

The Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) was established in 1905 in New York as a mutual aid society to assist Italian immigrants coming to the United States. The Grand Lodge of Illinois/Wisconsin presently has nine OSIA lodges under its jurisdiction. Among its efforts, OSIA has offered members scholarships, help with obtaining citizenship, aid to the poor, and life and mortuary benefits.

What’s in the Records

This database contains a number of different document types from the Grand Lodge of Illinois. The bulk of the records relate to death fund claims of OSIA members in Illinois. These include death certificates, member application forms, and other documentation necessary to make a claim from the fund. There is also a small collection of membership and death fund ledgers which contain some vital dates.

Information included in the records varies by document type, but you may find details such as

  • death date
  • place of death
  • name
  • age at death
  • gender
  • birth date
  • place of birth
  • spouse’s name
  • father’s name
  • mother’s name
  • age
  • residence date

Death fund claims have multiple records associated with them, so if you find a record you will want to use the arrow keys to browse forward and back to make sure you find all the documents related to your ancestor.

Some of the records are in Italian.