I already have my own birth and marriage certificates, so I need to focus on Rhode Island. Since it has been more than 100 years since my GF was born, his birth record is public information and finding it turned out to be a fairly simple internet search.
But then, I encountered the first of what I’m sure will be many hurdles ahead. The aged image of the registry book has his last name incorrectly spelled. Perhaps it’s a more precise description to say it was spelled phonetically. When you have the letter Z twice in a row in an Italian word (like pizza), it has a T sound to it. For the sake of privacy, I’ll just say that the last name misspelling was significant enough that I have to resolve it somehow. I decided to order the actual certified document in hopes that perhaps it had been corrected at some point in his life. I received the certified copy the other day and it is not… his official birth record is incorrect.
I reached out to experts on the Dual Citizenship Facebook group that I am a member of to seek advice. One option is to have a lawyer represent my family in the Superior Court of Rhode Island to get his name corrected on the official record – but this seems like a costly plan. The alternate plan, and one which has been used by many successful petitioners, is to write an affidavit to explain the discrepancy. I’ve decided to write the letter but augment it by getting official, certified documents for all the records I have to support the correct spelling.