This paper focuses on the research regarding the reconstruction of the life of my great-grandfather, a Habsburg citizen speaking Slovene, born in 1890 in a village in the Austrian Littoral, then part of Italy. His life, connected to emigration and Italianization, is fundamental to analyze these phenomena at the beginning of 20th century on the Italian Eastern border. This paper focuses on the difficulties encountered during the research, like arriving too late and the lack of specific preexisting studies, and on the solutions found, in particular the use of oral sources: family memories, interviews and letters with elements of orality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]