Sunday, January 28, 2001
I got an interesting e-mail from a gentleman named James Matteo the other day. He said that his father was born in San Potito Sannitico in 1897, and had been delivered by a midwife named Rosa Brandi. He wanted to know if it was the same Brandi family as ours. It seems likely to me that it is. My GGG Aunt is Rosa Brandi, born on 14 May 1844, the daughter of Filippo Antonia Potito Brandi and Maria Navarro. She was the older sister of Vincenzo Daniele Brandi, who brought his family to Saginaw in the 1880s. I don't know if she was a midwife, but I'll certainly be looking for that. She would have been 55 years old in 1897. James has actually visited San Potito, and in particular the church there, Santa Caterina, and passed along the interesting information that they have records at the church going back to 1697. The civil records that I've been looking at via the Mormons only go back to 1809, and I had figured that might be as far back as I could go, so this is interesting news indeed, that there are another 100 years of records. It might require a trip to the village, though, so I won't be looking at them any time soon.
Interestingly enough, in the civil records that I do have access to, I've discovered a Matteo in our tree. I haven't posted the records yet because I've been busy and haven't had time to clean them up, but I hope to soon. Maria Domenica Rapa's father, Domenico Rapa, has his mother's name given on his birth record and marriage record as Nicoletta Matteo, born in approximately 1789. Of course, the civil records don't go back that far, so finding a birth certificate for Nicoletta would have to wait until I can access the church records, but she and her husband Michele Rapa seem likely to have gotten married after 1809 (when Nicoletta would have been 20), so that's a possibility to find through the Mormons.
Posted at 2:58:47 PM
