Geneablogy: An occasional Journal about our experiences exploring our heritage

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

A month ago, Jason sent me e-mail that another member on the Calitri-L mailing list, Mark, had sent him a document in Italian that contained a lot of information on the De Rosa family. Jason hadn’t finished translating it, but he had enough done to send me some interesting information, including that Giovanni di Rosa, the father of Francesco de Rosa, Laura’s 4G Grandfather, died in 1840 in Pescopagano, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. I was ordering films at the Family History Center the next day, so I ordered the film of death records for Pescopagano from 1839-1843 (it must have been a sizable town to require a full roll for only 4+ years of records). The film finally came in this week, and I was able to find Giovanni’s death record with no problem. It says that he was the widow of Sebastiana Irace and the son of Alessandro di Rosa and Giudita Capriglione. Giovanni was born in Praiano, a village on the Amalfi coast, which is the same town that Francesco was born in. He died on 15 Dec 1840, and his wife died before him.

I still haven’t been able to absolutely prove that the Francesco de Rosa who married Colomba Frieri is the son of Giovanni, though. Francesco appears to have had three wives. The first was Maria Nicolais, with whom he had a son, Giovanni Antonio di Rosa, born on 12 Jan 1810. But by 27 Jan 1812, he’s with a new wife, Colomba Frieri, because they had a daughter on that date by the name of Maria Rachela di Rosa. Francesco and Colomba had at least seven other children, including Laura’s 3G grandfather, Angiolo Raffaele Vincenzo de Rosa, commonly known as Raffaele. But on none of their birth records is there any indication of who Francesco’s father is. Some do mention that he was from Praiano. The last record of any children from Francesco and Colomba is the birth of Maria Angelica on 24 Jul 1830. Then there’s a marriage record for a Francesco de Rosa and Antonia Capossela on 2 Jul 1832. The record says that Francesco was born in Praiano, the son of Giovanni de Rosa and Isabella Frace (got his mother’s name wrong). The age is right. But nowhere on the record does it say that Giovanni had a previous wife. I looked at the records of the banns today, and there’s nothing in there saying who Giovanni’s previous wives were, either.

If I could find a record of the marriage of Francesco and Colomba, that might clear things up. But I’ve checked the records for 1810 through 1812, and they’re not there. Today, I looked at the banns for the same period, and came up similarly empty. The Ahnentafel that Jason sent says that Colomba was from Cairano originally, so they probably married there. I’ll have to get the film. Still, even if they married in Cairano, I would have expected banns to be posted in Calitri as well. I don’t know, maybe they posted them in Praiano instead, since that was the birthplace of Francesco.

In the meantime, I’m really curious what the nature of the document that Mark sent Jason is.

Death Record

Posted at 11:21:21 PM Link to this entry

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002

After going backward for so long, I decided I needed to go forward a bit to clean up some loose ends. I was missing death records for two of my four 3G grandparents from San Potito Sannitico, Maria Pietrosimone and Filippo Brandi. So I ordered the film of records from 1900-1910, figuring they would likely be in there somewhere, since they were both born in the late 1810s. Sure enough, I found Filippo in 1900. He died on 3 Nov 1900, aged 82, at the house at number 16 Via Albero in San Potito. The rest of the record confirms everything I had found elsewhere, like his birth and marriage records.

Maria lived a bit longer; she died on 5 Mar 1907, aged 87, at 27 Via Torello. She had outlived her husband Domenico Rapa by 12 years.

It’s interesting looking through the records of this time. By 1900, emigration was well underway, and the number of births, marriages, and deaths is significantly less than in, say, the 1850s. You can almost feel the emptiness of the village. Just as a rough guess, it feels like maybe half of the village left. No wonder they celebrate Emigrants’ Day every year.

Death Records

Posted at 11:51:51 PM Link to this entry

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Saturday, June 8, 2002

I found the right Francesca di Napoli in the death records. This Francesca, Laura’s 4G Grandmother, and the wife of Vito Rabasca, died in Calitri on 20 Sep 1850, about seven years after her husband. Her parents, Laura’s 5G Grandparents, were Giovanni di Napoli and Antonia di Muro. I sent mail with this information to Jason, the man with the 20,000+ names from Calitri, and he tells me that Giovanni died in 1817, and was the son of Canio di Napoli and Antonia Codella. So now I just need to get the film with those death records on them and confirm that. Antonia di Muro was dead before Giovanni, but Jason has no indication of when, so I’ll have to look through the records from 1809 to 1817 to see if she’s in there. I don’t have that film at the Family History Center, but it’s one of the ones I have on order, and I ordered them almost four weeks ago, so they should be showing up very soon.

Death Record

Posted at 2:03:05 AM Link to this entry

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Saturday, June 1, 2002

I got a letter from the archives in Naples today. The Catasto Onciario (land records) from San Potito in the 1750s are at the archives. They can send them to me on microfilm for €59.39 ($55.43 on 1 June). They want a postal money order; it doesn’t appear that the US Postal Service issues international orders in Euros, just the almighty buck. They’re all bucked up. Pity; there are a lot of other ways to send money to another country. So I guess I’ll have to add on some kind of margin to cover fluctuations in exchange rates during the two or three weeks it takes the post office to issue international postal money orders. Bleah. Still, it’ll be great to get my hands on this, because it should provide definite evidence of family units that would prove which people are which in the baptism records from the 1700s that I already have. It should also tell me how wealthy (or poor) my ancestors were. This is so cool.

Posted at 9:14:59 PM Link to this entry

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