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Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Back in June, I mentioned that I hadn’t proven to my own satisfaction yet that Francesco di Rosa, Laura’s 4G grandfather, was the son of Giovanni di Rosa and Sebastiana Irace and the widower of Maria Nicolais.
Now I have.
I ordered the film of marriage records from Cairano, a town near Calitri and the place where Francesco’s wife Colomba Frieri was from. I hadn’t found a marriage record for them in Calitri, so I figured they probably married in the home town of the bride. I was right.
Francesco and Colomba married in Cairano on 5 Jan 1811, after having banns posted in both Cairano and Calitri on 23 and 30 Dec 1810. The marriage record shows that Francesco, age 27 and a native of Praiano, on the coast south of Naples if I recall correctly, was the widower of Maria Nicolais, and the son of Giovanni di Rosa, a 55 year old trader living in Calitri and his wife Sebastiana d’Irace, age 50. Colomba, age 21, was the daughter of the late Carlo Frieri and his wife Rosa Frieri, still living at the time of the marriage and 55 years old.
I hit the jackpot here. Francesco would have likely been born about 1783, and Colomba about 1789. Giovanni di Rosa and Rosa Frieri would have both been born around 1755, and Sebastiana Irace about 1760.
As I mentioned in June, Jason has a copy of a document about this branch of the family that fills in some of the details. I haven’t seen that yet, but hope to eventually.
Marriage Records
Posted at 7:54:34 PM Link to this entry
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Laura and I visited her parents’ house tonight and pumped them for more information on her dad’s family. We drew up a tree of everyone we knew, including siblings. Good thing we did, because I think that’s led to a breakthrough.
One interesting thing we learned was that Laura’s great-grandfather, Atillio Maracci, came to America at one point. He went to Chisholm, Minnesota, and we were told he brought his daughter Emma, Laura’s great aunt, to Minnesota to marry. So I searched on the Ellis Island site, and I found both of them. When I first found Atillio, I wasn’t sure it was the right man, even though there was nobody else with that name, but now I am. He came to America on the Regina d’Italia, arriving in New York on 6 May 1909. He was 41 at the time. This would place his birthdate at about 1867-8, which is new information. Unfortunately, the image of the shipping manifest appears to be missing on the Ellis Island site, and I wasn’t able to find it using Stephen Morse’s alternate search interface, either, so I’ll have to get this from the microfilm. The transcript shows his place of origin as Oriola, Genoa; there are a number of Oriolas in Italy, but none of them appear to be in Genoa province. I believe this is a mistranscription.
Emma, age 16, came to America on The America, arriving in New York on 5 Sep 1910. She was travelling with her cousin, 31 year old Paolo Tognoli, at her father’s behest. Atillio paid for both their passages, and they were listed going to join him in Chisholm. The manifest says they were both from Arcola. Arcola could easily be misread as Oriola, particularly if it’s written the way it’s written in Paolo’s entry. When I looked up Arcola on Multimap, it turned out to be right next to Pitelli, the village that Laura’s grandmother listed as her hometown on her Social Security application. Even more interestingly, Emma and Paolo both have a different town listed as their birthplaces. I wasn’t sure what the manifest said, so I entered the first few letters I could puzzle out into the search engine on Multimap and came up with Fivizzano, which is some few miles inland from Pitelli, Arcola, and La Spezia. It’s also apparently the only town in Italy that starts with the letters "Fiv". Rereading the manifest with that knowledge, the birthplace definitely appears to be Fivizzano. And when I search for Maracci on the Ellis Island site, there are a number of other Maraccis who come from Fivizzano. Also, the Labo surname map shows one of the larger concentrations of the name Maracci today right in the area of Fivizzano. And Maracci isn’t a common name, appearing in only 55 places, many of which are in the area around La Spezia. One other thing; the manifest lists Emma’s mother as Catarina Peri. We have her name as Casimira Peri from other sources, including Laura’s baby book and Albana’s Social Security application. Since everything else checks out, I believe this is a mistake on the original manifest.
Posted at 10:33:12 PM Link to this entry
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Looking at the web site for the State Archives in Przemysl, I find a list of other archives that contain records from the area that the Przemysl archives covers (scroll toward the bottom). Interestingly, Bircza shows up twice. Some of the records from Bircza are at the State Archives in Krakow, for whatever reason, and some are at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. I really wonder what kind of records are there.
Posted at 12:03:21 AM Link to this entry