Geneablogy: An occasional Journal about our experiences exploring our heritage

Friday, March 15, 2002

Last roundup post on the baptismal records; next week, I'll add some other recent discoveries from the late 1800s, then post a revised chart to make it all clear.

Angiolo Pietrosimone, my 4G-grandfather, was born on 11 Feb 1786, according to the 1802 Census. I found his baptismal record and confirmed that. The baptismal record shows that his full name was Angiolo Felice Domenico Antonio Pietrosimone. From his death record, I knew that his parents were Giovanni Pietrosimone and Vittoria Masuccio. I had also found their death records, which told me that Giovanni's father was Agostino Pietrosimone, and that Vittoria's parents were Michelangelo Masuccio and Anna Maria Paterno. And finding Anna Maria Paterno's death record told me that her parents were Giuseppe Paterno and Camilla Simonelli. I had already made a lot of progress on this line.

The 1802 Census shows Giovanni's birth date as 28 Dec 1753, and sure enough, there he is in the baptismal records. His mother is listed as Angiola Coluccio, my 6G grandmother. That was new. I also found a lot of records for siblings of Angiolo, as well as of siblings of Giovanni, but they don't shed a lot of additional light on things.

The 1802 Census appears to give my 5G-grandmother Vittoria Masuccio's age as 31, which would indicate a birth year of 1871, but didn't give a birth date. The 1806 Census gave her age as 41, which would indicate a birth date of about 1765, and her death record indicates a birth date of about 1762, which makes me think the 1802 Census was just wrong. I found a baptismal record for Teresa Vittoria Masuccio, born and baptized on 3 Oct 1761, which fits with the death record nearly perfectly. It gets the name of her mother slightly wrong, listing it as Anna Maria Perotto, but given that this was her first child and that she wasn't originally from San Potito, and that all future children with Michelangelo Masuccio were shown with her last name as Paterno, I think that the name here is a simple mistake.

I found a number of siblings for Vittoria. She was the eldest born to Michelangelo Masuccio and Anna Maria Paterno, who had children as late as 1784. The baptismal record for her sister Judicta Violanta listed grandparents as well, so I now know that Michelangelo's parents, my 7G-grandparents, were Ambrogio Masuccio and Violanta di Lello. The were both dead by the time Judicta was born on 14 May 1779.

As I explained in a previous post, Michelangelo might be my 7G-grandfather as well. The 1802 Census shows that Anna Maria Paterno was his second wife, and there was a series of children born to a Michelangelo Masuccio and Teresa Fattore between 1741 and 1755, and the first child born to Michelangelo and Anna Maria was named Teresa Vittoria, which is a circumstantial pointer to the idea that they were the same person, but I haven't proven it yet. I need to find some indication of who the parents of the Michelangelo married to Teresa Fattore was. Bill Sennello tells me the church in San Potito has marriage records, so maybe a marriage record for Michelangelo Masuccio and Teresa Fattore from around 1740 exists and can clear this up.

Baptismal Records

Posted at 5:19:35 AM

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