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
