I thought I knew a lot about Italian research, from the classes at National Institute of Genealogical Studies, researching the microfilms at Salt Lake, transcribing and translating documents, and reading all the books on Italian research I could find! But there is always something new to learn.
My grandmother Maria Jacomina Teresa Antoinetta Antonipieri emigrated from the Friuli region of Italy with her first husband Angelo Felice in 1911. I thought she was born in Enemonzo, and her parents moved there from Raveo, a smaller town about 5 km away. So I started in Raveo. A cousin(?), and now dear friend, Danilo Antonipieri, whom I had found on Facebook, [love social media for finding relatives!] had picked me up in Tolmezzo where I was staying, and then drove me to Raveo.....
The town is small. maybe 300 people now, and is set in the beautiful Carnia valley, very close to the Austrian border.....
I had hired (through Ancestry.com --progenealogists.com) an Italian genealogist, Gabriele Musumeci, to set up appointments with the local parish keeper of the records, and to be there to translate since although I read Italian fairly well, I don't speak it well.... and he was worth his weight in gold! (Although even he had to ask questions because they tend to sometimes use words in Friulani, a separate language, which sorta sounds like Italian, Slavic and German mixed....)
It was a beautiful day, and Signore Bonanni met us at the parish office. When we asked to look at records of Antonipieri.... he pulled out a beautiful book separate from the church records, which when opened, contained pages of hand-drawn family trees! Neither Gabriele or I had ever seen such a wonder, and I was so excited I could barely keep from happy dancing trough the room! The book was prepared by the priest about 1900 for all the families in the town. He also raised funds in 1894 to rebuild the church, and a plaque is located on the church.
If there is sainthood granted for genealogists, I nominate Father Barnaba Colledani!!! The book didn't contain all dates for everyone, but made it easy to prepare a bare bones pedigree to start looking for data..... My thoughts were that we sure did need to get a LDS camera crew here to digitize the book and the church records before another earthquake (there was a bad one here in 1979) destroys the records!
Here is a sample of the trees, this one for the Noselli family [tree #71, page 65] which is one of mine. I took pictures of whole pages with my iPad, and then zoomed portions, as there was, alas, no copy machine!!! I wanted to be able to read every thing... but we only had about a half day to look at the records. Signore Bonanni allowed us to use all the church record books which went back to about 1862, although the majority of records started about 1700, unlike the priest at Gaglianico.....
and of course Antonipieri "Chiandat" was the first tree in the book, followed by the next page Antonipieri "Bonella" and the a third page Antonipieri .... which led to the first new lesson in Italian genealogy....... Some towns use the old Roman system of a first name, a surname, and a name to denote the branch of the surname family which was called cognome then (or vulgo in the Latin Raveo church records) , which now in Italian means surname! In Roman times, the surname was nomen, with a praenomen (first name), and then a cognome, which could be a branch or nickname.... found this on Wikipedia which I love!
so New Lesson #1 ... named family branches!!
Now how to enter into Rootsmagic.... guess I'll use Nickname slot as it puts " " around it....
We found my great grandfather Daniele Anonipieri at the bottom of the Antonipieri "Bonella" tree [#2, page 4]. the top of that tree (also a Daniele) was in the first row of children of the previous Antonipieri "Chiandat" tree. We asked Signore Bonanni if he knew why the split, and he said that Daniele had gone "on coook" [ not sure of spelling, that's just what it sounded like...] When we asked what that meant, he explained was like the Cuckoo bird. who moves into another bird's nest... instead of the wife ( Maria Ariis called Bonella) coming to live with his family, he went to hers, hence the new branch of the tree Antonipieri "Bonella"! Even though both households were in Raveo!
We spent the afternoon at the parish archive in Enemonzo, returned to Raveo the next day for a half day to finish looking for records.... In the two days, we managed to take pictures and locate records giving names back to before 1700, about 7 generations!!!!!! Have never managed that in US records in all my 40 years of genealogy. Of course it helped that they remained in the same town for 200 years! The surnames in my tree include several Bonannis from different branches, Ariis ( diff branches) , Vriz/Vritz, Noselli, Iaconissi, Valino, Buttini, Pascoli, Piazza. I suspect that the reason the priest created the trees was to make sure the people weren't too closely related.... although we found one marriage in the family which had a papal dispensation for the marriage. Here's my grandmother's parents' marriage entry (second one).
It turns out that they were related also, about 4th cousins..... I'll add more info in part 4 about both Enemonzo and Raveo research, as this is getting too long! And I'll update my ahnentafel page with the new generations. But I'll close with a picture of Signore Bonanni (l), Danilo Antonipieri (r) & me(c) in front of the old Bell tower. Ciao!!! Arrivederci!
