Hard to believe it's been almost a year since I embarked on my trip to Italy in search of my mother's genealogical past and to show my husband and daughter a little of the culture, arts, food, and people of Italy.
I was most interested in visiting the area my grandmother was from. Close to the Austrian border, and in a part of Italy that I had never seen. I'm not really great yet at using embedded Google maps, and couldn't get it to display all the town names when I made it. The top red is Raveo, the main town
of the family. The yellow pin is Enemonzo, the town they moved to after grandmother was born in Raveo, and the latest home. The green pin is where we stayed in Tolmezzo, and the middle pin is the town of Colza, which we discovered as birthplace of one of the ancestors in some of the records, but I only passed through it, it's a frazione (subdivision) of Enemonzo now. From Tolmezzo to Raveo is about 7 miles, From Raveo to Enmonzo is about 4 miles. The towns are in the Carnia Valley. It is a beautiful area and off the beaten tourist track. I think only skiers in ski season or really serious summer hikers visit the area. There is only one bus from Udine (capital of region) to Tolmezzo most days... of course we missed it, necessitating a long expensive cab ride!!!
I spent most of my 2 1/2 days in the region ensconced in the archives of church records, so I will have to go again in the future to really look at the land and connect with the people....maybe next year? I'll have to rent a car, as this area isn't covered well by public transit, so I'll avoid winter, as the area gets lots of snow!
Wikipedia has a great history of the region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli . The Friuli language -- not an Italian dialect, it's a separate language--- is spoken as well as Italian..... I can't follow it at all, and my Italian was somewhat better, but I'm glad my cousin and the genealogist I was with spoke English!
According to the relative I met in Raveo, there are about 300 people in Raveo now (486 in 2004 according to Wikipedia) and probably never had more than 1000 people. Since our family lived there from at least 1700 to 1890, I must be related to everyone in the town!
