Corsica
Two women at Tomino in Cap Corse, and the reason this archive expects them to be strangers.
This archive holds two people in Corsica, and has never read a record for either. They are Cattarina Defranceschi and Marie Jerome Defranceschi, born Bastiani, both of Tomino in the Cap Corse, and both reached this project through the family tree rather than through a register.
Until today the site filed Corsica under «not ours». That was a guess wearing the clothes of a finding, and it is corrected here. The honest position is stronger and more interesting than either a connection or a dismissal.
The surname is Italian. It is Italian in Istria and it is Italian in Corsica, and that is the whole of what the two places have in common — which is to say, nothing genealogical at all.
What they do share is a shape. Corsica was Genoese for four centuries. Genoa ceded it to France by the Treaty of Versailles in May 1768, and French control followed the fighting at Ponte Novu in May 1769 — Napoleon was born at Ajaccio three months later, into a family that had been Italian subjects the year before. Cap Corse, the long northern finger where Tomino sits, was the most Genoese part of the island: it looked across at Liguria and Tuscany, traded wine and men with them, and its surnames are Ligurian and Tuscan.
So a de Franceschi at Tomino is almost certainly an Italian family that became French by conquest — exactly as a De Franceschi at Vodnjan became Austrian and then Croatian by treaty. The same surname, caught by two different empires, four hundred miles apart.
That is a real thing to write about, and it requires no relationship whatsoever. This archive expects these people to be strangers, and will say so unless a register says otherwise.
| Who | Where | How this archive knows |
|---|---|---|
| Cattarina Defranceschi | Tomino, Haute-Corse | the family tree · no record read |
| Marie Jerome Defranceschi, born Bastiani | Tomino, Haute-Corse | the family tree · no record read |
| Jean Defranceschi | Corsica · France | a namesake — historian of Corsica and of the French Revolution. No claim of kinship is made |
| Jean-Baptiste-Marie Franceschi | France · Spain | a namesake — a Napoleonic general. Corsican-descended officers of this name served Napoleon; none is joined to this family |
Zero records. Not one search had ever been run in a French archive for this surname, by this project, in any commune — and as of today the reason is clear: there is nothing to search. The Corsican material is the least-worked ground the archive has. It is also the ground with the best access, and now with a route through it.
The tables décennales for Tomino are online, digitised, and unbroken from 1802 to 1892 — nine ten-year indexes, each covering births, marriages and deaths together. They are at the Archives de Corse under 12 NUM 4186–4194, reached through Recherche documentaire → Etat civil, commune TOMINO (HAUTE-CORSE), document type TABLE DECENNALE.
This is what turns Corsica from a campaign into an afternoon. Every birth, marriage and death at Tomino across ninety years is indexed by surname in these nine books. Cattarina Defranceschi and Marie Jerome Defranceschi née Bastiani are either in them or they are not, and either answer is worth having. Nothing here has been read yet — this is the door, located and written down.
| 12 NUM 4186 | 1802 – 1812 |
| 12 NUM 4187 | 1813 – 1822 |
| 12 NUM 4188 | 1823 – 1832 |
| 12 NUM 4189 | 1833 – 1842 |
| 12 NUM 4190 | 1843 – 1852 |
| 12 NUM 4191 | 1853 – 1862 |
| 12 NUM 4192 | 1863 – 1872 |
| 12 NUM 4193 | 1873 – 1882 |
| 12 NUM 4194 | 1883 – 1892 |
The pop-up is solved. The site opens its image viewer through a JavaScript call — `openLot(idfic, 'THOTDESC_'+ref, ref, 'THOTDESC', '', '0')` — which spawns a window the browser pane blocks. Reading the function shows what it builds, and that address works typed straight in:
`/Internet_THOT/FrmLotDocFrame.asp?idlot=THOTDESC_&idfic=
12 NUM 4186 is open and legible — nineteen images, the first of them headed «Commune de Tomino — Mariages célébrés en l'an XI», with Jean Xavier Orlandi × M.lle Marie Polidori, 15 frimaire as its first entry. The volume indexes several Cap Corse communes, Tomino among them.
What is still not solved: paging inside the viewer. Its next-image control and its page box both accept input and neither advances the picture, and the image is drawn without a plain URL to fetch. So the door is open and the first page is readable; turning the page is the next problem.
- 1The tables décennales for Tomino, all eleven decades, 1793–1902. Alphabetical: read the D and F entries — Defranceschi, De Franceschi, Franceschi — and take every hit. This is the whole commune, cheaply.
- 2Then the same tables for the five communes around it — Rogliano, Ersa, Centuri, Morsiglia, Barrettali. A Cap Corse surname sits in a cluster of villages, never one. All six are on the platform.
- 3Then pull only the acts the tables point at, by commune, year and type. Full transcription, the archive's usual schema — and by then the reading is a known, small quantity.
- 4Then Corsica christiana, the pre-1793 parish registers. No decennial tables there, so this is the expensive part — and it is where a Ligurian or Tuscan origin would actually be settled, which is the only place a real comparison with the Istrian story could be made.
- 5Prove nothing. Every Corsican person entered gets the line corsica, and the page keeps saying parallel, not branch until a document says otherwise. The two women stay marked tree, unverified until a register names them.
Whether Tomino's registers survive for the early years
The online état civil is chiefly the greffe duplicate, and it is thin for the revolutionary years — most communes effectively begin around year XI, that is 1802–03. Tomino has not yet been checked. If its first decade is missing, the tables décennales will say so faster than the registers will.
Whether Tomino is one family or several
Two women of the surname in one tiny commune may be a household or a coincidence. Nothing yet says which.
Where the Corsican Franceschi came from
Liguria and Tuscany are the obvious candidates, and Cap Corse's whole history points that way — but obvious is not documented, and this archive has been wrong about obvious before.
Whether the Napoleonic officers belong here at all
Our own Namesakes page carries two Frenchmen of the name. They are recorded because they exist, not because they are relatives, and that has not changed.
Switzerland and Savoie, still untouched
Four DeFranceschi graves at Giubiasco in Ticino, and one Pierre Defranceschi at Gaillard in Haute-Savoie, which is effectively a suburb of Geneva. Both look like modern Italian labour migration and neither has been searched. They are two more separate stories, not part of this one.
Source People from the family's MyHeritage tree and from gravestone records; not one has been confirmed against a register. Historical background: the Treaty of Versailles of 15 May 1768, Ponte Novu, May 1769, and the Genoese administration of Cap Corse. Record availability from the Archives départementales de la Haute-Corse, whose civil registration for 1793–1902 was digitised in 2008–2009 and published for all communes.
All the families → · Namesakes → · Where the name went → · Method →