The Spine

«Located next to the main gate, this harmonious two-storey building was constructed from the carefully chiselled local stone. Architectural elements of the Gothic and Renaissance styles, popular in Venice in the late 15th century, exchange on the two storeys along the facade. The first floor with the double lancet window and the balcony represents the Floral Gothic, while more simple windows with semi-circular arches and a row of classical decorations are on the second.» And a point the Croatian tourist board makes without dwelling on it: Gračišće was never Venetian. It was in the county of Pazin, which is to say the Empire — and it has one of the best Venetian façades in Istria anyway.

Irma Huić puts the masonry in the fifteenth century; the Istrian Encyclopedia dates the building to 1570. The same hands, says the tourist board, were building houses in Poreč at the same time. Which is a reminder that a hill village in the Habsburg county was buying its stonework from the Venetian coast.

Isabel Putinja, who lives in Istria, got through the door in 2018 when a ground-floor room had been used as a wine cellar for the Easter Monday fair and the doors were left open the next day. What she photographed: stone steps, wrought railings, walls painted in patterns, French doors, Gothic windows, stone sinks, an old fireplace, floorboards, Venetian shutters, painted ceilings. «This is such an achingly beautiful building and it pains me to see it deteriorate by the day.» It has been empty for decades.

Because on 25 November 1819 Joannes Baptista Defranceschi of house 5 married Francisca Salomon, born 17 March 1797 — and this archive has never had anything on her but the name. It cannot prove she was of this house; Salamon is not a rare name in Istria. What it can do is stop treating her as a surname. She came from a village with one great house on its square, and that house is the one drawn here.

The family holds two Pazin microfilms as folders of page images, ZM34K-214 and ZM34K-215, about 1,465 images between them. An earlier round of this project worked through 214 and built seventy-two people out of it. Film 215 was catalogued as «Gologorica» and only its last section had been identified — the Gallignana births of 1746–1840. Walking the whole of it this week gives three books, not one.

A twentieth-century Status Animarum of the parish of Gologorica, on printed forms, arranged by hamlet — Riemunjica, Želeski, Sokolići — with a repertory indexed by age bands from 1890 to 1980, and an Italian-period stamp reading Comune di Fianona. It carries deaths into the 1970s.

A «Liber Baptisatorum» whose title page is dated in the 1660s — «comprato sotto il governo di …» — with a later hand pencilling «Gracisce» on the flyleaf. Narrative Latin, entry after entry, no ruled columns. Sampled pages give 1679, 1680, 1686, 1696, 1707, 1721, 1726, 1727, 1730 and 1735. It is the Gallignana baptism series from the 1660s to the 1740s, and it joins directly onto the 1746–1840 book that follows it.

The book already identified: Gallignana births 1746–1840, opening behind a title card reading «Matične knjige rimokatolika».

This whole read has been shadowed by one trap: the Latin «defuncti», of the late, which in these hands can pass for «Defran-». The reader cropped this word, enlarged it five times, and set it beside a genuine «defuncti» from the same page — the entry of 21 October 1720, «Helena defuncti filia Francisci Cerbulla». They are plainly different. «Defuncti» is one lower-case word with a tall looped f and a bare terminal i; «de Franceschis» is two words, with a capital F carrying a crossbar and an open bowl, the sch cluster visible, and a terminal s. And the grammar settles it independently: the word stands between «Domini Comitis Damiani» and «ac Ursulae eius coniugis», which is a surname slot. Nothing else can go there.

«Dominus Comes Damianus». And the officiant is not the parish priest, the cooperator or any of the canons who fill these folios by the hundred — it is the Provost and Vicar of the Cathedral of Pedena, come over to Gallignana for the day. This is a different stratum from every other entry in seventy-five years of this register, which is a parish book of farmers, and it should be weighed as such before anybody connects it to a Carnian weaver.

1720 is the year Nicolò and Marc'Antonio de Franceschi, sons of Giorgio, bought Catarina Bernardo Venier's Istrian possessions and took the Seget estate. A titled De Franceschi having a son christened in the Habsburg county in the same year the Candia branch buys into Venetian Istria is a coincidence this archive will note and not build on. There is no Damianus in the Seget genealogy Puhmajer reconstructs, and no Bartholomaeus.

And the godparents came from Novaki, the next village but one. The godfather's own name is read as «Carnus», which could be a surname or could be an origin — but this register writes Carniola as «Corniolinus», not Carnia, and the reader would not bank on it.

«Domini Comitis Damiani de Franceschis ac Ursulae eius coniugis», whose son Bartholomeus was baptised by the Provost and Vicar of the Cathedral of Pedena. Set out in full in the section above. A stranger to this archive, and still unidentified.

«Patrini fuerunt Judex Gregorius Milcovich et Ioana Uxor Sup.ni Ioanis Bap.tae Defranceschi.» The godparents were Judge Gregorius Milcovich and Joanna, wife of Suppanus Giovanni Battista Defranceschi. Suppanus is the župan, the headman of a village. The child was Josephus, son of Marinus Cincopan and Lucia, baptised by Canon Grah.

«Presbiter Philippus de Franceschi Baptisavit Josephum Antonium filium legitimum Ignatij Marinich et Uxoris Luciae.» Priest Philip de Franceschi baptised Joseph Anthony, lawful son of Ignatius Marinich and his wife Lucia. He is not the parish priest — the archpriest Diletta and the canons Grach and Baxa keep this register — so he is a visiting or assisting cleric. He is also the only person of the surname in the whole volume who is doing the writing rather than being written about.

«Patrini fuerunt R.di D.ni Joannes Grach, et Joanna uxor Sup.ni Jo: Baptistae Defranceschi à Golagoriza.» The Reverend Joannes Grach, and Joanna, wife of Giovanni Battista Defranceschi, headman of Gologorica. Word for word the same formula as 1733, the same wife, the same husband, the same office — and this time the scribe adds where they are from.

«Patrini fuerunt D.nus Joannes Petrus Defranceschi et Mattia uxor supradicti Joannis Grach», at the baptism of a daughter of Dominus Ignatius Martinich and Donna Lucia. The reader called this the clearest writing in the range and the reading unambiguous.

The Gallignana parish register, kept at the time by clergy with no interest in this family, has Giovanni Battista Defranceschi as headman of Gologorica in 1733 and 1743, and a Dominus Joannes Petrus Defranceschi in 1744. Carlo De Franceschi, writing privately to Kobler about 1873 out of family memory, has a Giambattista who built the house in 1711 and two sons, Giampietro and Giovanni Battista. The Zagreb article, written in 2024 out of the family's own archive, has a Gioan Pietro who is son of Gioan Battista the župan. Nobody was copying anybody.

Carlo makes Giampietro and Giovanni Battista brothers. The Zagreb account makes Giovanni Pietro the son of Giovanni Battista. The register cannot settle it — it gives no ages and no fathers — but it does settle that both men were alive, adult and of standing in consecutive years, and that the elder held the office. Family memory across five generations collapsing a father and son into a pair of brothers is one of the commonest things that happens to a pedigree, and this may be a clean instance of it caught in the act.

A fief-holder who is a Belgian from the diocese of Liège is an absentee by definition. An absentee lord needs a man on the ground: someone to hold the village office and collect his rents. The Defranceschi took both jobs — the father as župan, the son as the lord's tax collector — and the register catches the wife of the one and the person of the other being asked to stand godparent to the Martinich and the Grach, the leading families of the next parish. That is what standing looks like in a village of a few hundred people, and it is why the house of 1711 has arms over the door.

From 1740 to 1780 the village belonged to the bishops of Pićan — Pedena — until defeudalisation made it a municipality. So the diocese that runs through this whole page runs through the land too. It is the Provost and Vicar of Pedena Cathedral who baptises the count's son at Gallignana in 1720; it is the bishop of Pedena whose vicar general was Giovanni Antonio de Benzoni of Fiume; and from 1740 it is the bishop of Pedena who is Gologorica's landlord.

«Joan. Bapt. Defranceschi, agricola, natus 13. Augusti 1787, matrimonium 1819, obiit 14. Sept. 1846», with his wife «Francisca Salomon, nata 17. Martii 1797», and their children: Raymundus 1823, «Antonius 20. 7bris 1825», Joannes 1833, Franciscus Liberatus 1840, Leopoldina Maria 1829, Regina Theresia 1830. Seven names, and the head of them born in 1787 — which is the exact date the research log has been carrying as an open question about the Gologorica boy of house 31.

«Antonius Defranceschi, lapidarius, natus 20. Sept. 1825, matr. 25. Nov. 1856» — the same birth date to the day, so this is the son of the house-5 household, and he is entered as a stonecutter. His wife «Maria n. Fernasar, nata 17. Oct. 1832». Their children: Antonius 6 Aug 1856, «Josephus 22. Mart. 1863», Modestus 1875, Catharina 1859 who died in 1868, Leopolda 1865, and a second Catharina born 1869 and named for the first.

Josephus, born 22 March 1863 at Gračišće house 19 — the boy the Crikvenica register would enter in 1906 as «vešti klesar sada tvorničar», a skilled stonemason now a factory worker. So the chain is complete and every link has a date: Joannes Baptista, born 1787, farmer; Antonius, born 1825, stonecutter; Josephus, born 1863, stonemason then factory hand; Anton Rudolf, born 1890 at Klenovica; and the four brothers who ended in Australia, Germany and Senj.

On the later page for the same family the widow is entered with an occupation of her own: «Maria Defranceschi n. Fernasar, Obstetrix, 17-10-1832 … 10-1-1916». Obstetrix is a midwife. She married the stonecutter in 1856, outlived him, and died at eighty-three in 1916. This archive has trades for the men going back to 1787 and this is the first it has for a woman.

Her son Antonius, born 1856, married in 1889 «Maria n. Volhardt, nata 6-4-1867», and against her name the priest wrote where she came from: «nata in Orfanotrofio Tergesti» — born in the orphanage at Trieste. That is the Maria Valhart at the head of the American chart, the mother of the eleven children, whose birth date this archive matched to the day against her gravestone at Gračišće this morning. She began in a foundling hospital in another country.

This page has said for months that Giovanni, 1750–1829, is carried on the family chart and implied by «q. Joannis», but that no register page had ever been put in front of him. The tree gives him a birthplace, a death place and a citation: born 1750 at Gologorica, died 14 October 1829 at Gračišće, with FamilySearch image 3:1:3QS7-899X-5SJM. That is the first documentary handle on generation one this project has ever had.

The tree gives Giovanni Battista as born 13 August 1787 at Gologorica and died 14 September 1846 at Gračišće. This archive had the birth date from the Gologorica register and the death only as a year. The birthplace matters: it puts the move from Gologorica to Gračišće between his birth and his son's, which is exactly where the 1819 marriage to Francisca Salamon sits.

Antonius the lapidarius, died 4 August 1894 at Gračišće, ark 1:1:6YBR-MQ7K. This archive had 1894 from the parish repertorium and no day. The tree also carries his occupation in plain English — «Lapidary» — and his whole household as a timeline: the son of 6 August 1856, the marriage of 25 November 1856 fifteen weeks later, and then Francisca born 21 April 1858 and dead on the 23rd, Catharina born 22 November 1859 and dead 6 June 1868, and four more.

This site read the Gračišće baptismal register as baptised 23 March 1863, born the day before — so 22 March. The tree gave 19 March 1863, and both were printed here until an image could settle it. The image has arrived. The Gračišće Status Animarum, photographed in the reading room at the Državni arhiv u Pazinu, carries house 24 headed by Maria Defranceschi née Fernazar, her condition entered as OBSTETRIX — midwife — born 17-10-1832, married 25-11-1856, died 10-1-1916. That marriage date is Antonius the lapidarius's own, so this is his household under a later house number, and the children are listed beneath her. The third of them is Josephus, «Nativitatis dies mensis et annus» 22-3-1863. Two books of the same parish, written by different hands for different purposes, both say 22 March, and the column says birth and not baptism. This archive now prints 22 March 1863 and records 19 March as the reading that lost. It did not lose quietly: the family monument at Crikvenica, cut after 1936, is incised ✻19.III.1863 beside his wife's ✻19.IX.1863 — two nineteenths, sixty years after the fact, from people who were not consulting a register. That is where the tree's date almost certainly comes from. The same Status Animarum line adds a smaller thing worth keeping: against Josephus's marriage the priest wrote «1887?», with the question mark. The tree gives 12 October 1889 at Klenovica. The priest at Gračišće was guessing at a wedding that had happened somewhere else.

Anton Rudolf agrees exactly: born 20 January 1890 at Ledenice / Klenovica 22, dead about 1943 at Crikvenica. And his mother Ana Kalanj, born 3 January 1864, now carries a hard image citation — «Ledenice, Modrus-Fiume, Hungary records», FamilySearch 3:1:3QS7-L99X-K7DD, image 33 of 342, Hrvatski državni arhiv u Zagrebu, image group 005494765. That is a page number, not a database entry.

This site has carried an open question about Zdravko: the family file and the MyHeritage tree both once gave his death as 1999 at Horsham, while two Horsham memorials give December 1979. The tree now cites the Australia, Victoria, Index to Probate Registers, ark 1:1:JVKL-2T1, for «Zdrovko De Franceski». Probate the year after a December 1979 death is what the record ought to look like. The 1999 was the error and this closes it.

House 5 of Gallignana, in the ruled columns: «Raymundus eorum filius · 9 8bris 1823» — their son, 9 October 1823. Born thirteen months before Antonio. The four tick-columns beside him — vaccinatus, confirmatus, confessus, communicatus — are all four marked, so he was vaccinated, confirmed, and admitted to confession and communion. His brother Franciscus Liberatus, born 1840, has only the first two ticks, which dates the writing of the page: after the father's death in September 1846, and before the youngest boy came to communion. Say about 1848.

The «Matrimonii contracti» and «Obitus» columns are empty for every one of the children. Their father's marriage and death are entered on his own line; not one of the four sons has either. So the page tells us Raymundus was alive, at home, and unmarried at Gallignana at about twenty-five — and then the priest stopped keeping it up, and the household falls out of the record on that line.

Every spelling of the surname against every form of the given name — Raymundus, Raimondo, Rajmund, Raymond — across the whole indexed record: Croatia, Italy, Austria, the United States, Brazil, Argentina. Nothing. Not a marriage, not a death, not an emigration. The name is rare enough that a hit would be unmistakable, and there is no hit. He is not in the indexes at all, anywhere, ever.

An eldest son who is at home at twenty-five and then never appears again, while the second son inherits, marries and moves to house 19, is a recognisable shape. He died young, or he left, or he went into the church. Inferred — the archive is not choosing between them. Three things would settle it, and all three are bounded. The Gallignana death register for 1848–1880: one book, and if he died at home he is in it. The Gallignana marriage register for the same years: if he married out of the parish, the entry names his father. And the Austrian conscription lists for the County of Pazin — 1848 and 1849 took men of exactly his age, and the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna holds the Grundbuchblätter. One more thought worth writing down rather than acting on: 1848 is the year of revolution, and a literate twenty-five-year-old farmer's son in a Habsburg county was precisely who got called up.

Because of what his absence did. Antonio, the second son, becomes the stonecutter of house 19 — and the whole of this archive's spine, down through Josip, Anton Rudolf, Ivan, Ivan and David, runs through the younger brother. If Raymundus had married and stayed, the line on this page would be a different household in a different house, and most likely still in Istria. One missing man is the hinge.