Ninety-one years of Habsburg paperwork, and a De Franceschi in it almost continuously — the passport desk at Fiume, the quarantine station, the port captaincy, the chamber, the navy, the army and the Landwehr. Not one of them can be attached to a household on this site. The pattern is the finding.
This archive opened Hungaricana for the first time on 13 September 2026 and found, within an afternoon, more men of the name in imperial service than it had found in a year of parish registers. That is not because the men are more interesting. It is because a state writes down the people it employs, every year, by name, and prints it.
What follows is everything the Austrian and Hungarian service lists give. It is set out as a single roll because the individual entries are thin and the shape of them together is not: from the year the Bakar salt office was drawn to the year the monarchy ended, there is hardly a decade without one.
A warning that applies to every line of it. These lists record a man's year of birth, his service dates and his unit. They do not record where he was born. Not one of the eight can be attached to a household in this archive, and none is claimed as kin. They are here because they are of the name, in one empire, in one span of years — and because the next person to work on this will want the citations.
Drew the «Bauriss der zu Buccari befündlichen aerarial Salz-Einnehmer und Controlors Wohnung» — the ground plan and section of the imperial salt-receiver's and comptroller's residence at Bakar. Manuscript, 56 × 45 cm, one sheet.
National Archives of Hungary, T 62 No 1642, out of E 96 Tricesimalia 1827, 4:51
Passualist in the Polizey-Behörde of Fiume — the officer who issued and checked passports in a free port. He is listed among the city's patrician office-holders: Tudorovich the tax-receiver, Bossich the comptroller, Celebrini the book-keeper and orphans' commissioner, Peretti the chief fiscal. This is the earliest office this archive can put the name in, and it is a civil one.
«Der Pesther Stadt- und Landbothe für das Königreich Ungarn», 1835, Gerichtsbarkeiten, p. 71
Főnök — head — of the «szent Ferenczről czimzett Martinsiczai veszteglő intézet», the quarantine institute at Martinšćica named for St Francis: the lazaretto of the Kvarner, where ships and crews were held before they were let into the ports. Under him a clerk, a surgeon-teacher, a chaplain and four guards. On the same page the harbour captaincy at Buccari is recorded as vacant — Kapitány. Nincs. — nine years before Ferencz himself is pensioned as a port captain.
«Budapesti utasító» 1848, Törvényszékek, p. 70
In the Marine-Direktion at Pola. Valentin is the forename that runs through the Rijeka households — a Valentino fathering there in 1742–57, and another in 1794–1805.
Militärschematismus des österreichischen Kaiserthumes, Wien 1854, 1855, 1856
M. kir. révkapitány in the service of the Fiume Maritime Authority — 42 years, 10 months and 5 days of public service, pension of 1,050 forints from 1857, which puts him into state service about 1814. His port is not named; the authority governed the whole Hungarian Littoral, Bakar included.
Képviselőházi irományok, 1872, XV. kötet, 1872-650, p. 106
Seventeen issues of the Vereinigte Laibacher Zeitung, the official gazette of Carniola, carry his name across ten years — always in the same formula: «den Geklagten wegen ihres unbekannten Aufenthaltes Herr Johann Defranceski von Sturja als Curator ad actum auf ihre Gefahr und Kosten bestellt wurde». Where defendants could not be found, the court appointed him to stand for them. He is the officer, not the subject. This archive inferred from the publication rhythm — three issues in nine days, repeatedly — that somebody of the name was under repeated legal process in Carniola. The rhythm was right and the reading was backwards: that is how an edict is published, and he is the man named in it as the absent parties' curator. A standing court appointment, exercised for at least a decade. Sturja is Šturje, now part of Ajdovščina in the Vipava valley — which puts the family's own -ski spelling in Inner Carniola, a region this archive has never placed it in.
Vereinigte Laibacher Zeitung, 20 Oct 1865; 25 Jul 1866; 15, 24 and 28 Jun 1869; 14 and 29 Dec 1870; 2 Jan 1871; 20 and 28 Jun, 9 and 12 Jul 1872; 30 Dec 1874; 12 Jan, 3, 6 and 11 Mar 1875
A cadet in a line infantry regiment in 1859, an Unterleutnant 2. Classe in 1863 — and a cadet again in 1867. That does not describe one career. Either these are two men of the same name in two regiments, or one of the entries is wrong. This archive has not resolved it and will not guess.
Militärschematismus, Wien 1859 p. 130, 1863 p. 228, 1867 p. 220 (and 1861-62, 1864, 1865, 1866)
On a kegydíj of 65 forints a year, granted in three-year terms and renewed again and again — «tekintettel vagyontalanságára, munka- és keresetképtelenségére», in view of her destitution and her incapacity for work or earning. Her father was dead by 1888; she was still on the list in 1900.
Állami zárszámadás 1888 p. 179, 1894 p. 387, 1898 p. 412, 1900 p. 399
Born 1879. Naval academy 1894, commissioned 1 July 1898, Linienschiffsfähnrich and head of the harbour depot at Trieste by 1904, Linienschiffsleutnant commanding a patrol boat on the Danube by 1909, aboard the armoured cruiser Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia in 1910, at the Marinedetachement in Budapest in 1912, and still on the active list on 27 July 1918.
181 entries across 79 volumes of the navy rank lists — transcribed in full
His whole career →Not a De Franceschi, but the family that gave this one Lambertina Peschle, mother of Carlo the historian. Commissioned 1 August 1895, rank from 5 September 1895; Assistenzarzt, then with the 5th and 23rd Regiments, attached to the Landsturm district of Görz — Gorizia, where Carlo had been sent to the seminary seventy years earlier.
Schematismus der K. K. Landwehr, Wien 1896–1914; Ranglisten 1916, 1918
The Peschle →Fähnrich (nichtaktiv) — reserve ensign — with seniority from 1 January 1907, in the 27th Regiment. Still on the Landwehr rank list in 1918, by then with a mountain-rifle regiment.
Schematismus der K. K. Landwehr, Wien 1907–1914; Ranglisten der K. K. Landwehr 1916, 1918
Among the Fähnriche (Kadetten) of an infantry regiment through the last three years of the war. The names around his are the tell: Mikuličić, Rusich, Petrinić, Brkljačić, Franovich, Barbiani, Turkalj — a regiment drawing its men from the Littoral and Croatia. That is a hint about where he came from and it is not evidence.
Ranglisten des Kaiserlichen und Königlichen Heeres, Wien 1916 p. 437, 1917 p. 579, 1918 p. 287
Four months after Julius was last printed on the Emperor's active list, the Austrian State Chancellor writes to the «südslawischen Vertreter Dr. Defranceschi» — the South Slav representative — in the quarrel over the «Bosnian Registratur», the Austro-Hungarian archives being removed to the new Yugoslavia. The correspondence sits in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. Which is where this roll ends, and it ends on both sides at once. One man of the name is still an officer of the monarchy in July. By December another is negotiating with its last chancellor on behalf of the state that replaced it.
HHStA, Neues Politisches Archiv 397 — Staatskanzler to Dr Defranceschi, 21 December 1918
«… beim Husz\[aren\] Reg\[iment\] Nr 8 · Defranceschi Peter Dr · beim Garnisons-Spitale zu …» — a military doctor carried under Militär-Parteien in the land forces, attached to Hussar Regiment No. 8 and serving at a garrison hospital. The fourteenth man on this roll and the second physician on it, beside Dr Cäsar Peschle. He was found on 20 September 2026 by searching Hungarian word order — surname first — rather than a Hungarian forename, which is the only way the Hungarian portal indexes him.
Militärschematismus des österreichischen Kaiserthumes für 1867 (Wien 1867), Landmacht · Militär-Parteien, p. 647 — via Hungaricana
The roll above is about offices. This is about conscripts and subalterns, and it is the first First World War material this archive has ever held. The Austro-Hungarian casualty lists were printed to tell families apart, so they give rank, regiment, company, province, district, commune and year of birth — which makes them, by accident, the best genealogical source in the whole Austrian press.
Inft., k. k. LIR. Nr. 5, 10. Komp., Istrien, Pisino, Gračišće, 1884; kriegsgef., Merw, Gebiet Transkaspien, Rußland. Taken prisoner and held at Merv in Transcaspia — now Mary, in Turkmenistan. The commune is Maria née Fernasar's own village, printed in a war list fifty-two years after she married out of it.
Verlustliste, 6 May 1916
Jäg., FJB. Nr. 20, 1. StbsAbt., Pisino [I]strien, 1883, Hufschlag a. d. r. Ferse, Vereinshilfsspital Nr. 2 in Kassa. Same name, same district, a year out and a different unit. The same man or a cousin; not settled.
Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte, 14 December 1914
Jäg., TJR. Nr. 1, 2. Komp., Branzoll, 1885, Schuß i. d. r. Hand, Festungsspital Nr. 8 in Krakau. A Tyrolean rifleman in the fortress hospital at Kraków. Branzoll is Bronzolo, in South Tyrol — so the family's own -ski spelling here is Tyrolean, not Istrian.
Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte, 21 December 1914
Oblt., IR. Nr. 92, 1. Komp., [place], 1881, Schuß i. d. Oberkiefer und i. d. Oberschenkel, Konviktspital in Ujvidék. A first lieutenant of the line, in hospital at Novi Sad. His home town is in the entry and the OCR will not give it up — it reads «Sin-jn», which could be Sinj in Dalmatia or Šturje in Carniola, and this archive will not choose between them from a blot. He is not the naval Julius, who was born 1879 and was at sea.
Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte, 25 October 1914
EinjFreiw. Gefr., k. k. LIR. Nr. 23, 5. Komp., verw. An Einjährig-Freiwilliger — the one-year volunteer status open only to men with a secondary education — serving as a corporal. No commune in this entry.
Verlustliste, 11 November 1914
A name in the Verlustliste's own alphabetical register. The company he keeps in that column is the finding: Dallapiccola, Dalsass, Delago, Delugan, Dematté, Demetz, Deromedi, Desimoni, Detassis — Trentino and Ladin surnames almost without exception. Whatever formation this index covers, it was recruited in the south Tyrol, and it is very likely the Branzoll man again.
Verlustliste Alphabetisches Verzeichnis, 17 June 1915
Five or six men, and the honest caveat is about the searching rather than the finding. ANNO's optical reading of these lists is poor — they are set in tiny type, in columns, with heavy abbreviation, and the machine mangles exactly the proper names that matter. Fernasar was found only by searching for a pattern rather than a word. Absence from this set is not evidence that a man was not in the war. What is here is what the OCR happened to render well enough to find.
Read in order, this is not a set of soldiers. It is a municipal administration. The passport officer of Fiume in 1835; the man who drew the imperial salt office at Bakar in 1827; the director of the Kvarner quarantine station in 1848; a royal port captain pensioned in 1857 after forty-two years. Four civil posts before a single military one, all of them in the same forty kilometres of coast, all of them concerned with the same thing — who and what is allowed through a port.
The Kvarner households stop looking like farmers. Nine households at Rijeka and Bakar, a salt office drawn in 1827, a royal port captain pensioned in 1857, a naval officer at Pola in the 1850s and another on the Danube in 1909 — and the Regii written beside the name at a Bakar baptism in 1849. That is a family in the service of the state, on the water, for most of a century.
And it explains the saints. Nine of the twelve children born to Valentino and Ursula at Rijeka between 1794 and 1805 carry Nepomucena or Nepomuc. John of Nepomuk is the patron invoked against drowning — the saint of bridges and of men whose work is on the water. In a port official's household that is not only dynastic piety.
The 1859 pair is the sharpest thing on this page. In that year — Magenta, Solferino, the loss of Lombardy — Eduard Defranceschi enters the Austrian army as a cadet, and Valente Defranceschi abandons his desk in the Zadar accounting office and takes employment with the Italian government. Two men of one name, one empire, one year, opposite directions. Nothing connects them. They did not need to be related for that to be the truth about the name.
And there is a chaplain on the 1848 page worth noticing. The quarantine staff under Ferencz Defranceschi included «Káplán. Kobler Kajetán». Kobler is the name of the Rijeka historian Giovanni Kobler, whose correspondence with Carlo De Franceschi this archive holds and leans on. Two names that this site already keeps in one folder, standing in one lazaretto on the Kvarner in 1848. It proves nothing whatever. It is exactly the kind of coincidence that turns out to be a small world rather than a connection — and it is written down so that nobody has to find it twice.