The Lines

Four households of the surname can be traced to a place they came from, and they came from three different directions for three different reasons. Three are documented; the fourth is family lore. These are the only things this archive calls families, and nothing joins any two of them.

Gologorica, Gračišće, Crikvenica, Senj, Pfullingen are stops on one road — our road — not separate lines. So are Perinuša and Opačac on the Venetian road, and Umag, Brtonigla and Koper on the Cretan one. They have pages because there is a lot to say about each; they are not additions to the count.

Corsica is the clearest case, and it is now drawn as a line rather than buried in a footnote. It has everything the other four have — a place, a first generation with dates, six documented generations, a route out and a diaspora — and it has no connection to Istria whatever. That is exactly why it is worth drawing. A reader who finds a Franceschi in Puerto Rico or Caracas should be able to see, on the same picture, that there is a fully documented family of the name that goes there and is not this one.

De Franceschi means only «of the Franceschi» — the household of a man called Francesco. It was invented independently wherever an Italian-speaking clerk had two Francescos to tell apart. So a De Franceschi in Corsica or Bologna or Rio Grande do Sul is not evidence of anything at all until a document joins them, and this archive will not pretend otherwise.

The index gives the place of these baptisms as «Croazia, Austria» — no parish at all, which is why they have sat unplaced. But every FamilySearch index entry carries the ark of the image it was read from, and every image ark resolves to a DGS film number. These resolve to DGS 005497884, and the catalogue entry for that film reads: «Matična knjiga, 1568–1917 · Rimokatolička crkva. Župa Svetvinčenat» — the parish register of Svetvinčenat, held by the Croatian State Archive in Zagreb. So the register is named even though the index is not. The method is repeatable and it is now the archive's standard practice for any «Croazia, Austria» entry.

This archive's fourth family opens: «Pula, 1667 — Anto De Franceschi, with children entered in October 1667 and November 1669 — the earliest of the cluster.» Those are Franceschina, baptised 23 October 1667, and Mattia, born 8 November 1669 — both children of Anto De Franceschi and Marta. They are not Pula entries. They are Svetvinčenat entries, forty kilometres north, in a different parish and a different world. The southern-Istrian line's earliest evidence has been standing on a place-name the index never gave it.

That matters because Svetvinčenat is not an unknown. It is the cluster this archive lists as not placed — one hundred and forty-two records from 1666 — and three separate authorities call it Carnian. Kandler names the Carnian families settled at Sanvincenti. Doblanović, reading the Status animarum of 1734, finds the surnames that occur inside the castello and nowhere else in the parish — «De Franceschi, Crosila, Bergamo, Moro, Fiorencis» — and says they «came from the area of Carnia» and were «mainly in trade». Brhan finds a Stanzia De Franceschi on the 1820 cadastral map, a farmstead the family had held and already lost. So the oldest records of the «origin unknown» line are records of a documented Carnian colony.

Pulled out of the index and sorted, the parish gives a continuous presence: 1657 Francesco, son of Zuanne and Orsola · 1666 Colotta, daughter of Nadal and Fiora · 1666 Fioretta, daughter of M.ro Batta and Domenica · 1667 Franceschina and 1674 Mattio, of Anto and Marta · 1670 Luca, of Francesco and Giacoma · 1671 Giacomo, of Andrea and Zuana · 1673 Giovanna and 1688 Zuana, of Gaspero, with Marietta then Anta · 1701 Veneranda, of Gasparo and Antonia · 1703 Domenica, of Piero and Vittoria · 1704 Antonio, of Mattio and Zuanna · 1707 Piero, of Lunardo and Eufemia · 1709 Maria, of Nardo and Zuanna · 1722 Martino, of Mattio and Elisabetta · 1733 Maria, of Giacomo and Anzoletta · 1734 Pietro and 1735 Bata, of Nadal and Anta · 1737 Andrea, of Vitorio and Francesca. That is at least twelve distinct fathers of this surname in one small town between 1657 and 1737 — and the earliest of them, Zuanne, is four years before the surname enters the Moncalvo book and twelve years before the Mione headmen's list.

Lunardo — Nardo — Leonardo. A Leonardo De Franceschi is baptising children at Svetvinčenat in 1707 and 1709. The Gologorica house's own byname is «detti Leonardi», and its pedigree carries Leonardus 1697–1773, Leonardus 1766–1848 and Leonardus 1847–1917. Leonardo is not a common name in these registers, and it is now in both places at once. Inferred Vitorio. A Vitorio De Franceschi is baptising at Svetvinčenat in 1737 — and Vitorio, Vittorio and Victorius run right through the Pula–Fažana–Medulin group: Vitorio born 1720, Vitorio 1758, Vittorio 1795, Vittorio Giovanni 1849. Neither is proof. A shared font-name is the weakest evidence there is, and this archive has said so about better cases than this. What they are is two threads to pull, both bounded: the Svetvinčenat register is filmed and readable, and it will say whether these are the same men.

The Lines page draws the fourth family as «Out of southern Istria — origin unknown», documented from 1667 at Pula. Two of those three words now need work. The 1667 is right; the Pula is wrong; and «origin unknown» may not survive, because the register those earliest entries come from is a parish whose De Franceschi are called Carnian by everyone who has studied them. What this archive will not do is redraw the diagram on this. Two of the twelve Svetvinčenat fathers could be the ancestors of the Pula group, or none of them could; the town sat on the road between the county of Pazin and the Pula country and people moved both ways. The lane keeps its dotted origin, the correction to «Pula» is made, and the Svetvinčenat cluster is now the first place this archive will read page by page rather than by index.

«Alì 21 Decembre / Elena fiola di Francescho di Franceschi et di Eufemia sua consorte fu batezata da me piovano sopra deto. Fu compare s.r Zan Piero Quelo. Comare Chiara consorte di Tomaso Ostricich.» Svetvinčenat, Births 1589–1646, image 58 — a book this archive had never opened. A father, a mother, a daughter, a godfather and a godmother, all named. Thirty-eight years before Colotta of 1666, which this page has called the family's first appearance here since September. And the godfather is a Quelo. Seventy-nine years later, at the baptism of Nardo's son Piero in October 1707, the godmother is «la Sig.ra Andriana moglie del Sig.r Can.co Ottavio Quelis». The same house standing at the font for a De Franceschi child at both ends of the eighty years.

It moves the Istrian sequence. The archive's earliest dated Istrian occurrences ran Labin 1615, then Moncalvo di Pisino 1661, then Svetvinčenat 1666. Svetvinčenat now stands second, at 1628 — thirty-three years before Moncalvo, not five years after it. The «first recorded appearance at Moncalvo at the other end of Istria» sentence above is wrong in its ordering and is left standing with this correction beneath it. It does not join Francescho to the 1666 household. Thirty-eight years is one long generation or two short ones. Nadal, Batta, Anto, Andrea and Gaspo of the 1660s and 70s could be his sons or his grandsons or no relation of his at all, and no entry says. What the register shows is that the surname was already here in 1628, with a wife and a child and two godparents of the parish's own gentry — a settled household, not an arrival. Inferred And it is the only one. The 1589–1646 book was checked entry by entry through its index: one De Franceschi record in fifty-seven years. The 1568–1588 book holds none. The 1581–1589 and 1622–1623 marriage book holds none. So 1628 is a first sighting, not the top of a run.

Two sweeps had already read past this entry, and the reason is the same both times: its place field says «Croazia, Austria» and nothing else. No town. The September sweep kept only records whose place text named a town, so it threw this one away — the identical failure that produced the «Pula 1667» error, where an entry with no town in it was given one by guesswork. The fix is not a better place string. It is to stop using the place field. Every image on FamilySearch belongs to a waypoint, and the waypoint is the parish: `Croatia, Church Books → Roman Catholic → Svetvinčenat → Births 1589–1646`. Fetch the list of image arks under each of the parish's nine books, then match records to books by their image ark. A record cannot be at the wrong parish if the page it is written on is bound into that parish's book. Done that way, Svetvinčenat yields 118 indexed records across six of its nine books — and the place field of almost every one of them says only «Croazia, Austria».

This archive's own reference note says that on the records endpoint every `q.` term except `q.surname` is silently ignored. That is not quite true, and the exception is the one that matters. `q.fatherSurname=Franceschi` is honoured — but only when it is the sole name term. Supplied alongside `q.surname` it is discarded, which is how it came to be written off. On its own, against the Croatian church books, it returns 1,364 records where `q.surname` returns 3,550 different ones. Why that matters here: in the 1589–1646 book the child has no surname indexed at all. The Name column reads «Elena», «Eufemia», «Fumia», «Tomaso». The only surname in the record is the father's. A search by the person's surname can never see this book — and every early parish register that names children by forename alone is invisible the same way.

The same method opens the 1762–1858 marriage book: nineteen records. Eight are daughters of the house marrying out — Pasqua to Domenico Martincich, Anta to Gio Batta Stefanutto, Ellena to Mattio Santalezza in 1751, Sinforosa to Andrea Vernier in 1801, Veneranda to Antonio Subiotto in 1837, and Maria, Rosa, Euphrosia and Anna, all daughters of Joannes Defranceschi and Joanna Cleva, between 1859 and 1865. Three more are marriages of the men, and they reach back before the book: Zuanne son of Giacomo, Antonio son of Leonardo, and Vittorio son of Antonio, whose bride is Eufemia Bergamo. Bergamo and Fiorencis — Anna-Maria Fiorencis is the mother of the Vernier groom of 1861 — are two of the Carnian surnames Kandler lists as settled at Sanvincenti beside Defranceschi. The company the family keeps is still the only argument for where it came from, and it is still keeping it in 1861.

«Elena fig.la di Giacometta Redol, et di Cate sua mog.e, fu battezata da me D. Vicenzo Sines Can.co. Comp.i furno M.ro Nadal de Franceschi, et Elena mog.e di Sue Milicich.» Five months before his own daughter is christened, Nadal de Franceschi stands as godfather at Svetvinčenat. Godparents are almost never indexed, which is exactly why the page had to be opened. And he is styled M.ro — maestro, a master craftsman.

«Colotta figlia di M.ro Nadal de Franceschi et di Fiora sua consorte, nata li 10 d.o, et batt.a da me D. Vic.o; Comp.ri furno Giacometta Rebas, et Cata mog. di Dom.co Calcetta.» The name Colotta is written again in the margin, in the priest's own hand, the way this register indexes itself.

«Fioretta figlia di M.ro Batta de Franceschi, et di Dom.ca sua cons.te, nata li 18 d.o, et batt.a dal sud.o D. Pieu.o; Comp.ri furno M.ro Matte Felicer, et Dom.ca fig.la del q. M.ro Franc.o Sovardo.»

Read the godparents across these two openings alone and the parish's Carnian colony assembles itself: M.ro Nadal de Franceschi · M.ro Zuanne Spinoti · M.ro Matte Fiorenza · M.ro Matte Felicer · il M.co Angelo Fabri, fattor · M.ro Tomaso Selucer · M.ro Franc.o Sovardo. Spinotti. Fiorencis. Felice. Fabris. Those are not four names that happen to be in a Croatian village in 1666. They are the Canale di Gorto — the same set that stands on the gravestones at Santa Maria di Gorto and on its war memorial, and the same set Doblanović finds inside this town's castello in the household book of 1734. In 1666 they are all standing at each other's fonts, and a De Franceschi is among them, called maestro like the rest.

Eight years later, same parish, same register: «Vittoria fig.a di Giac.o Zebelin e di Elena sua leg.ma consorte… fu battezzata da me P. Fran.co Andreis Pievano. Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Ant.o di Franceschi e la Sig.ra Franceschetta Marchesi.» And twelve days later, his own son: «Mattio figlio del Sig.r Ant.o di Franceschi e della Sig.ra Marta sua leg.ma consorte, nato li 13 del sud.o mese, fu battezzato da me Pievano… Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Conte Luciani … et la Sig.ra Cattarina Pinco.» M.ro in 1666. Sig.r in 1674, with a Count for compare. That is a household changing class inside eight years, written down by two priests who had no reason to flatter anybody. It is also the first time this archive has watched it happen to a De Franceschi anywhere. Refined, after reading further. The change is not as clean as one opening made it look. As a godparent Anto is already «il S.r» on 20 October 1669 and again on 27 October 1669; but in his own family's entry three weeks later, 11 November 1669, the priest still writes «M.ro Ant.o». The two styles run side by side through 1669, and it is by 1674 that Sig.r has won in both places. This archive published the tidier version first and is correcting it here rather than quietly.

It is worth this: the Svetvinčenat family was Carnian, artisan, and rising, and it was doing in the 1660s and 1670s exactly what the literature says the Carnians did — trade, credit, marriage inside the group, and then a title of respect. It sits beside the Gologorica house's own eighteenth-century business of lending money and buying up debts, and beside the Stanzia De Franceschi that Brhan finds on the 1820 cadastre and which had already passed out of the family. It does not join them. Nothing read so far names a place of origin, and no entry ties any of these people to Mione, to Agrons, to Moncalvo or to Pula. Reading continues.

«il Sig.r Conte Lucciani da [D/R]ignan» — the word after da is a place and its first letter will not settle between a D and an R, enlarged five times. The surname will: it is Lucciani, with the double c, in a clear hand. So who was he? The index carries a Luciani family baptising children in exactly these years — Bartolomio Zuane on 12 November 1674, Margherita Zuanna 1693, Maria Elena 1693, Matta 1682, Zuanne Domenigo 1684, Maria 1692. Resolved by film, every one of them is in the parish register of Labin — Albona, DGS 005494791 and 005494792, «Matična knjiga 1536–1910». The Luciani are an Albona house. That is what the literature says too, and it is the family of the man who compiled the seventy-eight principal families of Albona. A count of theirs, standing at a De Franceschi font at Svetvinčenat in February 1674, is a man from the other side of Istria who had a reason to be there.

The name Luciani is already in this archive, twice, and neither time as a godparent. Carlo De Franceschi names him. In L'Istria: note storiche (1879) Carlo thanks, among his sources, «Signori cav. Tomaso Luciani e Dr. Antonio Scampicchio di Albona» — the two Albona antiquaries he worked with. And their books are on his shelves. The 2022 survey of the family library now in Zagreb finds, among the ex libris of previous owners, those of «Tomaso Luciani of Labin, the lawyer and politician Antonio Scampicchio, the historian Pietro Kandler». And Hauptmann, sorting the wrecked house at Gologorica in August 1945, lists among the manuscripts «letters of Gabriele D'Annunzio, of Tomaso Luciani and others». So: a Conte Lucciani of Albona stands godfather to a De Franceschi child in 1674; a Tomaso Luciani of Albona is Carlo De Franceschi's collaborator in the 1870s, his letters are in the house, and his bookplate is in the library. Two hundred years, one surname, one town, and no proved descent between them — the archive states the pairing and stops there. But it is the sort of thing that stops being a coincidence when it happens three times.

This is the second count of consequence in these registers. The first is in this archive already, and he carries our own name. «Die 25 Martii 1720 … Bartholomeus filius legitimus Domini Comitis Damiani de Franceschis ac Ursulae eius coniugis, sacris undis renatus est» — the only occurrence of the surname in seventy-five years of the Gallignana baptism book, read leaf by leaf. Count Damian de Franceschis is in no source this archive holds. He is not in the Blasonario's four families, not in Kobler's Fiume stocks, not in the Gologorica pedigree, and — checked now — not in Carlo De Franceschi's own history of Istria, whose index this archive has searched for him. A count of this surname in the County of Pazin in 1720, with a wife called Ursula and a son called Bartholomew, and nobody in two centuries of local historiography mentions him. One small thing worth noting rather than claiming: the Svetvinčenat register's earliest De Franceschi couple, in 1657, are Zuanne and Orsola — Orsola being Ursula. It is a common name. It is also the second time this archive has met the pairing.

Two days after his own daughter is christened, Anto stands godfather again — and this time the priest writes him out in full: «Gieppo fig.o leg.mo di M.ro Mattio Peleer e di Maria sua consorte, nato li 22 d.o, fu battezzato da me P. Fran.co Andreis Pievano. Comp.ri furono M.ro Ant.o di Franceschi di Piero, et Lucia moglie di Zuanne Bellauich da Barbana.» «di Piero» is a patronymic, not a place. Anto de Franceschi was the son of a Piero — and that pushes the family at Svetvinčenat back a generation before any of the twelve fathers the index knows about, into a man born around the 1610s or 1620s. It is the single most useful line read so far, and no index carries it, because indexes do not transcribe godparents.

«Franceschina fig.la leg.ma di M.ro Anto de Franceschi, et di Marta sua cons.te, nata li 6 del sud.o, et batt.a da me D. Vic.o Pineo Can.co. Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Angelo Ferri, et la Sig.ra Anna fig.la dell'Ill.mo s.r Nicolò Vieli, moglie di Gieppo Cacheda.» He is still M.ro here — but the godmother is already the daughter of an Illustrissimo. The climb this archive watched complete by 1674 has begun by 1667.

«Catarina fig.a di Sue Iacovich et d'Elena sua m.e… Comp.ri furno il S.r Ant.o de Franceschi, et Dom.ca mog. di Piero Bucich del Berro di Due Castelli.» — 20 October 1669. «Zuanne fig.o di Michiel Bratolich et di Santa sua consorte… Compari furono il S.r Ant.o de Franceschi, et Zua mog. di Matte Reba.» — 27 October 1669. Twice in eight days, for two unrelated households. Anto de Franceschi is one of the men this parish asks. Standing godparent was not a courtesy in a small Istrian town; it was a working relationship, and the register shows him in five of them in four years.

«Mattia fig.a del M.ro Ant.o de Franceschi e della S.ra Marta sua cons.te, nata li 8 [del] sud.o mese, fu battezzata da me P. Fran.co Andreis Pievano. Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Vicenzo Quelis, e la Sig.ra Cattarina Piero.» The index gives «Mattia De Franceschi, born 8 November 1669» without a sex. The register settles it: «fig.a … nata». Mattia is a daughter, not the son this archive had assumed from the name. And the godfather is a Quelis — the same family that supplies «il s.r Vicenzo Quelis» in 1666 and «l'Ill.mo s.r Nicolò Vieli» in 1667. The Quelis stand for this family repeatedly, which is worth more than any single entry.

«Mattio fig.o di Michiel Bratolch e di Pasqua sua leg.ma consorte, nato li 6 d.o… Comp.ri furono Ant.o di Franceschi, e D.na Pasqua moglie di M.ro Mattio da Llosta.» Here he is neither M.ro nor S.r — just Anto di Franceschi. The same priest, the same year. The honorifics in this register are not a ladder; they are a habit that varies with the hand and the moment, and this archive is recording that rather than building a story on it.

«Comp.ri furono M.ro Ant.o de Franceschi, et la Sig.ra Veneranda mog. del s.r Zuane de Cheri.» Worth a note for a different reason. Veneranda is a name this family goes on using: a Veneranda de Franceschi is baptised here in 1701, daughter of Gasparo; a Veneranda Defranceschi née Subiotto is in the record in 1837; a Veneranda Defranceschi née Demarin later still. Here in 1671 it belongs to the woman standing beside Anto at the font. Font-names travel that way, and it is worth writing down where a family's names come from.

Page 437, 10 June 1673: «Fran[cesco] fig.o di Michiel Festa, e d'Antonia sua legit.ma consorte». Festa is one of the families Brhan lists at Gallignana — «Gortan, De Franceschi, Festa, Picot, Baldè» — the Carnian households of the Pazin country. Here it is at Svetvinčenat, forty kilometres south, in 1673, in the same register as ours. That now makes Spinotti, Fiorencis, Felice, Fabris and Festa all present in this one parish in these years — and every one of them is a name Brhan or Doblanović places in the Carnian migration, and three of them stand on the gravestones at Gorto.

«Zuana figlia di M.ro Gaspero de Franceschi et d'Ant.a sua legg. consorte… fu Batt.a da P. Piero Palin. Compari furono M.ro Martin Ioancovich et Marina figlia del q. M.ro Batta de Franceschi.» Two new facts in one line of godparents. There is a Marina de Franceschi, adult in 1688 and therefore born by about 1670 — a daughter of the Batta whose child Fioretta was christened in 1666, and a person no index has. And «del q.» — del quondam, of the late — means Batta de Franceschi was dead by July 1688. A death this archive could not otherwise date at all.

In October 1692 a «D.a Marina moglie di M.ro Martin Francovich» stands godmother; in March 1701 the godmother at Gasparo's daughter's baptism is «Maria figlia di Martin Francovich». Set those beside 1688, where Marina de Franceschi stands with a M.ro Martin. Inferred The likeliest reading is that Marina de Franceschi married Martin Francovich, and that the Maria of 1701 is their daughter — which would make Batta's granddaughter the godmother at Gasparo's child's font, and tie two branches of this family together by choice rather than by guesswork. Two cautions, both real: the 1688 surname is written Ioancovich and the 1692 one Francovich, and standing as co-godparents does not make two people married. It is a reading, and it is labelled one.

«Giorgio figlio di Mico Matred e Zuana sua leg.ma consorte… fu hoggi batt. dal M.to R.do sig.r Can.co Pietro Quelis con lic.a mia. Compari furono M.ro Gasp.e di Franceschi e Cat.a moglie di Martin Bercovich.» — 17 March 1701. «Veneranda figlia leg.ma di Gasparo de Franceschi et Antonia sua consorte, nata li 12 d.o, fu hoggi batt.a dal M.to R.do sig.r Can.co Pietro Quelis di S. Vincenti. Comp.ri furono Zue de Blasio et Maria figlia di Martin Francovich.» — 20 March 1701. The same pattern as Nadal in 1666 and Anto in 1667: a De Franceschi stands at somebody else's font days before his own child is carried to it. Three generations of this family do it, in the same parish, across thirty-five years.

A faded entry, and the word after the surname will not resolve: «Comp.ri furono M.ro Mattio de Fran[ceschi] de …, et Cata figlia del q. Zuane Lucian…» The Christian name and surname are clear enough. Mattio de Franceschi is standing godfather in 1692 — and he is very likely the Mattio who fathers Antonio in 1704 and Martino in 1722. The other godparent is «Cata, daughter of the late Zuane Luciani» — the Albona name again, this time as a resident of the parish.

«Giacoma figlia leg.ma di M.ro Leonardo de Franceschi, et Eufemia sua leg.ma consorte, nata li 30 d[el] passato, fu hoggi battezzata dal R.do P. D. Vicenzo Francas. Comp.ri furono Sime Bercovich e moglie di Ghergo Doblanovich.» The index knows this man only as «Lunardo» and «Nardo», in 1707 and 1709. Here the priest writes him out: Leonardo. And Giacoma is a child of his the index does not have. That matters for one reason only, and it is worth stating carefully. The Gologorica house's byname is «detti Leonardi», and its pedigree runs Leonardus 1697–1773, Leonardus 1766–1848, Leonardus 1847–1917. A Leonardo de Franceschi is raising a family at Svetvinčenat from 1702. It is a shared font-name in a family that reuses font-names, and this archive is not going to pretend it is more than that. But it is now a documented Leonardo, not an abbreviation.

«Domenica figlia leg.ma di Piero de Franceschi et di Vittoria sua cons.te, nata oggi et battezzata di mano del Capell.o Salambat di mia licenza. Furono compari Nardo Franceschi et Maria r. q. … Giacomo Gambero.» This is the first De Franceschi standing godparent to another De Franceschi in this parish. Nardo — Leonardo — carries Piero's daughter. Two households of the name in one town, and they are close enough that one christens the other's child. Brothers, or uncle and nephew, on the ordinary reading; the register does not say which, and neither will this page.

«Dom.ca figlia leg.ma di M.ro Pietro de Franceschi et Vittoria sua moglie, nata li 5 d.o… essendo stati Padrini M.ro Mattio Lupieri, et Donna Antonia moglie del M.ro Fran.co Mandau.» Stop on that name. The Lupieri are the Carnian family of the Canale di Gorto — of Luint above Ovaro, four kilometres from Mione and Agrons. Brhan devotes a study to their Istrian correspondence; another to the Stanzia Lupieri at Sanvincenti, which stood on the road between Svetvinčenat and Canfanaro and is on the 1820 cadastre; a Valentino Lupieri was podestà of Sanvincenti in 1824. So in May 1707 a Lupieri of the Canale di Gorto stands godfather to a De Franceschi child at Svetvinčenat. Of every name in these registers, that is the one that ties this household hardest to the valley our own line came out of — not by descent, which nothing here shows, but by company. These people were each other's compari.

«Vittoria figlia leg.ma di S. Gieppo Pelizer e di Martina sua moglie, nata gemella con la sud.a in d.o parto li 22 sud.o… Furono compari S. Mattio de Franceschi, et la Sig.ra Madalena Pilastro.» By 1703 Mattio is Signor without qualification.

Page 557, 1704: «…li Butcovich della contrada di [B/R/S]ignano». That is the same word — the same first letter that would not resolve — as the place after «da» in «il Sig.r Conte Lucciani da …» in 1674. Which changes what kind of word it is. It is not a distant town; it is a contrada of this parish's own territory, used twice by two different priests. So the count of 1674 was not a visiting grandee from the other side of Istria: he held land here. The Lucciani are an Albona house, and one of them had a holding in the Svetvinčenat country. Inferred

«Mattio figlio leg.o de And.a Saia… Furono P.ni assistenti M.ro Nardo de Franceschi e la S.a Andriana…» — 6 September 1706. «…Comp.ri furono D. Nardo de Franceschi, et Elena Machier.» — later in 1707, and now styled D. With the christening of Piero's daughter in 1703 that is three godparent turns for Leonardo in four years. The role passes down the family: Nadal holds it in 1666, Anto through 1667–74, Gasparo in 1701, Mattio in 1692 and 1703, Leonardo from 1703. In this parish there is nearly always a De Franceschi being asked.

This archive said three days ago that opening 578 carries no De Franceschi. It does. The right-hand page opens with one, and the entry was missed. Both of the index's two Pieros have now been found on the film, and they are not what this page first said they were. Opening 578, 6 October 1707 — «Piero fig.o leg.mo di M.ro Nardo de Franceschi e di Eufemia Jugali, nato li 17 Settembre passato. Fu Battezzato da me medesimo. Assistenti P.ni furono Martin Salambat e la Sig.ra Andriana moglie del Sig.r Can.co Ottavio Quelis.» Opening 579, 15 October 1707 — «Piero fig.o leg.mo di M.ro Lunardo de Franceschi et d. Eufemia Jugali, nato li 05 corrente. Fu Battezzato di mia mano. P.ni assistenti P.re Martino Salambat … et la Sig.ra Andriana…» Two baptisms, nine days apart, of a boy called Piero, to a mother Eufemia both times and a father written Nardo once and Lunardo once. The stated births are eighteen days apart, which no mother manages. And the godparents are the same pair — Martino Salambat and Andriana Quelis, in the same order, in both entries. That is the proof. The duplicate is in the register, not in the index. The priest entered this child twice and never struck the first, and the top of the second page carries his own dating correction — «15 8bre qui sotto», scribbled above a heading he had first written 16 October. He was already confused about the dates on the page where he wrote it twice. The index then compounded it. It reads the first birth as 17 September and the second as 25 September — but the register says «nato li 05 corrente», the 5th of October. Neither index date is the baptism, and one of them is not the birth either.

Nineteen openings of DGS 005497884 read band by band: 397, 398, 402, 415, 423, 428, 437, 442, 496, 514, 516, 545, 549, 555, 557, 564, 571, 578, 579. They cover the baptisms of 1666, 1667, 1669, 1671, 1673, 1674, 1688, 1692, 1701, 1702, 1703, 1704, 1706 and 1707. Twenty occurrences of the surname that no index carries. Sixteen of them are godparent roles — the one category of entry no index transcribes — plus a daughter of Leonardo's the index does not have, and two probable appearances of Marina under her married name. Eleven baptisms confirmed word for word. One filiation recovered — «Ant.o di Franceschi di Piero». One death dated — Batta, before July 1688. Three people added — Marina, Giacoma, and a probable Maria. One sex corrected — Mattia of 1669 is a daughter. One duplicate found in the register itself — the two Pieros of October 1707, proved one child by their identical godparents. One within-family godparent link — Nardo for Piero's daughter, 1703. And the Lupieri. One correction to this page, published under the claim it corrects: the reading that opening 578 held no De Franceschi was wrong. It holds the first of the two Pieros. Reading a page and finding nothing is a claim like any other, and this one failed. What the film has not given is an origin. Not one entry in fourteen years of baptisms says where these people came from. No «da Carnia», no «di Mione», no «q. di Agrons». The Carnian identification of this household still rests entirely on the company it keeps — Spinotti, Fiorencis, Felice, Fabris, Festa, Bergamo, Lupieri — and on Doblanović and Brhan. That is a great deal, and it is not the same thing as a document. And the film is 595 images. Nineteen have been read. The rest hold this parish's marriages and deaths, which is where a place of origin is most likely to be written down, and where Batta's burial and Leonardo's second marriage would be. This archive has read the pages the index pointed at. It has not read the book.

The flight of 1669 is carried in every compilation and documented in none of them — Puhmajer's only authority for it is an encyclopaedia of 2001. Two other things are much harder. In 1674 the Republic assigned Zorzi de Franceschi a pension for his services in the War of Candia; after the Turkish conquest he went from Candia to Zante and from Zante to Sebenico, and a document of 1730 directs that the pension be drawn at Capodistria «probabilmente perchè la famiglia viveva già a Seghetto». The French suspended it and the Austrians restored it. That is a hundred and fifty years of a Venetian war pension following one family from Crete to Istria. And Marc'Antonio de Franceschi (1671–1758), the physician who bought the Seget estate in 1720, married in 1727 «Crissulla Marulli» — Chrysoula Marulli, a Cretan noble surname — and had eleven children by her. Puhmajer names her and moves straight on. She is the best evidence in his whole book for where these people came from.

This archive had this wrong and corrects it here. The mills on the Vrljika are not named for a Franceschi called Perin. They are named for the Perinović — Perin — a Zadar family the Franceschi brought in at the start of the eighteenth century as estate managers, and who followed them to their other properties. The by-name attached itself to the place and then to the owners, so that Andrija Kačić Miošić, in the Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga of 1756, sings of the taking of Imotski and calls the commander «Perinović Ive». A Venetian officer walked into Croatian epic verse under his steward's surname. A Venetian cadastral sheet of 1777 draws the stone bridge and the «Molinari di Franceschi» with eleven grindstones; fourteen were built in the end, and they ran until the end of the twentieth century.

By nobiliary compilation, mostly. A single surname with a Venetian count in it attracts everything else of that surname within a hundred miles. The most recent version of the error is online: a MyHeritage tree of 8,286 people descends the Crikvenica household from Zuane of Imotski, and it has been copied outward through Geni and Smart Matching since 2017. It is a magnificent pedigree and it is not ours. What separates the three is not argument but trade and register. The Klenovica baptism of 1890 names this family's place of settlement as «Gallignana u Istriji» — Gračišće in Istria — four generations downstream of the Gologorica house. The 1863 Gračišće entry gives the father as lapicida. The 1906 Crikvenica entry gives the son as «vešti klesar sada tvorničar», a skilled stonemason now a factory worker. Stonemasons coming down off an Istrian hill are not Venetian landowners on the Vrljika, and they are not Cretan counts.

The clinching detail is not in a document at all — it is on two walls. The Seget house and the Seget tomb both carry a lion. The Gologorica house and the Gologorica tomb carry a Greek cross with two arrows and a pomegranate. The Blasonario Giuliano lists four separate families of this surname in the region: one with a stork on a mount of three peaks, one with a lion, one with Carlo's cross and arrows and pomegranate, and one at Pisino with a half-castle. And Carlo De Franceschi himself, of the Gologorica house, writing in 1879 about the owners of Seget, called them «la nobile famiglia De Franceschi, attuale posseditrice, emigrata dall'isola di Candia» — the noble De Franceschi family, the present owner, emigrated from the island of Candia. Our own ancestor, describing them, described them as somebody else. One qualification, added September 2026. The Dalmatian family bears a lion too — Heyer von Rosenfeld draws the Franceschi shield party per fess, a lion rampant within it and a second lion issuing from the crown above, azure over or. So of the three arrivals, two bear lions and one does not, and the one that does not is the one this archive descends from. That is not an argument that Seget and Omiš are the same house; a lion in that posture is one of the commonest charges there is. It is a reason not to lean on the arms alone.

Nothing here proves the three are unrelated at some depth — a Franceschi is a son of Francesco, and the name was made independently wherever Italian was spoken. What is claimed is narrower and firmer: no document in this archive joins any two of them, and the people best placed to make the join declined to. Kobler had the Fiume civic registers and Carlo's own letters in front of him, and refused to unite even the three Fiume stocks he had found. The Seget family's own 1896 descent chart has not been read; the Imotski family's Zadar and Omiš papers have been read by a local historian and produce no Istrian link. Until one of those turns up a name in common, three arrivals is what the evidence supports, and three is what this site publishes.

Darko Darovec's survey of early-modern migration into Istria opens with Prospero Petronio, writing in 1681 from the bishop of Novigrad's notes of forty years earlier, listing the gente then living in the province. The second of them: «The Carni — many called them Cargnelli or Karnjeli — were related to the Friulians, who were their neighbours.» They spun wool and wove cloth and linen, and worked as tailors, smiths, shoemakers and stonemasons. They were reasonable and frugal, «so that many soon at least recovered materially, if they did not get rich as well». Their qualities were very useful to the province. They lived in fortified villages — castelli — and in the small towns, and they had not arrived before the Slavs. That is not a description of a peculiar family. It is a description of a class of immigrant, written down by a contemporary, and the Gologorica house sits inside it without adjustment: Carnian, artisan and small-owner, in a castello, comfortable enough within three generations to raise a small palace with an arcaded portico and a shield on the façade.

Darovec is precise about where the Friulian-Carnian stratum settled on the Austrian side: «a stratum of Italian and Friulian-Carnian origin had established itself in the small towns and other settlements of Austrian or Inner Istria, particularly in Pazin, Pićan, Gradišće, Žminj and Tinjan.» Gologorica lies between Pićan and Gračišće, in the County of Pazin, and Gračišće is the parish this line's registers are in. Every place in his list is within fifteen kilometres of the house. The Carnian arrival about 1700 stops being a family story and becomes a late instance of a documented movement.

The same page carries the thing the Name page has been arguing from surname evidence alone: «the immigrant Friulians and Carnians were eventually Slavicised or Croatised (for example, Callegarich, Furlanich) in the countryside and the Slavs Italianised (for example, Ivich, Bellasich, Slocovich) in the towns». Cossar, writing in 1930, found that Friulians «assimilated surprisingly swiftly» among the local population. Furlanich is literally the Friulian with a Slavic patronymic ending. So the change this archive tracks — De Franceschi to Defranceschi to Defrančeski — is the standard Istrian outcome for exactly this kind of family, in exactly this country, and not a peculiarity of ours.

The Seget tradition says a family came out of Crete when Candia fell. Darovec supplies what the tradition never does — the machinery. Venice attempted twelve organised settlements of some 4,000 Greeks from Nafplio, Monemvasia, Crete and Cyprus into Istria between 1530 and 1669. They were ineffective: harsh conditions and conflict with the locals sent many home or elsewhere. But of those who stayed, «those that remained integrated into the predominant Italian population, since they were mostly settled in urban areas». Two things follow. The terminal date of the whole programme is 1669 — the year Candia surrendered, and the year the Seget tradition names. And the outcome Darovec describes — settled in a town, absorbed into the Italian-speaking population, leaving no Greek trace behind — is exactly what the Umag family looks like: an Italian-speaking house at a coastal town, with one Cretan surname surviving in it, Crissulla Marulli, married in 1727. Inferred The paper does not name this family. What it does is move the Crete story from unlikely to the ordinary case.

In November 1600 the captain of Rašpor, Francesco Correr, counted his garrison by nationality: 330 Italians, 48 Frenchmen, 106 Croatians and 90 Corsicans. So there were Corsicans in Istria, in numbers, three generations before either of our arrivals — as paid soldiers. It changes nothing about the Corsican line, which this archive has closed as unconnected. It is here because it is the kind of fact that would otherwise be used, one day, to connect them.