Ližnjan

A marriage at Ližnjan on 10 June 1874. The principal is Gregorius Defranceski, and the clerk records his age: 22, which puts his birth in 1851. The record is filed under Croatia-Slavonia, Magyarország — the Hungarian half of the Monarchy — with the place tagged Ližnjan, Istria.

Maria Vojnić. She is named as the mother in every one of his children's baptisms. Vojnić is one of the great Ližnjan surnames — and it is one of the names standing beside «Defrančeski Ante» in the «Pučki prijatelj» subscription list of 27 February 1920.

Gregorio Defranceschi and Agata Skifić, who appear across the Ližnjan books from the 1840s. The indexer has repeatedly merged the two surnames into «Gregorii Skifić» and «Agathæ Skifić», which is how a machine reads a Latin entry giving a father, a mother and her maiden name in one line. Read against the Italian-language entries of the same couple — «Gregorio Defranceschi» and «Agata Schiffich» — the household is unmistakable.

Anastasia, baptised 23 February 1875 and again a child of the same name on 23 February 1876 — the second almost certainly named for the first. Maria, born 4 January 1878, baptised the 5th. Justina, born 3 October 1879, baptised the 4th. Maria again, born 25 January 1882, baptised the 26th — so the 1878 Maria had died. And Josephus, March 1887. Six baptisms in thirteen years and at least two of them replacing a dead child, which is the ordinary arithmetic of an Istrian village.

Justina Defrančeski — spelt there with the háček — married Josephus Fedel at Ližnjan on 22 November 1898. Stana Defranceski married Jacobus Vojnić on 7 August 1899. Two Ližnjan houses, in two years.

Gregorio and Agata's own children run back to the 1840s: Maria, 8 December 1846; Cattarina, 31 October 1847; a Giovanni; Agatha, born 30 December 1867 and baptised on New Year's Day 1868; a Maria who married Josephus Ruman on 17 November 1869; and a Lucia who married Joannes Sandalj on 11 February 1874, four months before her brother's wedding. Behind them stands a Mattio De Franceschi with a wife Madalena Peucovich, given as Gregorio's own parents.

At Ližnjan on 6 October 1879, a Lucia died aged twenty-five, born 1854, buried the next day. The indexer could not tell from the page whether her husband was «Joannis Sandalj» or «Gregorii Defranceski» and wrote both. If she is the Lucia Defranceschi who married Joannes Sandalj in February 1874, then Grga buried his sister five years into her marriage and three days after his daughter Justina was baptised.

Two Gregorios at Ližnjan, either side of the one found here. Gregorio de Franceschi, born 23 May 1822 at Ližnjan, died there 25 November 1861 — old enough to be the father of the Gregorius who married in 1874 at twenty-two. And Gregorius «Grgo» Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb — the man on the pin. Four generations of the name in one village, and the family knew about the last of them all along.

A line drawn from Ližnjan to Monheim, and a separate pin, «Petar Moves to Metzingen». The coordinates on the Monheim pin are 10.8537 E, 48.8427 N — which is Monheim in Bavaria, in the Donau-Ries, not Monheim am Rhein. It matters: Bavarian Monheim is about a hundred kilometres from Metzingen, and Metzingen is four kilometres from Pfullingen, where this family's own wartime papers were issued.

Nothing. The pin has no note, no date, no name and no document behind it, and neither does «Grga dies in Zagreb». They are David's own knowledge, drawn on a map some years ago. This archive has searched for both and found neither: no Defranceschi at Monheim in any index reachable from here, and no death for a Grga at Zagreb in the newspapers or the burial indexes.

Read directly out of the live MyHeritage tree the same evening: «Gregorius ‘Grgo’ Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb.» That is the Grga of the map pin, and he is not the Gregorius born in 1851 whom this page had just reconstructed out of the registers. He is four generations later. The pin was right and the reading of it here was wrong: this archive found *a* Grga at Ližnjan, decided it must be the one, and had to be corrected by the tree.

The Ližnjan parish registers at the Državni arhiv u Pazinu, read as images rather than as an index — for Grga's own baptism about 1851, his death, and any emigration note in the margin. And Zagreb's Mirogoj burial records for Marija Defrančeski, 1884–1971, which would give a birthplace.

This page has been reading the pin's coordinates literally and searching Bavaria. That was a mistake, and a consequential one. Germany has two Monheims, and the one that matters is Monheim am Rhein in North Rhine-Westphalia — a Rhineland industrial town in the Kreis Mettmann, between Düsseldorf and Cologne, and the kind of place Yugoslav labour went to from the 1960s. Bavarian Monheim, in the Donau-Ries, is a market town of eight thousand people with no such history. A pin dropped by autocomplete lands on the wrong one very easily.

The German public telephone directory, searched nationally in every spelling, returns exactly one private listing of «Defranceski» in the whole of Germany — fused, no particle, spelt precisely as this family spells it. It is at Langenfeld (Rheinland): five kilometres from Monheim am Rhein, in the same district, Kreis Mettmann. (The only «Defranceschi» listing in Germany is a company at Mannheim — the German arm of the Italian winery-equipment firm, and nothing to do with anybody.) They are living people, so this archive names no one. What it can say is this: the pin is no longer sourceless. A line drawn years ago from Ližnjan to Monheim, with no note and no date, turns out to point at the one corner of Germany where the surname is actually written the way this family writes it. That is not proof of a connection, and it is not being counted as one. It is the first thing that has ever supported the pin at all, and it converts a dead end into an address to ask at.

Three routes, none of which this archive will take on its own. The Croatian Catholic Mission for Monheim–Langenfeld–Leverkusen keeps its own registers and would know when a family arrived. The Kreis Mettmann Einwohnermeldeamt holds registration records, restricted but obtainable by the family. And the simplest of all: the family at Langenfeld can be written to. That is David's to do, not this archive's.

Milan Defrančeski, died 24 May 2001, aged 78 — so born about 1923 — Mirogoj RKT 96A/II/61, parents entered as «GRGO I MARIJA». And Dragutin Defrančeski, died 17 May 2004, aged 79 — born about 1925 — Mirogoj RKT 136/II/26, parents «MARIJA I GRGA». Two brothers, in two graves, both naming the same father and mother. This is the Grga of the pin, and he is now the father of two men whose graves can be visited.

David's MyHeritage tree gives «Gregorius ‘Grgo’ Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb». But a man whose sons were born in 1923 and 1925 was not born in 1931. Either the tree's year is wrong, or its Grgo is a third man of the name — a grandson, perhaps, named for him. Grga the father of Milan and Dragutin was born somewhere around 1890 to 1900. The archive is not going to pick a year; it is going to say that two independent records disagree and that the cemetery's is the one with a document behind it.

Marija Defrančeski, died 3 June 1971, aged 87, so born about 1884: Mirogoj RKT 147A/II/58. In the same grave, Zdenka Defrančeski, died 16 March 1945, aged two, and not buried until 24 December 1971 — which means the child's remains were moved into her grave after Marija died. A little girl who died in March 1945, in the last weeks of the war, and waited twenty-six years to be laid with her.

Antun Defrančeski, died 5 June 1943 aged 67 — born about 1876 — and Justina Defrančeski, died 26 November 1963 aged 78 — born about 1885. Both Mirogoj RKT 136/II/43, and both buried on the same day, 28 November 1963: he was moved to lie with her when she died, twenty years after his own death. Justina is the name of Grga's daughter, baptised at Ližnjan on 4 October 1879 — nine years off, and this archive is not going to make them the same woman on a name.

Uršula Defrančeski, died 7 July 1963, aged 71, so born about 1892 — Miroševac RKT 240/I/45, sharing the grave with two men both called Josip, one dead 21 February 1976 aged 88 and the other 3 December 1979. Uršula is the name David's own great-grandmother carried. This is a different woman in a different city, and it is worth writing down that the name is in both branches.

Blanka Defranceski, born 16 December 1928, died 17 April 2019 aged 90, Markovo polje RKT 34/I/1610, parents «ANĐELA I JOSIP». Štefica Defrančeski, born 7 December 1927, died 15 October 2016, parents «PAVAO I CECILIJA», buried in Milan's grave — so his wife. Ana Defrančeski, buried at Miroševac 3 May 1990, and a Josip Defrancevski, dead 29 April 1955 aged 48. Thirteen burials of the name in the city, spread over four cemeteries and eighty years.

1667. «Croatia, Church Books» has *Franceschina De Franceschi and Anto De Franceschi, 23 Oct 1667*, and another child of the same father on 8 November 1669. Then Gaspero, with children in 1688 and 3 April 1692. Then Mattio, whose son Antonio is entered in November 1704. That is four generations before the first date this site had for Ližnjan, and it is in the same registers this archive has been reading for Gračišće.

Not Ližnjan. Pula above all, and Fažana (Fasana), and Premantura, and Medulin, and Barban — the whole southern tip of the peninsula, Venetian territory, a different world from the Habsburg County of Pazin where our own family was. Baptisms and marriages at Pula in 1736, 1737, 1810, 1818, 1841, 1849, 1869; at Fažana in 1813, 1815, 1816, and a death there in 1846; at Premantura in 1809 and 1859. Ližnjan is where the family was still living in 1931, not where it came from.

A Matto De Franceschi dead at ROVINJ on 27 December 1728, and a Bortolo whose son Felice Antonio is baptised at ŠTERNA on 20 September 1778 — up in the Buje country, a hundred kilometres north. Southern Istria and the Bujština in one household file is either two families merged in the tree, or a family that moved twice.

Giambattista De Franceschi, born before 1765, has two children entered at ZOPPOLA in the province of Udine — one in 1779 and one on 19 January 1811, the latter cited to «Italia, Udine, Stato Civile (Archivio di Stato)». Zoppola is in Friuli. If that entry belongs in this cluster rather than being a Smart-Matched stranger, it points this family at Friuli and therefore at the Carnian direction, not the Cretan one. It is the single most testable thing in the whole node, and it is testable: the Zoppola civil registers are filmed.

Three ways, and all three are the twentieth century happening to Istria. Antonio Defranceschi, born 9 April 1894, died 11 February 1946 at Pula and buried in the k.u.k. Marinefriedhof — the Austro-Hungarian naval cemetery, which by 1946 was a Yugoslav city's memory of an empire. Grgo, born 1931 at Ližnjan, dead at Zagreb. And two born at Barban who went to France: Marie, 22 February 1924 – 16 February 2002 at Charleville in the Moselle, and Ivan, 29 August 1931 – 16 September 2016 at Cannes. That is the *esodo*, and France is a destination this archive's diaspora table did not have.

The Ližnjan page was written round a pin on a map and a note saying «Grga dies in Zagreb». Grga is real, and so is his family, and it is four times older and four times larger than this page assumed. Ližnjan should stop being counted as a fourth family and start being described as what the evidence shows: the last address of a southern-Istrian household that is in the Pula registers by 1667. Whether that household is Carnian, Cretan or neither is not yet settled — and the Zoppola entry is the thread to pull.

This page said the Friulian entry was «the single most testable thing in the whole node». It has been tested, and it is not evidence. It is a Smart Match. Four things kill it. Two living Lucias. The tree gives Giambattista a daughter Lucia born 1779 and dead 1813, and a second daughter Lucia born 19 January 1811 — the second born while the first was alive. No Italian family names a second living daughter after her sister. These are two different men. The alias names a local family. The 1813 citation reads «Giambattista De Franceschi o Samassa» — or Samassa, the Friulian plain's ordinary way of distinguishing branches. And Samassa is a Zoppola surname in its own right: Samassa Rachele and Samassa Giovanni are both in Zoppola's own civil registers. He is a Zoppola man of a Zoppola family. The surname is everywhere there. A full-text sweep of the Friulian plain returns De Franceschi at Azzano Decimo in 1897, Cordenons, Pordenone in 1888 and 1898, and Zoppola — the commonest patronymic in Italy, behaving commonly. And even at best it was the wrong Friuli. Zoppola is on the plain twenty-five kilometres west of Pordenone. Carnia is sixty kilometres north, in the mountains. A Zoppola link would not have been a Carnian link.

Where it was, and honestly. Thirty-one people, in the Pula and Fažana registers from 1667, with no origin. The one clue that pointed north was a graft, and removing it is worth more than keeping it would have been — the point of naming a testable thread is that it can fail. What remains testable is nearer home: the outlier deaths at Rovinj in 1728 and the baptism at Šterna in 1778, and Bertoša's study of Pula surnames from the confirmation lists of 1825, which is exactly the place and period this household is thickest.

This page has carried «Pula, 1667» as the oldest record of the southern-Istrian family: Anto De Franceschi with children entered in October 1667 and November 1669. The index gives their place only as «Croazia, Austria», and the Pula reading was this archive's own. Resolved properly — index entry to image ark, image ark to film, film to catalogue — those baptisms are on DGS 005497884, «Matična knjiga 1568–1917», the parish register of Svetvinčenat. Forty kilometres north, a different parish, and a town whose De Franceschi are called Carnian by everyone who has studied them. The 1667 date stands. The place does not. The whole finding →