The Defranceschi Archive
?–? · Weaver

Zuane De Franceschi

Named in 1679, with a son, as a weaver of Mione working in the Habsburg County of Pazin. The oldest documented tie between this family's two Italian-side origins.

The record
Documented
Recorded
1679
list drawn up by the merighi, the village headmen
Of
Mione, parish of Ovaro, Canale di Gorto
Trade
Weaver
tessitore
With
a son of his, and Zuane d'Erman of Mione
Where
‘nell'Istria, luogo imperiale’ — the County of Pazin
not Venetian Istria

The life

The entry reads, in the headmen's own words: da Mione «Zuane De Franceschi con un suo fiolo, Zuane d'Erman: questi tre nell'Istria, luogo imperiale» — from Mione, Zuane De Franceschi with a son of his, and Zuane d'Erman: these three in Istria, an imperial place.

Three things in that one line matter. First, it is a De Franceschi of Mione — the surname is in the Carnian village, not merely near it. Second, luogo imperiale means the Habsburg County of Pazin specifically; the list only recorded men who went to imperial territory, because that is what the question asked, and Venetian Istria — where most Gorto emigrants actually went — was left out of the answers entirely. Third, he took a son.

The County of Pazin is where Gologorica and Gračišće are. It is the county Giovanni Battista Defranceschi is said to have left for Fiume around 1740, sixty-one years later, and the county in which the De Franceschi house on the Gologorica square was built in 1711, thirty-two years later.

This does not prove descent. It does move the Carnia–Istria link from a plausible story about weavers in general to a named man of this surname, from this village, in this county, on a dated list. Zuane d'Erman came from Mione too; the Erman were another Gorto weaving family, and their contracts survive in the Micoli Toscano family archive at Mione.

Where he came from

Mione
Mion · Mione (Ovaro)
A hundred and thirty people at 710 metres — and the Italian end of a documented migration into Istria.