Vodnjan

The 1945 cadastre counts twelve Defranceschi families at Vodnjan, against two at Gologorica and one at Gračišće. For most of this archive's life that was all it knew, and the twelve households were listed as its second open question.

They are not open any more. The parish books of Dignano — FamilySearch catalogue item koha:963267 — hold baptisms from 1815, marriages 1815–1884 and deaths to 1893. The baptism register gives eight households between 1816 and 1865. **The marriage register has never been indexed by anybody**, and was read here opening by opening.

What came out of it: a line five generations deep, from a **Pietro** standing behind a marriage of the 1770s, through **Gio. Maria De Franceschi and Michiela Zambaletta**, to their children **Pietro, Cristoforo and Veniera** and the grandchildren married off in the 1820s. A **second, separate line** descending from a Domenico. **Four women of the name married out before the books open** — Domenica, Antonia Maria, Lucia and Veniera — recoverable only because their daughters' weddings named their mothers. And one household of three brothers, all «di Giuseppe»: **Don Stefano the priest**, who witnessed sixteen weddings under the parroco Giovanni Tromba, and **Pietro the ploughman and Cristoforo the weaver**, who signed the same book with a cross.

The town's church paperwork ran to the **Ordinariate of Pola**; the banns could be waived by the **Imperial-Royal Circle Captaincy**. Weddings involving Vodnjan people were also held at **Šišan** and **Svetvinčenat**, and a «Matt.o de Franceschi da Dignano» was buried at **Rovinj** in 1728 — the same formula, ninety-six years apart, naming the town only from outside it.