Research Log

Who was Count Damian de Franceschis?

On 25 March 1720 the Provost and Vicar of the Cathedral of Pedena came to Gallignana and baptised «Bartholomeus filius legitimus Domini Comitis Damiani de Franceschis ac Ursulae eius coniugis». The whole Gallignana baptism book of 1667–1745 has now been read leaf by leaf, and the surname occurs five times in it: this count in 1720; a Presbiter Philippus de Franceschi celebrating a baptism on 19 March 1734; and three times a Defranceschi of Gologorica standing godparent, in 1733, 1743 and 1744. The count is the only one of the five who is not from Gologorica and the only one this archive cannot place at all. The reading was verified against a genuine «defuncti» on the same page. He is in no source this archive holds — not the Seget line Puhmajer reconstructs, not the Gologorica registers, not Kobler's three Fiume stocks.

Next: The Pedena cathedral chapter's records, which would account for the Provost's journey; the Gologorica and Pisino registers for 1720 and after, for a Bartholomaeus; and any nobiliary list of the County of Pazin. A count of this surname in the Habsburg county in the year the Candia branch bought Seget is not a person who should be untraceable.

What is in Orbanić's edition of the 1788 Pićan visitation?

Ignazio Gaetano de Buset conducted a spiritual visitation of the diocese of Pićan — Pedena — and the Austrian part of the diocese of Poreč between 31 March and 31 August 1788, writing 178 sheets in Italian in four small volumes. Elvis Orbanić edited and published them: «Visita Spirituale del 1788 in Istria», Quaderni di «Archiva Ecclesiae» 13, Vatican City, 2016, 277 pp. It records the conduct of the parish priests and curates and the internal state of every church in the diocese, parish by parish. Gologorica and Gallignana are both in it, and in 1788 Gologorica had just come out of eight decades as the bishop of Pićan's own fief.

Next: Get the book. It is a printed edition, so a library or the Associazione Archivistica Ecclesiastica will do; no archive appointment is needed. Note that the manuscripts themselves are in the Diocesan Archives of TRIESTE, not Pazin — which is the detail that would otherwise waste a search. The editor, Elvis Orbanić, directs the state archives at Pazin.

When did Agostino De Franceschi of Gorto live?

The oldest De Franceschi stone in the cemetery at Santa Maria di Gorto carries an effaced inscription: «Qui giace / AGOSTINO DE FRANCESCHI / Nato 2? Luglio 18?? / Morto 1? Settembre 18?? / Moglie e [figli] posero». The stone was then reused, and FRANCESCO DE FRANCESCHI 1887–1945 and LIDUINA CECCONI 1897–1977 applied over it in metal letters. Two separate readings of the same photographs have produced 26 July 1822 and 22 July 1853 for the birth, and 11 and 15 September for the death. Neither is safe: the birth day is a 2 followed by a 2 or an 8, the death day a 1 followed by a 1 or a 5, and both years sit inside a blown highlight that no processing recovers.

Next: One photograph of that stone in raking light, early morning or late afternoon, square on. Failing that, the Ovaro civil death register — Carnia was in the Kingdom of Italy from 1866, so a death in the 1880s is civilly registered — which would also give his age, his parents and his widow's name, and would say whether Francesco of 1887 was his posthumous son.

Where are the Udine charters of 1467, 1471 and 1502?

The Istarska enciklopedija says the family held the castle of Agrons by the Degano, that charters of 1467 and 1471 record the investiture of a Leonardus Francisci by the Luogotenente of Friuli with an obligation of military service, and that a document of 1502 names «ser Leonardus Christoforus Francisci quondam Johannis gismanus de Carnia». These are the oldest documents anywhere that touch this family, and they carry it back four hundred years before the Gologorica house. Bertoša attributes all three explicitly to the researches of Camillo De Franceschi — so the citation is Camillo's, not his, and the trail runs through Camillo before it runs to Udine.

Next: Three lines at once. First, Camillo's «Storia documentata della Contea di Pisino», AMSI 1963 vols 10–12, which is the encyclopedia's own cited authority and which this archive does not hold — the footnote there should give the archival reference. Second, Camillo's working papers, whose inventories both say they include his transcriptions and the documents he used: the Società Istriana at Trieste (26 boxes) and the National and University Library at Zagreb (14 boxes and 9 folders). Letters to both are drafted. Third, the originals, presumably in the Archivio di Stato di Udine among the records of the Luogotenenza della Patria del Friuli — the fond and series are being identified.

Who was the Marquis de Prié of Moncalvo?

In 1712 a Gian Battista De Franceschi, parish priest of Moncalvo, took the peasants' side in a revolt against the taxes of the fief-holder's lieutenant, was arrested and shut in the castle of Pazin, and was let out by the lord of Moncalvo, «il marchese de Prié». A year after the family built its house. And in the same century Gologorica was the fief of Charles Antoine Biotz, a Belgian of the diocese of Liège. Two Netherlandish lords of one small Istrian village within a generation.

Next: That is a fact about how the Habsburg court disposed of Istrian fiefs, not about this family, and it should be traced through the literature on the County of Pazin rather than through parish books. Camillo's «Storia documentata della Contea di Pisino» is again the obvious place to start.

What is in box 1 at Rijeka?

HR-DARI-382, kut. 1: the «Albero genealogico della Famiglia de Franceschi» of 1896 — blue ink on paper, with births and deaths added later in black. Puhmajer says it runs «iz vremena koje seže u 15. stoljeće», from a time reaching back into the fifteenth century, down to the 1890s, with dates, occupations and spouses. He prints about a fifth of it in his footnotes and reproduces the rest as a photograph too small to read. The fond's own finding aid is titled 1412 / 1943.

Next: Ask the Državni arhiv u Rijeci for a high-resolution image of the chart itself, not a transcript. Then, in order: HR-DAPA-828 kut. 3, the 1927 Umag genealogy of the male line, as a control; Krota's «Sumarni inventar RO 23» (1990), the key to the whole fond, which Puhmajer used for only fourteen boxes; and HR-DARI-382 kut. 13 sv. 50, «Instromenti diversi per li Luoghi di Umago et Bugie», the pre-1720 deeds and the likeliest home of anything documenting the arrival in Istria.

Was Alvise de Franceschi really dragoman at the Ottoman Porte?

The 1896 family genealogy enters Alvise de Franceschi (1727 – c. 1790), owner of Seget, as «Dragomai alla Porta ottomana». A Venetian dragomanno alla Porta was a salaried interpreter-diplomat attached to the bailo at Constantinople — a real office with a real paper trail, and one Venice filled from Levantine-Greek families who had served her in the East. His father had married a Crissulla Marulli in 1727; Marulli is a Cretan noble surname and Crissulla is Chrysoula.

Next: The «Bailo a Costantinopoli» series in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, and the Senato Deliberazioni Costantinopoli. If he held the office, he was paid for it and there will be a file. It would also give the Candia story its first document, which it has never had.

Who were the Defranceschi of Bakar?

The family remembers a lot of them there, and this archive had not a line about Bakar or Buccari — twenty kilometres along the same coast this line came down to in 1890, and the seat of an archdeaconry in Kobler's own geography. A first sweep gives an Ant. Defranceschi keeping the accounts of the Colapian (Kupa) navigation for the royal chamber in the Zagreb almanacs of 1824–47, a Franciscus Defranceschi as chancery clerk beside him, and a Francesco Defranceschi as inspector of the parish school at Fiume in 1859–60. None is yet shown to be a Bakar household.

Next: Two things. The Bakar parish registers, which are a series this project has never touched. And «Stemmi della nobiltà di Buccari», Bakarski zbornik 2 (1996), pp. 5–62 — fifty-seven pages on the arms of Bakar's patrician houses. If the name is among them, that article has the shield.

Who is in the Gallignana baptism book of 1668–1745?

Nobody knows, because nobody has read it — and it turns out to be on the family's own hard drive. Microfilm ZM34K-215, images M01069946 to M01070130, is a Liber Baptisatorum with a title page of the 1660s and «Gracisce» pencilled on the flyleaf, running in sampled pages from 1679 through 1735 and joining onto the 1746–1840 births book that follows it. This log has been calling the pre-1764 books «the only significant undigitised material» and saying they must be read on paper at Pazin. One of them was already in the house.

Next: Read it. Image M01069975 is the opening for the winter of 1679–80 — the exact year of the Carnian headmen's return that names Zuane De Franceschi with a son at work in the imperial county. Two hundred images of narrative Latin, unindexed, no OCR possible, in the hand of the plebanus Jacobus Braitta. It is now the single most valuable thing anyone can do for this archive without leaving the house.

Is the Gračišće house-5 head the boy baptised at Gologorica casa 31?

The Gallignana Status Animarum gives the head of house 5 as Joan. Bapt. Defranceschi, agricola, born 13 August 1787. The Gologorica baptism book, folio 6, has a Joannes Baptista Defranceschi baptised at house 31 on 13 August 1787, son of Joannes Baptista and Theresia née Grach — the casa-31 «detti Leonardi» branch. Same name, same day, two parishes eight kilometres apart. Against it: one record is a birth and the other a baptism; the Gologorica household is entered Cives and the Gračišće man is an agricola. Recorded as inferred.

Next: The Gračišće marriage of 1819 to Francisca Salomon, which should name the groom's father, or his death entry of 1 September 1846. Either would settle it, and both are in the Gračišće registers rather than the Gologorica ones.

What is in box 2979 at Udine?

The inventory of Ovaro sources in the Archivio di Stato di Udine, printed in «Ovaro: itinerari e ricerche» (1995), lists the old notarial archive by notarial seat. Under «Sede notarile: Mione» stands B. 2979, Franceschi Gio. Batta — two protocols of instruments 1737–1783 and a minute-book 1757–1783. A notary of this surname held the seat at Mione for forty-six years, and everything drawn there in that time went through his hands. Two boxes on, B. 2985, Soravito Franceschi Antonio, 1800–1805.

Next: Write to the Archivio di Stato di Udine. Those are the years in which a Valentino Defranceschi «venuto dalla Carnia» was made a citizen of Fiume — 1739 — and the generations Carlo says came over. It is the most specific unopened door on the Carnian side and it needs a letter, not a search box.

Is the shield still on the house at Gologorica?

Three witnesses now say there is a carved coat of arms on the front of the family's house, across a hundred and forty years: Carlo describing his family's arms privately to Kobler about 1873; the architectural historian Radmila Matejčić in 1979 recording «il proprio palazzetto con portico ad arcate e blasone sulla facciata»; and the American branch in 2012 describing what they could still make out on it, «hard to read now due to wear and weather».

Next: ANSWERED, the same day. The house stands, with the arcaded loggia Matejčić describes. Set into the façade: a tablet reading «[A]N.O DOMINI … GIO: BATISTA DE FRANCESCHI FECCE FARE PER SE ET HEREDI SVOI»; a Madonna relief in a scrolled aedicule; a memorial tablet beginning «IN QUESTA CASA … CARLO DE FRANCESCHI … PATRIOTA ISTRIANO»; and at the top an oval cartouche under a plumed helm, charged with a cross crossed by two arrows and, below a band, a pomegranate. That is Carlo's private blazon of about 1873, exactly. The same arms are on both tablets of his tomb in the village cemetery and on the urn beside it. The Carlo plaque is now READ IN FULL and it corrects this entry: «IN QVESTA CASA AVITA / NACQVE E MORÌ / CARLO DE FRANCESCHI / PATRIOTTA FERVENTE / ARCHEOLOGO E STORICO / AGLI STVDI DELLA SVA ISTRIA / OPEROSO / MDCCCIX — MDCCCXCIII» — not «patriota istriano», and it says he was born and died in the house, and calls it the casa avita. The cartouche legend is partly read, by two readers independently: «… [name ending ‑A] · DE · FRANCESCHI · FIERI · … PERMISIT …», Latin, running clockwise with the top arc eroded away. The house is number 22. The YEAR on the builder's tablet is now READ: «ANNO · DOMNI · 1711 / GION · BATISTA / DE · FRANCESCHI / FECCE · FARE · PER · SE / ET · HEREDI · SVOI» — 1711, exactly the year Carlo gave Kobler for the building of the house, and the name is GION, not the abbreviation. A mark right of the last numeral was read by one reader as an open-form 4; enlarged, it sits outside the digits' band and against the panel border, and 1711 is published. STILL WANTED: one raking-light frame to close that off for good — no frame yet taken is closer than about six pixels per letter — and the lost segments of the cartouche legend. Both want a long lens and a torch swept round at a low angle, four to eight exposures, after sunset.

Does Valentino's chapel above Sveti Ivan still stand?

Kobler, writing in the 1890s, describes it in the present tense: the chapel of St Helena near the western boundary of Fiume's territory, a little beyond San Giovanni, with «Sacellum B. Mariæ Virgini erectum a D. Valentino Defranceschi a. 1764» cut over the door. Its upkeep passed in 1801 to the Faribault family, who had bought his vineyard at Plase, and in 1839 Celestino Faribault guaranteed fourteen masses a year. Kobler also lists Valentino's floor slab in the collegiate church, by the altar of the Madonna del Carmine, reading «Cineres D. Valentini De Franceschi, qui vivens sibi ac posteris suis destinavit hanc aeternae quietis sedem».

Next: Two photographs: the lintel above Sveti Ivan, and the slab in the church at Rijeka. Questions for the Rijeka conservation office or the parish. Neither needs an archive appointment.

Is the Seghetto tomb still in the cemetery at Umago?

«La Ricerca» 42–43 (2004): «Subito vicino c'è la tomba dei conti de Franceschi di Seghetto. Anche questa munita di stemma famigliare» — next to the tomb of the counts Marcovich, the tomb of the counts de Franceschi of Seghetto, with the family arms on it.

Next: ANSWERED, the same day it was asked, by somebody going and looking. It is not a headstone but a walled enclosure with iron railings, a stone canopy on four columns, a wrought-iron cross and two angels on top, and a black iron tympanum of acanthus filling the arch. At the centre of the ironwork: a shield under a five-pointed coronet, charged with a lion rampant and a star. Under the canopy, a marble monument in three bays, a wreath enclosing the date 1890, and the words FAMIGLIA DE FRANCESCHI DI SEGHETTO. A tablet against the wall gives Francesca d. 1924, Rag. Giorgio d. 1940 aged 26, Ing. Italo d. 1944 aged 68, Ferramondo d. 1945 aged 74, and Anna Fragiacomo ved. de Franceschi d. 1960 aged 70. The lion is also on the pediment of the house at Seget. It is the armorial's second family, not Carlo's.

What is in the 1885 Vodnjan election file at Trieste?

Daniela Simon's monograph cites a detailed complaint by the Croatian Party about the rural-communes election in the Vodnjan district on 22 May 1885, naming the people involved, and records that «die Forderung nach Annullierung der Wahl von G. B. De Franceschi wurde an das Abgeordnetenhaus gerichtet» — the demand to annul G. B. de Franceschi's election was put to the Chamber of Deputies. She describes the same season's poll at Poreč as involving vote-buying, obstruction and assaults witnessed by the district captain, with the police standing by.

Next: Archivio di Stato di Trieste, I.R. Luogotenenza del Litorale (1850–1918), Atti Presidiali, 1891, fascicolo 138: Vodnjan, 1 September 1885; the Poreč companion is fascicolo 131. Ask for a scan. He served the term, so the complaint failed or lapsed; the file would say which.

Do G. B. de Franceschi's Umago manuscripts survive?

Rino Cigui, editing Kandler's «Cenni storici di Umago» in the «Atti» for 2004, notes that Kandler was among the first to attempt a systematic history of Umago «assieme al canonico Francesco Roselli ed a Giovanni Battista de Franceschi», and describes him as «cultore di studi storici e autore della raccolta ‹Manoscritti inediti relativi alla Storia di Umago›». The man this archive knows as the leader of the Italian majority in the Diet and a deputy at Vienna for eighteen years also assembled a manuscript collection on his own town.

Next: Ask the Centro di ricerche storiche at Rovinj and the Umag town museum whether the raccolta survives and where. If it does, it is a De Franceschi archive nobody in this project has looked at.

Where are the family's own three sources?

The 2012 reunion album records its own chain of custody. A man who had married into the Gallignana house more than fifty years before handed over his handwritten notes of the family tree; a cousin had made a tape of the family genealogy years earlier and passed it round; another cousin had been researching the family in the 1970s. None of the three is in this archive.

Next: Ask the American cousins. Any one of the three would be worth more than another week in the newspapers, and the tape in particular is oral testimony from a generation now gone.

Is there a Trieste departure manifest anywhere?

Trieste was the Austro-Hungarian emigration port and the Austro-Americana line sailed from it to New York, and a 1917 draft card even records a Gallignana-born man's birthplace as ‘Frieste’ — the port standing in for the village. But no Trieste outward manifest appears in any collection searched.

Next: The Trieste port records are held at the Archivio di Stato di Trieste and are not in the FamilySearch index. This is the largest remaining gap on the leaving side.

What is in the two de Franceschi family archives?

Unknown, and they are the largest untouched source in the project. HR-DARI-382 at Rijeka and HR-DAPA-828 at Pazin hold the papers of both Istrian branches — letters, wills, inventories, accounts, and two made genealogies, one of about 1896 and one of 1927. A monograph has quoted from them, so they are accessible to researchers.

Next: Write to both archives. The 1896 tree at Rijeka gives births, deaths and marriages for every member and would likely close several questions on this log at once.

How does the Gračišće stonemason join the Gologorica gentry?

Half answered, from the wrong end. Antonius the «lapicida» is now traced back two further generations from the Gračišće book of souls: he was born 20 September 1825 in house 19, son of Joan. Bapt. Defranceschi of house 5, an «agricola» born 13 August 1787 — a farmer, not gentry either. The Gračišće line is a working line for at least three generations before the stonecutter. What still has no record is any join between that line and the Dominus house at Gologorica, two villages away.

Next: The 1787 birth is now the end of the documented chain, and the next request to Pazin should be the Gračišće baptisms of the 1780s for Joan. Battista, which would name his father — the Giovanni of 1750–1829 the family chart carries but nothing yet proves.

Whose children did Carlo De Franceschi bury?

The burial registers of Rovinj and Poreč hold four entries naming the father only as «Caroli» or «Carlo De Franceschi»: Julius at Rovinj in February 1854; Lamberta and Aurelia Augusta at Poreč within weeks of each other in July 1867; Virginia at Poreč in August 1876, aged eighteen. Rovinj and Poreč are the two towns Carlo worked in, the dates fall inside his married life, and Lamberta is his own mother's name — Lambertina Peschle of Volosca. Camillo, born at Poreč thirteen months after the two infant burials, is described in the literature as the youngest of Carlo's four children. Four is the number who lived.

Next: Ask Pazin for the Poreč and Rovinj death registers by name and year, and for Carlo's own marriage — which would give his wife's name, still missing from this archive.

Whose is the Ližnjan family, and what happened there in 1846?

Ten burials at Ližnjan in southern Istria, and the register keeps returning to children: Giovanni born 1845 and dead in November 1846, Maria born and dead in 1846, Antonio the same year. Across Europe those are the hunger years — blight in 1845, a failed grain harvest in 1846, typhus behind it. The Ližnjan Defranceschi are accounted for by no line in this archive.

Next: Ližnjan's baptism and marriage registers, to reconstruct the household behind those burials. The in-law surnames already visible are Skifich, Skoko, Vojnić and Primus.

Where are the Gologorica marriages of 1790–1849?

Missing from both microfilm volumes. The books run to 1789 and the next Gologorica marriage register in the archive index starts only in the 1850s. That gap swallows the two marriages this line most needs: Leonardus and Matthea on 23 November 1790, and Josephus and Lambertina Peschle on 3 February 1807 — the record that would name Lambertina's father.

Next: The 1790–1849 marriage register has to be found in other Pazin or diocesan microfilm, or the marriages were recorded in the brides' home parishes.

Where is Giuseppe's baptism?

Searched, and it is not in the Rijeka index. Valentino and Elena's fourteen children are now recovered from that register, baptised between 1737 and 1757 — Josepha Catharina, Matheus Franciscus, Nicolaus Francus, Mattio, Nicolo, Francisca Joanna Theresia, Ignatius Francus Mattheus, Vitus Joannes Baptista, Aloysius Joannes Petrus, Antonio, Aloysius Rochus, Rosalia Francisca, Aloysia, Maria. There is no Giuseppe among them. But Giuseppe named sons Valentino twice, in 1772 and again in 1776, and by the Italian custom the first son carries the paternal grandfather's name. The likeliest reading is that Giuseppe was born before his father reached Fiume — which puts his baptism in Carnia, in the Ovaro registers that are this project's other dead end.

Next: Two routes. The Ovaro parish books before 1806, which are in no portal and must be asked for at the parish. Or the three-quarters of the Rijeka register that is photographed but not name-indexed, which has to be read image by image.

Is Zuane De Franceschi of Mione an ancestor of the Gologorica family?

The 1679 headmen's list names him with a son, working as a weaver ‘nell'Istria, luogo imperiale’ — the Habsburg County of Pazin, which is exactly where Gologorica and Gračišće are. Thirty-two years later the De Franceschi house goes up on the Gologorica square; sixty-one years later Giovanni Battista leaves that county for Fiume. The route is documented. The descent is not.

Next: Gologorica baptisms and marriages 1644–1763, and the Gračišće series from 1667, looking for a Zuane or Giovanni arriving from Friuli in the 1680s or 1690s. The Gologorica books for those years are the undigitised ones.

Are the Valentino and Giovanni Battista lines one family?

Half answered. Carlo claims Giovanni Battista outright as his own kin. On Valentino he is careful: the Fiume port captain Francesco descended from him, Valentino came to Fiume «direttamente dalla Carnia», and Francesco confirmed the Carnian origin — so the branch «potrebbe essere stato congiunto del mio trisavolo nato in Carnia», might have been connected to my great-great-grandfather, born in Carnia. Two Carnian families of one surname in one port; Carlo would not go further and neither should this.

Next: Y-DNA would settle it in weeks. Otherwise the Ovaro parish registers, where both would have been baptised before they left.

Who are the twelve Defranceschi families of Vodnjan?

Found in the 1945 cadastre: twelve families at Vodnjan against two at Gologorica and one at Gračišće — the largest concentration in Istria, and accounted for by no line in the existing family narrative. Vodnjan's registers are exceptionally deep: 133 books, baptisms from 1559, 118 digitised.

Next: Read the Vodnjan baptisms. The most tractable open question in the archive — the books are catalogued and nearly all digitised.

Are there any documented De Franceschi in Carnia at all?

Yes — twelve of them, found by searching the Italian indexes by place rather than by name. At PALUZZA in the Val Bût: Zuanne De Franceschi and Maria Delli Zotti; their son Daniele born 1782, who married Maria Silverio; Francesco and Domenica Englaro with sons born 1807 and 1810; Francesco and Cattarina Delli Zotti; Daniele and Maria Pittino, whose son Pietro born 1851 is the mason who died at San Daniele del Friuli in 1895 — the death certificate that has been in this family's folder all along, now identified. At OVARO, the parish that contains Mione: Sebastiano Soravito De Franceschi and Giacoma Gortani, and a Battista born 1879. And Monsignor Lucio Soravito de Franceschi was born at Mione di Ovaro on 8 December 1939 — the surname still in the village two hundred and sixty years after the headmen's list put it there.

Next: And then the village itself. The Archivio di Stato di Udine has digitised fifty-nine Napoleonic civil registers for the Comune di Mione and publishes them on Antenati. The birth index for 1806-1810 opens on three De Franceschi entries, and the acts name three households: Osvaldo and Appolonia Salante, farmers of Muina; Francesco, a tailor, and Margherita Gortan of Mione; and Osvaldo, a carpenter, and Cattarina Brencis, whose son born 15 October 1810 was named Giovanni Battista. A tailor is exactly the cramar trade that walked the road of the Furlans into Istria. NEXT, and this is now the single most valuable thing available to the project: the same series holds nine volumes of Matrimoni and thirteen of Matrimoni allegati for Mione. Napoleonic marriage allegati contain birth extracts for the couple and death extracts for their parents. One De Franceschi marriage at Mione between 1806 and 1815 would reach back to the middle of the eighteenth century. DONE, and it did. The marriage index for 1806-1810 holds two: Osvaldo Defranceschi with Valentina Prencis at Mione on 6 August 1807, and Osvaldo Defranceschi with Appolonia Salante at Muina on 28 January 1808. The second act reads the groom's birth certificate into the record: born 14 March 1788 at Muina, of the lawful marriage of ANTONIO qm. LEONARDO DE FRANCESCHI and Maria nata Corva, with Antonio's written consent dated 25 October 1807. Four generations at Muina, the earliest a Leonardo dead before 1808. The 1807 act is not yet located.

Who was Josip's wife?

Ana Kalanj, by four register entries — the baptisms of 1890, 1892, 1894 and 1896 all name her, and the 1905 burial of their daughter writes her Ana Kalaj-Kučarica with the house-name. Her own baptism survives at Ledenice: 3 January 1864, daughter of Josip Kalanj and Rosalia née Perković, at Rijenovica house 22. But the family's own genealogy file gives Josip a wife Ana Grubišić, born 19 September 1863 and died 28 May 1936, and holds a photograph of her gravestone reading ANA DE. FRANCESCHI. Two different birth dates, nine months apart, and two different maiden names.

Next: The Crikvenica death register for 28 May 1936, and the marriage register. Either Josip married twice, or the gravestone belongs to a different Ana De Franceschi in the same parish.

Which Carnian family is Valentino's, exactly?

Mione is no longer a guess — a De Franceschi of Mione is on the 1679 list. But nothing yet ties Valentino, made a citizen of Fiume in 1739, to that household rather than to any other Carnian family of the name.

Next: Ovaro's parish registers before 1806 are in no portal. Contact the parish; check the Archivio Storico Diocesano at Udine for duplicates. Separately, the Micoli Toscano family archive at Mione holds Gorto contracts naming the Erman, who travelled with Zuane in 1679.

Are the Dalmatian Franceschi related to us at all?

Almost certainly not. They reached Dalmatia in the fourteenth century as a noble house, held a warship at Omiš by 1590, and won the Perinuša estate for storming Imotski in 1717. Ours were weavers and modest landowners. But the existing family account lists Omiš and Imotski among its four directions, so the claim is in the family's own memory and has to be tested rather than waved away.

Next: Y-DNA again, which would settle it in weeks. Otherwise Omiš and Imotski parish registers, held by the State Archives in Split, not Pazin.

What is in the six oldest Gologorica books?

Baptisms 1644–1763, marriages 1656–1781 and burials 1646–1777 are the only significant undigitised material in the Istrian parishes — and they are now the highest-value target in the project, because they cover both the 1679 arrival window and Giovanni Battista's birth.

Next: They must be read on paper, in the village or the Pazin reading room. The archive states it will not do this for you.

What survives, parish by parish, for Senj and Crikvenica?

The fond is identified — HR-DARI-275, 1,822 books, 1564 to 1949, forty linear metres — but only partially filmed, only partially public, and with no parish-level inventory published. Six books came from the Senj registry office in March 2018 and sit at the Senj collection centre.

Next: ARHiNET, the national catalogue that would carry the item list, failed to resolve on every attempt. Write to the Rijeka archive directly.

Where do the South African Defranceski come from?

Thirteen of the seventeen people spelling it this way live in South Africa. Nothing on the open web connects a named individual to a named ship or year.

Next: South African naturalisation and immigration records. Several thousand Italian former internees settled there at the end of the 1940s, which fits the date and direction — context, not evidence.

Is there anything carved on the 1711 house?

Istrian lintels frequently carry a date with a house mark or arms. The De Franceschi house stands on the main square at Gologorica.

Next: A photograph. Anybody visiting can close this one.