The Eleven

United States Census of 1930, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York — NARA T626, roll 1495. Read the four names against the reunion chart. Albina is the sixth of the Eleven, born at Gračišće on 14 April 1900. Anthony is the eldest, born 18 February 1887 — and the census gives his year of immigration as 1922, which is the year of the passenger list this archive found under his name. And «Grochina» is what a Brooklyn enumerator made of Gioacchino, the tenth child, born 12 August 1907, whom the family called Bruno. A sister, her husband, and two of her brothers, in one flat, on one census night. One of them had crossed the Atlantic eight years earlier; one would marry a German girl from Hanover sixteen months later. Nothing in this archive had put any two of them in the same room.

The obvious search, and nobody had run it. Type the village's Italian name into the keyword box of a database of billions of records and ten results come back. Three carry this family's name. Joseph Defranceschi — Petition for naturalization, Brooklyn, 1915. «Birth date 12 Mar 1892 · Birth country Austria · Birth place as transcribed: Gallignana, Austria.» Petition 13838, declaration 22660, certificate 1104860. Albina Schinkepan — Petition for naturalization, Brooklyn, 1928. «Birth date 14 Apr 1900 · Birth place as transcribed: Gallignana, Austria · Husband Frank Schinkepan, born 24 Feb 1896.» Petition 100185. The name of this village is written into the federal records of the United States, twice, by two of the eleven children of Antonio and Maria. Not «Austria», not «Italy», not «Trieste» — Gallignana. It is the plainest documentary tie between the hill town this archive is built on and the country half the family went to. The other seven are the village's other emigrants, and they are worth naming because a village of that size sends its people out together: Poldrugovac Thomas (b.1899, petitions of 1921 and 1941) and Poldrugovaz Santo (b.1900, 1946); Millassich Leopoldo (b.1883) and Emilia (b.1889), arriving 1912; Lanza Anthony (b.1892); Silich Victor. Six surnames out of one parish, in the New York courts.

And then the two records that sit beside each other in the index, one number apart, on one page of one ship's manifest. «Antonio De Franceschi · Passenger · Male · Age 35y · Birth year 1887 · Nationality Italy, Slovenian · Residence G. Pedena, Venezia, Italy · Year 1922 · Departure port Genoa · Arrival New York · Ship name Conte Rosso.» And in the relations field: «Departure port relation (WIFE): Marta Defranceschi». «Albina De Franceschi · Passenger · Female · Age 22y · Birth year 1900 · Nationality Italy, Italian · Residence G. Gallignana, Venezia · Year 1922 · Departure port Genoa · Arrival New York · Ship name Conte Rosso.» Brother and sister, thirty-five and twenty-two, on the same crossing. The eldest of the Eleven and the sixth, going down to Genoa from opposite ends of the same few miles of Istria — he from Pedena, which is Pićan, the cathedral town over the hill; she from Gallignana. The Conte Rosso was a Lloyd Sabaudo liner two years old that year. Three details this archive did not have and would not have guessed. Antonio was living at Pićan, not Gračišće. He left a wife behind him — Marta Defranceschi, named at the departure port, which is why the census of 1930 finds him married but lodging with his sister eight years later. And an American clerk wrote his nationality as «Italy, Slovenian» and hers as «Italy, Italian» — the same household, the same village, sorted into two nations by a man at a desk in New York harbour.

Albina's husband takes a different spelling in every record — Chinikopan on the 1925 marriage licence, Chinkojan in the 1930 census, Schinkepan on her 1928 petition. Search the keyword Pisino and he appears under a fourth: «Schinkopan, Frank, born 1896 — United States Naturalization Petitions, New York, 1920 and 1926.» Born 24 February 1896, out of Pisino — Pazin, the county town. He declared his intention in 1920, petitioned in 1926, married Albina of Gallignana in between, and by 1930 was keeping a Brooklyn household with two of her brothers in it. Four spellings of one man, and the archive can now say where he came from.

Albine Defranceschi, spinster, aged 25, born 1900 — married Frank Chinikopan, aged 28, born 1897, at Kings County, New York, on 23 April 1925. «Father's first name(s): Anton. Mother's first name(s): Maria. Mother's last name: Volhart.» That is the couple at the head of the 2012 chart — Antonio DeFranceschi 1856–1924 + Maria Valhart 1867–1945 — and it is the surname the Gračišće Status Animarum of 1925 spells Volhardt. A New York clerk, working from what the bride told him, wrote her mother's maiden name into the civil record of the State of New York. The reunion album's «Albina Chinkopan» is Frank Chinikopan, and this archive now has the day.

Bruno De Franceschi, single, aged 24, birth place: Istria, Italy — married Gerda Seedorf, aged 18, birth place: Hanover, Germany, at Manhattan on 30 July 1931. His father Anton; his mother Mary Walhal. Her father John Seedorf; her mother Anna Huntsen. The stone at Nine Partners Cemetery, Millbrook, gave this archive a wife it could read only as «Gerda Se…». She was Gerda Seedorf of Hanover, eighteen years old, marrying a boy from Istria in Manhattan two years into the Depression.

United States Naturalization Petitions, Brooklyn, Kings, New York, 1939. Declaration of intention no. 284221; certificate 2-665402. «First name Bruno · Last name De Franceschi · Birth date 12 Aug 1907 · Spouse Gerda de Franceschi, born 15 Jan 1913 · Relation 2: child, born 2 December 1932.» 12 August 1907 is the reunion album's date for Gioacchino, to the day. But see the correction below: the image behind this index entry is Gerda's own declaration, not Bruno's, and everything here was extracted from her form. There is a son, born 2 December 1932, who is not named here because he may be living.

The second son, Giuseppe — «Uncle Joe» — born 3 March 1892 on the chart. Four records, in order: 1917–18 · World War I Draft Registration Cards, New York City board no. 27. «Joseph Defranceschi · Birth date 12 Mar 1892 · Place of birth as transcribed Frieste · Birth country Austria · Citizenship United States.» The American records this archive already had gave 12 March, not the chart's 3 March; the draft card is where that comes from. Frieste is Trieste — what an Istrian says to a New York clerk who has never heard of Gallignana. 20 May 1926 · Manhattan. He marries Maria Duda, born 1903 in New Jersey. «Father Anton; mother Maria Valbart.» The mother's name again, from a third child, in a third record. 1 April 1940 · United States Census, Brooklyn. Head of household, aged 48, born Austria, at the same address as in 1935. With him his wife Mary, 36, born New Jersey — Maria Duda — and two children, a daughter born 1927 and a son born 1929, both born in New Jersey. This archive had not known he had children. 26 April 1940 · U.S. Veteran's Gravesites. «Joseph De Franceschi · died 26 Apr 1940 · Rank Sergeant · US Army · World War I · Long Island National Cemetery, Farmingdale, New York · Section F, Site 2918.» Twenty-five days after the census taker wrote him down. The grave record carries no birth year, so the identification rests on the name, the borough, and a First World War service that matches his own 1917 registration in New York City. This archive calls that strong and not proved — and notes that a man who registered for the American draft in 1917 as an Austrian-born citizen was, four months earlier, technically a subject of the empire his new country had just gone to war against.

The youngest of the Eleven, Basilio, born 29 September 1909. The Social Security Death Index and the obituary index agree: «Basilio Defranceschi · 29 September 1909 – 15 June 1994 · New York, New York», Social Security number issued in New York. Born at Gračišće while it was Austria; died in New York City, aged eighty-four, in the summer of 1994. This archive had no death date for him at all.

It is worth setting these side by side, because they were written by three different clerks, in three different years, from what three different children of the same woman told them: · Albina, 1925 — «Anton · Maria Volhart» · Joseph, 1926 — «Anton · Maria Valbart» · Bruno, 1931 — «Anton · Mary Walhal» And the parish book of souls at Gračišće, house 24: Maria Volhardt, 6 April 1867 – 3 October 1945. Four spellings, one woman. This is what a German surname does in the mouths of Istrian children and the ears of New York registrars, and it is the strongest identification in this whole sweep: the three of the Eleven who married in New York all named the same mother.

The petition of Albina Schinkopan, hereby filed, respectfully showeth: First. My place of residence is 2922 Ave. L, Brooklyn. Second. My occupation is housewife. Third. I was born on the 14 day of April, anno Domini 1900, at Gallignana Austria. Fourth. I emigrated to the United States from Genoa, on or about the 29 day of August, anno Domini 1922, and arrived in the United States, at the port of New York, on the 9 day of September, anno Domini 1922, on the vessel Conte Rosso.

Eleven days at sea. Out of Genoa on 29 August 1922, into New York on 9 September. Her brother Antonio is the record immediately before hers on that manifest, so this is his crossing too — the eldest of the Eleven and the sixth, landing together on the ninth of September 1922. And an address: 2922 Avenue L, Brooklyn. Hold on to it.

CERTIFICATE OF ARRIVAL — FOR NATURALIZATION PURPOSES U.S. Department of Labor, Immigration Service. At Ellis Island, N.Y.H., Dec. 2, 1915. This is to certify that the following-named alien arrived at the port indicated, on the date and in the manner described below, viz: Name of alien: Joseph Defranceschi Port of entry: New York Date of arrival: October 11, 1910 Name of vessel: Martha Washington — Line: Aus.-Amer.

And on the petition beside it, in his own hand: «The petition of Joseph Defranceschi … First. My place of residence is 148 Sackett Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. … Third. I was born on the 12 day of March, anno Domini 1892, at Gallignana, Austria. Fourth. I emigrated to the United States from Triest, Austria, on or about the 24 day of September…» Uncle Joe went first, and he went alone, and he was eighteen. Out of Trieste about 24 September 1910, into New York on 11 October — seventeen days — on the Martha Washington of the Austro-Americana, the Trieste line, sailing under the Habsburg flag from the port his draft card would later render as «Frieste». That is twelve years before Antonio and Albina came on the Conte Rosso. The Eleven did not emigrate; they went one at a time, over a generation, and the boy who went first was the one who opened the door. His address, 148 Sackett Street, is the Columbia Street waterfront in South Brooklyn — the dock district. His occupation is written in a hand this archive reads as oiler, an engine-room hand. Seven years later he registered for the American draft in New York City; twenty-five years later he would be buried as a sergeant of the United States Army.

The same house, six years later, written out by an enumerator in the thirty-second assembly district of Brooklyn, enumeration district 24-1260, block 706. Family 196. They owned it. The «home owned or rented» column says O, and the value column says $16,000 — a figure worth pausing on for a chef and a housewife eight years off the boat. There is a radio set in the house, which the 1930 schedule asked about and most of that street did not have. And four lines of work, immigration and status that the index does not carry: · Frank Chinkojan, 34, head — born Italy, mother tongue Italian, immigrated 1920, naturalised, speaks English. Occupation: chef, restaurant. · Albina, 29, wife — immigrated 1922, naturalised, no occupation. · «Trochina» Defranceschi, 23, single — immigrated 1921, first papers only. Occupation: counter man, restaurant — and in the «at work yesterday» column, no, with 24 in the unemployment line. Twenty-four weeks out of work in the first spring of the Depression. · Anthony Defranceschi, 43, married at 32 — immigrated 1922, first papers only. Occupation: fireman, electric company — a stoker, shovelling coal into a generating plant. Married at thirty-two puts Anthony's wedding at about 1919, in Istria, three years before he sailed. His wife Marta was named at the departure port and did not come. In 1930 he is forty-three, married, and lodging in his sister's house.

I, GERDA DE FRANCESCHI, now residing at 3003 Ave. L, Brooklyn, Kings, N.Y., occupation housewife, aged 26 … sex female, color white, complexion fair, color of eyes greyblue, color of hair blonde, height 5 feet 6 inches, weight 138 pounds, visible distinctive marks none. Race German; nationality German. I was born in Hollen, Germany on January 15, 1913. I am married. The name of my husband is Bruno; we were married on July 30, 1931 at New York, N.Y.; he was born at Gallignana, Italy on August 12, 1907; entered the United States at New York, N.Y. on September 1926 for permanent residence therein, and now resides at 3003 Ave. L, Brooklyn, N.Y. I have 1 children …: Richard, December 2, 1932, born in Brooklyn, N.Y. My last foreign residence was Wesermünde, Germany. I emigrated to the United States of America from Bremen, Germany. My lawful entry for permanent residence in the United States was at New York, N.Y., under the name of Gerda Seedorf, on October 21, 1929, on the vessel Dresden.

There is a photograph pasted to the form — a woman of twenty-six with fair hair, looking straight at the camera — and beneath it her signature, Gerda De Franceschi, twice. «He was born at Gallignana, Italy on August 12, 1907.» Typed by a clerk of the Eastern District of New York in 1939, from what Bruno's wife told him. That is the third of the Eleven whose birth village is written into a federal record of the United States — and the only one of the three where the date comes with it. The couple were living at 3003 Avenue L, eighty yards from the house at 2922 where he had lodged with his sister nine years before. He never left the street.

This archive published, earlier today, that Bruno petitioned again in 1942 «indexed under both names as Bruno de Franceschi Or Seedorf». That was wrong, and the image says so. The 1942 document is a Petition for Naturalization under the Nationality Act of 1940, and it opens: «My full, true, and correct name is GERDA DE FRANCESCHI, formerly Gerda Seedorf.» It is hers. The index built «Bruno … Or Seedorf» out of her husband's given name in field 7 and her own maiden name in field 1. The same is true of the 1939 row headed «Bruno De Franceschi». The image behind it is Gerda's declaration of intention, and everything the index gives under Bruno's name — his birth date, his wife, his child — was extracted from her form. So far as this collection goes, Bruno has no naturalisation file of his own. What exists is his wife's, and it describes him. That is a different fact, and worth having: it may mean he naturalised elsewhere, or through military service, or not at all.

The 1930 census says «Trochina» Defranceschi immigrated in 1921. Gerda's declaration of 1939 says Bruno «entered the United States at New York, N.Y. on September 1926 for permanent residence therein». Both cannot be a first arrival. The naturalisation form asks specifically for the lawful entry for permanent residence, which is the entry that counts for citizenship — a man who came once as a boy of fourteen and again at nineteen would give the second. The census asks only «year of immigration to the United States», and the answer is whatever the person at the door says. This archive does not know which, and says so. The passenger lists for September 1926 would settle it in an afternoon.

DECLARATION OF INTENTION · District Court of the United States, Eastern District of New York FRANK SCHINKOPAN, aged 24 years, occupation Cook, color White, complexion fair, height 5 feet 8 inches, weight 144 pounds, color of hair dark brown, color of eyes gray, visible distinctive marks none; born in Pisino, Italy, on the 24 day of February, anno Domini 1896; I now reside at 304 Ninth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York; I emigrated to the United States of America from Trieste, Austria, on the vessel Elenor; my last foreign residence was Trieste, Austria; I am not married; …it is my bona fide intention to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, of whom I am now a subject; I arrived at the port of New York, on or about the 15 day of March, anno Domini 1920. (signed) Frank Schinkopan

Albina's husband, five years before he married her, and the paper answers three things at once. He came out of the same country and the same port. Born at Pisino — Pazin, the county town over the hill from Gallignana; sailing from Trieste, as Joseph had in 1910 and as Antonio would in 1926; landing at New York on 15 March 1920, on a vessel the clerk wrote as Elenor. He was a cook. In 1920, twenty-four, single, in a room on Ninth Avenue. In the census of 1930 he is a chef in a restaurant, married, and the owner of a $16,000 house on Avenue L with two of his wife's brothers living in it. Ten years, and a man goes from the boarding-house to the deed. And he renounced a king. The form makes him abjure «Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, of whom I am now a subject» — because between his birth at Pisino in 1896 and his declaration at Brooklyn in 1920, the country his village stood in had changed hands. He left as an Austrian and swore as an Italian without moving.

The 1922 list was found and read on the film. It is not the American manifest but an Italian alphabetical index to the voyage, headed in Italian: «Numero dei biglietto · COGNOME E NOME · PATERNITÀ · ETÀ». And there they are, one line after the other, in a clerk's copperplate: De Franceschi Antonio · ✓ · 35 De Franceschi Albina · ✓ · 22 The brother-and-sister crossing, which this archive had inferred from two index numbers one digit apart, is now a thing you can look at. But the column that would have been worth most is empty. «PATERNITÀ» — paternity, the father's name, the field an Italian emigration clerk was supposed to fill — carries nothing for either of them but a tick. The one document that asked directly who their father was did not write the answer down. And a correction, published within an hour of the claim it corrects. This page said first that the sheet carried a «going to join» column whose rows could not be aligned. That was the wrong diagnosis. The image holds two pages of the ledger side by side, and the entries this archive was trying to align — «bro. Alberto», «sister Elvira», «bro. Edwardo» — belong to the Di Bruzzi family on the right-hand page, four names further down the alphabet. They have nothing to do with the De Franceschi at all. What stands to the right of the two De Franceschi lines is an American address and a reference number, and this archive could not read either with confidence at the resolution available. It is not guessing at them.

LIST OR MANIFEST OF ALIEN PASSENGERS FOR THE UNITED STATES S.S. MARTHA WASHINGTON · Passengers sailing from TRIESTE · [stamped] MAY 31 1926 Line 6 — DEFRANCESCHI · ANTONIO · 39 · M · M[arried] · Calling or occupation: mason · Able to read: yes · Language: Italian · Race or people: Italian · Last permanent residence: N.Y., Brooklyn · Name and complete address of nearest relative or friend in country whence came: wife, Defranceschi Marta, Pedena 10, Istria, Italy · Final destination: N.Y., Brooklyn

Read the column headings and the answer falls out. «Last permanent residence: N.Y., Brooklyn» is not what an immigrant writes. It is what a returning resident writes, coming back on a re-entry permit — and the right-hand columns of this sheet are permit numbers issued at Washington. So Antonio crossed in September 1922, went home to Istria at some point in the next three and a half years, and came back into New York on 31 May 1926. His wife stayed where she was: Marta Defranceschi, Pedena 10 — house number ten in the village of Pićan. Two more things this line gives that nothing else did. He is a mason. His father, Antonius Defranceschi of Gallignana house 19, is entered in the parish book of souls as a stonecutter — the trade went across the Atlantic with the son. And the clerk who in 1922 wrote his race as «Slovenian» writes it in 1926 as «Italian». Same man, same village, four years apart. And the ship. The Martha Washington of the Austro-Americana, out of Trieste, is the ship Joseph had sailed on in 1910. Sixteen years later his elder brother came back on her.

Findmypast returns exactly one record for a Marta Defranceschi: «1922, United States, Passenger and Crew Lists». It looks like an arrival. It is not. Its identifier is …016453669/2. Antonio's is …016453669/1. She is not a passenger — she is the relation named in his own manifest line, indexed as though she were a person because the field held a name. Marta exists in the record of the United States as an address in Istria, and nothing else.

The 1930 census is the last time Antonio Defranceschi, born 1887, appears in any American source this sweep can find. There is no 1940 census entry for him. He never completed naturalisation — the 1930 sheet gives him «Pa», first papers only, ten years and two crossings in. There is no United States death record, no Social Security entry, no grave. Absence from an index is not a departure, and this page will not turn one into the other. But a man who kept a wife at Pedena 10, who had already gone home once and come back, who never took citizenship, and who is in nothing American after April 1930 — the reading that fits is that he went home for good, and that the reunion chart's «Italy» beside his name is where he ended. The Pićan registers would say. So would the Italian and Croatian civil records for Pićan after 1930. Neither has been looked at.

He looked promising: a Peter Defranceschi born 1902, naturalising at New York in 1931, 1936 and 1937, and sailing from Britain to New York in 1939 — the one man of the name in the outbound British lists. His 1931 declaration of intention settles him: «Birth date 12 Jan 1902 · Birth country Switzerland · Birth place as transcribed Basel, Switzerland.» A Swiss de Franceschi. Closed.

The 1939 Register — the wartime national register of England and Wales, taken on 29 September 1939 — has no Defranceschi and no Defranceski at all. It has five Franceschi: three at 30 Broad Walk, Kidbrooke in Greenwich; one at Redbridge in Ilford; one at Bexhill in Sussex. English households, none of them connected to anything on this site. That is a negative worth recording. Whatever this surname was doing in the 1930s, it was not living in England.

Josip Defranceski, 39, born 1915, arrives at Philadelphia in 1954 aboard the Slovenija — a Jugolinija liner out of Rijeka. On the same lists: Bosiljka, born 1918, and three children born 1942, 1946 and 1947, not named here because they may be living. A man, his wife and three children, leaving Yugoslavia for America in 1954, sailing from the port this family's own line lived beside. Nothing connects them to it. The spelling does what no index can: it says these people wrote their name exactly as David's family does.

Zdravko Defranceski, 1922–1980, died at Horsham, Victoria, aged 58. The Victorian death register names his parents: «Father Anton. Mother Ursula.» Ruža «Rosa» Defranceski died at Horsham on 30 January 1996, occupation «home duties»; probate was granted on 6 May 1996. Both are in the Billion Graves index for Horsham cemetery. The fused Croatian spelling, a father called Anton, and a grave in country Victoria — in the country this family's own line ends up in. It is not a link and this page will not make it one. It is the closest thing to one that a name-search has ever produced, and it can be tested: the Victorian death certificate will give Zdravko's birthplace.

BillionGraves photographed Horsham Cemetery, 8 Davis Drive, Horsham, Victoria, on 8 May 2018, and the plate is legible: «IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF ZDRAVKO FRANK DEFRANCESKI · DIED 22ND DECEMBER 1979 AGED 58 · BELOVED HUSBAND OF ROSA · LOVING FATHER OF …» — two children are named beneath, and are not named here. So the pair are confirmed as husband and wife: Zdravko Frank Defranceski, 1921–22 to 22 December 1979, and Ruža «Rosa» Defranceski, died 30 January 1996, both at Horsham. The Victorian death register gives his parents as Anton and Ursula. A man born about 1921 to an Anton, spelling the name exactly as this family spells it, buried in country Victoria. The Victorian death certificate — which this archive does not hold — records birthplace. It is one form and a fee away.

John J Defranceski, born 1917 — United States Army enlistment, Second World War. Giovanni Defranceski, born 1871 — married at Manhattan in 1894. Luigi Defranceski — married at Luzerne, Pennsylvania, in 1904. Petro Defranceski — a passenger list of 1912. Nothing joins any of them to this line, and the living British and Australian entries in the same index are deliberately left out of this page.

«The name deFranceschi traces back to the 16th century in the province of Florence, from where some of the offsprings moved to the Northeast corner of Italy known as CARNIA, later it became part of Friuli. Some of the people became farmers, others became artisans of which there was great need at the time. Some of them moved to Aquileia where they entered religious life. More were on the move to the peninsula of Istria in the town of MONCALVO, where Gian Battista deFranceschi built a house in 1711. Through the years he became a fairly wealthy landowner, shopkeeper and trader.» Carnia, the artisans, the 1711 house and Gian Battista: the same four things Carlo wrote privately to Kobler in the 1870s, and which this archive has spent a year corroborating from headmen's lists and notarial inventories. Two branches of one family, separated for a century, carrying the same account.

«There was his son Gian Pietro and other DeFranceschi's through the 1800s, Filippo, Gian Mattia who became Parish priests and also Giuseppe, Giuseppe Jr., Carlo, and Camillo.» Gian Pietro is the Giampietro of Carlo's account. And Gian Mattia the parish priest is the man the Visitation of the diocese of Pedena names on 7 April 1788 as «parroco Mattia Defranceschi» of Gologorica, and who signs the register «Ego Joannes Mathias Franceschi Parochus».

«Since there were no birth certificates we could only get birth dates from the 3 churches in Gallignana, San Vito, Santa Eufemia, and Our Lady of the Square.» Three churches named, in the parish this line comes from. The album adds that a cousin who visited years earlier brought back further dates, and that for the reunion all marriages and deaths were left out — «there is still a great deal of work to be done in the future».

«Grandpa Antonio & Grandma Maria brought 11 children into the world in a 2 bedroom house with an additional room below (a cantina now), with some land to farm, a small vineyard to grow wine, no running water (a pump in the kitchen), no refrigeration, only an ice box, no central heating or air conditioning, and last but not least no bathroom in the house.» Eleven children, two bedrooms, and a pump at the sink.

The writer first went to Gallignana in 1972 and was received in the house; years later she was given lunch there again, and the afternoon was spent under the grape arbour with the family news. «From medieval times to the 21st century there is a home that is lived in by DeFranceschi's.» The names of the people living in it are omitted here under this archive's rule on the living.

The chart printed for the Crystal Springs reunion in 2012 gives «VIRGINIA (3/30/1895)», sixth of the eleven children of Antonio DeFranceschi and Maria Valhart, and the album says she married Giovanni Marfan and had four children. The stone gives 30 March 1895. Same day, same month, same year — one written down in America in 2012, the other cut in Istria in 1981. And it gives what the chart did not: she died on 28 December 1981, aged eighty-six, and she is buried in her own village.

The chart gives «Nazario (2/7/1939)» as one of her four. The stone gives 7 February 1939. He is the man the album remembers: the writer first came to Gallignana in 1972 and was received by Aunt Virginia; years later «her son Nazario and his wife Mila» gave the visiting American cousins lunch and their own wine, and the afternoon went under the grape arbour. He died on 11 December 2003.

«F. DE FRANCESCHI» at the head — the family — and «MARFAN» beneath it, the name the daughter married into. Two porcelain ovals are set into the marble, an older woman and a man in a suit and tie. It is the same convention as the Carnian stones at Santa Maria di Gorto, where six of the eleven De Franceschi graves are a daughter under her husband's name.

A cross-topped obelisk stands between the Salamon and Marfan monuments, and it reads «ANTONIO DEFRANCESCHI 185[5 or 6] – 19[2]4» and «MARIA DEFRANCESCHI 6. IV. 1867 – 3. X. 1945». These are the two names at the head of the American chart — «started by Antonio DeFranceschi 8/6/1856 – 10/23/1924 + Maria Valhart 4/6/1867 – 1945». The chart is in American date order, so its 4/6/1867 is the sixth of April, and the stone says 6.IV.1867. A date written down in California in 2012 and a date cut in Istria after 1945, and they agree exactly. And the stone gives what the chart could not: Maria died on 3 October 1945. The chart had only the year.

Antonio's line is worn, and reads 185[5 or 6] to 19[2]4. That is consistent with the chart's 6 August 1856 and 23 October 1924 and does nothing to contradict it, but it is not independent confirmation — the digits that would confirm are the ones the weather has taken. It is the single most valuable surface in that cemetery for this archive, and it wants one photograph in raking light. Note also that the stone calls her MARIA DEFRANCESCHI, not Valhart: on her own husband's monument she carries his name, and the maiden name survives only on the American chart and in the registers.

«Antonius Defranceschi q. Antonii, murator, 6-8-1856, m. 23-2-1885, † 23-10-1929» and «Maria n. Volhardt, eius uxor, 6-4-1867». A mason. Married on 23 February 1885 — the day digit is 23 and not 25, read again at full magnification against the same hand's threes elsewhere on the page. And his wife's birth date is 6 April 1867 — which is exactly what the obelisk in the Gračišće cemetery says, «MARIA DEFRANCESCHI 6. IV. 1867 – 3. X. 1945», and exactly what the American chart says as 4/6/1867. Three independent records, one date.

Antonius 18-2-1887, married 31-5-1919 · Paschalis 1-4-1888, died 16-10-1895 · Nicephorus 1-1-1890 · Josephus 12-3-1892 · Virginia 30-5-1895 · Victoria-Ema 16-2-1898, died 14-5-1902 · Albina 14-4-1900 · Rutilius 3-11-1902, married 16-5-1928 · Daniel 8-3-1905, married 2-7-1927 · Joachim 12-8-1907 · Basilius 29-9-1909, married 28-2-1936. Thirteen born, two dead in childhood, eleven who grew up. The chart said eleven and the register says why.

Against Nicephorus, against Albina and against Joachim the priest has written that they were living in America. He was keeping a running note of where his parishioners had gone.

The manifest of the S.S. Conte Rosso, Genoa to New York, 29 August 1922, carries «DE FRANCESCHI ALBINA, 22, domestic, Venezia G. Gallignana, Father Antonio — Gallignano». This page had her as one of the eleven and could not prove the father. The register gives Albina born 14 April 1900 at Gračišće, daughter of Antonius the mason, and marks her as gone to America. She was twenty-two in August 1922. It is the same woman, and her father is the man on the obelisk.

The American chart gives Antonio's death as 10/23/1924 — 23 October 1924. The parish register gives 25-10-1929. Two days apart in the day and five years apart in the year, which is a strange kind of disagreement and probably means one of them is a transcription of the other gone wrong. The worn obelisk reads 19[2]4 and cannot arbitrate. The Gračišće civil death register would.

Basilius is the last name in the column, and his birth date is 29 September 1909 — read at full magnification, where the month digit is a nine and not the three this page first printed. The Diaspora page of this archive has carried, for months, a New York family it could describe and could not place: «DEFRANCESCHI, DARIO, also known as DARIO DE FRANCESCH, was born 26 September 1937 in GALLIGNANA, Austria, son of BASILIO DEFRANCESCHI and MARIA L ROVINA» — and a father Basilio born 29 September 1909, who took a New York social security number, made his claim at the Jackson Heights office in 1971, and died in Manhattan on 15 June 1994. That page ended: «Nothing yet joins Basilio to this line.» Something does now. The day, the month and the year are the same, the parish is the same, and the register adds the step in between — Basilius married on 28 February 1936, eighteen months before Dario was born at Gallignana. He is the youngest of the thirteen children of Antonio the mason and Maria Volhardt: the twelfth name under the household that this page has always called the Eleven.

New York City, 27 April 1945: «Albina Chinkopan», died at Brooklyn, born 14 April 1900 in Austria, buried 30 April 1945 at East Farmingdale in Suffolk County. The certificate names her parents. Father: Anthony De Franceschi, born Austria. Mother: Maria Walhart, born Austria. «Walhart» is Volhardt — the name the Gračišće priest wrote in the Status Animarum of 1925 as «Maria n. Volhardt, eius uxor, 6-4-1867». An American registrar heard it and spelt it as he heard it. That single misspelling is the proof: it ties a Brooklyn death certificate to house 24 at Gračišće without any inference at all.

This page has carried, out of the 2012 reunion album, that Rotilio married Albina Chinkopan, «the sister, presumably, of his own sister's husband». It is now clear that there was only ever one Albina and one Chinkopan marriage, and it is the sister's. Albina De Franceschi, born 14 April 1900, married Frank Chinkopan — himself born at Gallignana in 1896–97, so a boy from the same village — and the pair of them naturalised in New York, she on 5 April 1928. He died at Manhattan on 7 May 1948, three years after her; his own parents were Anthony and Maria Linpich. His brother Antonio Chinkopan, born at Gallignana in August 1898, naturalised at Brooklyn in the early 1930s and married a Jennie born in Brooklyn in 1911. Which means the album gave Rotilio his sister's husband's surname. The one concrete detail attached to him — the name of his wife — is a duplication.

Searched properly rather than gestured at. «Rotilio» as a given name in Argentine records returns a dozen men — Voltolini, Cichini, Moreira, Ballesteros, Jurado, Juarez — and not one of them carries this surname. The surname in Argentina between 1900 and 1910 returns another dozen — Piergiacomi, Rosso, Oreste, Adolfo, Ernesto at La Plata and La Boca — an Italian-mainland stock with Italian-mainland in-law names, and no Rotilio among them. Nothing in the United States either. What the parish register does give is a man: «Rutilius 3-11-1902, married 16-5-1928» — born 3 November 1902, not 1903, and married at sixteen May 1928, five years after the last of his brothers had sailed. The priest marked Nicephorus, Albina and Joachim as «degit Americae». He did not mark Rutilius. As of 1928 he was at home, and getting married there.

Weaker than it was this morning, and the diagram says so. The album's Buenos Aires rests on family memory alone; its supporting detail turns out to belong to his sister; and the register shows him in Istria six years after the album's own emigration window. This is not a claim that he never went. Two daughters and a destination are the kind of thing families remember correctly, and CEMLA's arrival index — the one instrument that would answer it — is behind a bot check this archive will not answer. But the honest position is that Rotilio is now the least evidenced of the eleven, and Argentina stays dotted.

Antonio «Tony», born 18 February 1887 — naturalised at Brooklyn on 18 September 1922 and again 10 April 1929, with a wife Marta born 1894. This page had him in Italy; he was in Brooklyn. Giuseppe, born 12 March 1892 — naturalisations of 2 February 1912 and 13 December 1915, the earliest of the family in America by a decade. Gioacchino «Bruno», born 12 August 1907 — naturalised at Brooklyn on 18 April 1945, with Gerda Seedorf, born Hanover; his record names his parents as «Anton» and «Mary Walhal» — Volhardt again, spelt differently again. Basilio, born 29 September 1909 — at Jackson Heights, with Maria Rovina and his son Dario, born at Gallignana 26 September 1937.

Antonio the mason and Maria Volhardt raised thirteen children in one house at Gračišće. Two died small. Of the eleven who grew up, five reached New York and four of them lived within a few miles of each other in Brooklyn, alongside at least two Chinkopan brothers from the same village. Virginia stayed and received the American cousins at Gallignana in 1972. Daniele went to Tuscany in 1947. Pasquale and Nicefaro left young and were never heard from. And Rotilio married in 1928 and then, on the present evidence, vanishes.

House 21, and again house 20: «Catharina Fernasar, agr., 1800», and beneath her «Maria, filia ejus illegitima, 17 Oct. 1832» — Maria, her illegitimate daughter. A second child, Joannes, is entered the same way. So Maria née Fernasar, who married the stonecutter, was herself born outside marriage.

The same page carries, under house 20, «Antonius, filius illeg. Mariae, 6 Aug. 1856» — Antonius, illegitimate son of Maria. The marriage of Antonius Defranceschi the stonecutter to Maria Fernasar is dated 25 November 1856. Her son was born on 6 August, fifteen weeks earlier. When they married he was legitimised, and from then on every register enters him as their son.

Antonius, born 6 August 1856, the mason — «Antonio DeFranceschi 8/6/1856» at the top of the chart printed for the Crystal Springs reunion in 2012, husband of Maria Valhart, father of the eleven children. He was born three and a half months before his parents' wedding, to a mother who had herself been born outside marriage twenty-four years earlier.

Against Maria née Volhardt, whom he married on 23 February 1889, the priest wrote «nata in Orphanotrophio Tergesti» — born in the orphanage at Trieste. So the couple at the head of the American chart were an illegitimately-born mason from a village of four hundred people and a foundling from a Trieste institution, and between them they had thirteen children, eleven of whom grew up, and four of those went to America.

Because it is true and because the parish priest wrote it without embarrassment in a book meant to be read by his successors. A family archive that quietly rounded these edges off would be doing something the people in it did not do. The entries are matter-of-fact: illegitima, illeg. Mariae, nata in Orphanotrophio. Nobody was hiding anything, and a hundred and seventy years later there is nothing here to be ashamed of and a good deal to be moved by.