Valentino Defranceschi

…showing the movement from Carnia into Istria at all. That is no longer. Giovanni Kobler, going through the civic records of Fiume in the 1870s, wrote out for Carlo De Franceschi the Defranceschi households of that city — and his second entry reads: «Valentino Defranceschi, venuto dalla Carnia, fu fatto Cittadino nel 1739.» Come from Carnia; made a citizen in 1739. With his wife Elena he had ten sons and four daughters, a house in the Capuchins' quarter and a vineyard at Plase; in 1764 he built the Chapel of St Helen; he made…

…— 2 protocolli istrumenti e testamenti 1800–1805». Every contract and will drawn at Mione between 1737 and 1783 passed through the hands of a Giovanni Battista Franceschi and is in one box in Udine. That period covers exactly 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 this archive has on the Carnian side, and it needs a letter, not a search box. Giorgio…

…Rijeka· a household a hundred and thirteen years too early Giovanni Kobler went through the civic records of Fiume in the 1870s and wrote out for Carlo De Franceschi every household of this surname he could find. His earliest is «Valentino Defranceschi, venuto dalla Carnia, fu fatto Cittadino nel 1739» — come from Carnia, made a citizen in 1739. The parish register of Fiume has a De Franceschi household baptising children in the city in 1626. This was not found by looking for it. It came out…

…archive has held the Carnia claim at arm's length because it rested on one document — the headmen's list of 1679 — and on Carlo's private testimony about his own family. There are now three independent things: the 1679 list; Kobler's record that Valentino Defranceschi came from Carnia and was made a citizen of Fiume in 1739; and a modern Croatian historian describing the Gologorica family flatly as Friulian-Carnian, settled in the seventeenth century. None of them joins this line to that one. But the road itself is no…

…in the seventeenth century, in a parish whose lord is a bishop too poor to live in his own diocese, among tenants who could be seized and sold for sixty florins of unpaid tax, in a church that had been singing in Glagolitic within living memory. By 1739 a Valentino Defranceschi come from Carnia was made a citizen of Fiume; by 1819 the family was marrying Salomons at Gračišće; by 1848 one of them sat in the parliament at Vienna. That is the distance travelled, and this is the floor it started from. Ivan Grah,…

…«È forse Lei un Discendente?» — Are you perhaps a descendant? Carlo's reply is the letter this archive has built half its Carnia argument on. And Kobler's second entry is a document, not a tradition «Valentino Defranceschi, venuto dalla Carnia, fu fatto Cittadino nel 1739, e colla moglie Elena ebbe 10 figli e 4 figlie, aveva casa in contrada dei Capuccini e vigna in Plase, fabbricò nel 1764 la Capella di S. Elena, fece per se tomba nel Duomo con epigrafe nel 1785 e morì nel…

…Carnia, fu fatto Cittadino nel 1739, e colla moglie Elena ebbe 10 figli e 4 figlie, aveva casa in contrada dei Capuccini e vigna in Plase, fabbricò nel 1764 la Capella di S. Elena, fece per se tomba nel Duomo con epigrafe nel 1785 e morì nel 1785.» Valentino Defranceschi, come from Carnia, was made a Citizen in 1739; by his wife Elena he had ten sons and four daughters; he had a house in the Capuchins' quarter and a vineyard at Plase; in 1764 he built the Chapel of St Helen; in 1785 he made himself a tomb in the Duomo with…

…and Don Ramiro's letter from Pisino tells you what it was like to stand next to him on a Saturday morning. Valentino's chapel, and the words over its door This archive has been carrying Kobler's one-sentence summary of Valentino Defranceschi for months — came from Carnia, made a citizen in 1739, built the chapel of St Helen in 1764, made himself a tomb, died in 1785 — and noting that the chapel and the tomb were things that could still be looked for. Kobler's «Memorie per la storia della città…

…is four times as long, and it gives the inscription. 25. La Cappella di S. Elena. — Esiste presso il confine occidentale, poco più in là di S. Giovanni. Sulla porta d'ingresso si legge incisa l'epigrafe: «Sacellum B. Mariæ Virgini erectum a D. Valentino Defranceschi a. 1764». Quel Defranceschi era venuto a Fiume dalla Carnia circa l'anno 1730, aveva una moglie di nome Elena, e possedeva una casa in Fiume e una vigna in Plasse. Morì nel 1785, e fu sepolto nel Duomo. 25. The Chapel of St Helen. — It stands near…

…in Plasse. Morì nel 1785, e fu sepolto nel Duomo. 25. The Chapel of St Helen. — It stands near the western boundary, a little beyond San Giovanni. Over the entrance door is cut the inscription: «A chapel raised to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Signor Valentino Defranceschi in the year 1764». That Defranceschi had come to Fiume from Carnia about the year 1730; he had a wife named Elena, and owned a house in Fiume and a vineyard at Plase. He died in 1785 and was buried in the Duomo. The name is cut in stone,…

…year 1730; he had a wife named Elena, and owned a house in Fiume and a vineyard at Plase. He died in 1785 and was buried in the Duomo. The name is cut in stone, and Kobler read it there «Sacellum B. Mariæ Virgini erectum a D. Valentino Defranceschi a. 1764.» Not a register entry, not a tradition, not a citation — a lintel. And the D. is Dominus, the same title the Gologorica registers give a Josephus Defranceschi in the same decades and the same title the Rovigno scholarship says a Carnian earned in…

…the burials that still had their slabs: after the chapter's own vault and the tomb of Bishop Giovanni Antonio de Benzoni, the family tombs of the Stemberg, Velens, Saurich, Troyer, Lumaga and the rest, and then the individual stones — «Giorgio Marchesetti, Valentino Defranceschi, Francesco Calucci…». He adds that almost all of them are eighteenth-century, because the great restoration of 1716–1726 took up the slabs of the extinct families. Valentino's was still in the floor when Kobler walked over it. Two things to ask…

…A house in the Capuchins' quarter, and «vigna con casa in Plasse sul confine di Castua» — a vineyard with a house at Plase on the Kastav boundary. There, Kobler says here, he had the chapel of St Helena built in 1761, its front carrying «Sacellum a D. Valentino Defranceschi erectum a. 1764». The tomb, word for word He died aged eighty-five and was buried in the collegiate church by the altar of the Madonna del Carmine, under a stone reading «Cineres D. Valentini De Franceschi, qui vivens sibi ac posteris suis…

…Kobler, all of them small and all of them Kobler's own. He gives the chapel as built in 1761 in the family article and dated 1764 by its inscription, and he transcribes the inscription twice with different wording — «Sacellum B. Mariæ Virgini erectum a D. Valentino Defranceschi a. 1764» in the chapter on the chapels, and «Sacellum a D. Valentino Defranceschi erectum a. 1764» in the family article. And Ignazio's wife is «Giuseppa Donegalli» here, where this archive had «Giuseppa Danezello» from the earlier reading. The stone, if it…

…in 1761 in the family article and dated 1764 by its inscription, and he transcribes the inscription twice with different wording — «Sacellum B. Mariæ Virgini erectum a D. Valentino Defranceschi a. 1764» in the chapter on the chapels, and «Sacellum a D. Valentino Defranceschi erectum a. 1764» in the family article. And Ignazio's wife is «Giuseppa Donegalli» here, where this archive had «Giuseppa Danezello» from the earlier reading. The stone, if it survives, settles the first two; the marriage register at Rijeka settles the…

…this archive already had on disk — and let them answer. The lead was worth having. It was not evidence. And it turns out to bear on this family directly. Kobler's own article on the three Fiume stocks of the surname records that Valentino Defranceschi, civic engineer and steward of Fiume, «ammogliatosi nel 1793 con Orsola de Benzoni», married an Orsola de Benzoni in 1793 and had eight children by her. So the Defranceschi married into the Benzoni — the Fiume house that had produced, two generations…

…earlier, the vicar general of the diocese of Gologorica and Gallignana and then a bishop. And Giovanni Antonio's own mother was an Orsola, which is where the name in the family comes from. The bishop is buried in the collegiate church at Fiume. So is Valentino Defranceschi of Carnia, under a floor slab by the altar of the Madonna del Carmine. Giovanni Kobler, «Memorie per la storia della liburnica città di Fiume», reprinted as vol. 3 of the Collana degli Atti of Rovigno, 1978; Ivan Grah, «Izvještaji…

…are on it. The De Franceschi are not, and neither are the Bono. The sentence on the modern page has taken a real list and widened it. None of which is the interesting part. The interesting part is what the Benzoni actually were, because in 1793 Valentino Defranceschi married Orsola de Benzoni — and that was not a marriage into an ordinary merchant family. c. 1650 — two brothers from Cremona Giovanni Battista and Vincenzo, trading. Giovanni Battista married Antonia Tremanini in 1653 and…

…He built the great house on the piazza of St Vitus running through to the Contrada di San Michele, and bought the braida by Sant'Andrea. He died at Fiume on 3 December 1745 and was buried in the collegiate church under a slab — the same floor that holds Valentino Defranceschi of Carnia. The second son — and the reason this is worth a whole section Stefano Giovanni, born 1690: municipal councillor of Fiume in 1724, and then «luogotenente nella contea di Pisino» — lieutenant in the County of…

…Benzoni house itself. What this does not settle is Orsola. Kobler's Benzoni article traces the descendants of Stefano Giovanni, of Giuseppe Gabriele and of the Vincenzo branch, and no Orsola of the right generation appears in it to be the woman Valentino Defranceschi married in 1793. The name is certainly in the house — the bishop's own mother was Orsola de Marotti — but which branch Valentino's wife came from is unresolved, and it is the marriage register of Fiume that would say. She died in 1807, and he built the…

…Dani, Deseppi, Defranceschi, Ellenz, Glavan, Lusser, Marotti, Minoli, Ruppani e Zuzulich» — assigning further building plots to eleven named families. Out of that plan came the Piazza della Fiumara, the theatre square, the market square and the Corso. Valentino Defranceschi of Carnia, twenty-six years off the boat, was given a lot in the making of modern Fiume. 1848 — a patrician councillor «Patrizi consiglieri che abitavano in Fiume nel 1848» — the patrician councillors living in Fiume in 1848. The list…

…then: «Dove passassero gli altri, non si sa» — where the others went is not known. But in the chapter that walks Fiume street by street, describing the Contrada dei Cappuccini, he writes without a backward glance: «Nel 1763 si trova accennata una casa di Valentino Defranceschi, la quale poi fu di Carlo Rossi, vice console inglese, e di sua moglie Giuseppa, figlia del detto Defranceschi, e nel 1794 passò in proprietà di Elena ved. Faribault.» A house of Valentino Defranceschi is noted in 1763, which afterwards belonged to Carlo…

…glance: «Nel 1763 si trova accennata una casa di Valentino Defranceschi, la quale poi fu di Carlo Rossi, vice console inglese, e di sua moglie Giuseppa, figlia del detto Defranceschi, e nel 1794 passò in proprietà di Elena ved. Faribault.» A house of Valentino Defranceschi is noted in 1763, which afterwards belonged to Carlo Rossi, British vice-consul, and to his wife Giuseppa, daughter of the said Defranceschi; and in 1794 it passed to Elena, widow Faribault. There she is. Giuseppa Defranceschi, one of the fourteen, married…

…his own son Carlo. He had died in Venice in 1953, an exile from the province he spent his life documenting. Storia documentata della Contea di Pisino Venice, published posthumously 1964 valentino-defranceschi Valentino Defranceschi born died mione carnia-fiume Citizen of Fiume Landowner documented Came from Carnia and was made a citizen of Fiume in 1739 — the same year he baptised a son there.…

…Krk, Küstenland, Austria, lead X9D5-S4D9 Mattio Defranceschi Defranceschi M y d. 11 Jul 1742· of Fiume, Modrus-Fiume, Ungheria Fiume, Modrus-Fiume, Ungheria Valentino Defranceschi Elena Defranceschi in Rijeka X9DP-GGFB Nicolo Defranceschi Defranceschi M y d. 1742· of Fiume, Modrus-Fiume, Ungheria Fiume, Modrus-Fiume, Ungheria Valentino…

…year De Franceschi house built on the Gologorica square year Zuane Ivan Franceschi shelters 600 Imotski refugees year Imotski taken; the Perinuša estate granted year Valentino Defranceschi, from Carnia, made a citizen of Fiume year Giovanni Battista Defranceschi arrives from the County of Pazin year First Gračišće status animarum year Joseph II dissolves the Pauline order at…