Rivetti
Chiara Rivetti, who outlived Pasquale Falco by nine years — and the two Rivetti families of Arienzo, one of them gentry, that the archive spent five years telling apart.
Chiara Rivetti was the oldest open question this archive had, and closing it in 2026 was the single biggest find of the register sweeps. She still had no page. This is it.
Chiara Rivetti
She married Pasquale Falco in the 1780s and was still alive on strada Camellara when he died there on 1 October 1834. She outlived him by nearly nine years, and died in her own house at eight in the evening on 13 September 1843, aged eighty.
…è morta nella sua propria casa CHIARA RIVETTI VEDOVA DI PASQUALE FALCO, nata in Arienzo, di anni OTTANTA, di professione CONTADINA, domiciliata ivi, figlia di NICOLA RIVETTI Defunto, di professione CONTADINO, domiciliato ivi, e di ANNA DI RUGGIO Defunta, domiciliata ivi.
Arienzo, Morti 1843, atto 43. LUCA COSSI, 33, a sartore, and GIOVANNI COSSI, 43, a contadino — both of strada Camellara — walked to the town hall to report it. Plate on the Documents page.
And a second series now says the same thing, twenty-nine years earlier. Her son Vincenzo's marriage dossier of 1814 — found in September 2026 — contains a notarial act of 8 December 1814 in which «li conjugi Pasquale Falco del fu Matteo, e CHIARA RIVETTI del fu NICOLA» consent to their son's marriage. A notary's instrument and a parish burial, three decades and two record series apart, agree on her father. the act
The same dossier gives her an age for the first time outside a death act. The banns of 11 September 1814 make her forty-seven, implying a birth about 1767. Her 1843 burial implied 1763; the family tree says 1772. Three estimates, no two agreeing — and in the same act the clerk gets her son's age and her son's bride's age right to the year. Her baptism is the next target. The Processetti →
Why one word in that act mattered so much
Her Latin burial entry called her only «filia quondam NICOLAI et ANNA» — daughter of the late Nicola and Anna. Two Arienzo couples answered to that.
| Couple | Who they were | What the archive did |
|---|---|---|
| Don NICOLA RIVETTI × Donn'Anna Quotolo | Gentry. She died on 25 April 1824, aged eighty-eight, a gentildonna of strada Croce dell'Ospedale, daughter of the late Silvestro Quotolo, possidente. Their daughter Donna Francesca Rivetti died in January 1816, wife of Don Claudio Cimmino. | Ruled out. |
| NICOLA RIVETTI, contadino × Anna di Ruggio | Day-labourers. Named in the 1821 death act of their son Carmine Rivetti , buried at fifty-three from strada Monticello de' Cappuccini. | Chiara's parents. The 1843 act writes her father's trade out — contadino — and that single word decides it. |
The archive had preferred the labouring couple for years, on the reasoning that Chiara married a contadino and lived among day-labourers — and refused to claim it, because a preference is not a record. It waited for the word. And it makes CARMINE RIVETTI, buried in 1821 at fifty-three, her brother, born about 1768.
The other Rivetti of Arienzo — the ones with the Don
The gentry Rivetti are worth knowing precisely so that nobody mistakes them for Chiara's people. They are a different family in the same town, and the registers keep them apart with an honorific.
| Who | What the register says |
|---|---|
| Don GIOVANBATTISTA RIVETTI | «FARMACISTA» — the apothecary. Married Donna Caterina Espositella, a gentildonna of strada Porta di Sopra. Their three-year-old son Raffaele Ottaviano is entered as a gentiluomo. |
| Don Giuseppe Rivetti the elder × Giovanna Bega | Both dead before March 1819. |
| Don Nicola Rivetti × Donn'Anna Quotolo | See above. She was eighty-eight at her death in 1824. |
| A Rivetti in a marriage record | Styled Doctoris Physici — a physician. |
An apothecary, a physician and three Don in one surname, alongside a household of contadini who buried their dead from Monticello de' Cappuccini. Same name, same parish, two worlds.
A Rivetti married a Falco daughter too
Crescenzo Rivetti married Angela Falco — a daughter of Matteo Falco and Francesca Crisci, so a sister of Pasquale of generation two. Their daughter Angelandrea Rivetti died on 12 February 1819. When Crescenzo died in December 1816, Gioacchino Falco (36) and Giuseppe Falco (32), both of strada Camellara, declared it as «parenti del defunto» — they were his wife's brothers, and that stated word is what makes Gioacchino a candidate fifth child of the founding couple.
So the two names cross in both directions in the founding generation: Chiara Rivetti marries in, Angela Falco marries out.
Two Giuseppe Rivetti of standing — and it is not settled
This archive has carried a muddle here for some time. It can now be stated exactly, which is not the same as solved.
| The man | His wife | Known from |
|---|---|---|
| Don GIUSEPPE RIVETTI the elder dead before March 1819 | GIOVANNA BEGA also dead by then | The 1819 death of their daughter Suor Maria Maddalena Rivetti , a nun. |
| GIUSEPPE RIVETTI, possidente dead before November 1839 | LUCIA CIOFFI also dead by then | The 1839 death of their son Don GIOVANBATTISTA RIVETTI, FARMACISTA, aged 55 — so born about 1784. |
First, the name is now certain. The 1839 act was read at 3400 pixels and gave «LUCIA COPPA(?)/CIOFFI» — a question mark and an alternative. Re-fetched at the image's own resolution it reads «e di Lucia Cioffi Defunta», and the double-f is unmistakable. Lucia Coppa never existed; she was a misreading. Corrections →
What is not certain is whether these are two men or one. Two Giuseppe Rivetti of standing, both dead, with two different wives. Either there were two, or one man married twice. Nothing found so far decides it, and this archive will not pick the tidier answer. What would settle it: the marriage records, or a death act for either Giuseppe that names his own parents.
And it puts the Rivetti and the Cioffi together twice, in both directions. Giuseppe Rivetti the possidente married a Lucia CIOFFI; and in February 1815 a Don Saverio CIOFFI was married to a Donna Anna Maria RIVETTI, whose seven-day-old daughter Metilde died that month and is entered as a gentildonna. The gentry of this town married each other.
Neither is this line. Ours are contadini, and Chiara Rivetti was the daughter of a contadino — the question this archive spent five years on, and answered no.
The Rivetti on the ground, 1816–1843
137 of these 169 records were read off the death registers line by line. What they show is a family spread across Arienzo — Monticello de' Cappuccini, Via Nuova, Capodiuomo, Sant'Andrea, San Giuseppe, and strada Camellara itself.
| Who | What the act says |
|---|---|
| Alessio Rivetti × Orsola Diglio , strada Camellara | Wife and daughter dead on the same day. Grazia Rivetti, nine years old, at six in the morning on 28 August 1842; her mother Orsola, thirty-six, four hours earlier. The same two men reported both. |
| A Rivetti of strada Camellara × Chiara Sorrino | Two children dead in two days — Paolo, three, on 23 August; Grazia, seven months, on the 24th. |
| Felicia Rivetti × Vincenzo Morgillo | Died 30 January 1839 at thirty-seven, «figlia di ANTONIO RIVETTI», a contadino still living, «e di Marchetta Quotolo». A Rivetti woman married into a Morgillo household — the other name that flanks this line. See Morgillo. |
| Angelo Rivetti , 28, calzolajo | Declares at the death of Salvatore Rivetti, 58, vaticale of strada Sant'Andrea — and the register calls him NIPOTE, nephew. A stated kinship, not an inferred one. |
| Antonio Rivetti , 40, of strada Via Nuova | Reports the death of his own twenty-day-old son Paolo, and the clerk writes PADRE. |
What would move this line
- The marriage of Pasquale Falco and Chiara Rivetti, Arienzo, 1780s. It would name all four parents at once and is the oldest document this archive is still looking for.
- Nicola Rivetti and Anna di Ruggio's own marriage, about 1760, which would take the labouring Rivetti back another generation.
- Whether the two Rivetti families are one family that divided. An apothecary and a day-labourer of one surname in one small town is not two families by default — but nothing found so far joins them, and the archive does not assume it.
All 169 Rivetti records are listed with their sources at the register →