The Defranceschi Archive
Method, ethics and sources

About

How this archive decides what it is willing to say.

The confidence system

A claim is never stored as a fact. It is stored as an assertion with a source and a confidence, and the interface always shows which. Three states, on every date, every relationship and every claim about character.

Documented

A named source with a folio reference and, wherever possible, the scan itself.

Inferred

A reasoned conclusion from documented facts, with the reasoning written out so it can be challenged and overturned.

Family lore

Told, remembered, not corroborated. Kept because it is precious and the family said it; labelled because pretending otherwise is how family myths become family history.

Living people

Data protection law reaches the living and not the dead, and a private tree is exempt from it while a public website is not. So the rule is structural rather than editorial: anyone marked living is omitted from the generated site at build time — not hidden behind CSS, not behind a login, not present in the data with a flag. Not rendered at all.

A living person appears only if they have asked to. A removal request is honoured within days, without argument and without requiring a reason.

Successes and failings both

Illegitimacy, poverty, desertion, debt, drink, crime, children who did not survive — these are in the registers and they are the truth of most families. The policy: the closer to living memory, the higher the bar. Beyond about 1920, nothing without a named source. Within living memory, nothing about anyone without their family's consent.

Hardship is told in its context. Camillo De Franceschi went to prison for two years at twenty-one; that is not a stain to be managed but the most interesting fact about him, and it belongs on his page in full.

These places sit on the fault line of one of Europe's most contested memories. Between a quarter and a third of a million people left Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia after 1943, and there are two national narratives that do not agree about any of it. This archive's position: report what happened to our people, with sources; use both toponyms always; do not adjudicate between national grievances. Some of this family stayed and some left, and both are owed the same dignity.

Sources

159 sources, grouped by what kind of thing they are. The search register records every one of the 669 searches made against them, including the ones that found nothing.

Publication — 33
SourceWhereUsed for
Carlo De Franceschi, «L'Istria: note storiche» archive.org The family's own historian on his own country: 524 pages, published at Parenzo by Gaetano Coana and dedicated «alla gioventù dell'Istria».
«Lettere di Carlo De Franceschi a Giovanni Kobler» Atti e Memorie della Società Istriana, 1928 The letters in which Carlo, about 1873, sets out what his family believed about itself: that it came from Carnia and settled in Istria «intorno al 1700»; that De Franceschi still lived at Mione and Muina; that his trisavolo Giambattista built the 1711 house at Gologorica; and the blazon of the family arms.
Camillo De Franceschi, «Storia documentata della Contea di Pisino» ed. Carlo de Franceschi, Venice 1964 Carlo's son on the county the family lived in — still the standard work.
Blasonario Giuliano unioneistriani.it The armorial of Venezia Giulia.
Petar Puhmajer, «Stancija de Franceschi u Segetu kod Umaga» Ministarstvo kulture RH, Zagreb 2019, ISBN 978-953-312-048-5 The conservation monograph on the Seget estate: how it was bought from the Valier in 1720, how the house was built and rebuilt, and the two Istrian branches.
«La tenuta de Franceschi di Seghetto», la Voce del popolo lavoce.hr The Italian-language daily of Rijeka on the Seget estate: the county in Crete, the 1538 defence of Calus, Lemiores and Sabionera, the shipwreck of 1669, the hundred thousand ducats of 1716, the library of four thousand volumes and its destruction, and the arms on the tympanum.
Deborah Howard, «Titian's Portraits of Grand Chancellor Andrea de' Franceschi» The life of Andrea de' Franceschi, born 1473, Grand Chancellor of Venice from 15 September 1529 until his death in 1552, buried at Santi Giovanni e Paolo — his embassies, his will and its five codicils, and the Titian portraits he left his nephew.
Josip Banić, «Venetian Istria in the Embrace of a Nascent Dominium (c. 1381 – c. 1470)» Doctoral dissertation, Central European University, 2021 A modern historian's verdict on Camillo: one of three figures who «tower» over Istrian medieval studies, and the only surviving witness to sources lost in the war.
Centro di Ricerche Storiche di Rovigno — catalogue of Istrian sacred art crsrv.org Catalogues the paintings in the chapel of Stancija Seghetto — formerly Villa De Franceschi — and records their poor condition; and a Pentecost whose patron Antonio Alisi identified as «un de Franceschi nobile di Seghetto».
Anita Marin, «Oznake vlasništva i posvete na knjigama Knjižnice obitelji De Franceschi» doi.org The paper that told this archive its subject's library still exists.
Marin, Jurišić & Matijaca, «Arhiv obitelji De Franceschi u Nacionalnoj i sveučilišnoj knjižnici u Zagrebu» doi.org The published inventory of the family archive, shelfmark PDF 2.337 — fourteen boxes and nine folders, described box by box by the three librarians who arranged them.
Jakov Jelinčić, «Korespondencija Giovanni Kobler — Carlo De Franceschi», I–III hrcak.srce.hr Kobler's side of the correspondence — the letters Carlo was answering — edited and published in three parts.
Stipan Trogrlić, «Gologorica u Kronici Župe (1892.–1918.) prema zapisima župnika Ljudevita Žvačeka» hrcak.srce.hr The parish chronicle of Gologorica for 1892–1918, as kept by the parish priest Ljudevit Žváček — on the national-political, moral-religious, economic-social and ethnographic life of the village.
Miroslav Bertoša, «Gologorički De Franceschi: između etosa i etnosa» in «Etos i etnos zavičaja», Čakavski sabor, Pula – Rijeka 1985, pp. 177–253 Seventy-six pages on the De Franceschi of Gologorica by one of Croatia's leading historians of Istria — «between ethos and ethnos», on a family that was Friulian-Carnian in origin and Italian-national in politics, in a village that was Croatian in speech.
Irma Huić, «Urbanistički razvoj Gračišća u Istri» hrcak.srce.hr The first study anyone has made of how Gračišće grew — the family's own parish.
Ivan Grah, «Izvještaji pićanskih biskupa Svetoj Stolici (1589–1780)» archive.org Every report the bishops of Pićan (Pedena) sent to Rome between 1589 and 1780, summarised from the Vatican archive.
Giorgio Ferigo, «Le cifre, le anime. Scritti di storia della popolazione e della mobilità in Carnia» archive.org The collected demographic history of Carnia by the historian who did the work on its migration.
Mieczysław Małecki, «Przegląd słowiańskich gwar Istrji» archive.org A dialect atlas of Slavic Istria with six maps, made by a Polish Slavist in the 1920s.
«Atti del Centro di ricerche storiche di Rovigno» archive.org The scholarly journal of Istrian history, published by the Italian research centre at Rovinj.
Dorotea Brhan, «Emigrazione dalla Carnia verso l'Istria (XVI–XIX sec.)» archive.org Twenty-two pages on the exact migration this family made, built from the parish and notarial books in the state archive at Pazin.
Egidio Ivetic, «La popolazione dell'Istria nell'età moderna. Lineamenti evolutivi» archive.org The standard demographic history of early-modern Istria, counting hearths province by province from 1508.
«La Ricerca» — bollettino del Centro di ricerche storiche di Rovigno archive.org The centre's bulletin, shorter and more local than the Atti.
Daniela Simon, «Die bedrohte Ordnung der Vielfalt. Kulturelle Hybridität in Istrien, 1870–1914» transcript-verlag.de A monograph on cultural hybridity in Istria in exactly the decades this family's last Istrian generation lived through, built largely on «Naša Sloga» and on the Trieste and Pazin archives.
Napoleón Franceschi González, «LOS FRANCESCHI, la pequeña historia de una familia» researchgate.net A Venezuelan historian's history of the Corsican Franceschi of Ersa in Cap Corse, from Pietro Franceschi (1694–1771) to the emigration to Venezuela by way of the French Caribbean.
«Atti» del Centro di ricerche storiche di Rovigno, vol. 39 crsrv.org Cites Camillo De Franceschi throughout as the authority on Pula, and yields his Pula bibliography — including «Testamenti polesani del secolo XV con alcuni cenni sulle antiche casate patrizie di Pola», sixteen fifteenth-century wills he transcribed.
«Istra iz pera Nobilea» — Pietro Nobile's Istrian drawings Croatia, exhibition and study volume Camillo De Franceschi bought the Nobile drawings for the Provincial Library in 1934 and 1941 from heirs at Koper; Giulio De Franceschi appears as an illustrator of monuments; and the author reports finding the ex libris «De Franceschi – Seghetto» on books in that library's holdings — the Seget house's own library.
Mate Križman, «Antička svjedočanstva o Istri» idoc.pub Every Greek and Latin writer who mentions Istria, with commentary.
Matea Kaćunić, «Uloga obitelji Franceschi u mletačkom osvajanju Imotskog» repozitorij.ffst.unist.hr The best single study of the Dalmatian family: origins, genealogy to the eighteenth century, noble status, arms, the conquest of Imotski, and the Perinuša and Opačac estates.
Ferdinand Šišić, «An Abridged Political History of Rieka (Fiume)» Imprimerie Graphique, Paris 1919 Written for the Paris Peace Conference, with a documentary appendix of Fiume's election papers — including the protocol of 20 April 1871 signed «Frco Defranceschi».
Regan & Nadilo, «Istarski kašteli … sjeverno od Čepićkog polja» hrcak.srce.hr An architectural survey of Gologorica: the house of 1711 with its arms, inscription and relief of Christ, and the benefice held on lease by the De Franceschi from 1772 until 1848.
Elvis Orbanić, in «Acta Histriae» 32 (2024) 1 hrcak.srce.hr On the votive record at Sveti Petar u Šumi — and, in its source list, the Gologorica parish archive: baptisms 1691–1763 and deaths 1646–1777, held in the parish.
«ISTRA — Popis stanovništva 1945 / Cadastre National de l'Istrie» scribd.com The ethnic cadastre of Istria taken to the peace negotiations.
Milko Kos, «Doneski k zgodovini Istre v srednjem veku» library.hungaricana.hu A correction to a source this archive leans on. Kos publishes twenty original parchment charters from the State Archive in Vienna (repertory 3), previously unpublished and unused, on the ministerial family styling itself «de Pisino» — and says plainly that his purpose is «izpolniti in marsikje popraviti Franceschijeva izvajanja o genealogiji pazinskih gospodov»: to fill out, and in many places correct, Camillo De Franceschi's conclusions on the genealogy of the lords of Pazin.
Archive — 26
SourceWhereUsed for
Državni arhiv u Pazinu (DAPA) dapa.hr The Pazin State Archive holds the parish registers of central Istria.
Arolsen Archives — International Center on Nazi Persecution arolsen-archives.org The former International Tracing Service.
Hrvatski državni arhiv arhiv.hr The Croatian State Archive.
Matične knjige — Croatian parish registers familysearch.org The baptism of Ana Kalanj at Ledenice on 3 January 1864; the baptism of Anton Rudolf at Klenovica on 20 January 1890, which gives the parents' place of origin as Gallignana in Istria; the marriage of Nodburga Defranceschi at Bakar on 27 February 1794.
Comune di San Daniele del Friuli and Comune di Concesio — atti di morte Friuli and Brescia, Italy Italian civil death registers: Pietro De Franceschi, mason, aged 44, in the civic hospital at San Daniele on 30 March 1895; Edoardo De Franceschi, former officer of Zara, aged 48, in the same hospital on 12 August 1899; Giovanni De Franceschi, aged three, at Concesio above Brescia on 15 July 1916.
The State Archives of Friuli Venezia Giulia — Trieste, Udine, Gorizia, Pordenone projectancestry.com A guide to what each holds.
«Il Piccolo» di Trieste — the digitised run archive.org The Trieste daily from 1881, issue by issue, with the full text indexed.
The National Archives, Kew — Discovery discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk The catalogue of the British national archive, and of some 2,500 other British archives besides.
Archivi di Corsica — Collectivité de Corse archives.isula.corsica The online reading room of the Corsican archives: état civil, Corsica christiana, the decennial tables and the notarial series, free and without an account.
Archives départementales de Meurthe-et-Moselle — archives en ligne archivesenligne.meurthe-et-moselle.fr Free digitised civil registration and census for the Lorraine département.
Österreichisches Staatsarchiv — Archivinformationssystem archivinformationssystem.at The catalogue of the whole Austrian State Archives — Kriegsarchiv, Marine, Adelsarchiv, Hofkammer, Justiz — searchable by a free field search across every department, with no account.
ARHiNET — the Croatian State Archives' network arhinet.arhiv.hr The national descriptive network of the Croatian archives, and on paper the catalogue that would cover every state archive in the country at once.
Archivio di Stato di Udine asudine.beniculturali.it The state archive for Friuli, and the holder of the Carnic notarial series.
Arolsen Archives — online collections collections.arolsen-archives.org The online collections of the International Center on Nazi Persecution at Bad Arolsen — displaced-persons files, registrations and transport lists, free and without an account.
Matični ured Crikvenica — the civil registry office crikvenica.hr The registry office holding the Crikvenica death register for 1943, which is the document that would settle one of this archive's open deaths.
Državni arhiv u Zadru (DAZD) dazd.hr The state archive at Zadar, approached through its Prijamni ured (reception office) for the Dalmatian files.
Mémoire des Hommes · Grand Mémorial · Base Léonore memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr The French defence ministry's military personnel and casualty databases, together with the Grand Mémorial and the Légion d'honneur files — the obvious route into the French-side Defrance and Franceschi-Delonne names.
Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo museudaimigracao.org.br The Hospedaria de Imigrantes enrolment registers at São Paulo — the arrival record for the Brazilian cluster, and the natural companion to the Veneto departure region the My Maps gave.
Pomorski i povijesni muzej Hrvatskog primorja, Rijeka ppmhp.hr The Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral at Rijeka — the obvious holder for anything on the Fiume shipmasters of this name.
National Archives of Australia — RecordSearch recordsearch.naa.gov.au The free Australian federal archives catalogue, and the source that closed the question David asked about the child on the General M B Stewart: he is Anton Mario De Franceski, born 21 August 1944 at Reutlingen, Zdravko and Ruža's only child.
Stadtarchiv Reutlingen — photograph database stadtarchiv.reutlingen.de Reutlingen's city archive and its photograph database, worked for the German years.
The Internet Archive — Wayback Machine web.archive.org Used for one job: to save the family's own Google Site at defranceski.com before it is switched off.
Archives nationales (France) — BB/29, letters patent of the First Empire chan.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr The series in which the Napoleonic titles of Defrance and of Franceschi-Delonne are registered — the French ennoblements that the old site pointed at and that bear on the arms question.
Patrimonio culturale — Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia patrimonioculturale.regione.fvg.it The regional cultural-heritage catalogue for Friuli Venezia Giulia.
NSW State Archives — passenger lists records.nsw.gov.au The New South Wales passenger indexes, free to search.
Villa Ružić, Rijeka — the de Canziani Jakšić collection villaruzic.hr A private Rijeka archive and house museum, approached over the Hotel Therapia at Crikvenica — where Hedviga Blažević is said to have sung, and to have met Ivan Defranceski.
Bibliography — 14
SourceWhereUsed for
Cairn.info cairn.info The French humanities journal platform, approached for French scholarship and for surname distribution alongside Filae and Geopatronyme.
Digitalne zbirke Nacionalne i sveučilišne knjižnice digitalna.nsk.hr The digital collections of the Croatian National and University Library, searched in full text under both spellings.
DiZbi.HAZU — the Croatian Academy's digital collection dizbi.hazu.hr The digital repository of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which supplied Danilo Klen's **«Urbar Petre Pilose iz 1425.
Central European University — electronic theses etd.ceu.hu CEU's open thesis repository, cited here for Kurelić, «Eagle and Lion» (2013) — excellent background on the sixteenth-century Pazin frontier and a useful Istrian place-name gazetteer.
Isidore — French humanities and social science search isidore.science A French aggregator of humanities scholarship, searched across the «Res pro Deo» journal collection for the surname and for twenty place-names.
OpenEdition Journals journals.openedition.org The French open-access journal platform, read here for Pomara, «An Attempted Albanian Settlement in Istria (1610–1612)», Diasporas 43 (2025).
Muzej hrvatskih arheoloških spomenika, Split mhas-split.hr The Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments, cited here for the 2000 exhibition catalogue «Hrvati i Karolinzi», read by OCR.
Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu The Johns Hopkins scholarly platform, read here for Nova et Vetera 21:2 (2023).
Google Scholar scholar.google.com Used to run down two scholarly works whose titles looked as though they might touch this family.
Academia.edu academia.edu Cited for a paper on Titian's portraits of Andrea de Franceschi — a Venetian grand chancellor of a different family, and part of the standing evidence that several unrelated houses carry this name.
Ministarstvo kulture i medija — Mala biblioteka Godišnjaka zaštite spomenika kulture min-kulture.gov.hr The Croatian culture ministry's publication series on monument protection; volume 20 (2019) is cited alongside Smrikve for the west-Istrian house at Seget.
Istarsko povijesno društvo — članak br. 34 ipd-ssi.hr The Istrian Historical Society's PDF of article no.
Università di Bologna — staff pages unibo.it Read in full for Zelda Alice Franceschi, a Bologna anthropologist of the Argentine Gran Chaco, because the surname and the Argentine subject together looked like a lead.
WorldCat worldcat.org Used to locate two books this archive needs and does not have: Vergé-Franceschi, «Le cap Corse: généalogies et destins» (2006), the reference work for Cap Corse families, which would settle whether the Tomino Defranceschi are in it; and Bertoša, «Etos i etnos zavičaja» (Pula–Rijeka 1985), which contains «Gologorički De Franceschi: između etosa i etnosa», the footnoted original behind the encyclopedia entry.
Online source — 12
SourceWhereUsed for
Grad Bakar bakar.hr The town of Bakar's own site, cited here for «Stemmi della nobiltà di Buccari», Bakarski zbornik 2 (1996) — fifty-seven pages on the arms of Bakar's patrician houses, which bears on the arms page and on the Bakar question.
Google My Maps — David's own maps google.com Two maps David built himself over years, and a primary source in their own right rather than a reference work.
Poskok — «Obitelj De Franceschi u Imotskom od 1717. do danas» poskok.info A Croatian news site carrying a long article on the De Franceschi at Imotski from 1717 to the present, which is now the backbone of this archive's Imotski page.
Istarska županija — istra-istria.hr istra-istria.hr The Istrian County's official site, linked from the old Google Site under «Regional and community».
Istria–Fiume–Dalmatia — Italian biographies istria-fiume-dalmatia.blogspot.com A blog collecting Italian biographies of the Istrian, Fiuman and Dalmatian exile communities.
FEEFHS — Federation of East European Family History Societies feefhs.org A long-running gateway of East European genealogical resources, linked for its Croatia page.
DVHH — Danube Swabian Heritage dvhh.org The Danube Swabian heritage portal, linked from the old site.
Smrikve — the Istrian local-history library smrikve.com A large privately built library of west-Istrian local history.
Italian Parish Records italianparishrecords.org A guide to what Italian parish registers exist and where, linked from the map beside Antenati as the second door into Italy.
Općina Žminj zminj.hr The municipality of Žminj, whose local history carries the «Carnielli» of Istria — men described as «...ra u Karniji», many still spending part of each year back at Agrons near Ovaro, and marrying only girls from there, who stayed in Carnia while the men wintered in Istria.
Istria Outside My Window istriaoutsidemywindow.com Isabel Putinja's Istrian blog, carrying «A peek inside Gračišće's Salamon Palace» (2018) — photographs of the interior, and the only published look inside that this archive knows of.
Istra.hr — the Istrian tourist board istra.hr Cited for «Istrian building heritage of the Venetian era», which supplies the architectural description quoted on the direct line — and the point that Gračišće was never Venetian.
Index — 11
SourceWhereUsed for
sortedbyname.com — DEFRANCESCHI sortedbyname.com 127 entries drawn from the Social Security NUMIDENT and death files, state marriage and death indexes released through ReclaimTheRecords, and Ellis Island passenger manifests.
CEMLA — Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos cemla.com The index of arrivals at Buenos Aires, and the obvious first door for the Argentine branch of the diaspora.
CISEI — Centro Internazionale Studi Emigrazione Italiana ciseionline.it The Genoa emigration database, cited across the literature as the route into Italian departures for Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Canada and Australia.
Corsica Généalogie corsicagenealogie.com A Corsican genealogical society's index to the registers of 226 communes, used to test whether the Corsican Defranceschi are connected to this family.
Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages — historical index familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au The free historical index to the Queensland civil register, searched to test whether any of the Australian arrivals went north.
Findmypast findmypast.co.uk A paid British index, and after the Austrian catalogue the most productive single source this archive has used.
Geni geni.com A collaborative tree site, carrying the Obitelj Franceschi / de Franceschi noble-family project that David's old site linked to.
Gradska groblja Zagreb — the city burial register gradskagroblja.hr Zagreb's municipal cemetery register, free and searchable, and unusually informative: thirteen burials of the name, some carrying the parents' names. *Milan Defrančeski (d.
JUSP Jasenovac — Poimenični popis žrtava jusp-jasenovac.hr The Jasenovac Memorial Site's published list of named victims of the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška camps, free and searchable by surname.
WikiTree wikitree.com A collaborative single-tree site, approached for profiles under this surname.
Nati in Trentino natiintrentino.it The Trentino provincial index of parish baptisms, which would cover the Trentino spellings of the name.
Family — 7
SourceWhereUsed for
«The DeFranceschi Family Tree Album» printed for the first family reunion, Crystal Springs Resort, 7–9 September 2012 The American branch's own history and chart, headed «started by Antonio DeFranceschi 8/6/1856 – 10/23/1924 + Maria Valhart 4/6/1867 – 1945».
The family's MacFamilyTree file held by the family A database of 284 people, 114 families and 211 recorded events, with 247 photographs, catalogued and captioned by the family; last written 18 November 2021.
defranceski.com sites.google.com The roster of significant persons, the account of the four Croatian lines, the collected blazons, and the descent chart that first set out the line from Giovanni of Gologorica to Brisbane.
The Omiš and Seget photographs held by the family Studio portraits of the Omiš branch — Josip and Anna with baby Ante, Zane, Frane, Anton «Toni» of 1932 — and seven photographs of the Seget villa: the 1843 façade, the tympanum with its carved arms, the crenellated tower, the rustic range and the well.
The family's own survey of the Val Degano — Ovaro, Mione, Muina, Agrons Photographed on the ground by the family, autumn 2026 A drive up the valley the archive had only ever read about, and a walk through the cemetery at the Pieve di Santa Maria di Gorto with a camera.
The family's own survey of Istria — Gologorica, Gračišće, Seget, Umag, Crikvenica Photographed on the ground by the family, 2026 A drive through the places this archive had only read about, with a camera.
Cheryl Lerena, «Life After Lies» — a memoir Unpublished typescript, about 81,600 words; the family holds the file David's mother's memoir, written over some fifteen years.
Reference — 6
SourceWhereUsed for
Lee Steiner, Croatia Church Books — mapped A set of Google Earth overlays mapping every Croatian parish register in the FamilySearch collection to its place, with the browse link for each.
Hrvatski plemićki zbor — the Franceschi family plemstvo.hr The Croatian Noble Corps on the Zadar and Omiš descent: Niccolò received into the Hungarian-Croatian nobility by charter at Buda in 1359; the branch at Omiš from Francesca de Franceschi in the later sixteenth century; Giovanni «il Zuane» and the siege of Imotski in 1718.
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani treccani.it The biographies of Carlo De Franceschi, Camillo De Franceschi and Girolamo de' Franceschi of Koper, bishop of Corone.
Diocesan and press notices for Mons. Lucio Soravito de Franceschi it.cathopedia.org Born at Mione di Ovaro on 8 December 1939, ordained 1963, Bishop of Adria-Rovigo 2004–2015, died 6 July 2019.
«Ovaro: itinerari e ricerche» — with Luana Pasut, «Fonti ovaresi nell'Archivio di Stato di Udine» archive.org A guide to the comune of Ovaro, which contains Mione, with an inventory of what the Archivio di Stato di Udine holds for it.
Catholic-Hierarchy catholic-hierarchy.org A reference database of Catholic bishops, cited for a Franceschi bishop of Forlì, died 1601.
Portal — 6
SourceWhereUsed for
Hrčak — the portal of Croatian scientific and professional journals hrcak.srce.hr Free, open, and the place where Croatian scholarship on this family actually lives.
ANNO — Historische Zeitungen und Zeitschriften, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek anno.onb.ac.at Full-text searchable historic Austrian newspapers, free and without registration.
dLib.si — the Digital Library of Slovenia dlib.si Free and open, and it holds runs of the Austrian Littoral periodicals — including Kandler's «L'Istria» of 1846–52, which Irma Huić cites for Gračišće.
Internet Archive — full-text search archive.org Not only the scanned books.
Hungaricana — the Hungarian Cultural Heritage Portal hungaricana.hu Free and unblocked, with full-text OCR across the Hungarian state accounts, the parliamentary papers, the Austro-Hungarian military and naval rank lists, and the National Archives of Hungary map and plan collection.
Matricula Online — Kirchenbücher / parish registers data.matricula-online.eu Digitised parish registers for the German, Austrian, Slovenian, Luxembourgish, Swiss and South Tyrolean churches.
Register film — 6
SourceWhereUsed for
Svetvinčenat parish registers — Births 1709–1764 familysearch.org The castle's first surviving baptism book.
Svetvinčenat parish registers — Marriages 1762–1779 and later familysearch.org The marriage volume read frame by frame for Antonio the bell-ringer and the witness lines of the 1770s.
Fiume (Rijeka) parish registers — Marriages 1734–1753 familysearch.org Read end to end, nineteen years of a city's marriages, for one entry of the name.
Kaštelir parish registers familysearch.org Read for Franciscus the tailor and the Kaštelir households.
Parenzo (Poreč) parish registers familysearch.org Baptisms of Anna Maria (1844) and Paolo Francesco Domenico (1846), children of Mattio Defranceschi, carpenter, and Domenica Frezza — the second with Francesco Marchese de Polesini at the font.
Parenzo (Poreč) parish registers — deaths familysearch.org Read for the Parenzo deaths, including «Anna Maria Defranceschi, moglie di Giacomo Rocco», 17 September 1879, aged thirty-five.
Database — 5
SourceWhereUsed for
Antenati — Portale degli Antenati antenati.cultura.gov.it The Italian state archives' genealogy portal.
FamilySearch familysearch.org The single largest source in this archive.
Find a Grave findagrave.com Ninety-six memorials under every spelling of the surname, from which the grave gazetteer is built.
Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org Four public-domain works reproduced on the namesakes page: Titian's portrait of Andrea de' Franceschi (Detroit Institute of Arts); the Vasari woodcut of Piero della Francesca from the 1648 Vite; Piero's Urbino diptych; and Mariano de Franceschi's Camel Caravan at Rest.
The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Arrival Records Collection statueofliberty.org The Foundation's own passenger database, searched for this archive for the first time on 13 September 2026.
Encyclopedia — 4
SourceWhereUsed for
Hrvatski biografski leksikon hbl.lzmk.hr The Croatian biographical lexicon, which carries a full life of «Defrančeski, Ante» — born Ližnjan near Pula 1 February 1894, died Skrad 27 September 1949; Kastav teachers' college 1912; a volunteer on the Salonika front; Kotoriba and Čakovec 1920–24; the Higher Pedagogical School at Zagreb 1928; professor at the Zagreb teachers' training school; the Ministry of Education at Belgrade 1932–33.
Istarska enciklopedija (Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža) istra.lzmk.hr Bertoša's entry «De Franceschi» in the Istrian encyclopedia, and one of the few secondary works that treats this family directly.
Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org Cited in three languages, and in every case for a public figure rather than for this family's own people: Carlo De Franceschi on the Croatian and Czech Wikipedias, and Piero della Francesca at Sansepolcro and Monterchi on the English.
Istrapedia istrapedia.hr The Istrian online encyclopedia, carrying a «de Franceschi» entry, cited here for Pićan — the Pedena where Antonio lived.
Family file — 3
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MyHeritage family tree export, July 2018 — SUPERSEDED myheritage.com A GEDCOM of 8,286 individuals, 254 of them carrying this surname.
The family's own copy of the Reutlingen displaced-persons file 92 images, held by the family The French-zone and IRO papers for both brothers' households, photographed by the family.
MyHeritage, David's live family tree (tree 4) myheritage.com 15,643 people, of whom 459 carry this surname, compiled and sourced by David himself over many years and still growing.
Transcription — 2
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istrianet.org — Carlo De Franceschi, «L'Istria», transcribed istrianet.org A clean transcription of several chapters of Carlo's 1879 book, made from the Arnaldo Forni reprint, with maps from Egidio Ivetic's «L'Istria moderna» and biography from Benussi — both Centro di Ricerche Storiche, Rovigno.
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild immigrantships.net Passenger manifests transcribed by volunteers and put online free, with no registration and no paywall, since 1998.
article — 2
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Dean Brhan, «“Stare cum loco et foco”. L'emigrazione verso l'Istria dalla Carnia e dal Friuli» Amici dell'Orologeria Pesarina Giovanni Battista e Remigio Solari — APS, Prato Carnico (Pesariis). Open text on the association's own site; read in full, September 2026.
Anita Marin, Martina Jurišić, Alena Matijaca, «Zbirka obitelji De Franceschi u Nacionalnoj i sveučilišnoj knjižnici u Zagrebu – prilog istraživanju» doi.org
Test — 2
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MyHeritage Y-DNA (powered by FamilyTreeDNA) myheritage.com A Y-chromosome haplogroup assignment for David and for his father, both returning L-M27.
23andMe — David's kit you.23andme.com A second company on a second chip.
Newspapers — 2
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Stare hrvatske novine — the NSK newspaper portal dnc.nsk.hr The National and University Library's digitised Croatian newspapers.
Trove — National Library of Australia trove.nla.gov.au The free Australian newspaper and gazette portal.
Commercial — 2
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The commercial heraldry sites — Heraldry's Institute, House of Names, COADB heraldrysinstitute.com Three businesses that sell coats of arms by surname.
Croatian Roots croatianroots.com A commercial genealogical research service for Croatia.
Printed regesti of state papers — 2
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«Senato Rettori: cose dell'Istria», parte quarta — Atti e memorie della Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria vol. XX (1904), pp. 1–45 openstarts.units.it The Venetian Senate's deliberations on Istria for 1670–1676, in regest form — registers 46 to 50. This is the volume that documents the Cretan refugee settlement at Parenzo decree by decree: the sixty families and the first list; nineteen of the twenty-three who embarked at Zante; the request for land to build their own church; the houses still empty in 1673 and let out for repair money; twenty-five families counted in 1674; four declared forfeit for leaving; six holding 145 campi in 1675.
«Senato Mare: cose dell'Istria», parte dodicesima — AMSI vol. XVI (1900), pp. 1–116 openstarts.units.it The Senato Mare companion to the volume above.
Online tree — 1
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Geneanet — «Urban ANTOINE's Family Tree», published by the member «carnia» geneanet.org A Carnian researcher's tree covering the villages of the Gorto valley.
Secondary, popular — 1
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Fiumemondo — «Brief history of Rijeka» fiumemondo.com A long single-page history of the city from Tarsatica to the present.
Printed, 1845 — 1
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Francesco Cavalli, «Della regione litorale Austro-Illirica» archive.org A statistical and historical description of the Austrian Littoral published in 1845, with chronological lists of the bishops of each see.
Printed, 1926 — HELD — 1
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Carlo De Franceschi, «Memorie autobiografiche», ed. Camillo De Franceschi hdl.handle.net Carlo's autobiography, dictated as letters between April and December 1883 at the insistent asking of his son Gian Pietro, assistant judge at Pola, who died at thirty in 1884 and left the manuscript to his two brothers.
Digital repository — 1
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OpenStarts — Università degli Studi di Trieste openstarts.units.it The University of Trieste's institutional repository, which has digitised the «Archeografo Triestino» and much of the Istrian and Giulian periodical literature, open access and without registration.
Archive, Trieste — 1
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Società Istriana di Archeologia e Storia Patria — «Archivio Camillo De Franceschi e famiglia» siasp-aps.org Twenty-six boxes of the family's own papers — correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, photographs and personal documents of three generations — held by the society Carlo helped found and later presided over.
newspaper — 1
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«Gazzetta di Zara», anno IX, no. 62, 4 August 1840 anno.onb.ac.at
chapter — 1
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Darko Darovec, «Migration to Istria and the North Adriatic in the Modern Age: society, culture and environment» In Flocel Sabaté (ed.), «Mediterranean Towns: Mobility and Displacement of People», Publicacions de la Presidència, Sèrie Major 10. Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 2021, pp. 205–228. Open access from the publisher.
archive — 1
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Državni arhiv u Rijeci — HR-DARI-254, «Obitelj De Franceschi iz Gologorice», 1610–1934 riarhiv.hr
book — 1
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Giuseppe Tassini, «Curiosità veneziane, ovvero Origini delle denominazioni stradali di Venezia» archive.org
Heritage register — 1
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«Pristanište Zichy / De Francescijev gat» — Croatian maritime and industrial heritage register arcaadriatica.eu «Pristanište Zichy / De Francescijev gat» — a stone pier in the Rijeka port basin, between the Istrian pier and the Vienna pier: east face 150 m, west face 134 m, south face 80 m, about 6 m alongside, rail-mounted cranes on both flanks. Cited for the pier's dimensions and for both of its names.
Dataset — 1
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GeoNames geographical database geonames.org GeoNames placed most of this archive's map. 1,123 of the 1,286 places on the research map carry coordinates derived from it — 1,065 disambiguated against a region, 53 matched directly, 5 in part — and data/gazetteer.json, the archive's committed gazetteer of 2,506 places, is distilled from the same dumps by scripts/build-gazetteer.py.
Parish register (microfilm) — 1
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Svetvinčenat marriages — FamilySearch film 005497886 familysearch.org The marriage register of the collegiate parish of San Vincenti / Svetvinčenat. The film's own target board names it «MATIČNA KNJIGA VJENČANIH 1581–1623», item 1, roll 88, operator Kekić Anita, project CRO 00009 — and the film runs well past that item: the 1762 volume opens at frame 43 and frame 300 is a printed Austrian «Liber Copulatorum» of 1887. Frames 43–64 (July 1762 – February 1773) have been read opening by opening, about 170 marriages, and are logged on /searched/.
Doctoral thesis — 1
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Lia De Luca, «Venezia e le immigrazioni in Istria nel Cinque e Seicento» iris.unive.it The modern study of exactly this question — who Venice moved into Istria, and how — written out of the Senate's own filze at the Archivio di Stato di Venezia. Chapter 5.6, «gli ultimi tentativi di ripopolamento organizzato», is the Cretan settlement of Parenzo and the hajduk settlement of the Pola district as one operation. It supplies what the printed regesti leave out: that the whole Cretan community sheltering at Zante was to be moved to Parenzo with 2,000 ducats and building materials for sixty families; that in July 1673 a survey of usurped land in the Parenzo territory was opened to free ground for them, and «alcune famiglie immigrate ottennero di essere ammesse nel consiglio di Parenzo»; and that in September 1671 Pola, Sissan, Lisignan, Castel di Mormaran, Pomer and Medolin petitioned against the hajduks together.
Nothing here yet establishes descent. The register holdings are documented; the lines above them are not. That is the work.