What changed

A new page: «Lives on one scale» — every dated person in a line, as a scrollable chart of lifespans Search

did David asked whether the births and deaths of a whole line could be shown on a scrollable timeline. The Timeline already existed and is deliberately a different thing — its own dek says «the point is not when people were born» — so this is the one that is about the people. /lives/: one bar to a person, birth to death, sorted by birth, scrolling sideways across the years and down through the line. ⭐ The point of it is not the bars. It is which bars are solid. A bar is drawn solid only where the roster says the date was read off a register, an index of record or a headstone; everything else came off a family tree and is drawn hollow. Across the roster that is 431 hollow of 1,031; on our own Carnia line it is 100 of 205 — almost exactly half. The hollow bars are the work still to do, and the chart is the first thing on this site that shows how much of it there is. And an open end is not a short life. Where only one date is known the bar fades out instead of stopping square. 57 per cent of these people have one date and not the other — which is, mostly, a map of the burial registers nobody has read. What it leaves out, and why. All 58 living people, entirely — the rule here is name and town and nothing else, and a chart of dates is no place for an exception. And 28 rows the roster marks sameAs another: they are one life entered twice, and one life gets one bar. It is generated from roster.json and nothing is typed into it — including the figures in its own prose, which compute themselves so that a sentence like «almost exactly half» cannot go stale the next time somebody reads a register. ⚠ It is not in the navigation. The nav is shared ground with another session; the page is reachable from the Timeline until David decides where it belongs.

found Built from roster.json; no new research

The eighty-four people who were in David's tree and not in this roster are now in it Yield

did 82 new rows; the roster goes 1,225 → 1,307. Two of the eighty-four were already here under the same name and were skipped rather than duplicated. Twenty-five of them are living, and they appear by name and by town and by nothing else — no birth year, no death year, no photograph — exactly as the rule has stood since 15 September. The living gate passes on all of them. Ližnjan 7, Gračišće 6, Crikvenica 5, Brooklyn 5, Gologorica 4, Allentown 2, and singles at Trieste, Venice, Varaždin, Gallignana, Mercedes, Ellis Island, Urach, Metzingen, Horsham, Johannesburg and Castelgomberto. Thirty-nine have no place at all. Every row says what it is: «Tree-derived: no register has been read for this person here», marked inf. These were never strangers — 486 of the 668 tree-only people were already inside David's own pens, tested and parked. The eighty-four were the remainder, and they are the good list.

found The live MyHeritage tree, reconciled against the roster

Fourteen places where the tree and this archive disagree now say so on the person's own page Search

did Seven are age arithmetic — death agreed, birth out by one to three — and now say plainly that an age produces this and that the archive keeps the register's figure. Two are too big for arithmetic (Mario, 1919 against 1924; Girolamo of Omiš, 1632 against 1622) and say one side has the wrong man. Three dispute the death year — Clementina Maria by thirty years, Josephus Lambertus by twenty-one, Lina by two — and say this needs the burial register, not a judgement. And the mirrored Petrus Defranceschi pair says it is one man on the roster twice, 1768 and 1765, same death year 1829. A first attempt put these notes on 56 rows instead of 14, because it matched on name alone and this roster is record-level: Maria Defranceschi is twenty-four rows, and twenty-three of them would have been accused of a disagreement belonging to one. Stripped and redone against name and source.

found reconcile.json, written onto the roster

Helena Defranceschi is a parish godmother, not a grandmother — an earlier reading withdrawn Correction

did She stands godmother nine times in twenty frames between 1745 and 1747, for families with no connection to her own. Her appearance at Giuseppe's first son in 1772 is therefore weak evidence of kinship, and this archive's earlier reading of it as «what a grandmother does» is withdrawn. What the count does give is her identity: Valentino the Carnian's wife is the only Helena Defranceschi known to be living at Fiume in those years, and she is written plain in 1747 and D.na in 1772. A rival exists — a Helena Defranceschi b. 1725 of Gologorica — and the entries carry no patronymic, so the identification rests on residence alone. inf.

found Fiume baptisms, images 127–150 tallied

Twelve years of Fiume weddings read end to end, and the marriage that would settle everything is not in them Nothing

did Twenty-four frames, November 1736 to February 1748, and exactly one Defranceschi marriage in all of it — Valentino's. Joannes Baptista and Magdalena are nowhere. Their son was born 24 May 1748, so a Fiume wedding would have fallen inside the swept window. They married elsewhere, as their son Giuseppe would in his turn. The nil is the finding, because it names the next book. Kobler's correspondent claimed a «Giovanni Batt. De Franceschi venuto dalla Contea di Pisino… intorno al 1740» for his own family — the Gologorica house, this archive's own line — and said that man studied at Fiume and married a lady of the D'Agnese family. The whole question now reduces to Magdalena's maiden name, and it is in the County of Pazin's registers, which run from 1582 and have never been opened here.

found Fiume marriages, film 005497925 images 168–191, both pages

Valentino's own wedding, 28 February 1737 — and the register writes «ex Carnia» in its own hand Search

did «Die 28 Februarij 1737. D.num Valentinum de Franceschi ex Carnia, et Elenam Surcho junxit in matrimonium D.nus Petrus Eustachius Sauss Canonicus…» Found by walking the marriage run backwards from 1746 until the years ran out. Three things at once. The date is nine months less two days before the eldest child's baptism. «Ex Carnia» becomes primary rather than Kobler's word, written two years before the citizenship of 1739. And Valentino's wife, called only Helena or Elena jugalis Defranceschi in every other entry for twenty years, here has a maiden name: Elena Surcho. (The initial is the looped capital this hand uses for both S and Z; given as read.)

found Fiume marriages, film 005497925 image 168

Giuseppe of the Rijeka chain has a baptism at last, and his father is not Valentino Search

did «Die 29 May 1748. Josephum Aloysium filium legitimum D.ni Joannis Baptæ et D.næ Magdalenæ jugalium de Franceschi, natum 24 hujus…» A second Defranceschi household at Fiume, which this archive did not know existed — and its son is almost certainly the Giuseppe × Francesca who baptised four children between 1772 and 1778 and whose line runs on through twenty-one grandchildren at Rijeka. Five things agree: forename, surname, town, an age of twenty-four at his first child's baptism, and the fact that this archive had already found «Joannes Baptista Defranceschi, widower» remarrying on 9 December 1771 — the status of a man whose wife Magdalena had died. The MyHeritage tree's unsourced b. 1748, d. 1778 now has a document behind the birth year. So work-list 142 is answered, and answered no. Giuseppe is not a sixteenth child of Valentino the Carnian. Still inf — no entry says «Josephus filius Joannis Baptistæ».

found Fiume baptisms, film 005497925 image 150

Valentino had sixteen children, not fifteen — and the fifth-year silence that shaped a whole work-list item never existed Search

did «Die 13 8bris 1747. Franciscam Matthæam filiam legitimam D.ni Valentini, et Helenæ jugalium Defranceschi, natam 10 hujus…» A daughter born 10 October 1747, in no index anywhere, and not the Matheus Franciscus of 1739 who has his own ark. It cost a published claim. This site said fifteen children and described 1746–1750 as «a five-year silence in a household that otherwise produces a child every year or two» — the silence being the whole reason to think an unrecorded Giuseppe might be hiding in it. The household was baptising in 1747 and the page had simply not been read. It is also the argument for sweeping rather than querying. The four unindexed children found earlier in September were recovered by interpolating between dated frames, which needs a date to aim at. Nothing pointed at Francisca Matthæa. She came out of reading pages no index could have nominated. The family's own count survives: the sixteenth child is a daughter, so the sons still come out at ten.

found Fiume baptisms, film 005497925 image 146, read frame by frame

Eighty-four people were in the roster with no link to their own page — and the pages existed all along Search

did Nothing was missing. Eighty-four rows just had nowhere to click. The sweep for connections turned up 84 roster rows whose who field was empty — 63 of them from the index, the rest from households, register reads and line notes. The reading at the time was that these people had no page, and so nothing in the archive could link to them: they were unreachable by construction, the cheapest kind of disconnection there is. That reading was wrong in the best possible way. build-dossiers.py writes a page for every roster row, keyed on slugify(name) — it never consults the who field at all. So all eighty-four pages had been built, and published, and were sitting at their URLs. What was missing was the link from the roster to them. Checked before touching anything: all 84 slugs were already present in dossiers.json. Backfilled: 84. Skipped: 0. Roster rows now without a page link: none. Four rows were deliberately left alone — the Lerena family, whose who points at /cheryl-lerena/ rather than a /who/ page, because that research belongs to another session. A reminder that «this person is unreachable» and «this person has no page» are different claims, and only one of them was true.

found The roster audited against its own dossiers

The «forty-five duplicate rows» were the roster working as designed — but the long baptismal names really were split, and now join up Search

did The merge was the wrong fix, and checking the page's own note said so. The audit of 20 September found 38 groups and 45 roster rows that looked like one person entered twice or seven times. The roster's own note answers it: «Identity here is by record, not by resolved individual — two entries may be one person». A row is a record, not a human. Pietro De Franceschi b. 1734 appears seven times because seven records name him, and collapsing them would delete the provenance the page exists to show. Nothing was merged. And the dossiers already resolve what matters. build-dossiers.py groups rows by slug, so one page carries «Found in: Household · Parish burial · Read off the register · Record index», and a second pass cross-links the spellings, so Mattio De Franceschi already reached its eight variants. One real hole underneath it, though. That fold keeps the whole name, so it never joined a long baptismal name to its own short form. Fiume christened a boy «Franciscum Josephum Aloysium Joannem Nepomuc» in 1797 and the index carried him at four different lengths — four pages, one child, not a link between them. Camillo Romano never reached Camillo either. Fixed by a second pass on first given name plus birth year — specific enough to mean something, and exactly the case the first pass misses. It only ever adds. 77 groups, 147 pages, 101 cross-links that were missing. Camillo now reaches Camillo Romano; the four Franciscums reach each other and Franciscus. Three times today a finding dissolved when the archive's own files were checked. This is the third, and the residue was worth more than the claim.

found The merge list, tested against the roster's own contract

Twenty-one people who looked like they were in two places at once, worked through one at a time Search

did Seven were never in two places. Six are probably two different people. Six need a register. And two rows of this archive were carrying a page slug where a place should be. Not two places at all — seven. Anton Rudolf b. 1890 is «Klenovica» and «Ledenice», and Klenovica is in Ledenice parish — the thing this archive read on the page this morning. Antonio b. 1897 is «Middle Village» and «Queens», and Middle Village is Queens. Camillo b. 1868 is «Gologorica» and «Pazin» because the second row is the deliberate namesake entry for his name in Croatian. Giuseppe b. 1784 and Katharina Johanna b. 1823 are paired against «Croatia, parish not named» and «Austria» — placeholders, not places. Giovanni Eliseo b. 1825 is Pula and Fažana, eight kilometres apart, and the index geocodes Fažana to Fasana in Piedmont, which is how it became a country apart. A real defect underneath, now fixed. Four life rows had a page section slug in the place field — early-fiume, carnia-fiume, pazin-fiume — so their dossiers read «Place: early-fiume». They are Valentino Defranceschi, Domenico de Franceschi, Giovanni Battista Defranceschi and Zuane De Franceschi, and they do not all resolve the same way: the first three belong at Rijeka, but Zuane is of Mione in Carnia and only appears in the Fiume page's Carnian section. Set accordingly, with their place slugs. Probably two different people — six. Antonio b. 1753 is at Rijeka, Split and Vodnjan; Stefano b. 1831 is at Vodnjan three times and at Omiš once, on the chart, which is a different line entirely. And four pit the Gologorica pedigree against a burial somewhere else — Antonius b. 1848 (Pula), Franciscus b. 1819 and Josephus b. 1862 (both Kaštelir), Joannes b. 1871 (Ližnjan). Four of the same shape is worth noticing, but a common forename and a shared year in a small surname pool is exactly what coincidence looks like, and this archive is not merging a pedigree into a burial on that. Still open — six. Anna Maria b. 1844 (Poreč / Fiume), Franco b. 1821 (Rijeka / Vižinada), Mattio b. 1674 (Svetvinčenat / Rovinj), Piero Anto b. 1736 (Rovinj / Pula), Pietro b. 1734 (Svetvinčenat / Bale / Vodnjan) and Pietro b. 1884 (Rijeka / Giubiasco in Ticino). Each is one register entry away and none of them is guessed at here.

found The cross-place candidates from the roster audit

Every issue this archive had queued for a human to open, read in one sitting instead Yield

did A street, a court officer, a schoolmaster on the other side of the argument, and a date this archive may have wrong. · «Via Carlo Defranceschi», Pola — in the classified columns of Il Giornaletto di Pola in 110 issues between 3 January 1914 and 20 May 1919. Rooms to let, a beer depot at number 3. Pola named a street after him and by 1914 it was just an address. The landmarks page had been asking «any others?» since it was written. · Johann Defranceski of Šturje — seventeen issues of the Laibacher Zeitung, 1865–1875, always as Curator ad actum for defendants of unknown whereabouts. This archive had inferred from the three-issues-in-nine-days rhythm that somebody of the name was under repeated legal process. The rhythm was right and the reading was backwards: that is how an edict is published, and he is the court's officer inside it. Šturje is in the Vipava valley — a region this archive had never placed the name in. · Naša Sloga, 28 May 1914 — at two Croatian electoral meetings in Istria, one of them in the yard by the Croatian school with over five hundred people present, the speakers include «domaći učitelj Defranceski», the local schoolmaster. Naša Sloga is the paper that existed to oppose Carlo De Franceschi. Sixty-six years after Carlo was denounced in the Lloyd as an Italian irredentist, a man of his name is speaking for the Croatian side in the Croatian paper. Like the Eduard-and-Valente pair of 1859, they did not need to be related for that to be true about the name. · L'Istria, 28 January 1882 — a journalist visits Carlo, finds him ill («il male che lo tormenta»), and records that he went to school at Gorizia and Graz and finished his studies in 1832. · L'Eco di Pola, 3 September 1887 — a de Franceschi «integerrimo deputato al Parlamento» stands godfather to a workers' society banner at Umago, beside the wife of the Podestà. · La Fiamma, 1912 — a scholarly bibliography citing Camillo De Franceschi's «Dante a Pola» (Giornale dantesco, Florence 1906) and his work on pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre who stopped at Pola. · And two contemporary sources giving Carlo's birth year as 1810, against the register's 1809 — filed as an open question. The queue is cleared. What had been written up as an errand for a human with a browser took one sitting, because every ANNO issue carries its own full text.

found The rest of the ANNO queue — thirteen issues, read from Volltext

The first First World War records this archive has ever read Yield

did This archive has covered the Second World War in detail and had never once opened a First World War casualty list. Two surnames were sitting in them. The lists are a genealogist's document by accident: to tell families apart they print rank, regiment, company, province, district, commune and year of birth, and then what happened to the man. «Verlustliste», 6 May 1916 — Fernasar Josef, Inft., k. k. LIR. Nr. 5, 10. Komp., Istrien, Pisino, Gračišće, 1884; kriegsgef., Merw, Gebiet Transkaspien, Rußland. A man of Maria née Fernasar's own village, born 1884, a prisoner of war at Merv in Transcaspia — now Mary, in Turkmenistan. The surname of our fourth generation's mother, placed at last, in a printed record. «Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte», 14 December 1914 — Fernasar Josef, Jäg., FJB. Nr. 20, Pisino [I]strien, 1883, Hufschlag a. d. r. Ferse, Vereinshilfsspital Nr. 2 in Kassa. Same name, same district, a year out and a different unit. Same man or a cousin; not settled. «Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte», 21 December 1914 — Defranceski Josef, Jäg., TJR. Nr. 1, 2. Komp., Branzoll, 1885, Schuß i. d. r. Hand, Festungsspital Nr. 8 in Krakau. A Tyrolean rifleman shot through the right hand, in the fortress hospital at Kraków. And Branzoll is Bronzolo, in South Tyrol — so the family's own -ski spelling, in the Austrian press, is at least partly Tyrolean and not Istrian, which corrects an assumption made here yesterday. It also joins up with the Defranzeschi cluster in Der Tiroler and the Innsbruck papers, and gives the Trentino blind spot its first named person. The method note that matters more than any of it: these were read from ANNO's own Volltext view — annoshow?text=||x — which returns the whole issue's OCR as plain text. Every ANNO issue has one. This project had spent a year treating the page images as the only way in.

found Austro-Hungarian casualty lists — «Verlustliste» and «Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte»

The best unread document this archive had: nine occurrences of the surname in one four-page issue Yield

did The prediction was wrong and the issue is better than the prediction. This archive expected shipping and quarantine notices: the Lloyd's journal carried them, and 1848 is the year Ferencz Defranceschi was running the quarantine station at Martinšćica. Nine mentions in four pages looked like a port list. Every one of the nine is Carlo. The issue carries a long, furious, signed-off attack on «dem Istrianer Deputirten Herrn Carl De Franceschi» — announced in the contents page, running across pages three and four. What it gives, beyond a great deal of 1848 invective: · A publication of Carlo's this archive did not know about — a Flugbogen, a broadsheet, answering the Lloyd's Trieste correspondents on whether Istria was a land of Slavic character, «in sehr vielen Exemplaren in Istrien verbreitet». · His post in 1848: Rathsprotokollist des Landrechts zu Rovigno — council protocolist of the district court at Rovigno. This site had him as an Auscultans at Pazin in 1842 and expelled in 1854, and nothing between. · His own words in Italian, quoted by an enemy: «voi non Istriano, chi diede mandato d'immischiarvi [nelle] cose nostre…» · The bootblack. He called his opponent's Stiefelputzer as a witness against him, and the correspondent will not let it go. · And the detail that he and Facchinetti and Madonizza, asked who had authorised their protest against joining the German Confederation, answered that they had protested as private persons and that the word Deputati had got into the title by oversight. And one conflict this archive cannot resolve. The Lloyd says three times that he sat for Rovigno. This site says Pisino. A hostile paper is not a better source than a historian, but it is a contemporary one, printed while he was sitting. Both are now on his page and neither is preferred. Read from the issue's own Volltext view at ANNO — which is the lesson worth keeping: every ANNO issue has one, and this archive had been treating the page images as the only way in.

found «Journal des Österreichischen Lloyd», Triest, 7 September 1848 — read in full

Seven variants of the surname against the whole Austrian press, and the one nobody had ever tried Yield

did «Defranceski» — the spelling this family actually uses — had never been searched in the Austrian press. It returns 28 issues. «De Franceski» gives 4 more, «Defranzeschi» 19, «Di Franceschi» 13, «Defrancheschi» 1. Sixty-five issues in variants, on top of the 950 and 722 for the two main forms. And the dates give the game away. Look at when «Defranceski» appears in the official papers: · Wiener Zeitung — 21, 24 and 29 December 1872. Three issues in nine days. · Vereinigte Laibacher Zeitung — 3, 6 and 11 March 1875. Three issues in eight days. And again 15, 24 and 28 June 1869. And again across June and July 1872. That is not news coverage. That is an edict. Austrian official gazettes published legal notices — summonses, estates, bankruptcies, tenders — three times at set intervals, and the Wiener Zeitung and the Laibacher Zeitung were the gazettes of record for the empire and for Carniola. Seventeen issues of the Laibach paper between 1865 and 1875 carry the name, in exactly that rhythm. So somewhere in Carniola in those ten years, a Defranceski was the subject of repeated official legal process. Whether that is one man or several, and whether a court, an estate or a business, the issues themselves would say in a line. Two more that open ground this archive has never been on: · Nachrichten über Verwundete und Verletzte, 21 and 30 December 1914 — the Austro-Hungarian casualty lists. A Defranceski, twice, in the war's first winter. This archive has covered the Second World War in detail and has never once looked at a First World War casualty list. · Lagerzeitung für Wagna, 4 February 1917 — the newspaper of the Wagna camp itself. The archive already holds the camp's intake lists from the Rovigno monograph, with two Defranceschi of Dignano in them; this is the camp's own paper, which is a different record, and it names a Defranceski. And the Tyrolean cluster sorts itself out. «Defranzeschi» is almost entirely Der Tiroler, the Innsbrucker Nachrichten and the Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger, 1899–1927, published at Bozen and Innsbruck — which is the Trentino group this site files as a blind spot. It now has a spelling and a set of dates. None of it has been read: ANNO's page viewer is behind a Cloudflare check this archive does not answer.

found ANNO — every spelling, including the family's own

Every issue carrying any spelling of the name, read in full text Yield

did One hundred and sixty-four issues, read end to end. Four people, and a large negative. · Alessandro Defranceschi — enrolled in the levy at Pola, 18 June 1914, one of fifty-two taken from three hundred and eighteen. Born about 1893. Not previously in this archive. · Luigi Defranceschi — two crowns to the Red Cross, 3 September 1914, in a list a police inspector collected door to door. · Angelina Defranceschi — married at Pola, 21 November 1914, in a notice the couple paid to place. The groom's surname will not come off the OCR. · Angelo Defranceschi, 63, «da Fasana» — at no. 6 via del Prato, 25 November 1914. Supplies the village of origin missing from the archive's record of an Angelo born 1851. And the negative, which is the size of the thing: one hundred and fifty-eight of the one hundred and sixty-four issues are the street name and nothing else — via Carlo Defranceschi, in rental advertisements. Filtering the street out is most of the work; the OCR renders via as vla, wvia, ia and tia, and breaks the street name across columns. Two further mentions give no forename: a subscription line of 2 September 1914, and «il debito Defranceschi» of two thousand crowns in a fraudulent-bankruptcy trial reported 13 January 1915. The name stopping in March 1915 was tested before it was written about and is an artefact: ANNO's run is complete for 1914, patchy to March 1915, and then absent. The page.

found ANNO — *Il Giornaletto di Pola*, the whole run

Every archived URL on the family's own Google Site, before it is switched off Yield

did Checked, found nearly empty, and filled. A CDX query for every URL under that host returned two successful captures: the site root of 1 January 2022 and the home page of 11 July 2025. Family Trees, The People, The Places, The Map, The Name, The Coat of Arms, Publications, Resources and About were archived nowhere on the public net — Google Sites builds its navigation in script, so the crawler never followed it below the front page. The same fact made the page list uncrawlable, so it was read out of the page source instead: twelve live addresses, not the nine of this archive's own reckoning table, which had folded the two sub-pages under The Story into their parent. All twelve were submitted to Save Page Now on 14 September 2026 and all twelve captured, every job reporting success, verified by fetching the snapshots back — The People returns at 413 KB, byte for byte the live page. Two drew 429 on the first pass and were taken on a later one. Two things learned in the doing. Save Page Now no longer accepts anonymous requests: a POST without a session returns 401 «You need to be logged in to use Save Page Now». And a Wayback capture of a Google Sites page keeps the frame around an embedded My Map, not the map — which is why the KML export of 8 September 2026 is the only thing standing between those pins and the account being closed.

found The Wayback Machine — everything under sites.google.com/defranceski.com

The waypoint tree of Croatia Church Books 2040054, walked to the level of the individual volume Yield

did Three hundred and nine register volumes now have their own address, and every one of them was tested. The archive had listed 263 Istrian volumes and 46 Kvarner ones as plain text since the day it walked the waypoints; there was no way to open a single one of them. The tree is collection → 9RKB-7M9:391644801 (Roman Catholic) → parish → volume, and one call returns all 1,000 Croatian parishes. A volume's waypoint yields the arks of its images, and familysearch.org/ark:/61903/?cc=2040054&wc= opens the viewer at page one of that book. 263 of 263 Istrian volumes and 46 of 46 Kvarner volumes returned a link; nothing failed. 307 calls at 2.2-second spacing drew no rate limiting at all, against the 25–40 per burst this archive had recorded. The Kvarner links this page already carried were dead. They used FamilySearch's «owc» browse form, which now answers «Something Went Wrong» for every waypoint tried. Nine broken links, replaced by 46 working ones. And joining the inventory to the film produced a finding. Of the 1,151 books the Pazin inventory catalogues: 142 are on film; 495 are in parishes with no film at all; 449 are twentieth-century civil registration the church film never covered; and 26 are old parish books in parishes that were filmed, which the filming skipped — eighteen of them still on a shelf in the village. Barban's births from 1629 and Ližnjan's marriages from 1680 are on that list.

found FamilySearch image waypoints — every Istrian and Kvarner volume, addressed

The Croatian collection walked for sixty Dalmatian parishes, and the Udine collection for twenty-six Carnian comuni Yield

did Nine hundred and eighty-five more volumes now open at page one, and nothing failed. Dalmatia — 343 volumes across 60 parishes, the Omiš, Split, Trogir–Seget, Imotski, Zadar and Dubrovnik groups with the ring each married into. Earliest volume 1569. Same collection as Istria (2040054), same method. Carnia is a different country and took a different route. It is not in the Croatian collection, and the collections API silently ignores its own text filter — a search for «Udine» returns Alabama — so all 3,483 FamilySearch collections had to be paged to find it. There is exactly one: «Italy, Udine, Civil Registration (State Archive), 1806-1815, 1871-1911», collection 1939238, 1.26 million images. This archive had been describing it as 1806–1815 only; the 1871–1911 half has never been looked at. 642 volumes across 26 Carnian comuni are now linked. Sutrio has 64, Prato 62, Paluzza 56. And Ovaro is not in it. The province lists 627 comuni and Ovaro is not one of them — nor Mione, Muina, Ovasta, Luint, Liariis, Chialina, Agrons or Cludinico. But Colza is, a frazione of Ovaro, holding a complete Napoleonic set for 1806–1812: births, deaths, marriages, banns and indexes, 25 volumes. Whether Mione and Muina are written inside them is a question the images can answer and the index cannot — the record API's place filter is ignored too. The volumes are linked; it is a few minutes' reading and it has not been done. Comeglians, the Gorto canton seat, carries the marriage allegati for 1807–1815 — the documents behind this archive's Giovanni Battista de' Franceschi «already dead by 1789». A warning with it. The Udine collection indexes 2,201 people called Franceschi. Of the first eleven hundred, the Carnian communes account for five. The rest are lowland Friulian families — Lauzzana and Colloredo (209), Udine (129), Muzzana del Turgnano (114), Bertiolo (101). Most Franceschi in the Udine registers are not this family and are not from the mountains.

found FamilySearch image waypoints — Dalmatia and Carnia, every volume addressed

All 38 record sets the surname touches, paged out in full under three spellings Yield

did Findmypast was worked hard on 9 September and it was not finished. That day took Travel & Migration, the US censuses and the naturalisation files. The death, probate, obituary and parish sets had never been opened. Two probate files at Horsham, Victoria, both with their Public Record Office references. · Zdravko «Zdrovko» De Franceski — died 22 December 1979, probate granted 19 June 1980, file 874/188, VPRS 28/P10 unit 148. Occupation labourer, residence Horsham. The headstone already said the date; this adds his trade and a file that can be ordered. · Ruža «Rosa» Defranceski — died 30 January 1996, probate granted 6 May 1996, file 1113076, VPRS 28/P26 unit 155. Occupation home duties, residence Horsham, buried Horsham Cemetery. The stone gave her only as «beloved husband of Rosa». She outlived him by sixteen years. Twenty obituary notices and twenty-two Social Security death records give death dates for people this archive had only birth years for — Duilio 1921–2003 (son of Luigi De Franceschi and Libera Chimčić), Basilio 1909–1994, Tobias 1911–1972, and Connecticut deaths at Torrington and Waterbury. Two clusters that were invisible from the passenger lists. The 1910 census puts a household of six in Tennessee — Antonio 1875, Bertha 1882, Pietro 1904, Alberts 1905, Aurora 1907, Alba 1908. The 1930 census puts six more in Michigan. British Armed Forces banns and marriages, 1946: one at Trieste, one at Venice — British service marriages in occupied Italy, a seam this archive has never touched. New York Roman Catholic parish marriages name the parishes: Our Lady of Pompei, Transfiguration, St Anthony of Padua, St Joseph Sixth Avenue, Ascension — which places the New York family street by street. And a negative worth the time it saves: «defranceschi» and «de franceschi» are the same corpus. Findmypast folds the space, returning 548 and 612 for the same records. The fused «Defranceski» is the one that behaves differently — 36 results, and they are almost all this family.

found Findmypast — the record sets nobody had opened, swept before the trial ends

Why one census returns forty entries the other censuses do not Found

did There is a Puerto Rican De Franceschi population, and it is large. Forty of the forty-two Puerto Rico hits in the whole Findmypast corpus sit in the 1920 census: Isabela (11), San Lorenzo (9), Ponce (7), San Juan (3), Yauco (3), and singles at Peñuelas, San Sebastián, Lajas, Guayama, Luquillo and Ceiba. The forenames are Spanish throughout — Carmen, Aurora, Mercedes, Dominga, Concepción, Ramona, Filomena, Josefa. This is not the Istrian family and should never be folded into it. It is recorded here for the same reason the archive records the Tyrolean and the Corsican groups: so that a future search which turns up forty De Franceschi in Puerto Rico knows immediately that they have been seen, weighed and set aside. One of them does reach this archive's own list: Maria, born 1888, died 1983 at San Juan — already a pin on the Atlas from the geocoding pass, and now dated.

found Findmypast — «de Franceschi» in the 1920 United States census

Every layer, pin, note, link, line and shaded area, before the map is switched off Yield

did A My Map dies with the account and no crawler saves one. The earlier JSON export kept the pins; the KML keeps everything. Imported: 10 layers, 1,289 pins, 56 lines, 10 polygons, 111 notes and 188 links. The 56 lines are named movements David drew by hand — «Ivan moves to Senj», «Tomasso travels to Omis», «Bakar to Gologorica», «Frank and Ruza Move to Horsham». They are now the arrows on the Atlas, drawn dashed and labelled as his, because motion on a map is persuasive in a way that evidence is not. The 10 polygons are the hot-spots he shaded — Udine, Venezia, Austrian, three in France, and three «De Franceschi Hot Spot» areas in Istria and the Veneto. They are a toggleable overlay. And 129 of the map's own FamilySearch links are already dead, because they use the «owc» browse form that now answers «Something Went Wrong». The map was decaying before it was switched off.

found David's Google My Map — imported whole from the KML

The documents behind the death, marriage, parish and passport index rows Yield

did Two war brides, married in the year the Allies held both cities. · Daphne De Franceschi married Leslie Wain at Trieste, 1946 — GRO Army Marriages, page 3654, line 102. · Placida V De Franceschi married Reginald Onions at Venice, 1946 — page 2865, line 103. They are consecutive lines in the same register. Two women of this name marrying British servicemen in occupied Italy, and this archive had no idea either existed. Two United States passport applications, which are the documents that prove a man went back: · Giovanni De Franceschi, born 1876 in Italy — applied in Connecticut in 1922, certificate 109256, NARA M1490 roll 1807. Connecticut is Torrington, where this archive already stands twelve people. · Louis De Franceschi, born 1873 in Italy — applied 1919, certificate 148535, roll 1008. And a Neapolitan family of the name. Ignazio Luigi Nicola De Franceschi, baptised 25 April 1842 at San Marco di Palazzo, Napoli, son of Carmine de Franceschi and Angiola Conti. Logged, not absorbed. Blocked, and worth writing down: the New York Roman Catholic parish registers — baptisms and marriages at Our Lady of Pompei, Transfiguration, St Anthony of Padua, Ascension and St Joseph Sixth Avenue — sit behind a higher subscription tier than the trial carries. Seven records, named and located, that could not be opened.

found Findmypast — the transcripts, read before the trial lapsed

Whether 1,153 «leads» are really 1,153 leads Yield

did Nearly half of them are another family. Sorting the 1,153 lead rows by whether the spelling is this surname at all: · 498 — Francetich, Franchini, Franceschini, Franceskini. The archive's rule has always excluded these. Nobody had counted how much of the lead pile they were. · 429 — indexed under the father's surname only. Real, and the way into the early parish books, but not searchable by name. · 104 — this surname, plainly. · 122 — unclear, and each needs an eye. One hundred and forty-five rows carry both the parents and the parish, which is everything needed to open a book. That is the worklist, and it is now published parish by parish with the number of volumes this archive can already open for each. Forty-five of the hundred and forty-five are at Vodnjan, which has no film at all. Those forty-five are a letter to Pazin, not an afternoon at a screen — which is exactly the distinction the number 1,153 was hiding.

found The Register's own lead pile, classified

The surname across the whole Italian state-archive portal, and then the Carnian communes Partial

did It is open again, and Carnia is in it. This archive's note said Antenati 403s both browsers; on 14 September the portal answered normally. The search is at /search-nominative/ and the parameter is cognome, not q — which is why earlier attempts looked like a block and were not one. 418 results for «de franceschi», spread across five spellings: De Franceschi (393), De' Franceschi (7), Dè Franceschi (6), De Franceschi Roncadin (2), Dé Franceschi (2). The heaviest places are Roma (63), Brescia (59), Dosolo (45), San Ferdinando (26), Genova (21) — and thirty-nine more localities behind them. The very first result is Carnian: Maria De Franceschi, born Paluzza, 1865, married Gio Batta Della Pietra, daughter of Costantino De Franceschi and Giovanna Lazzara — a marriage record with both parents named. Paluzza is eighteen kilometres from Mione. Then the bot protection closed. An XHR fetch to the same endpoint returned 403 and the navigations that followed returned «403 Forbidden». No attempt was made to get round it. The portal is worth a patient second visit: the Carnian communes David named — Tolmezzo, Enemonzo, Socchieve, Ampezzo — were never reached.

found Portale Antenati — the Carnia side

Whether it holds Croatian parish registers at all Nothing

did Matricula does not hold Croatia. Its fonds are Germany 9,123 · Austria 2,857 · Slovenia 723 · Switzerland 292 · Luxembourg 277 · Italy 106 · Poland 5 · Serbia 5 · Bosnia 2. There is no Croatian section, so Senj and Karlobag are not there and cannot be. Nor is Carnia. Italy on Matricula is Bozen-Brixen only — South Tyrol. Friuli, Udine and the Val Degano are absent. And it cannot be searched by name at all. The search page is headed «Search for Places» and its fields are place, diocese and date_filter. There is no surname index. Matricula is a shelf you browse, not an index you query — which is worth knowing before anyone spends an evening trying. One thing it does have. The Koper diocese carries 198 parishes including the whole Vipava valley — Ajdovščina, Vipava, Podnanos, Col, Budanje, Vrhpolje and Šturje itself. Šturje is the parish of the Johann Defranceski this archive found acting as court-appointed curator ad actum at Laibach between 1865 and 1875, and whose village it had never placed in a register. That is a door, and it is open.

found Matricula Online — the Senj and Karlobag side

Books & Libraries, and the surname written with a space Found

did The first Trove pass ran newspapers only, and only the fused spellings. It reported «Defranceski» 2 and «Defranceschi» 13. This archive's own variant rule — that each spelling returns a different, non-overlapping set — was never applied to Trove. «De Franceschi» with a space returns 82 newspaper articles. Six times the fused count. The samples are twentieth-century Canberra: «Carol De Franceschi, 19, of Flynn» in the Canberra Times of 7 July 1981, and a fatal accident report of 22 June 1977 naming a sister at Willyamba Place, Flynn. An ACT family of the name, which this archive had not seen. Books & Libraries — a zone never opened — returns 19. It does not find new relatives; it hardens two namesakes the archive already carries on assertion: · Carlo Prospero Defranceschi is confirmed as Salieri's librettist from two independent catalogue authorities. «Cäsar auf Pharmacusa» (Theater an der Wien, 3 editions 1801–1808) — «Libretto by Carlo Defranceschi — New Grove»; and «Angiolina, oder Die Heyrath durchs Getöse» (4 editions 1803–1807) — «la poesia è del Sig. Carlo Defranceschi», per the U.S. RISM Libretto Project and Stieger, Opernlexikon. · Jean Defranceschi, «La Corse française: 30 novembre 1789 – 15 juin 1794» (1980) — the Corsican historian the archive lists, now with a book and a date. A note on the tool. Trove's interface now loads each zone only on a click and throttles under repeated queries; its API needs a key this project does not hold. The remaining zones — Diaries, Images, Magazines, People & Organisations — were not completed and are left open.

found Trove — the zones and the spelling the first pass missed

Whether the Carnian civil registers are online anywhere at all Yield

did Mione has fifty-nine registers of its own, digitised, free, and open — and this archive has been saying for months that they were not online. The name search was the wrong door. Antenati says so itself: «Non tutti i nomi sono ricercabili perché solo una parte dei registri disponibili è stata completamente indicizzata» — only part of the holding is name-indexed, and Tolmezzo returns nothing by surname. The other form, /search-registry/, browses the registers themselves. Ovaro: 271 registers, all held by the Archivio di Stato di Udine, in two fonds — Stato civile napoleonico (173) and Stato civile italiano, Comuni afferenti al Tribunale di Tolmezzo (98). The series break down by village: · Mione (oggi frazione di Ovaro) — 59 registers · Ovaro itself — 144 · Lenzone — 9 · Chialina — 8 · Cludinico — 8 · and nine more series behind them By type: Morti 61, Matrimoni 49, Nati 39, Matrimoni pubblicazioni ed opposizioni 31, Matrimoni allegati 28, and eighteen more. By year they run from 1806 through 1871 and beyond — so both the Napoleonic registration and the Italian civil registration after unification. Each result carries its own shelfmark and a «Vedi il registro» link — for example Registro 1806, Nati, segnatura 12995, Agrons con Cella; 1806, Matrimoni allegati, segnatura 185, Lenzone. Tolmezzo has 452 registers on the same portal, and the other Carnian communes are there too. This is the same material FamilySearch holds and keeps behind «Image Restricted». The Italian state archive has published it itself, and published it open.

found Portale Antenati — the registers, not the name index

The twenty-eight allegati files, starting with the two for Mione and the one for Muina Partial

did The Mione allegati had already been read, and the page that says so is this archive's own. Mione 1806 (segnatura 185, six images) is a single marriage file: Ignazio di Prato of Chialina × Giacoma de' Franceschi of Mione, September 1806. It holds the groom's Latin baptism of 13 December 1777 — Ignatius, son of Iacobus son of the late Leonardus de Prato — the bride's parish certificate of 25 May 1789, and the consent of the groom's mother Catterina, widow of the late Gio: Giacomo di Prato, who could not attend the signing. Every one of those facts is already on the Carnia page. Mione 1808 (segnatura 12984) is catalogued as Matrimoni, allegati and is not a marriage file at all. It is one image: a covering letter of 17 February 1809 from the Municipalità of Mione to the Civil Tribunal of First Instance at Udine, transmitting the previous year's registers. No names of this family, and no marriage. Muina 1806 (segnatura 185, ten images) is the one still worth opening. Only its cover sheet was reached: Antenati's session then returned «400 Bad Request — size of a request header field exceeds server limit», which is the cookie growing across a long sitting rather than a block. It clears with a fresh session. And a correction made before it was published. On the first pass this reader transcribed the Mione 1806 certificate as «Giovanna, daughter of Giacomo q. Gio: Batta, born 1785». All three were wrong. Zoomed properly it reads Giacoma, daughter of Osvaldo q. Gio: Batta, born 1789. It was caught by checking the archive before writing, which turned up the same certificate already transcribed correctly — and had it not been checked, this archive would have gained a daughter, a father and a birth year that do not exist.

found Antenati — the Ovaro marriage allegati, opened one by one

The ten-image file for Muina, the second village Carlo De Franceschi named Nothing

did No De Franceschi in it. The file holds two marriages, and both belong to other Muina families: · Giovanni Battista Corva × Cattarina Fabris, November 1806. The groom's Latin baptism of 16 October 1782 — Joannes Bapta, son of Paolo son of the late Giacomo, formerly of Giovanni Corva of Muina, and Maria Maddalena his wife. The bride's certificate gives Cattarina, daughter of Giovanni q. Pietro Fabris of Muina, born 12 May 1780, and her father's own signed consent is in the file. · Giovanni Battista Micoli × the daughter of Tomaso, June 1807, with the groom's certificate: son of Giovanni q. Pietro Micoli of Muina and Marta his wife, born December 1777. Corva, Fabris and Micoli are all names this archive already knows from Muina — Osvaldo Corva of Agrons and Teresa Corva of Muina are in the 1807 death index, and Micoli is on Ferigo's list of the families that walked the road of the Furlans. They are the neighbours, not the family. Eight of the ten images were read; two are blank versos. This is the negative the errand asked for: the second village Carlo named has a surviving marriage file from the right decade and the surname is not in it.

found Antenati — the Muina marriage allegati, 1806–07, read in a fresh session

I said Dubrovnik was too thin to be a group. It is a household. Correction

did This archive said Asked whether the Rijeka, Dubrovnik and Bakar groups could each have a page, this archive answered that Dubrovnik could not: «it's four people, and the 1829 row has four names in a parent list, which is exactly the tabular-register trap that burned us on Francisca. Giving it a page would dress four records as a group.» What is true The caution was right and the conclusion was wrong. The trap was real. The answer was to apply the rule, not to walk away from the records. Applied, the four resolve into one household across forty-two years. The 1829 row is a marriage, not a birth: four parent names is the signature of the Austrian tabular register, whose columns run SPONSI, SPONSAE, GENITORES SPONSI, GENITORES SPONSAE. Read that way it says Matteo Persich, born 1829, son of Antonio Persich and Teresa Martecchini, marrying a daughter of Pietro Defranceschi — and the other three records are that couple's children, baptised at Dubrovnik in 1853, 1863 and 1871. The children confirm the reading. The first son is Antonio, his father's father. The daughter of 23 December 1863 is Cattarina Teresa Vittoria Maria, his father's mother. That is the ordinary Adriatic naming order, and it is independent of the row that was misread. The lesson is not about Dubrovnik. A rule this archive learned in order to avoid a false positive was used instead to avoid looking — which costs more than the error it was guarding against. And two smaller things fell out of it: the surname is Martecchini, not Martechini — forebears finds exactly one person of the archive's spelling in the world — and it is Ragusan, not Venetian, which is where this site had filed it on the strength of how it looks. How it happened

found A claim taken back

The Atlas was drawing a fifth of what the archive knows, and this site holds two different Gračišćes Correction

did This archive said The Atlas carried 52 hand-written pins and had done since it was built. The dek said «every place this archive can put a document in», which was not true: the roster names 266 place strings attaching 1,440 people to the ground. What is true Rebuilt from the roster, the map holds 154 places and 955 people. Three things were wrong rather than merely missing. · One town was being drawn several times under different names. Almissa and Omiš are the same place; so are Fiume, Vitipolis and Tarsatica, which is why the first rebuild put Rijeka on the map three times. Historic and Italian forms are now folded onto the town they name. · This archive holds two different coordinates for Gračišće, seven kilometres apart — one in places.json, one in atlas.json. Neither was flagged because nothing had ever compared them. The heavier pin keeps the ground and the builder now refuses to draw one name twice. · Seventy-three entries name something that is not a town. Thirteen say «Österreich», five «Austria», four «Italy»; and four each say «Santa Maria Assunta», «Immacolata Concezione» and «Assunzione di Maria Santissima» — church dedications written into a place field. Those are left off the map and are a data error to be cleaned, not a place to be pinned. How it happened Found by building the thing properly rather than by checking it. Nothing compares a gazetteer against itself until something has to draw both.

found A claim taken back

«642 volumes open at page one» — the Carnian ones do not open at all Correction

did This archive said Published this morning: «985 more volumes now open at page one», counting 343 Dalmatian and 642 Carnian. The Carnian half was described exactly like the Croatian half. What is true The images of the entire Udine collection are restricted. The viewer answers «Image Restricted — access is typically determined by local laws or the custodian». Tested at Colza, Comeglians and Paluzza; all three are shut. The Croatian volumes — Istria, the Kvarner and Dalmatia — open normally, which is how the mistake survived a spot-check: the one volume tested end to end that morning was Tinjan, and Tinjan is Croatian. So the honest count is 652 volumes that open and 642 that are addressable but gated. The link is still worth having — it names the exact volume and its register number, which is what a reading-room request needs — but it is a catalogue entry, not a document. How it happened Found within hours, by going to do the thing the page promised: reading Colza to settle whether Ovaro's registers are filed under it. The page said the volume was open; the volume was shut. A link was tested for the wrong country and the claim was written for both.

found A claim taken back

«Settling Ovaro means a reading room» — it means a browser, and always did Correction

did This archive said Published hours earlier, on finding FamilySearch's Udine images restricted: «Settling Ovaro now means a Family History Center, an affiliate library, or the Archivio di Stato di Udine itself — not an afternoon at a screen.» What is true The Archivio di Stato di Udine has published them itself, on Antenati, free and open. Ovaro has 271 registers there and fifty-nine of them are Mione's, catalogued under its own name. The first correction was right about FamilySearch and wrong about the world. One vendor's gate was mistaken for the state of the record. The reason it was missed is worth keeping: Antenati was searched by name, which returns nothing for Tolmezzo, because only part of the holding is name-indexed. The portal says so on the results page. The registers were one form away the whole time. How it happened Found by retrying a source this archive had twice written off — once as «403s both browsers», once as «needs a reading room» — and by reading the failure message instead of accepting it.

found A claim taken back

«Antenati has the Mione registers all along» — this archive already knew, on its own Carnia page Correction

did This archive said Published this afternoon: that Mione's fifty-nine registers are open on Antenati and that «this archive has been saying for months that they were not online». What is true The Carnia page already said it, in as many words: «The Archivio di Stato di Udine has digitised the Napoleonic civil registers of the Comune di Mione — fifty-nine volumes… and publishes them openly on the Antenati portal.» It had already read the 1809 and 1810 birth books and published four households out of them. What was actually new this afternoon was narrower and should have been stated as such: the 1806 volume had not been read, and it holds a fifth household and a generation above it. The error was mine and it was the ordinary one — I searched the web before I searched the archive. A site of twelve hundred pages will tell you what it already knows if you ask it first. How it happened Caught within the hour, by grepping this archive's own data before writing up the register act.

found A claim taken back

Every spelling of the surname this archive carries — DEFRANCESKI, DEFRANCESCHI, DE FRANCESCHI, FRANCESCHI — across births to 1926, marriages to 1951 and deaths to 1996 Nothing

did Nothing, under any spelling, in 167 years of the Queensland register. DEFRANCESKI returns zero. DEFRANCESCHI returns zero. FRANCESCHI returns two, and neither is ours — Joseph Franceschi, who married Menichina Amedei in 1877, and Jacques Ange Franceschi, a Corsican-French name, who died in 1989 to Albert Franceschi and Marcelle. (The two-word «DE FRANCESCHI» appears to return a hundred rows, but the space defeats the index's exact-match flag and it falls back to fuzzy matching — the results are «de Ruyter de Wildt» and «de Jong de Silva». It is not a holding.) And the null is the expected one, which is why it is worth writing down rather than worrying about. This family's only two Queensland deaths are Mario De Franceschi in 2013 and Antony De Franceski in 1999. The index closes deaths at 1996. Both fall outside it by design, not by absence — so this search could not have found them, and finding nothing else means there was no earlier Queensland branch. The arrival in Brisbane is as recent as this archive says. Nobody of this name registered a birth, a marriage or a death in Queensland before 1996.

found Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages — historical index

The lesson from the Hungarian material applied to the Austrian press: the surname as two words, as one, and in the family's own spelling Search

did This archive has been searching ANNO with one hand. ANNO has a clean JSON endpoint behind its search page — /anno-suche/rest/search/simple?query=…&from=N — which returns, per issue, the paper, the date, the place of publication, the language and the number of hits inside that issue. Run three ways, the surname gives: · «De Franceschi», two words — 950 issues. · «Defranceschi», one word — 722 issues. This is the only form this archive had ever used. · «Defranceski», the family's own spelling — 28 issues, never searched here at all. «De Franceski» gives 4 more. The forms overlap but do not contain one another. Roughly a quarter of the Austrian press coverage of this surname was invisible to every ANNO search this project has run. Who is in it. Proximity search — matching words standing within three of each other rather than anywhere in the same issue — sorts it out: Carlo De Franceschi, 42 issues; Camillo, 5; and Enrico, 392 — an opera singer working in Vienna and Salzburg in 1930 and 1931, who is not ours, is now named on the namesakes page, and who accounts for two fifths of everything ANNO holds under this name. Anyone who searches it will hit him first. And a reading queue, which is the useful part. Of the 950, 185 issues are Istrian or Adriatic — Il giovine Pensiero of Pula, L'Istria, Il Popolo Istriano, Il Giornaletto di Pola, L'Eco di Pola, La Fiamma, Naša Sloga, the Pester Lloyd, and the Journal des Österreichischen Lloyd. Those are the papers that would print this family, and they are now listed by date and by how many times the name appears inside each issue. The single best of them is the oldest. Journal des Österreichischen Lloyd, 7 September 1848 — nine occurrences in one four-page issue, published at Trieste and Vienna. The Austrian Lloyd's journal carried shipping movements, quarantine and port notices; 1848 is the year Ferencz Defranceschi was running the quarantine station at Martinšćica. That issue has not been read, because ANNO's page viewer at data.onb.ac.at sits behind a Cloudflare check which this archive does not answer.

found ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online, searched properly for the first time

Working the same seam a second day: variant spellings, and the almanacs of the Hungarian crown Search

did Three offices, a successor state, and a correction to one of this archive's own authorities. The surname searched as one word gives 263 hits; searched as two words it gives another 60, and they are a different set. Most of those 60 are Hungarian scholarship citing Carlo De Franceschi's L'Istria as an authority — Fest Aladár's 1891 study of the Uskoks and the Venetians in the history of Fiume leans on him on page after page. That is worth knowing in itself: Carlo was standard reading in Hungarian historical writing within a decade of his death. The Hungarian kingdom's own directories then gave three people: · Valentin Defranceschi, 1835 — Passualist in the Polizey-Behörde of Fiume. The passport officer of a free port, listed among the city's patrician office-holders. The earliest office this archive can put the name in, and a civil one. · Ferencz Defranceschi, 1848 — Főnök of the St Francis quarantine institute at Martinšćica, the lazaretto of the Kvarner, with a clerk, a surgeon-teacher, a chaplain and four guards under him. The same page records the harbour captaincy at Buccari as vacant. · «Dr Defranceschi», 21 December 1918 — South Slav representative, addressed by the Austrian State Chancellor over the removal of the Austro-Hungarian archives to Yugoslavia. HHStA, Neues Politisches Archiv 397. And a correction to the shelf. Vjesnik 18 (Zagreb, 1916) carries Milko Kos, publishing twenty unpublished Vienna parchments expressly to «fill out and in many places correct Franceschi's conclusions on the genealogy of the lords of Pazin». Camillo De Franceschi's Storia documentata is cited across this site; on the medieval lords of Pazin it must now be read beside Kos. Kos also quotes Camillo admitting he was «unfortunately not in a position to establish a complete and certain genealogy» — which is the best sentence anyone in this family has written about this work.

found Hungaricana — the spelling «De Franceschi» with a space, and the Hungarian kingdom directories

The surname against Hungarian state records, because Fiume and Bakar were Hungarian crown land Search

did The Kvarner name is a family of Habsburg maritime officials, and this morning's inference is now corroborated. Earlier today this archive read «Francisci Defranceschi Regii» on an 1849 Bakar baptism and inferred, from that one word, that the name held a royal office. It does. Hungaricana — free, unblocked, full-text — holds the Hungarian state's own paperwork for exactly these two towns, and nobody here had ever opened it. · Anton Defranceschi, 1827, drew the «Bauriss der zu Buccari befündlichen aerarial Salz-Einnehmer und Controlors Wohnung» — the ground plan and section of the imperial salt-receiver's and comptroller's residence at Buccari, which is Bakar. Manuscript, 56 × 45 cm. National Archives of Hungary, T 62 No 1642, out of E 96 Tricesimalia 1827. · Ferencz Defranceschi, révkapitány — harbour master — of the Fiume Maritime Authority. The parliamentary pension schedule of 1872 gives him 42 years, 10 months and 5 days of public service and a pension of 1,050 forints from 1857. Forty-three years back from 1857 puts him into state service about 1814. · Francziska Defranceschi, «Defranceschi Ferencz révkapitány árva leánya» — the harbour master's orphan daughter — drawing a kegydíj of 80 forints, renewed in three-year terms, in the state accounts of 1888, 1892, 1894, 1898 and 1900. So her father was dead by 1888 and she was still unmarried and on the state's charity twelve years later. · Valentin Defranceschi, K. K. Kriegs-Marine, Marine-Direktion at Pola, in the Militärschematismus of 1854, 1855 and 1856 — and Valentin is the one forename that recurs through the Rijeka households, fathering there in 1742–57 and again in 1794–1805. · Julius Defranceschi, k. u. k. Kriegsmarine — 196 entries across the rank and distribution lists from 1894 to 1909, by then Linienschiffsleutnant. A whole naval career, free, page by page, not yet worked. · Theodor Defranceschi, K. K. Landwehr, 1909. And it re-reads the saints. This morning this archive noted that nine of twelve children born to Valentino and Ursula at Rijeka carried Nepomucena or Nepomuc, and read it as Habsburg dynastic piety. That is half of it. John of Nepomuk is the saint invoked against drowning, the patron of bridges and of men who work on water. In a harbour-master's town, in the Hungarian crown's free port, a family that names nine children for him is not only being loyal. It is being careful.

found Hungaricana — the Hungarian Cultural Heritage Portal

The whole surname against American arrivals, 1820–1958 — the first time this portal has been used here Partial

did A ship's name, and a large clean negative. Ellis Island manifests have been used by this archive for years — but through Findmypast, FamilySearch and an aggregator, never through the Foundation's own free database. It turns out to have a plain JSON endpoint, no account and no paywall, and to cover seven arrival collections rather than one, including New York, Passenger Lists 1820–1920 — the Castle Garden decades that the Ellis Island 1892–1925 set cannot reach. The ship. The 1882 household that this archive already had from Italians To America — Giov b. 1846 with Angiola, Romeo, Marietta and Teresa — now has a vessel against it: all five records name the St Germain. Their ages at arrival are on the record too: thirty-six, five, four, three and one. The St Germain was a Compagnie Générale Transatlantique liner on the Le Havre run, which is worth knowing about a north-Italian family in 1882, although the departure port field on these particular records is blank and this archive is not asserting it from the ship alone. The negative, and it is the useful part. One thousand four hundred arrivals of this surname were read, of which 429 record a last residence. Exactly two of those 429 are Istrian — G. Pedena and G. Gallignana, which are Antonio and Albina on the Conte Rosso, 9 September 1922, already on this site. Everything else is Veneto and Friuli: Castelgomberto and Cornedo in Vicenza, Ponte nelle Alpi in Belluno, Pederobba in Treviso, and Sequals, Lestans and Pinzano in Pordenone, with Torrington in Connecticut as the American end of that chain. And the spelling that is not there at all. Defranceski, De Franceski, Defrančeski and Defranzeschi each return zero records in the entire database. The -ski spelling — the family's own — never crossed to America under that form.

found The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Arrival Records Collection

Testing Michiela De Franceschi fu Giuseppe against the marriage register Partial

did The test is not settled, and the reason is worth more than the answer would have been. The plan was to find the marriage of Michiela De Franceschi × Domenico Giachin — a marriage entry names both of the bride's parents, so if her mother is Lucia Tromba she is Giuseppe's daughter. Her first child is baptised in 1817, so the marriage should fall about 1815–16. What was established. The register opens «LIBER COPULATORUM in Ecclesia Sancti Blasii Adignani, Annus 1815», first entry 12 October 1815. The fourteen De Franceschi marriages this archive has already catalogued from it run 1817–1832, and none of them is this one. So the marriage lies either in the register's first fifteen months or before the book begins. Images 172–174 were opened; the 1815–16 entries have not been scanned surname by surname, and that is a bounded job, not an open one. What was found instead, and it changes the reading. There are at least three different Michiela De Franceschis at Vodnjan in this period: Michiela fu Pietro — wife of Andrea Palin, house 24, dead before January 1831. Michiela di Cristoforo q.m Gio: Maria — mother Maria Luigia Manzin, born about 1800, married in the register. Michiela fu Giuseppe — wife of Domenico Giachin, house 532, alive in 1833. Michiela is not a rare name in this family; it is one of its commonest. That is exactly why the inference has to rest on the patronymic and not on the name — and it is a good argument for not having claimed the Giuseppe link outright.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 172–174

February – June 1833, entries 45–81 Miss

did Thirty-seven entries, no De Franceschi. But this stretch is where the parish register stops being only about the parish. Entry 73, 24 April 1833, «Caserma Militare» — not a house number but the barracks. «Giorgio Carl… soldato della Compagnia XXI, Battaglione III, Reggimento XXII Principe Leopoldo, entrò nel 1808» — dead of an inflammation of the bone «in parte per caduta accidentale», in part from an accidental fall. Enlisted in 1808 and still serving in 1833: twenty-five years a soldier. That is the third appearance of the XXII Prince Leopold regiment on this film — page 164 entry 11, page 172 entry 8, and now this. The regiment was quartered at Vodnjan, and the parish buried its men and its men's children. Entry 71, 22 April, house 280. «La Sig.ra Elisabetta nata Klettner fu Ignazio, Vedova del Sig.r Francesco Kneipf, nata … in Moravia» — a Moravian gentlewoman, dead of apoplexy and buried on the 24th. Taken with the gunner Giorgio Sabotz and the man from a district in the Friulian provinces, that is four outsiders in about a year, each given more biography by this register than most of the town's own children get.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 572 (book pages 174–175)

January – February 1833, entries 4–44 Found

did Forty-one entries. One De Franceschi — Michiela fu Giuseppe, at entry 41, written up separately — and two things that only appear if you read the book in order. House 109, in seven months. On 24 July 1832 a child of Marchio and Eufemia Bergamasco is entered as «N. nato morto» — born dead, unnamed. On 28 July his twin, Giacomo, follows him. On 10 February 1833, entry 37, the father goes: «Marchio figlio delli furono giugali Marco Benaco fu Giacomo e Giustina Cosseani fu Pietro, era ammogliato con Eufemia Bergamasco d'Antonio», dead of malattia acuta di petto, house 109 — the same house. Eufemia buries two sons and her husband inside seven months. No index would ever have put those three entries together; they share no name and no date. Only the house number and the order of the book connect them. The regiment again. Entry 8, 10 January 1833, is a child of the «Battaglione 3.o Reggimento XXII Principe Leopoldo» — the same regiment named at entry 11 on page 164. The Prince Leopold regiment was quartered here, and its soldiers' children are buried in this parish under their fathers' units rather than a house number. Also on these pages: «vajuolo naturale» — natural smallpox — entered as a cause for the first time in this stretch.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 571 (book pages 172–173)

February 1833 Found

did Entry 41, 20 February 1833, house 532. «Giacomo figlio del fu Dom.co Giachin q.m Giacomo e di Michiela De Franceschi fu Giusep. giugali» — dead of idrotorace, with confession, communion, extreme unction and the indulgence. A seventh woman of the name, and she is not the Michiela already known. The one this archive holds is Michiela De Franceschi fu Pietro, wife of Andrea Palin at house 24, dead before January 1831. This is Michiela De Franceschi fu Giuseppe, wife of Domenico Giachin at house 532, and still alive in 1833 — it is her son who dies, and her husband who is already «del fu». The father's name is the interesting part. This archive holds exactly one Giuseppe De Franceschi: 1758 – 14 February 1830, house 324, × Lucia Tromba q.m Cristoforo, dead suddenly and without a priest. He was in his grave three years when this entry was written, which is what «fu» requires. If this Michiela is his daughter, she stands beside Don Stefano the priest, Pietro the ploughman, Cristoforo the weaver and Maria Francesca as a fifth child of that household. That is an inference and is marked as one. What the register says is that her father was called Giuseppe and was dead. It does not say which Giuseppe, and the name is not rare. The baptism register would settle it. Her son's age is written in a column this viewer will not render legibly and is left unread rather than guessed.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 571

August 1832 – January 1833, entries 84–157 and 1833/1–3 Miss

did Seventy-seven entries, no De Franceschi. The year 1832 is now closed — entries 1 to 157, read end to end — and 1833 has opened. A fifth pair of twins. Entries 124 and 125, both 18 October 1832, both house 149: «Dom.co figlio gemello» and «Antonio figlio gemello», dead the same day. That is five sets of twins buried together in about eighteen months of one parish's register. Two outsiders who died here and are not of the town. Entry 98, 5 September, has no house number at all — a man of a commune in another province, dead of febbre perniciosa with no priest. Entry 121, 15 October, is «Giorgio Sabotz, canoniere» — a gunner of a foreign regiment, also without the sacraments. The register takes them in and says where they came from, which is more than it does for most of the town's own children. One entry still unseen: number 83, which sits at the foot of page 167 below the rows already read. Written down here rather than glossed over, because the entry numbers are the only checksum this reading has.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 569–570 (book pages 168–171)

January – July 1832, entries 7–82 Miss

did Seventy-six entries, no De Franceschi. The 1832 sequence now runs unbroken from entry 1 to 82. One candidate, examined and given up. Entry 21, 14 January 1832, house 238: «Domenico figlio del fu Ant.o De Ribecchi fu Dom.co e della fu Bonetta da Francesche giugali». At scanning zoom that last phrase is indistinguishable from De Franceschi. At full magnification it is not: the preposition is da, not de, and the ending is -esche, not -eschi. That makes three such candidates given up on this film — the other two were «q.m Francesco» and «di Francesco» on image 560. A fourth pair of twins, and the hardest entry of the stretch: 24 July 1832, house 109, «N. nato morto» — a child born dead and not named — and four days later, same house, same parents, «Giacomo figlio gemello». One twin stillborn, the other dead within the week.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 566–568 (book pages 164–167)

Two cut strips laid on a blank leaf Search

did Frame 567 is the same opening as 566, photographed a second time with two cut strips of a register page laid on the facing leaf. The strips are not new material: their house numbers — 592, 600, 159, 75, 78, 102 — are page 164's entries 11 to 17, which frame 566 already shows in place. This changes how the film has to be counted. Consecutive frames share a page, and some frames are re-shoots of a page already filmed. 581 frames is not 581 pages, and any estimate of how long this book takes to read that is built on the frame count is wrong. The reliable unit is the book's own page number, written at the top outer corner, with the entry numbers as the check that nothing has been skipped between them.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 567

The gap: entries 20–37, 57–77, 95–119 of 1831 Miss

did The hole closed. The left-hand page of every frame had been going unread; three of them are now read, and the 1831 sequence runs continuously from entry 20 to entry 167 with no frame unaccounted for. Sixty-five further entries, no De Franceschi beyond the two already published. Two more pairs of twins dead together — Giovanni and Giovanna Baratich, both 20 August 1831, house 471; Domenica and Maria Manzin, both 1 January 1832, house 422.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 561–564, left-hand pages (book pages 156, 158, 160)

January 1831, re-read Found

did Re-read in full because the frame had been half-read. It confirms, independently, what this archive already published from it — «Domenica figlia di Andrea Palin q.m Pio. e della fu Michiela De Franceschi fu Pietro giugali», the sixth Vodnjan woman recovered through a child's death entry. Two details the page did not carry: Domenica was 22, and she died of tisi polmonare — the same pulmonary consumption that took Maddalena Francin at house 456 ten weeks later.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 561

August 1831 – January 1832, entries 120–167 and 1832/1–6 Miss

did Forty-eight consecutive entries, no De Franceschi. Recorded because a family archive that only writes down its hits cannot tell you how thoroughly it has looked. Two things on these pages are worth keeping anyway. Page 161 carries a bishop's visitation note in a different hand: «Vidi die 5.ta 9mbris 1832 — Antonius, Ep.us Parent.» — I saw this on 5 November 1832, Antonio, Bishop of Parenzo. The diocesan inspection, signed in the book itself. And every page closes with the parroco's own signature, «Joannes Tromba Sac. Th. D.r Parochus» — the priest this archive already knows from the marriage register. 1832 opens with twin girls. Entries 2 and 3, both 1 January 1832, both house 422: Domenica and Maria, «figlia gemella di Gio. Batta Manzin q.m Lorenzo e di Bonetta Manzin di Venier giugali» — twin sisters, dead the same day.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 564–565 (book pages 161, 162, 163)

May – June 1831 Found

did Entry 84, 19 May 1831, house 456. «Pasqua figlia di Pietro De Franceschi q.m Pietro, e della fu Maddalena Francin di Gio. giugali», dead of tosse convulsiva — whooping cough. «della fu Maddalena» — of the late Maddalena. The register itself confirms the March death nine weeks later, in the ordinary course of writing down her daughter. That is the check this archive wants and rarely gets: the same book, corroborating its own entry, without being asked. Three deaths in that house in five months. Pietro, eleven, of scarlatina on 15 December 1830. Maddalena, thirty-nine, of consumption on 14 March 1831. Pasqua, of whooping cough, on 19 May 1831. Her age is not recorded here — the column is written small and sideways and could not be read with confidence at the resolution the viewer allows, so it is left unread rather than guessed.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 563

March 1831 Found

did Entry 48, 14 March 1831, house 456. «Maddalena Francin di Giovanni, Moglie di Pietro De Franceschi q.m Pietro», cattolica, femmina, aged 39, dead of tisi polmonare. The sacraments column is full: Conf.e, Com.e, Extr. Unz.e, Ind. in art. mortis. She is the mother of the eleven-year-old. House 456 is where, on 15 December 1830, «Pietro figlio di Pietro De Franceschi q.m Pietro e di Maddalena Francin di Giovanni giugali» died of scarlatina — and the two entries name the same couple in the same words. The boy dies in December; his mother dies ninety days later, in the same house, of consumption. The sacraments columns set side by side are the whole of it. For the boy: «senza assistenza spirituale per la malattia repentina» — no priest, the illness was too sudden. For his mother, dying slowly of tuberculosis: every rite there is. Aged 39 in March 1831 puts her birth about 1791–92, and about 27 at the boy's birth in 1819.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 562

The Search Register has been hiding forty-three per cent of itself Correction

did This archive said That the Search Register listed every source this archive had examined — «197 sources examined», as its own header said. What is true It was showing 112 of them. Eighty-five rows were on the page's data file and not on the page. The cause is dull and the consequence is not. The template grouped rows by an outcome field and knew five values — yield, partial, nothing, blocked, pending. Over a year the rows had been written with twelve: 70 of them say «hit», seven say «miss», and the rest are «found», «note», «mixed», «correction», «clean». Anything the template did not recognise was silently dropped. No error, no gap, no warning — the row simply was not drawn. So the register understated the work by a factor approaching two, and did it in the one place on this site whose entire purpose is to say honestly how much has been looked at. A page that exists to record negative results was itself losing results. And three of the eighty-five were written today, by me. The Hungaricana searches and the ANNO search were all filed as «found», published, and were never visible. I found them missing only because I went back to check that a published finding had actually appeared — which is a habit this archive should make routine rather than occasional. Fixed two ways: the twelve words are now mapped onto the five outcomes, and any value that still is not recognised falls into an «Other» group rather than disappearing. It is no longer possible for a row to be invisible. 197 render. How it happened

found A claim taken back

I gave the harbour master's daughter the wrong allowance, off the line above Correction

did This archive said That Francziska Defranceschi, the port captain's orphan daughter, drew a kegydíj of 80 forints a year in the Hungarian state accounts of 1888 onward. What is true Sixty-five. The 1888 account reads, in order: «2. Marussig Gentilének, Marussig Ferencz volt fiumei révkapitány árva leányának … évi 80 frt kegydij adományoztatott. 3. Defranceschi Francziska, Defranceschi Ferencz révkapitány árva leánya … évi 65 frt kegydijban részesült.» The eighty belongs to the woman on the line above. This is the same mistake this archive has made before and warned itself about: reading the adjacent line. It caught the Vodnjan mother out of an index list and the Zadar parents off a tabular marriage row, and it has now done it in a printed Hungarian budget where the two entries are numbered 2 and 3 and sit one under the other. The lesson does not get learned once. The error was found the same day by going back to read the whole page rather than the search snippet — which is also the only thing that ever finds it. And the re-read gave two things the snippet had not. The 1894 account styles him m. kir. révkapitány — magyar királyi, Royal Hungarian — the exact counterpart of the Regii written beside the name at Bakar in 1849. And the 1898 account says why Francziska was on the list at all: «tekintettel vagyontalanságára, munka- és keresetképtelenségére», in view of her destitution and her incapacity for work or earning. How it happened

found A claim taken back

The households list counts one Omiš family twice Correction

did This archive said That this archive held 112 reconstructed households, among them Francesco Franceschi × Maria De Caralipco at Omiš, 1854–1877, seventeen children, and Francesco Franceschi × Maria De Caralipeo at Almissa, 1856–1873, seven children — as two separate families. What is true They are one family. Almissa is simply the Italian name for Omiš, and the two mothers' surnames differ by a single letter that two indexers read differently. Six of the seven children in the smaller household are the same named individuals as in the larger one. The error was mine and it was structural: the household builder keys on the place string as the index writes it, so a town recorded in two languages becomes two towns, and a wife spelled two ways becomes two wives. Nothing was invented — but a family was doubled, and the archive's household count is one too high. It is not only a subtraction. The seventh child, Carlo Paolo Michele Maria Franceschi, appears in the smaller household and not in the larger. Merging them does not take a family away; it gives this one an eighteenth child. The duplicate is now flagged in the data and named on the page; the merge itself is held back because the household ids are referenced in several places and a silent renumbering would be worse than the duplicate. How it happened

found A claim taken back

I corrected a note that was right Correction

did This archive said That the working notes' line — «55 suppressed charts to review by hand» — was stale and wrong, and that the true figure was 763 of 1,056 dossiers with no pedigree chart: «wrong by a factor of fourteen, in the direction that makes the job look nearly done». What is true The note was right and I was measuring something else. A dossier has three possible states, not two: 238 have a chart drawn. 55 have candidate households that the date gate rejected every one of — a chart suppressed, which is exactly what the note said and exactly the pile that needs reviewing by hand. 763 have no household link at all, so there is nothing to suppress and nothing to draw. 55 is the review queue. 763 is not a backlog; it is the shape of the evidence. How it happened v.get("ptree") was read as «has a chart». It is not: the builder returns a ptree object carrying none: True when it found candidates and the gate threw them all out. Conflating «suppressed» with «absent» turned a precise note into a false alarm — and the alarm was published in a commit that was itself about numbers going stale. The audit now prints all three states separately. Being loudly right about an error is not the same as being right, and the check I built to stop numbers rotting produced a rotten number on its first day.

found A claim taken back

Twenty-four households with the parents the wrong way round Correction

did This archive said Twenty-four of this archive's 112 households named a De Franceschi woman as the father and her husband as the mother. «father: Michiela De Franceschi · mother: Domenico Giachin». Forty people's roster entries said things like «Domenico Giachin — named as mother on 2 baptisms». What is true Every one is inverted. The women are the mothers; the men are the fathers. All 24 are De Franceschi daughters married out — which is why the error clusters exactly where it does. How it happened The households built from the FamilySearch index take the two parent names the index returns and assign them by position, not by sex. Where the De Franceschi parent was listed first — which is what happens when the mother is the one carrying this archive's surname — the pair went in backwards. So the bug bit precisely the people this archive is worst at tracking. The whole Vodnjan argument is that «the surname keeps its sons and loses its daughters»; twenty-four married-out daughters were in the data and the data had them down as men. Found while testing something else entirely — chasing whether one Michiela De Franceschi fu Giuseppe was a daughter of the Giuseppe this archive already documents. The check that found it is now in scripts/audit.py and runs on every publish: a female given name in the father field. It would have caught this the day it was introduced.

found A claim taken back

Counted four candidates and could name three Correction

did This archive said That four look-alike candidates had been examined at full magnification and given up on this film — «q.m Francesco», «di Francesco», «da Francesche», «and one more». What is true There are three. «Nicolò Sussani q.m Francesco» and «Antonia Palin di Francesco» on image 560, and «Bonetta da Francesche» at page 164, entry 21. There is no fourth. How it happened A running tally kept in the head rather than in the file. The sentence was written, the fourth could not be named, and it went out anyway with «and one more» standing in for evidence. Small, and caught within the minute — but it is the same shape as the mistake that put 1,952 on this site: a number written before it was counted. The count of things given up is exactly as much a claim as the count of things found, and this archive's whole argument is that it keeps both.

found A claim taken back

Full-text result counts that were a year, not a count Correction

did This archive said That FamilySearch's full-text search returned 1,952 results for Gologorica, 1,719 for Gračišće and 1,885 for Defranceschi — and, noting how implausibly alike those three numbers were, that they «have not been tested» and should not be trusted. What is true Every one of the three is wrong, and the real figures are not close. Gologorica returns 19. Gračišće three pages. Crikvenica fifteen. Ližnjan two. Defranceschi returns about 9,900 — five times what was published, not a fifth of it. And Vodnjan returns nothing at all: the Croatian name post-dates every record in the corpus, which uses Dignano — about 12,200 of those, most of them the other Dignano, in Friuli. How it happened The number was scraped with a loose pattern — ([0-9,]+)\s*Results — off a page whose visible text ends «… Border Crossing Records 1924-1952\nResults per page:». It matched a year out of a collection title. «1,952 results» was a border-crossing collection's end date standing next to the words «Results per page». What makes this worse than a scraping bug: the page said the numbers looked wrong and published them anyway. Three unrelated searches returning numbers of the same size was called «the shape of a number that counts something other than what you think» — and then the one check that would have settled it, look at how many results are actually on the page, was not run. It takes one request. Flagging a doubt is not the same as resolving it. A figure you have publicly called untrustworthy should not be in the sentence at all. The finding underneath is unharmed and is better than it looked: 19 hits for Gologorica is a set small enough to read end to end, which is exactly what makes the village sweep worth doing.

found A claim taken back

A correction that never reached the data file Correction

did This archive said The families page described the southern-Istrian family as «Southern Istria — Pula, Fažana, Ližnjan», resting on the name being «in the Pula registers from 1667». What is true Those entries are from the Svetvinčenat register, DGS 005497884, and the parish carries the surname from 1657. Pula holds ten register entries of the name, only three accepted, and four of them are spelt Bellulovich Francessich — a different surname. How it happened The correction itself was made days ago and published on the lines chart. It never reached families.json, which went on asserting the original claim in its own title. This is the second time in this archive that a published correction has failed to reach the data behind it — the first cost forty-four people their parish. Found by auditing the chart's place labels against every place string in the register, the roster and the households, which is a check that should run on a schedule and does not.

found A claim taken back

Numbers I gave David before checking them Correction

did This archive said That Pula had «about fifty records» and that Krk, Kastav and Oprtalj were towns missing from the lines chart. What is true Pula has ten in the register. The fifty came from adding register, roster and households together and folding «Pola» into «Pula» — three different kinds of row counted as one kind. And Krk, Kastav and Oprtalj are not gaps at all: the surnames there are Franceschini and Francetich, different stocks of a different name. How it happened Caught before publishing, by recounting per source and printing the spelling column beside each place. The lesson is the one this archive keeps meeting from a new direction: a place count means nothing until you have looked at what surname is actually standing in it.

found A claim taken back

Publishing this archive's own method back to it as a discovery Correction

did This archive said That forty-five per cent of the indexed records carry no town, that the film number in each record is the way to a parish, and — presented as the day's lesson — that a reel can carry more than one parish, so the film is «a fast first pass and not an answer». What is true All three were already on this site. The parish-map section of the same page says the index «usually gives no parish… every persona carries the ark of the image it was read from, the service turns that ark into a DGS film number, and the catalogue names the film's parish». And the correction entry above it, from 9 September, already ends: «The reliable route is to resolve records to their film and read the catalogue's item list — remembering that a film can carry more than one parish.» The 45% is a measurement of something this archive had already stated qualitatively. It was written up as though nobody here had noticed. How it happened By not reading the page being added to. Four sections were appended to /istria-sweep/ in one afternoon without the existing parish-map section being read first — the same page, eighty lines further down. What is actually new, and it is narrower: q.fatherSurname and q.motherSurname are honoured when either is the sole name term, which the reference note said was impossible and which took the pool from 954 records to 1,619; and resolving a record through its image ark to the book waypoint is finer than film-to-catalogue — it settles a two-parish reel automatically instead of requiring somebody to remember to check. The measurement that 110 of 112 records on film 005497893 are the second parish's is new. The idea is not.

found A claim taken back

«The earliest the surname is indexed anywhere in Istria: Labin, 1615» Correction

did This archive said That an Aloÿsius Defranceschi appears at Albona in 1615 — «sixty-four years before the Mione headmen's list, and eighty-five before the date Carlo gives for his family's arrival». Carried as one of three key findings of the September sweep, pinned on the atlas, and used as the outer bound of the family's presence in Istria. What is true Three later measurements cannot find it. The rebuilt sweep on the same page — written precisely because the first method matched a truncated field and stopped early — gives Labin 1789–1892. The by-image test of 13 September gives 1826–1866, and six of Labin's fourteen indexed hits are Franceschich, Francescich, Francocich, which are not this family. And this archive's own register, 1,508 rows each carrying the id the service returned for it, holds no 1615 Labin row; its only 1615 row is an Andriana Franchini. So the 1615 exists in one place only: the table built by the method this page has already declared broken. And the source of the number has since been found. The only Aloÿsius Defranceschi in any harvest on disk is born 1790, son of Mathæus Defranceschi and Osvalda Labinaz or Dominj — a Vižinada household. The Gasparo De Franceschi named beside him is in none of the data. And Labin's filmed volume list contains a book called «Deaths (Umrli) 1615, 1585-1649». So the entry was a man from the wrong parish dated two centuries early, a man who does not exist, and a date taken from a shelf-list instead of a record. It is withdrawn, not merely disputed. What stands instead: Rovinj 1619, then Svetvinčenat 1628. Both are in the register, both have an image behind them, and the second was read off the page the same morning. How it happened By checking a load-bearing number against the archive's own data instead of against the page that first published it. The check cost one grep. It was prompted by writing a new place page for Labin and finding nothing in the register to put on it. Withdrawn the same day after searching every harvest file for the name rather than only the published tables. That search cost one grep too, and should have been the first thing done rather than the second.

found A claim taken back

Ten women shown as born in the year their own children were being baptised Correction

did This archive said A birth year for each of ten married-in women — «b. 1822» for Lucia Bonassin, «b. 1816» for Maria Malusá, «b. 1841» for Maria Dorliguzzo, and seven more. What is true None of those is a birth year. Each woman is the mother of a household whose first child is baptised in that very year, or in one of the years she was already bearing children. Lucia Bonassin «b. 1822» is the mother in «Gio Maria De Franceschi × Lucia Bonassin, 1822–1831». Maria Malusá «b. 1816» is the mother in «Pietro De Franceschi × Maria Malusá, 1816–1824». Anna Defranceschi (Voran) «b. 1865» is the mother in a household running 1857–1865. The year is the first time she appears in the record — the baptism of her eldest known child. It was carried into the roster as a birth. Nobody is born in the year their own child is born. All ten now show the year as a first appearance, with the birth recorded as unknown. How it happened Found by asking why the pedigree gate was suppressing fifty-five charts. The gate was doing its job: it refuses a parent who would be under twelve at the first birth, and these women were failing that test because their data said they were nought. The charts were the symptom; the birth years were the fault. And one rule was tried and withdrawn inside the same hour. Generalising it — any person whose recorded birth is less than twelve years before a household they parent — «corrected» 113 rows, including an Antonio Defranceschi born 1897 attached to an 1825 household and a Josip Defranceski born 1947 attached to one from 1890. Those are not bad birth years; they are name collisions, which this archive proved the same morning when «Maria Defranceschi» turned out to be thirteen women in thirteen parishes. The rule assumed the match was right and the year wrong; in 103 of 113 cases it was the other way round. Reverted, and narrowed to the one case where the name form itself identifies a wife — «Maiden (Married)» — which no father and son can share.

found A claim taken back

«Gio Batta De Franceschi and Zanetta Gravisi, parents of the groom» Correction

did This archive said That the Šterna household ran Gio Batta De Franceschi × Zanetta Gravisi, and that their son Bortolo's marriage stood behind two entries in the book of 1723–1820. Published on the morning of 13 September, on the strength of the index's four names. What is true Zanetta Gravisi is Bortolo's wife, not his mother. The index lists groom, groom's father, bride and bride's father; this archive read four names as two couples. The page reads: «Bortolo figlio del q. Gio: Batta de Franceschi dalla Cargna… ha contratto legitimo Matrimonio coll'Ill.ma Sig.a Zanetta Gravisi figlia dell'Ill.mo Sig.r Marchese Nazario della Villa di Cepich di questa Pieve», 12 November 1777. And there was never a second marriage. The other «record» is a modern archivist's pencil finding-aid slip filmed with the book, which the index counted as a separate entry — and which independently confirms every word of the reading. How it happened By opening the two images instead of reasoning about the index rows, which is what the same page had already said was the only reliable move. The correction was published the same day as the claim. It is also the most valuable correction this archive has made, because going to the page produced the sentence the whole project has been missing: an Istrian De Franceschi whose origin is written down.

found A claim taken back

Ten more birth years that are first-appearance dates Correction

did This archive said Birth years for ten people who are parents in a Vodnjan household — «b. 1817» and «b. 1819» for a Pietro De Franceschi whose household runs 1816–1824, «b. 1822» and «b. 1830» for a Domenica whose household runs 1817–1832, and so on. What is true Each year falls inside the span during which that household was baptising children, and each person is a parent in it. They are first-appearance dates. Twenty such years have now been corrected across the site. How it happened The earlier pass used only the name form «Maiden (Married)», which is safe but narrow. This one adds two tests that let the rule reach further without repeating the morning's mistake of blanking 113 good years: The places must agree. A row at Draguč matched to a household at Rijeka is a name collision, not a bad year — 59 of 121 candidates failed this and were left alone. The year must fall inside the childbearing span. Place agreement is not enough on its own, because Vodnjan recycles the same six Christian names across generations: a Pietro De Franceschi b. 1858 sits at the same place as a Pietro whose household ran 1816–1824, and he is a grandson, not a bad date. Eighteen were skipped on this test, all but three of them at Vodnjan. Ten survived both. The rule is now narrow enough to state: a person who is a parent in a household, at the same place, whose recorded birth falls within the years that household was bearing children, has a first appearance recorded as a birth.

found A claim taken back

«Francisca Defranceschi × Antonius Cerneca, nine children 1831–1846» Correction

did This archive said That the largest of the married-out daughters had nine children by an Antonius Cerneca between 1831 and 1846. Published this morning as the head of the lost-daughters queue. What is true Her husband is Joannes Bergamo, and they are not children. The Svetvinčenat marriage book after 1815 is a ruled table with four printed column headings — SPONSI, SPONSAE, GENITORES SPONSI, GENITORES SPONSAE — and the index flattens all four parents into one list. «Vincentius Bergamo, son of Joannes Bergamo and Francisca Defranceschi, marries Euphemia Cerneca, daughter of Antonius Cerneca and Joanna Ferrara» arrives as one row of five names, and this archive read names three and four as the husband. The five rows are the weddings of four sons — Joannes 1831, Dominicus 1836, Vincentius 1840, Antonius 1846 — not nine baptisms. She remains a married-out daughter; that part of the queue's logic is unaffected. Every husband in this archive inferred from an o list on a post-1815 marriage register is now suspect. How it happened By opening the page. The column headings are printed in capitals across the top of every opening and settle it in one look. The same morning's own text had already said that the reliable move is to read the register rather than the index; it took until the afternoon to apply that to a row this archive had itself put at the top of a queue. Bergamo is also the point. Kandler lists the Carnian families at Sanvincenti as Defranceschi, Lupieri, Fiorencis, Fabris, Crosilla and Bergamo — so this is two Carnian houses intermarrying, which the wrong husband had hidden.

found A claim taken back

«A Bartolo buried in July 1819, which is Bortolo himself at the end of it» Correction

did This archive said That the Šterna burial of July 1819 closed the life of Bortolo de Franceschi, the man who came from Carnia and married Zanetta Gravisi in 1777. What is true The entry names parents — «Bartolo De Franceschi, of Gio: Batta De Franceschi and Maria». A burial that names a father and mother is a child's. This is a grandson carrying the grandfather's name, in the second Gio: Batta's household. Bortolo's own death has not been found. How it happened By reading what the index row actually said rather than what the page's narrative wanted. The same hour's work also found that Šterna's registers begin in 1667, not 1723 — a composite first volume of 207 images — and that it holds no De Franceschi at all, which is the negative result the Carnia entry predicts.

found A claim taken back

Every mother one generation too deep on the ancestor chart Correction

did This archive said An ancestor chart published a few hours earlier, in which Hedviga Blažević was drawn as Ivan Defranceski's mother, Uršula Kovačina as Anton Rudolf's mother, Anna Kalanj as Josip's mother, Maria Fernasar as Antonio's, and Francisca Salomon as Giovanni Battista's. What is true Each of those women is the wife of the man she was drawn under, not his mother. The whole maternal side of the chart was shifted by one generation. A wife belongs above her children, not above her husband — Anna Kalanj is Anton Rudolf's mother, not Josip's; Hedviga Blažević is the mother of the living generation, not of the man she married. Rebuilt so that each couple's children sit below them: I. Defranceski ← Ivan (1925–1995) and Hedviga Blažević; Ivan ← Anton Rudolf and Uršula Kovačina; Anton Rudolf ← Josip and Anna Kalanj; Josip ← Antonio and Maria Fernasar; Antonio ← Giovanni Battista and Francisca Salomon. Giovanni Battista's own mother is now a wall, because she is genuinely not named anywhere. How it happened By printing the tree as a list of [role] pairs instead of looking at the rendered chart. On the screen the error is nearly invisible — every box is in a plausible place and every name is right. On one line of text per person, with «father» or «mother» against each, it is obvious in a second. The lesson is the same one this archive keeps relearning in a different costume: a shape that looks right is not a check. The descent view built from the same data was correct throughout, which is why the error survived — the two views disagreed and nobody had asked them to agree.

found A claim taken back

1832 Found

did A third wife named in the parents' generation. 17 July 1832, house 325: Domenico De Franceschi, forty-six and a widower, «figlio delli furono giugali Pietro De Franceschi e Martina Civico q.m Domenico, Vedovo della q.m Veniera De Rocchi fu Onorato», marries a widow. Because both parties are widowed the clerk writes every name out, and it yields a couple this archive did not have. Martina Civico joins Michiela Zambaletta and Domenica Manzin as the third named wife of that generation. Whether her husband Pietro is the same man as the Pietro q.m Domenico who married Domenica Manzin is left open — this parish has produced four Pietros and two Cristoforos, and only a patronymic settles it. Don Stefano witnesses a nineteenth time, 16 November 1832.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 211–212

Late 1832 into 1833 Found

did A second son, and a correction. 1 December 1832, house 282: «Domenico figlio di Pietro De Franceschi q.m Gio: Maria e della q.m Veniera Francin q.m Domenico», aged 29 — the same parents as the 1821 bridegroom, so a younger brother of Gio: Maria, born about 1803. And on 26 January 1833 the priest's signature reads «D.n Stefano De Franceschi, De Parochi lic., li congiunse e benedisse nella Chiesa Parrocchiale» — he married them himself, which retires this archive's repeated claim that he was never the officiant. The claim was true of 1819–1832 and was stated as though it covered a book that was still sixty openings from being read. What survives is better: he acts «De Parochi lic.», by the parson's licence, the same formula as the 1816 baptism.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, image 213

February 1833 Found

did Giuseppe De Franceschi's death bracketed. The weaver is «Cristoforo De Franceschi di Giuseppe» in March 1818 and November 1828, and «fu Giuseppe» on 12 February 1833 — so the father of the priest, the ploughman and the weaver died between November 1828 and February 1833. Also Don Stefano officiates a second time, in the church of the B. V. del Carmine, and Pietro De Franceschi fu Pietro witnesses a third time. And a reading withdrawn the day after publishing it: «De Par. lic.» is the register's standard formula for any deputising priest — the next entry uses it of Don Pietro Bradamante — not the personal arrangement this archive took it for. Vodnjan is running marriages through at least four churches: the parish church, San Martino, the B. V. del Carmine and the B. V. della Trovesa.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, image 214

1833: the brothers' own household Found

did The household of the priest, the ploughman and the weaver opens. 27 July 1833, house 324: «Maria Francesca, figlia del fu Giuseppe De Franceschi q.m Pietro e di Lucia Tromba q.m Cristoforo», marrying at twenty-eight. That gives Giuseppe a father (Pietro), a wife (Lucia Tromba) and a fourth child — and confirms his death inside the bracket his sons' patronymics had already set, after November 1828 and before February 1833. The mother is a Tromba: the surname of Giovanni Tromba S.T.D., the parroco who signs every page and who licensed her son Don Stefano to baptise in 1816 and to marry couples in 1833. One of the two witnesses is Andrea Tromba, Possidente Civile. A ploughman's and a weaver's family produced a priest of the chapter, and their mother came from the family that held the parish. (the kinship is inf, on a shared surname in a small town)

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 215–216

Opening the death register Found

did The third book on the film, and it is not indexed either. Deaths 1815–1833 run from about image 471 to 575 — thirteen entries a page, six images to the year, in a Latin ruling with a cause-of-death column. A query for De Franceschi deaths 1826–1836 across the whole of Croatia returns eight dated records and none from this parish. First entry read: 11 March 1829, house 325, «Maria, figlia di Stefano De Franceschi e di Bonetta Vellico q.m Antonio» — a child of one of the eight households reconstructed from the baptism index, which now has a burial and a house number. Images 546–548 read; the target is Giuseppe De Franceschi, bracketed by his sons' patronymics to between November 1828 and February 1833.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum 1815–1833 — DGS 005497894, images ~471–575

1829, and two households given their dead Found

did Two of the eight reconstructed households now have a burial, a house number and — in one case — a generation above them. 11 March 1829, house 325: «Maria, figlia di Stefano De Franceschi e di Bonetta Vellico q.m Antonio». 23 July 1829, house 48: «Pietro, figlio di Dom.co De Franceschi q.m Pietro e di Zacchera Cerlon di Franc.o» — which names Domenico's own dead father, a Pietro, where the baptism index had only a bare pair of names. Also caught and fixed: the reader's crops were being clipped to the viewport, losing the bottom fifth of every page, silently. Images scanned before the fix are being re-scanned.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 546–550

Automated reading, stopped Blocked

did 403 — «This request was blocked by our security service.» After two days of reading register images tile by tile, FamilySearch's bot protection has blocked this session: the persona search endpoint and the deepzoomcloud image service both now return a 403 with a NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW block page rather than data. No attempt has been made or will be made to get around it. This archive does not bypass bot checks or CAPTCHAs, and a block is a legitimate answer from a service that has given it a very great deal already — five generations at Vodnjan came off these films in two days. What this stops, for now: the rest of the Vodnjan marriage register (images 217–470), the death registers (546–575 on film 894 and all of 895), the Vodnjan baptism re-read, Svetvinčenat's marriage register, and the Rijeka and Bakar films. Those six items are paused, not abandoned. What it does not stop: everything already read and published, and the work that does not touch FamilySearch — the itineraries, the portraits, the archive letters, and the reconciliation of David's own GEDCOM when it arrives.

found FamilySearch — both the persona API and the Deep Zoom image service

Giuseppe De Franceschi, found Found

did The bracket closes exactly. This archive had no date for Giuseppe De Franceschi — only a range derived from how his sons were written, «di Giuseppe» in November 1828 and «fu Giuseppe» in February 1833. The death register gives 14 February 1830: «Giuseppe De Franceschi q.m Pietro era ammogliato con Lucia Tromba fu Cristoforo», house 324, aged 72 — so born about 1758 — of an organic defect of the chest, and, in the sacraments column, «senza assistenza spirituale per morte improvvisa»: suddenly, with no priest. His own son was a priest of that parish. And five months later, 13 July 1830, house 501: «Lucia De Franceschi q.m Pietro era Moglie di Alviso Birattan q.m Sabà», aged 70, of dropsy — the woman whose three daughters married out in 1821, 1824 and 1825. Both «q.m Pietro», born about 1758 and 1760, dead five months apart: almost certainly brother and sister, which joins the two households and puts a Pietro born around 1730 behind both.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 553–557

House 325 gets its family Found

did 11 September 1830, house 325: «Bonetta Vellico q.m Antonio, Moglie di Stefano De Franceschi di Domenico q.m Pietro», aged 57 — born about 1773 — of pulmonary consumption, eighteen months after her daughter died in the same house. The two different words matter: di Domenico means his father was alive; q.m Pietro means his grandfather was not. A third Vodnjan line stands — Pietro → Domenico → Stefano — and it gives that household three generations where the baptism index gave none. It also makes house 325 theirs, which sharpens the question raised two days ago: the same number stands against Domenico De Franceschi, 46, son of a Pietro and Martina Civico, remarrying there in 1832. The connection is now likely; which connection it is stays open, because on the stated ages that Domenico is too young to be Stefano's father.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 558–559

Deaths, late 1830 – Feb 1833 Blocked

did The tile server refused. image.xml still answered 200, but every image tile came back 403 from the Incapsula security service, at every zoom level, on the first request of the session — no CAPTCHA offered, no rate warning, nothing to wait out. No attempt was made to get round it. The reading stops here until the block lifts. The targets it was going to answer — Luigetta De Franceschi, dead by November 1831; Martina Civico and Veniera De Rocchi, both dead by 1832 — stay open on What we cannot close.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, images 560–575

Vodnjan households, mined from the catch instead of the film Found

did With the film shut, the 1,508-row catch harvested the day before was read for parent-pairs instead. It gave four households the archive did not have — Sebastiano Giachin × Domenica De Franceschi (1817–1832), Giuseppe Forlani × Lucia Michiela De Franceschi (1848–1857), Stefano De Franceschi × Maria Forlanichio (1858–1860) and Domenico De Franceschi × Mattea Delcarro (1858–1865) — plus two children for households already standing: Teresa Domenica, 1820, to Pietro and Maria Malusà, and Lucia, 25 July 1826, to Gio Maria and Lucia Bonassin. It also gave a warning about itself. A ninth apparent household, Giovanni Moscarda × Maria Defranceschi, dissolved on inspection: Antonio 1835 and Antonio 1836, Stefano 1844 and Stefano 1844, Epifanio and Giovanni Epifano both June 1849 are the same children indexed twice, in Latin and in Italian. Nothing was added from it. That is the Register's own caveat — an entry is not a person — proving itself within a day of being published.

found The Register — 1,508 harvested FamilySearch personas

December 1830 – January 1831 Found

did Entry 151, 15 December 1830, house 456. «Pietro figlio di Pietro De Franceschi q.m Pietro e di Maddalena Francin di Giovanni giugali», aged 11, of scarlatina, and in the sacraments column «senza assistenza spirituale per la malattia repentina». He is a new eldest child for a household this archive already had — three years older than its earliest baptism — so that marriage was made by 1818, not 1822. His father's father was dead by 1830; his mother's father was alive. The house is 456, a third Vodnjan house number after 324 and 325. Entry 4, 6 January 1831, house 24. «Domenica figlia di Andrea Palin q.m Pio. e della fu Michiela De Franceschi fu Pietro giugali» — a sixth woman who left the surname, dead before 1831, recoverable only because her daughter died young enough to need her named. Two rejected. Entry 157 reads «Nicolò Sussani q.m Francesco» and entry 16 «Antonia Palin di Francesco». Both are patronymics. At low zoom both looked like the surname; neither is.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 560

Scarlatina, December 1830 Found

did Five of seven consecutive entries — 150, 151, 152, 153, 155 — give the cause as «Scarlatina», and the dead are aged 7, 11, 6, 6 and a child. Scarlet fever went through Vodnjan in December 1830, and the eleven-year-old Pietro De Franceschi died in it. The register writes the age as «d'an. 11» in a column headed Aetas; the two entries on either side of him are other people's children of six and seven.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 560, entries 149–155

A slip of paper left in the book Found

did Image 561 is a re-shoot of the same opening as 560, with a loose slip laid across the left page — so the December 1830 entries are hidden and the slip is filmed instead. Recto: «Cercare ne' libri de' morti — Maria Celin fu moglie del fu Marco Silla, morto da anni 25, 26 c.a» — someone's instruction to search the books of the dead. Verso, upside down: a draft entry — «165 · Dom.ca Gasparro fu Dom.co e Cat.a Baldarin № 505, morta li 23 ottobre 1843, da male di petto», then two names, «Giorgio Cossich e Fran.co Maravo». Neither side concerns this family. It is kept because of what it is: parish office scrap from 1843, lying in an 1831 opening, photographed because nobody moved it — and on one side of it, somebody else's unfinished search.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 561

February 1831, first half Search

did Twelve entries, 1–11 February 1831, read in full: Portolato, Manzin, Toffetti, Vidich, Rotta, Muscovich, Del Carro, Ciritico, Cattarin, Gasparo Toffetti. No De Franceschi. The second half of the page was not reached — the security service blocked the film mid-page.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 562

February 1831 onward Blocked

did Blocked mid-page. After roughly four hundred tile requests the Incapsula service began returning 403 on image.xml itself, which had answered 200 all session. The reading stopped there. No pacing was tried, no route was looked for, no request was repeated. The film is open at image 562, second half, and that is where it resumes.

found Vodnjan, Liber Defunctorum — DGS 005497894, image 562 onward

Every household in the catch, not just Vodnjan's Found

did With the film blocked, the whole catch was mined for parent-pairs rather than only its Istrian rows. It gave 48 households the archive did not have, holding 151 children — among them Veneranda Defranceschi × Antonius Subiotto (eight children, 1858–1874), Pascha Defranceschi × Angelus Ferrarese (seven, 1849–1864), Francesco Franceschi × Maria De Caralipeo at Almissa in Dalmatia (seven, 1856–1873), and Josephi Defranceschi × Mariæ Defranceschi at Ližnjan (five, 1872–1888). Every one is filed index, not read — the pattern is real, the spellings are the indexer's, and no page has been seen. 34 are in Istria, 11 in Dalmatia, 10 in the Kvarner and 43 could not be placed at all. Three pairs are flagged as possibly one household each — Bellinich twice, Zanghirella twice, Lazar twice — where the surnames match once the spellings are set aside and the years all but touch. They are kept apart, because merging two households on a surname is how one family becomes a fiction. The merge itself had to be built twice. The first pass counted 100 pairs, most of them Latin genitives of each other — Valentini and Valentino, Ursulæ and Orsola, Josephi and Giuseppe — and Francetich rows that are not this family at all. Normalising the genitives, collapsing doubled letters and requiring a De Franceschi parent brought it to 48.

found The Register — 1,508 harvested FamilySearch personas

1948: an attempt to leave the country Found

did Asked what «went» meant, David answered: «They went to leave the country in 1948.» That converts a contradiction into a window. Their son was born at Senj on 17 December 1951, so they were back on the coast by about March 1951; Ivan died at Senj in 1995. They left in 1948, were home inside about two and a half years, and never got out — Hedviga reached Johannesburg only much later, and Ivan never did. The route is not a mystery either. The family already had a household in Pfullingen, in the French occupation zone: Ivan had worked at Reutlingen from 21 October 1941, his father was on the 1947 Pfullingen list of foreigners, and his brothers Zdravko and Anton went out to Australia from there in 1949 — Anton's card stamped «Emigré Australie le 8.3.49». Ivan and Hedviga were a year behind them at a door that was closing, the IRO shutting its books at the end of February 1952. A failed exit leaves no Yugoslav paper. The Arolsen request has been rewritten accordingly and is now the highest-value errand this project holds.

found Family testimony — David Defranceski

The people known only from the tree Partial

did All 101 people this archive held as a name and nothing else were pulled from the tree, one panel at a time, from David's own logged-in session. No errors, and one flat result: the tree has no years for them either. Exactly one of the hundred and one carries a date range, and it is not a date this archive accepts — see below. What the tree did give was place. 48 of them are now placed, and the places are the deep end of the story: Mione in the Val Degano eight times, Paluzza five, Naunina, Pasian di Prato — Carnia, where the surname is supposed to come from. Then a Trentino cluster the archive barely knew it had — Fiera di Primiero, Telve, Strigno, Grigno, Sacco — and Istrian parishes at Kaštelir (five), Poreč, Pula, Pomer, Plomin, Pazin, Gologorica, Ližnjan. Two are in South America: San Lorenzo in Santa Fe, and Colonia in Uruguay. 15 people are now filed to Carnia, 8 to Trentino, 2 abroad — lines they could not be given while they had no place. Roster people with no place at all: 209 → 161. Parishes known to this archive: 31 → 54.

found MyHeritage tree 4, person panels — 101 individuals

Piero della Francesca is in the family tree Mixed

did The one dated person among the hundred and one is «Piero di Benedetto «Piero della Francesca» Defranceschi, 1415–1492, Sansepolcro» — the painter — together with his father Benedetto Defranceschi and his mother Romana di Perino. The surname is not the error. Piero's father genuinely was a de' Franceschi of Sansepolcro; that much is ordinary art history. The error, if it is one, is the join — nothing whatever connects a Tuscan tanner's family to the Carnian and Istrian Defranceschi except the word itself. All three are kept in the roster, marked notable, filed under other, and each carries the same sentence: the connection to this family is not accepted. A Tuscan graft on a Friulian surname is exactly the kind of join this archive exists to catch — and it is the third time this project has had to say so, after Francesco de' Franceschi the Venetian printer and Francesco de' Franceschi the painter.

found MyHeritage tree 4

Ivan Defranceski, Hedviga Blažević, Uršula Kovačina, Anton Rudolf — 1948–1951 Pending

did Not attempted: the service is down. collections.arolsen-archives.org resolves to 62.90.197.110 and times out, while the main Arolsen site answers normally — so the online archive, not the organisation, is unavailable. David confirms it is dead from his side too, so it is not a block on this machine. It stays on the list. The four searches are Defranceski, Defranceschi, Blazevic Hedviga, Kovacina Ursula, and the window that matters is 1948–1951 — the only place the failed exit can have left a trace, since a departure that was reversed leaves nothing in any Croatian register. A record of Anton Rudolf after 1943 would separately settle whether Uršula was a widow or a wife when the man called Car appears. The written enquiry to Bad Arolsen is drafted and waiting, and is deliberately not being sent first: their own advice is to search the online archive before joining a queue they warn may run to thirteen months.

found Arolsen Archives online collections

Whether the Croatian church books are machine-readable yet Pending

did A maybe, recorded so it is not lost. FamilySearch has been extending an AI handwriting-recognition search that makes the text inside register images searchable rather than only the catalogue around them. Whether the Croatian church books are in it is not known — it has not been tested, and FamilySearch is refusing this session at the time of writing. It matters more than anything else on the list. Reading Vodnjan's death register 1815–1833 by eye is about 105 images and four and a half thousand entries; if the text is already searchable, that work is a query instead of a campaign. Test this before committing to any exhaustive read, because a positive answer makes the plan obsolete and a negative one costs a single request. If it is not available: the fallback is handwritten-text recognition trained on this clerk's hand — twenty pages transcribed by hand to train on, then the rest by machine. That costs money and setup and is David's decision, not this archive's.

found FamilySearch full-text search — untested

Whether the Corsican records can be searched by surname Found

did They cannot, and finding that out is the result. The Archives of the Collectivité de Corse are free, need no account and are not FamilySearch — the platform refuses a command-line client but opens normally in a browser. No module has a surname field. État civil, Corsica christiana, Recensements, Registres matricules all take the same three criteria — commune, date range, record type — and the platform says outright that anything else is une recherche non indexée. So Corsica is images to be read, like Vodnjan. But the record types include TABLE DÉCENNALE — the alphabetical ten-yearly index French civil registration compiled for every commune, 1793–1902. That is roughly eleven index pages per commune instead of ten years of acts, and it is why Corsica can be finished when Vodnjan cannot: an Austrian Liber Defunctorum was never indexed by anybody. Six Cap Corse communes are on the platform and all are in scope: Tomino, Rogliano, Ersa, Centuri, Morsiglia, Barrettali. Available types: naissances, mariages, décès, baptêmes, sépultures, publications de mariage, table décennale.

found Archives de Corse — archives.isula.corsica

A filter of mine deleted a paragraph of hers Correction

did This archive said Nothing — that is the problem. The account of Paputchka's death, some five hundred words, silently vanished from the transcription. What is true The scanner destroyed its opening sentence, returning «WS CAPES FUG PS PEPE AU SII Pony FRU. OI WC PI PO UT UU TET» where she had written «We experienced "true" love with our Siberian Husky Paputchka». A rule I wrote to strip scanner noise matched that line — and because prose is stored one line per paragraph, deleting the line deleted the entire paragraph. How it happened Restored word for word from the original, supplied by David, and marked on the page as restored so no reader has to wonder which text they are looking at. The lesson is specific and unpleasant: a cleanup rule that operates on a whole paragraph can destroy a whole paragraph. Noise-stripping must be scoped to the noise — a few tokens — and never to the container it sits in. It was also found by the reader, not by me: nothing in the build warned that five hundred words had gone, because nothing was counting. A reconciliation was then run over the whole page — every substantial line of the raw scan tested against the published text — and it found four more losses of the same kind: the closing paragraph of the husky piece, which had been left beginning mid-sentence at «anger and rage»; a sentence from A Suicide Avenged; a line of dialogue from it; and part of the godparents letter. All four are restored and marked. One passage is unrecoverable — three lines describing a person, from the 2004 course — and stands on the page as a stated gap rather than a silent one.

found A claim taken back

A living man named in an allegation Correction

did This archive said Her own introduction to the first poem was published word for word, and it named the man she was then married to in a sentence describing «a long standing affair, committing adultery for years». What is true That should never have gone up. It is an allegation of adultery against a named living person, published by this archive. That the words are hers and that she published them herself does not transfer the risk or the discretion — the archive chose to reproduce them. How it happened The name is removed; the sentence now reads «my marriage was over». It is the single alteration to her text anywhere on that page, and the page says so. The failure was not ignorance of the rule. The same rule had been applied an hour earlier, and correctly, to a different document — a statement of allegations that was excluded entirely for naming living people. Then a transcription was published verbatim without running the same test over it. A rule applied once is not a rule; it has to be run against every page that goes out.

found A claim taken back

«Corsica — not ours» Correction

did This archive said The lines page filed Corsica under «not ours». What is true Nobody had checked. Not one search had ever been run in a French archive for this surname, in any commune. «Not ours» was a guess wearing the clothes of a finding — the same error as a false join, made in the opposite direction. How it happened Replaced with a stated position and its reasoning on a page of its own: a parallel, not a branch, expected to be unrelated and not yet tested. Dismissing a line without looking is exactly as unevidenced as claiming one.

found A claim taken back

«Nine parishes» on the Archive page Correction

did This archive said «1,151 registers catalogued across nine parishes» — the count of books was computed from the data, the count of parishes was typed by hand. What is true There are fourteen: Barban, Cerovlje, Gologorica, Gračišće, Ližnjan, Motovun, Pazin, Pićan, Poreč, Svetvinčenat, Umag, Vižinada, Vodnjan and Čepić. How it happened Now computed from the same data as the number beside it. Any figure a page states should be derived, not typed — a hand-typed number is right on the day it is written and wrong from then on.

found A claim taken back

What the Archive's 1,151 actually counts Correction

did This archive said Nothing false — but the page led with 1,151 and let a reader assume it was a measure of the project's reach. Set beside a sister site's 10,536 records naming 4,779 people, it invited exactly the wrong comparison. What is true 1,151 counts books, not people. It is the Pazin inventory of parish registers that exist. This archive has opened a book in 7 of the 14 parishes, and most of the 997 digitised volumes have never been looked at. The comparable people-counts are 1,136 on Everyone and 1,508 on The Register. How it happened The page now says so in its own words, and says why the sister project's number is larger: it read a town's death registers act by act rather than searching an index for one surname. 1,151 is not an achievement. It is the size of the job.

found A claim taken back

Piero della Francesca in the family tree Correction

did This archive said Nothing on this site — the claim is in the family's own MyHeritage tree, which places the painter Piero della Francesca (1415–1492) of Sansepolcro in this family, with his father Benedetto and mother Romana di Perino. What is true Piero's father genuinely was a de' Franceschi of Sansepolcro, so the surname is real. The connection to the Carnian and Istrian family is not. Nothing documents it, and nothing here claims it. How it happened Recorded rather than deleted, because the tree is a source this archive reads and it is better to name a doubtful join than to leave it unmentioned. All three are marked so on their own pages. This is the third famous namesake the project has had to refuse — after the Venetian printer and the Venetian painter — and the pattern is always the same: a well-known man of the name, and no join but the name.

found A claim taken back

Hedviga Blažević has two birthdays Correction

did This archive said Two pages give her birth as 8 March 1926. A third page quotes the certified extract of the Senj birth register, attached to her son's 1951 entry, which gives 3 August 1926. What is true Both have stood on this site at once and nobody noticed. Written as numbers they are 8/3/1926 and 3/8/1926 — a day and a month exchanged, almost certainly where a European date met an English-speaking translator. This archive does not know which is right. How it happened Neither has been quietly deleted. Both now stand, marked as in conflict, and the Senj birth register for 1926 is an errand. The lesson is one this project keeps relearning: a date that appears twice in an archive should be diffed, not trusted twice.

found A claim taken back

Anton Rudolf, dead in 1943 and certified in 1950 Correction

did This archive said Anton Rudolf Defranceski, born 20 January 1890 at Klenovica house 22, died in 1943 — recorded here «per the family». The same page also has him on the Pfullingen list of foreigners in 1947 and certified by that town's mayor in 1950. What is true Those cannot both be about the same living man. Either the 1943 death is wrong — and it was only ever family testimony, never a register — or the Pfullingen documents are about a different Anton. The archive printed both and did not notice. How it happened Surfaced only because the family's oral history of 1948 made the widow's situation matter. Written up on Nineteen forty-eight, and the Crikvenica death register for 1943 is now an errand. Lore is worth collecting partly because it makes you re-read your own pages.

found A claim taken back

What the first 403 actually was Correction

did This archive said That FamilySearch's tile server had blocked the death-register reading, recorded as blocked in the Search Register and written up on Method as a second instance of when the service says stop, stop. What is true The tile path was wrong. Tiles live at …/image.xml's sibling image_files/{level}/{col}_{row}.jpg, and the reader was asking for …/{level}/{col}_{row}.jpg — no image_files. Today that same wrong path returns a plain 404; yesterday the security service answered the unknown path with a 403. So the reading was stopped by my own broken URL, dressed up as somebody else's refusal. A real block did come later, after several hundred tile requests, on image.xml itself — and that one is recorded honestly. How it happened Check that the request is well-formed before concluding you have been refused. A 403 on a path that does not exist is not a verdict on your conduct. The cheap test — does the correct URL work? — costs one request and was not run.

found A claim taken back

The FamilySearch paging cap Correction

did This archive said A method note stated the persona endpoint caps out at about 1,100 records. What is true The real ceiling is about 1,800. The 1,100 figure came from a run that stopped early and was never retested; the full harvest of 10 September reached 1,800 distinct records before the endpoint began serving page one again. How it happened Retested deliberately, at offsets 1,800, 2,600 and 3,600, before publishing a number that the whole of The Register now rests on.

found A claim taken back

Living people Correction

did This archive said The footer of every page read «Living people are excluded from this build.» What is true At David's instruction the policy changed: living people the archive knows of are now named, by name only — no date of birth, no address, no place of residence, no photograph. How it happened The footer was corrected the same day the policy changed, rather than left contradicting the pages above it.

found A claim taken back

«Never once as the officiant» Correction

did This archive said That Don Stefano De Franceschi appears in the Vodnjan marriage register nineteen times as a witness and never once as the officiant — a point this archive made repeatedly, because it fixed his standing under the parroco Giovanni Tromba. What is true On 26 January 1833 he married a couple himself: «D.n Stefano De Franceschi, De Parochi lic., li congiunse e benedisse nella Chiesa Parrocchiale». How it happened True of every entry from 1819 to the end of 1832, and stated as though it were true of the whole book — while sixty openings of that book were still unread. A claim about a register nobody has finished reading is a claim about the part you have read. What survives is the better point: he acts «De Parochi lic.», by the parish priest's licence, exactly as at the baptism of 1816. Seventeen years apart, the same three words.

found A claim taken back

Reading a formula as a personal arrangement Correction

did This archive said That «De Parochi lic.» — by the parish priest's licence — was the particular standing Don Stefano De Franceschi held at Vodnjan, and that the register used «the same three words about him» seventeen years apart, at a baptism in 1816 and at an altar in 1833. What is true It is the register's standard formula for any priest deputising for the parroco. The very next entry, 13 February 1833, uses it of Don Pietro Bradamante. How it happened Published the day before, on a run of entries that happened to feature one man. Two consecutive days of the same book undid it. The underlying fact is unchanged — Don Stefano was never the parson of Vodnjan — but the phrase was doing work it does not do.

found A claim taken back

Full-text search of the whole book for every spelling of the surname Found

did Two finds, and one of them is uncomfortable. Antoljak cites Carlo De Franceschi twenty-one times across his study of the Slav settlement of Istria — and corrects him twice: once for misreading a charter («netočno pročitan»), once, harder, for writing in 1885 that Istria was never occupied or ruled by any Slav people, having confused the Rječina with the Raša. Published on Carlo's Book, under the claim it complicates. And, in the Zadar chapter, a palace: «Ferro-Grisogono-Franceschi», on the corner of Široka ulica, with a footnote to an article «Famiglia Franceschi» in the Zadar almanac for 1859 that this project had never heard of.

found Stjepan Antoljak, «Hrvati u prošlosti» (475 pp., supplied by David)

A filter this archive had never applied to a query it had run many times Found

did Seven records nobody here had seen, and three of them read on the film. A De Franceschi household in Fiume in 1626 — Giovanni Antonio and Lucia, three children baptised 1626, 1628 and 1632 — 113 years before the Valentino whom Kobler and Carlo took for the first of the name in the city. The 1628 godfather is the imperial Captain of Fiume; the 1632 baptism was performed by the Bishop of Senj in person. Almost certainly not this family, and said so on the page. Also four unread: two at Omiš (1644, and a man born about 1581 who died in 1645) and two at Split.

found FamilySearch personas, surname De Franceschi, Croatia, births 1600–1700

Opening the films behind four index entries this page had published as unread Found

did Three of the four read. Two index errors corrected — the Omiš child of January 1644 is indexed «Nicolaa, Female» and the register says «il figlio … Nicolò»; the 1645 death is indexed 20 March and the register reads 29. Two godparent appearances that exist in no index — Sig.ra Francesca de Franceschi stands twice on one opening of the Omiš book. A father styled Cap.n Zuane de Franceschi. An emergency baptism at Split in 1700, «l'acqua in casa, in caso di necessità», to Egidio de Franceschi and Maria. And Gioannes Maria de Franceschi, died 29 March 1645 aged 64 — born about 1581, the oldest birth year this archive holds for the surname anywhere in Croatia. The fourth, a Split burial of 1716, is still unopened and is labelled so.

found Omiš and Split parish registers — DGS 005494111 and 005494166

All 328 movement records harvested from the result listings (transcripts paywalled, none bought) Found

did Four of the Eleven found in it, and one gravestone finished. Bruno born 1907 petitions for United States citizenship at New York in 1939 and again in 1942 as «Bruno de Franceschi Or Seedorf»; Gerda born 1913 petitions in the same year — the surname the Millbrook stone cut off is SEEDORF. Antonio 1887 and Albina 1900 both cross in 1922, brother and sister in the same year. Joseph 1892 petitions at New York in 1912, 1915 and 1916. Basilio, Dario and Benito all sail in 1955–56. And the shape of the whole file: the commonest event is the same man arriving three times — circulation, not emigration. Four Vermont border crossings point at the Barre granite sheds, which is where a stonecutter's sons would go. Published on Leaving.

found Findmypast — Travel & Migration, surname «defranceschi»

David took a trial and asked for everything; transcripts read, not just index rows Found

did The American half of the family, in documents. The 1930 census puts three of the Eleven in one Brooklyn flat — Albina, her husband Frank Chinkojan, and her brothers Anthony (immigrated 1922) and «Grochina», the enumerator's Gioacchino. Albina's marriage licence of 23 April 1925 names her mother Maria Volhart; Joseph's of 1926 names Maria Valbart; Bruno's of 1931 names Mary Walhal — three children, three clerks, one woman, and the parish book's Volhardt behind all of them. Gerda's surname is Seedorf, of Hanover. Joseph's 1917 draft card gives 12 March 1892 and «Frieste»; the 1940 census gives him a wife and two children; and a Sergeant Joseph De Franceschi of the First World War lies at Long Island National Cemetery, dead 26 April 1940, twenty-five days after that census. Basilio died 15 June 1994. And the fused spelling Defranceski returns thirty-six of its own — a family of five off the Slovenija at Philadelphia in 1954, and two graves at Horsham, Victoria.

found Findmypast — full subscription, every category, every spelling

Searching the village name instead of the surname Found

did «Gallignana» returns ten records in the whole database and three are this family's — Joseph's naturalisation petition of 1915 and Albina's of 1928, both giving «Gallignana, Austria» as the birthplace in a United States federal record, and Albina's 1922 arrival. The other seven are the village's other emigrants: Poldrugovac, Millassich, Lanza, Silich. «Pedena» and «Pisino» then gave the crossing: Antonio and Albina De Franceschi, one index number apart, on the Conte Rosso out of Genoa in 1922 — he aged 35 living at Pićan with a wife Marta left behind, she aged 22 at Gallignana; and Albina's husband under a fourth spelling, Frank Schinkopan of Pisino, born 24 February 1896, naturalising at New York in 1920 and 1926.

found Findmypast — keyword «Gallignana», «Pedena», «Pisino»

Opening the documents behind the transcripts: census sheet, naturalisation petitions and declarations Found

did An address, a ship and a date. Albina's 1928 petition, in her own words: «I emigrated from Genoa on or about the 29 day of August 1922, and arrived at the port of New York on the 9 day of September 1922, on the vessel Conte Rosso» — and her residence, 2922 Ave. L, Brooklyn, which is the house the 1930 census sheet shows the family owning, valued at $16,000, with a radio. The sheet also gives the trades: Frank Chinkojan a chef, Anthony a fireman at an electric company, and «Trochina» a counter man in a restaurant, twenty-four weeks out of work in the first spring of the Depression. Gerda's 1939 declaration carries her photograph, her arrival at New York on the Dresden from Bremen on 21 October 1929, and the line «he was born at Gallignana, Italy on August 12, 1907». And a correction: the 1939 and 1942 records indexed under Bruno's name are Gerda's own papers. Two leads closed as well — Peter b.1902 was born at Basel, and the 1939 Register has no Defranceschi in England at all.

found Findmypast — the images, through the IIIF image service

The certificate of arrival, the petition, and the Australian headstone Found

did Joseph went first, and twelve years early. His certificate of arrival, issued at Ellis Island on 2 December 1915: «Date of arrival October 11, 1910 · Name of vessel Martha Washington · Line Aus.-Amer.» — out of Trieste about 24 September 1910, aged eighteen, on the Austro-Americana line. His petition gives 148 Sackett Street, Brooklyn, on the docks, and an occupation this archive reads as oiler. And the Horsham headstone is legible: «IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF ZDRAVKO FRANK DEFRANCESKI · DIED 22ND DECEMBER 1979 AGED 58 · BELOVED HUSBAND OF ROSA», photographed 8 May 2018. The war-grave record for Sergeant Joseph De Franceschi is an index only — no image exists to open.

found Findmypast images, second pass — Joseph's naturalisation file; BillionGraves, Horsham

Whether Antonio ever went back to the wife he left at Pićan Found

did He did, and he came out again. The manifest of the S.S. Martha Washington sailing from Trieste, stamped New York 31 May 1926, line 6: «DEFRANCESCHI, ANTONIO, 39, married, mason … last permanent residence N.Y., Brooklyn … nearest relative in country whence came: wife, Defranceschi Marta, Pedena 10, Istria, Italy». «Last permanent residence Brooklyn» is a returning resident on a re-entry permit — so he had gone home to Istria between 1922 and 1926 and come back. He was a mason, the trade his father is given by in the Gračišće book of souls. And it is the ship Joseph crossed on in 1910. Marta never came: her only «record» carries the identifier one digit along from Antonio's — she is the relation field of his own manifest line. After April 1930 he appears in no American source at all, and never completed naturalisation.

found Findmypast — the 1926 Martha Washington manifest, and a search for Marta

Seventy articles; the earliest sixty are shipping intelligence Found

did A whole chapter nobody knew was there. Between 1865 and 1878 a master of this name commands Austrian ships in the Black Sea grain and Bristol Channel coal trades — the Natalia out of Constantinople and Galatz, the Rachel from Odessa to Antwerp, the Peppina Luigia Trieste to Troon, and above all the Aquilone, «Aus, 350, Defranceschi», tracked through nineteen printed sightings from Alexandria and Sulina to Belfast, Malta, Venice, Ghent, Barcelona and out of Cardiff for Guadaloupe on 11 December 1877. The masters printed beside him are Bujanovich, Lacovich, Cattarinich, Ivancich, Nicolich — the sea-captain families of Lošinj, Rijeka and Bakar, and this archive has an unplaced Dominus household at Bakar. And in 1896 the South Wales Echo writes that «Signorina Defranceschi belongs to an old Cardiff family, and has recently taken her degree at the Vienna Conservatoire of Music», playing harpsichord recitals at the Cardiff Exhibition. Published at /at-sea/.

found Findmypast British & Irish Newspapers — keyword «Defranceschi»

83 more articles under the particle spelling, and one under the fused Found

did Three more Aquilone voyages (Queenstown with Alexandria wheat, 3 July 1872; Leith for Trieste, January 1874; Deal, Alexandria for Stockton, February 1875) — and a second man of the sea entirely: «George De Franceschi, A.B., an Austrian», giving evidence at the Board of Trade inquiry into the loss of the Shields steamer Aberlady Bay, June 1889. The first man of this surname anywhere in the archive who is named, dated, put on a named ship and quoted. Also Enrico de Franceschi, baritone of La Scala — recorded 1924 with Zita Fumagalli-Riva («here is very excellent singing»), listed in 1926 among Amato, Galeffi, Rouard and Stracciari, and broadcast live to Britain from La Scala in March 1938 with Gigli and Pagliughi. And the single «Defranceski» hit fills in a career: Josip Defranceski, Director of External Services, Radio Belgrade, leaving Peshawar for Kabul in December 1959.

found Findmypast newspapers, second pass — «de Franceschi» and «Defranceski»

The Aquilone's port of registry Miss

did She is not in it. Both volumes downloaded and searched in full; the only near match is the French Aquilon of Jersey, 48 tons. That is informative rather than disappointing: Lloyd's classed British ships and foreign ships whose owners paid London. An Austrian barque of 350 tons belongs on the register of the Austro-Hungarian Veritas, whose books are at Trieste and Rijeka. The port of registry — the fact that would say whether she was a Bakar, Rijeka or Lošinj ship — has to be asked there. What London gives instead is her Cardiff agent, G. Montaldo & Co.

found Lloyd's Register of Shipping, 1875 and 1877–78 (Internet Archive full text)

Gallignana, Pisino, Buccari as keywords Mixed

did «Gallignana»: zero articles in the entire archive. «Pisino»: 915, every one of them OCR noise — «early rising» mis-set, and a brand of stove polish called Pisino Sun. «Buccari»: 1,377, and all of them shipping — Bakar had its own standing heading in the London shipping press from at least 1850, between Cagliari and Carloforte in the alphabetical run of ports. The town where this archive has twelve unplaced Dominus people was tracked daily by the London insurance market for a century. And no Defranceschi ever appears under that heading.

found British & Irish newspapers — the archive's own place-names

The Australian press, which is not on Findmypast Found

did «Defranceski» returns two, both government gazettes. «Defranceschi» returns thirteen, and one is a story: The Age, Melbourne, 25 January 1954, «Girl Saw Friend Drown» — «Giordano Defranceschi, laborer, swam out into the … but Defranceschi disappeared … before the eyes of a girl he met here last week.» The Australian inward passenger lists carry a Giordano de Franceschi arriving in 1950; this archive believes they are the same man and cannot prove it. Also DeFranceschi Bros, 716 Chappie Lane, Broken Hill, NSW Government Gazette, 17 June 1966. And no nineteenth-century Defranceschi in the Australian press at all — the name arrives after the Second World War, exactly as the passenger lists say.

found Trove, National Library of Australia — newspapers and gazettes

The one Australian record fifty-seven years before all the others Found

did Solved, and it is not a migrant. «INWARD. A LIST of the Crew and Passengers arrived in the Ship Miowera of London, James Stott Master, of the Burthen of 1,911 Tons, from the Port of Melbourne to Sydney, New South Wales, 1893.» In the seamen's column, dittoed down from the quartermaster above him: «G. Defranceschi · ″ · 28 · Austrian». Q.M. — quartermaster, twenty-eight, Austrian, on the overnight run from Melbourne to Sydney on 6 January 1893. He was not going to Australia; he was passing through it. The surname reaches Australia in 1893 as a sailor and does not settle there for another fifty-seven years.

found NSW Unassisted Passenger Lists — the 1893 Australian outlier

Albina's husband's own papers, and the 1922 embarkation list Found

did Frank Schinkopan's declaration of intention, Brooklyn 1920: «aged 24, occupation Cook, complexion fair, height 5 feet 8, weight 144, hair dark brown, eyes gray; born in Pisino, Italy, on the 24 day of February 1896; residing 304 Ninth Avenue, Brooklyn; emigrated from Trieste, Austria, on the vessel Elenor; not married; renouncing particularly Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, of whom I am now a subject; arrived at the port of New York on or about the 15 March 1920.» A cook in a Brooklyn room in 1920; a chef owning a $16,000 house on Avenue L by 1930. And the Conte Rosso manifest opened — the Italian form, «Numero dei biglietto · COGNOME E NOME · PATERNITÀ · ETÀ» — with De Franceschi Antonio 35 and De Franceschi Albina 22 on consecutive lines. The paternità column is blank but for a tick: the one document that asked directly who their father was did not write it down. A «going to join» column exists but the rows could not be aligned across the spread with certainty and were not guessed at.

found Findmypast images, third pass — Frank Schinkopan's declaration; the Conte Rosso manifest

A death record for either of them Miss

did Nothing. Bruno died at Millbrook, New York, on 6 July 2000 by his gravestone, and the Social Security Death Index and obituary collections on Findmypast carry neither him nor Gerda. Their dates come from the stone and from the naturalisation papers, and that is where they stay.

found Findmypast — deaths of Bruno and Gerda de Franceschi

The last of the four unread records Found

did The best single line found all day. The index said «Nicolo De Franceschi, burial 18 May 1716, birth 1626». The register says: «Can.co Don Nicolò de Franceschi ⟨Can.co di S. Vito di Candia⟩ passò da questa alla miglior vita d'anni 90 incirca … et fù sepolto nella Chiesa del Domo in Coro nella sepoltura delli Sig.ri Can.ci.» A canon of a church in Candia — Crete — buried in the choir of Split cathedral in the canons' vault, aged about ninety. Born about 1626; Candia fell to the Turks in 1669 when he was forty-three. The Seget branch's Cretan origin has been treated on this site as the family's own tradition. It now has a document standing beside it.

found Split, Župa Sv. Dujma — DGS 005494174, image 378

The Rovinj records, from 1619 Found

did A new earliest. «Adì 27 Mago 1619 · morì ser Piero di Franceschi da Pola. Fu portato il suo cadavere … off. L 24» — the oldest dated appearance of this surname in Istria the archive holds, seven years before the Fiume baptisms and a hundred and forty-two before the name is first written at Gologorica. He is styled ser; he is of Pola, not of Rovinj; his body was carried there; and his offering of 24 lire is near the top of a page whose other entries run at 2, 6 and 12. And the second-oldest is also a stranger: «Ob.to di Matt.o de Franceschi da Dignano», 27 December 1728, 6 lire — Vodnjan, which this archive lists among the unplaced. The film holds fourteen more, including a Rovinj household across three generations (Giacomo → Vittorio & Domenica Moscarda → Piero Anto 1736) — and Carlo De Franceschi's own marriage to Maria Michelcich, with his parents named as «Giuseppe da Gologorizza» and «Lambertina Pesle». That image has not been opened.

found Rovinj, Župa Rovinj — DGS 005497871, images 225 and 466

Finding and opening the registers, after this archive first said they did not exist Found

did Found, and a correction retracted. This archive said in the afternoon that the seventy-eight Vodnjan records were really Vižinada's, because the catalogue answered the film number 005497893 with «Župa Vižinada». A reel can carry two parishes. That one holds Vižinada's deaths 1754–1831 and Vodnjan's baptisms 1815–1866, catalogue item koha:963267 — «metrical books for the Roman Catholic congregation at Dignano … later Vodnjan». The marriages 1815–1884 and deaths to 1893 are on films 894 and 895. The baptismal book is headed «LIBER BAPTIZATORUM IN ECCLESIA S. BLASII DIGNANI», and entry 149 of 4 December 1816 gives house 376, «Pietro De Franceschi di Giuseppe, agricoltore», «Maria Malusà q.m Matteo di Antonio», condition civile — and the baptising priest is «D. Stefano De Franceschi, de Parocho licentia». A priest of the name at Vodnjan, and five lay households. The one death on that reel, Mathaeus De Franceschi son of Anton, house 32, 7 August 1819, is in the Liber Defunctorum of Castellier — Kaštelir, under Vižinada — which is exactly why the wrong answer looked right.

found Vodnjan (Dignano) parish registers — DGS 005497893–95, catalogue koha:963267

Reading the marriage register by eye, because nobody has indexed it Found

did The register is not indexed. Two hundred and eighty-six marriage-query arks were resolved against film 005497894 and none of them is on it, which is why these marriages have never been seen. Read opening by opening instead. Eleven openings in, five De Franceschi appearances: 30 March 1818, house 312 — «Pietro De Franceschi q.m Gio. Maria, vedovo della q.m Veniera Franzin q.m Domenico», aged 42, marrying Lorenza Tesser q.m Ambrogio, widow of Andrea Manzin, which puts his birth about 1776 and his father's death before 1818; «+ Cristoforo De Franceschi di Giuseppe, tessitore» and «+ Pietro De Franceschi di Giuseppe, agricoltore» as witnesses in March and September 1818, both signing with a cross — brothers, and a different Pietro from the widower; «Don Stefano De Franceschi, Sacerdote» as witness on 7 June 1819, with the page signed by Giovanni Tromba S.T.D., parroco e preposito del Capitolo — so Don Stefano was a priest of the town, not the parish priest; and «la fu Domenica De Franceschi», mother of a bride aged 40 in November 1817, dead before the register begins and born about 1750. Images 183–265 still to read.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum 1815–1884 — DGS 005497894, images 172–182

Reading on: 1819 and 1820 Found

did A priest, a ploughman and a weaver turn out to be brothers. On 17 August 1820 the clerk writes the witness in full — «D.n Stefano De Franceschi di Giuseppe — Sacerdote» — the same patronymic already recorded for «+ Pietro De Franceschi di Giuseppe, agricoltore» and «+ Cristoforo De Franceschi di Giuseppe, tessitore», both of whom sign with a cross. Don Stefano witnesses four marriages in these openings (7 June and 20 August 1819, 17 August and 13 November 1820), twice beside a canon of the chapter, never as officiant — the parroco who signs every page is Giovanni Tromba S.T.D. Also found: «la vivente Antonia Maria De Franceschi», widow of Damiano Storcovich, alive 30 June 1819 with a daughter aged 40 — a second woman of the name born about 1750, alongside the Domenica already dead in 1817.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 183–187

The 1821 marriage that closes a chain Found

did Four generations off one page. From 1821 the register rules new columns — «Sponsus et Genitores» — and names both parties' parents in every entry. The first result: 9 June 1821, house 356, «Gio: Maria De Franceschi figlio di Pietro De Franceschi q.m Gio: Maria e della fu Veniera Francin q.m Dom.co de Rondel», aged 22, marrying Lucia Bonassin, aged 27. That is the household this archive had reconstructed from the baptism register — now with its father, grandfather and great-grandfather named. It also settles this morning's open question: the Gio Maria fathering children in the 1820s was flagged as probably a grandson of the Gio Maria dead by 1818, marked inf because it was not proved. It is proved.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, image 188

1821–1822 Found

did A third De Franceschi woman married out. 14 November 1821, house 54: Maria, daughter of Alvise Birattan q.m Saba and «Lucia De Franceschi q.m Pietro», marries at twenty-one — so Lucia married by 1799 and her father Pietro was dead by 1821, which makes him older than the Pietro who remarried in 1818. The witnesses are Giannandrea Dalla Zonca, Nobile and Guglielmo Conte Lombardo di Pola, and the couple needed a dispensation in the fourth degree of consanguinity. Also Don Stefano's fifth witness appearance, 3 July 1822, house 200. And one deliberate miss recorded — «Maddalena Franceschich q.m Gio, di Pinguente», a Slavic patronymic out of Buzet that is not this surname.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 189–190

1823–1824 Found

did «Pietro De Franceschi di Gio., da Dignano — Tessitore», witness on 30 January 1824 at a marriage celebrated in Šišan by that village's curate. Because the wedding was outside Vodnjan the clerk records where each witness came from, and this is the same formula that labelled «Matt.o de Franceschi da Dignano» when he was buried at Rovinj in 1728 — ninety-six years apart, the name written down only from outside the town. He is a fourth distinct Pietro — son of a Giovanni, and a weaver like Cristoforo. Also Bianca Bortolan, second daughter of Lucia De Franceschi q.m Pietro, married 14 June 1824 aged 20, fixing that household's dates without a baptism surviving for any of them.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 191–192

1823–1824: a second male line Found

did A second Vodnjan line, three generations deep, unrelated to Giuseppe's. 19 November 1823, house 684: Bonetta, «figlia del fu Pietro De Franceschi q.m Dom.co e Domenica Manzin q.m Dom.co», marries at twenty-three — so born about 1800, her father dead by 1823 and his father a Domenico. Ninety days later, 28 February 1824, house 764, a «Pietro De Franceschi q.m Pietro, agricoltore» witnesses — a man whose father Pietro is newly dead, and on the dates almost certainly Bonetta's brother. Left open on purpose: whether this Pietro q.m Domenico is also the «q.m Pietro» who fathered Lucia, married out by 1799. A shared forename is not evidence.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, image 193

1824–1825, and a correction Found

did A third daughter, and a misreading put right. 15 January 1825, house 667: Lucia, «figlia di Alvise Birattan q.m Saba e di Lucia De Franceschi q.m Pietro», marries at 28 — born about 1797, alongside Maria (b. c.1800) and Bianca (b. c.1804). Three weddings out of one house, none of them indexed anywhere. This entry also writes the husband's surname clearly, and it is Birattan, not the Bortolan this archive published earlier today off the 1821 hand; the earlier rows have been corrected in place with the change stated. Also Don Stefano's sixth witness appearance, 28 October 1824, house 208, again beside Canon Michiel Benedetto.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 194–195

1825–1826 Found

did Pietro had a brother. 25 January 1826, house 224: Michiela, «figlia di Cristoforo De Franceschi q.m Gio: Maria e di Maria Luigia Manzin q.m Domenico», marries at 26 — the same dead father as the Pietro who remarried in 1818, so Cristoforo is his brother and the eldest Vodnjan line now carries two sons. It also means two men named Cristoforo De Franceschi are alive in the town at once — this one q.m Gio: Maria, and the weaver di Giuseppe — told apart only by the father's name. And 10 July 1826: «Ant.o De Franceschi fu Vittorio» witnesses at a wedding celebrated by the archpriest at Svetvinčenat — a Rovinj given-name in the patronymic and a Svetvinčenat venue, recorded as a coincidence of the page and not claimed as a link. One miss ruled out by eye on image 196: «Pietro Francin q.m Fran.co», not Franceschi.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 196–198

1826–1828 Found

did A sister, and the eldest line becomes a family of three. 7 February 1828, house 366: Michiela Damiana, daughter of the late Domenico Pastrovicchio and «della vivente Veniera De Franceschi q.m Gio: Maria», marries at twenty — and the witness is «Cristoforo De Franceschi fu Gio: M.a, Agricoltore», her uncle. So Gio. Maria De Franceschi, dead before 1818, is now shown with three children — Pietro, Cristoforo and Veniera — none of whom has a baptism on any film this archive can reach; the register found them by naming their dead father the same way three times across ten years. Also «Pietro De Franceschi di Gio., Tessitore» witnessing again on 23 September 1828, in Vodnjan this time and without the «da Dignano», which shows he lived there. And Don Stefano's seventh and eighth appearances, 16 February and 23 September 1828. Images 199 and 200 read with no De Franceschi on them.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 199–202

Late 1828 into 1829 Found

did Cristoforo the weaver, named in full at last — «Cristoforo De Franceschi di Giuseppe, Tessitore», witness 25 November 1828 — which is what safely separates him from the other Cristoforo, fu Gio: Maria, the ploughman who witnessed his own niece's wedding ten months earlier. Two men, one name, one town, one volume. Don Stefano witnesses twice more the same afternoon (entries 42 and 43, both 25 November 1828), taking him to ten. And the near-miss worth keeping: «Giuseppe figlio del fu Pietro Francin q.m Dom.co de Rondel» — not Franceschi, but the identical patronymic to Pietro De Franceschi's first wife «Veniera Francin q.m Dom.co de Rondel», so this groom is Veniera's nephew and a first cousin of the 1821 bridegroom. Francin is not Franceschi, and in this parish the two families are a household deep in each other. Image 204 read clean.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 203–204

1829–1830 Found

did Don Stefano reaches fourteen witness appearances in ten years — four of them on these two openings alone (23 May, 31 August, 19 and 22 December 1829). The May wedding was held in the church of San Martino and he stood beside Ferdinando Verbits, Maestro delle Scuole Elementari, the town schoolmaster; the December one carried a dispensation from the three readings of the banns granted by the Imperial-Royal Circle Captaincy. He is never once the officiant: that is always the parroco Giovanni Tromba. Pietro De Franceschi di Gio., Tessitore witnesses a third time on 22 February 1830, on a marriage dispensed in the fourth degree of consanguinity by the Ordinariate of Pola — which is where Vodnjan's church paperwork ran, and where to write next.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 205–206

1830, and a fifth generation Found

did A widow's second wedding names her grandfather. 25 June 1830, house 483: Veniera De Franceschi, widow of Domenico Pastrovicchio, remarries at forty-nine — and because a widow's remarriage is written out in full, the clerk records her parents: «Gio. Maria De Franceschi fu Pietro e Michiela Zambaletta fu Cristoforo». The father who has been a bare name since March 1818 now has a father and a wife of his own, and the Vodnjan line stands five generations deep off this one unindexed book, back to a marriage of the 1770s. Michiela Zambaletta is the first woman named as a mother anywhere in the line. Don Stefano witnesses twice more, 8 June and 24 November 1830, reaching sixteen.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 207–208

Whose face is on the Crikvenica page Correction

did The face was wrong, and it was on the direct line's own page. A hand-tinted portrait of a bearded man in a bow tie had been published here as Josip Defranceschi, born at Gračišće 22 March 1863 — David's great-grandfather, and the only likeness the direct line had. David identified it: the photograph is from the Imotski branch, and the sitter is a Josip of that family. Two branches' pictures sit in one collection; a card carried the name, this line has a man of that name, and this archive matched face to name without asking which Josip. The register plates on that page were checked against Gračišće and Ledenice — the portrait was never checked against anything. Withdrawn from the head card and from the 1906 entry in the story, recaptioned in the gallery, and a correction section added to the page where it stood. The companion portrait published as his wife Ana is also withdrawn: its only identification was that it matched the man beside it. No likeness of the Crikvenica Josip is known to this archive. Note the pattern — the retired 2018 GEDCOM spliced Imotski onto this line too. The same seam has now caught this archive twice, once in a pedigree and once in a photograph.

found Family photograph collection — the hand-tinted portrait pair

Carlo De Franceschi's own marriage, opened at last Found

did The historian was married lying down. 1 March 1852 at Rovinj: «Il Signor Carlo De Franceschi q.m Giuseppe e della Sig.ra Lambertina Pesle di Mattia, da Gologorizza di Pisino, Assessore presso quest'I. R. Corte di Giustizia, celibe d'anni 40» marries «Maria Michelcich di Luca e di Maria, celibe d'anni 26» — «al letto dello Sposo, per essere gravemente ammalato», at the bridegroom's bed because he was gravely ill. The banns were dispensed the same day by the Imperial-Royal District Captaincy, note № 898, urgente necessitate, and the witnesses are the deputy State Prosecutor Zaccaria Maver and Dr Barzan, physician — the law and the medicine, not the family. He did not die; he lived to 1893. The entry also fixes his office in 1852 and names both parents. Two corrections fall out: the register says d'anni 40 and he was forty-two (b. 16 Oct 1809); and this archive's marriage table carried the year as 1812 — it is 1852, now fixed with the reason stated. On the same film, a burial of «Julius, son of Carlo», born 1853, dead 13 February 1854 — very probably the first child of this marriage.

found Rovinj, marriages — DGS 005497870, image 211, entry 31

1831–1832 Found

did A fifth woman married out, and a fourth trade. 17 November 1831: «Ant.o Gio., figlio di Fran.co Gorlato q.m Biaggio e della q.m Luigetta De Franceschi», marrying at twenty-three — so she was born about 1808's mother's generation and dead by 1831, and she joins Domenica, Antonia Maria, Lucia and Veniera as women of the name recoverable only through a child's wedding. 18 February 1832: «Giovanni De Franceschi q.m Pietro, Calzolajo» witnesses — a shoemaker, and on the patronymic very likely a brother of Bonetta and of Pietro the ploughman in the line descending from a Domenico. Pietro q.m Pietro also witnesses again, 15 October 1831. Don Stefano reaches eighteen. One generation of one surname in one small town now shows a priest, a ploughman, a weaver and a shoemaker.

found Vodnjan, Liber Copulatorum — DGS 005497894, images 209–210

A face on the direct line Correction

did This archive said A hand-tinted portrait of a bearded man in a bow tie, published as Josip Defranceschi, born at Gračišće 22 March 1863 — David's great-grandfather, and the only likeness the direct line had. What is true It is from the Imotski branch, and the sitter is a Josip of that family. No likeness of the Crikvenica Josip is known to this archive. The companion portrait published as his wife Ana is withdrawn too, because its only identification was that it matched the man beside it. How it happened Two branches' photographs sit in one family collection. A card carried the name, this line has a man of that name, and this archive matched the face to the name without asking which Josip — while checking every register plate on the same page against Pazin and Ledenice. The portrait was never checked against anything. Identified by David, who holds the originals. The retired 2018 GEDCOM spliced Imotski onto this line as well: the same seam has caught this archive twice.

found A claim taken back

Seventy-eight records moved to the wrong parish Correction

did This archive said That the seventy-eight Vodnjan records were really Vižinada's, because resolving them to film 005497893 and asking the catalogue who made that film returned «Rimokatolička crkva. Župa Vižinada». What is true A reel can carry more than one parish. That one holds Vižinada's deaths 1754–1831 and Vodnjan's baptisms 1815–1866 (koha:963267). The records are Vodnjan's. How it happened The catalogue answers a film-number query with the first creator on the reel. The method was sound and the question put to it was wrong. It stood on the site for about an hour, published within twenty minutes of being reached and without a single image being opened. What made it look right: the one death on that reel really is Vižinada's — it is in the Liber Defunctorum of Castellier, Kaštelir.

found A claim taken back

Forty-four people filed under the wrong town Correction

did This archive said Eight reconstructed Vodnjan households and their children carried Vižinada as their parish in the roster, and the households themselves had no place at all. What is true They are Vodnjan. Eight households placed, forty-four rows moved, and Vodnjan moved out of unplaced into Southern Istria. How it happened The correction above was published on the narrative page and never reached the data. David asked why the headcount had not moved all day; it had not, because the roster was three commits behind the research and still carried the error the essay had already retracted. Fixed, and the rebuild order is now written into the queue notes.

found A claim taken back

A surname misread Correction

did This archive said «Alvise Bortolan q.m Saba», husband of Lucia De Franceschi, in two published entries. What is true «Alvise Birattan q.m Saba». The 1825 entry writes it legibly, and the two earlier ones say the same thing once you go back and look. How it happened A hard hand read twice from the same wrong first guess. Bortolan was this archive's word, not the register's.

found A claim taken back

A marriage dated forty years early Correction

did This archive said Carlo De Franceschi × Maria Michelcich, 1812. What is true 1 March 1852, Rovinj, entry 31. The bride was twenty-six, so she cannot have married in 1812. How it happened Carried straight from an index whose year field appears to hold the groom's, not the marriage's. It survived because nobody had opened the image — the same failure as the portrait, in a different medium.

found A claim taken back

A broken site pushed live Correction

did This archive said Nothing — the page simply was not there for about six minutes. What is true The build had failed and the commit went out anyway. How it happened npm run build | tail -2 hides the build's exit code behind the pipe's. This was the second time. There is now scripts/publish.sh, which builds without a pipe, checks that every source page produced an output file, and refuses to commit or push if either fails.

found A claim taken back

Bold words breaking onto their own line Correction

did This archive said Nothing wrong in the words — but wherever a paragraph of running prose contained a bold phrase, the phrase was thrown onto a line of its own, so the sentence read as three broken fragments. What is true A styling fault, live across the site for an unknown period and on eleven pages that pass marked-up text into a paragraph. How it happened .prose was declared display:flex; flex-direction:column, which turns every inline child — including a — into its own flex item. It is now spacing applied between block children only. Found by looking at a new page rather than by any test. Two stylesheets exist in this repo and only one is loaded; the first fix went into the wrong one.