The Defranceschi Archive
The Defranceschi Archive, as one book

Contents

Front matter and 7 parts, read in order or entered anywhere. Every page of the archive is a chapter, and Previous and Next at the foot of each page follow this order. The menus stay as shortcuts; no address has moved.

Front

Front matter

  1. The coverNot one family but a surname, and every line that carries it: the evidence, and what is still missing.
  2. AboutHow this archive decides what it is willing to say.
  3. MethodWhat this archive learned the hard way about reading Istrian registers online.
I

I. The name, and where it begins 🇮🇹 🇭🇷

A surname written down under eight sovereigns, in four languages, and spelled at least nine ways, and the place where every account the family gives of itself begins: the valleys of Carnia, where the documents run out. This part reads the name, then the mountain villages, then Istria town by town, then the historian of the province, whose letter answers, in his own hand, most of what the archive has spent its time trying to establish.

The name

  1. The NameEvery shift has a cause: a change of ruler, clerk or language.
  2. Say Your NameOne person, written down six different ways by six different clerks.
  3. Arms & FlagsWhere the internet lies to people, and the honest position.
  4. The Other FranceschiSome are certainly kin to this family, most are certainly not; the point is the name.

Where it begins

  1. Back to CarniaTwelve De Franceschi across three villages, and the name still at Mione in 1939.
  2. Every Town in IstriaTwenty-one towns carry the name, thirty-nine do not.

The family's historian

  1. Carlo De FranceschiThe historian of Istria, and this family's own.
  2. Carlo's LetterHis reply to a question about the families of Fiume who carried the surname.
  3. Carlo's BookA history of his province, online all along, that gives the home parishes a diocese and is silent about Carnia.
  4. The Library in ZagrebThe books and the family archive from the house at Gologorica were not destroyed in 1945.
II

II. Our line, from Gologorica to Brisbane 🇭🇷 🇩🇪 🇿🇦 🇦🇺

One descent of eight generations, told once in order, then drawn, then taken station by station: Gologorica, Gračišće, Crikvenica, Senj and Pfullingen, with the families of the mothers behind it and the families that married into the direct line. Every chapter carries the document it rests on and says where the evidence stops.

  1. The StoryThe whole descent told once, in order, with the document behind every claim.
  2. The SpineEight generations; for four of them a page of the Gračišće parish books names the household, the wife and the trade.
  3. Our line, drawnEight generations of a single descent, each as the couple it actually was; every child listed.

Stations of the line

  1. The Gologorica LineRead off the parish register itself, page by page: the ancestral line.
  2. The ElevenThe American branch's first reunion and printed tree begin with a man born at Gallignana in 1856.
  3. The House at CrikvenicaThe generation that came down off the Istrian hills to the Kvarner coast, with the family's own photographs.
  4. The Senj LineBehind the wife from Senj stand carriers, tobacco-factory workers and a Karlobag ancestry.
  5. Six Names at PfullingenA 1947 list of foreigners registered at Pfullingen: six Defranceski, five of them born at Crikvenica.
  6. Nineteen forty-eightTold in the family and held as lore until a record says otherwise: they went to leave the country.

The mothers' families

  1. Salomon — FranciscaGeneration two: what can be proved about her family, and what it would take to prove more.
  2. SalomonA family that married into our own direct line.
  3. Fernasar — MariaGeneration three: what can be proved about her family, and what it would take to prove more.
  4. Fernasar / TornasarA family that married into our own direct line.
  5. Kalanj — AnnaWhat can be proved about the family of the great-great-grandmother, and what two archives disagreed about.
  6. KalanjA family that married into our own direct line.
  7. Kovačina — UršulaGeneration five: what can be proved about her family, and what it would take to prove more.
  8. KovačinaA family that married into our own direct line.

Other families married into the direct line

  1. Grach / GrahA family that married into our own direct line.
  2. Sablich / JablichA family that married into our own direct line.
  3. Orlis / OrtisA family that married into our own direct line.
  4. PeschleA family that married into our own direct line.

From the family's own papers

  1. The poemsA collection of poems, letters, stories and writing-course exercises, transcribed entire and in its own order: 94 pieces.
III

III. Seven families, one surname 🇭🇷 🇮🇹 🇫🇷

The archive follows seven families of the name. They arrive from different directions and the records join no two of them. This part separates a family, which is an origin, from a station on one family's road and from a namesake, then takes the others in turn: the castle parish of Svetvinčenat, the Dalmatian line out of Venice, the Cretan estate at Seget, southern Istria, Vodnjan, the Kvarner households, Dubrovnik, Corsica and the Alpine clusters of Trentino.

  1. The LinesA family is an origin, a station is a stop on one family's road, and a namesake merely shares the commonest patronymic in Italy.
  2. The treesFive of the seven families drawn, each in the form its evidence supports.
  3. SvetvinčenatA baptism of 21 December 1628, thirty-eight years before the cluster everyone knew about: the castle parish the Lines page draws as the second of the seven.

Venice and Dalmatia

  1. The Omiš LineA family chart for the Dalmatian branch, running from an envoy of Pope Urban V to the middle of the twentieth century.
  2. The Imotski FranceschiA second Franceschi family, Venetian nobility on the Vrljika, wrongly joined to this one by a widely copied online tree.
  3. Ragusa — the Dubrovnik householdA daughter who married into Ragusa, and the three children she had there.

Crete and Istria

  1. Seget, and CreteTwo branches in Istria, one at Gologorica and one at Umag and Seget, and the second said to have come out of Crete.
  2. The Candia decreesThe Venetian Senate's decrees on the Cretan refugees at Poreč and the hajduks at Medulin, 1671–1676.
  3. LižnjanThird of eighteen towns in the rebuilt record sweep, and until now without a page of its own.
  4. VodnjanTwelve families in a 1945 cadastre, and nothing behind them until the parish books were opened.

The Kvarner

  1. The Kvarner householdsNine households in two towns across two hundred and thirty years, with every missing join marked.
  2. Fiume, 1626Every household of the surname that Giovanni Kobler could find in the civic records of Fiume.

Beyond Istria

  1. CorsicaTwo women at Tomino in Cap Corse, and the reason this archive expects them to be strangers.
  2. Trentino, and the Alpine clustersA cluster of the name in the Valsugana and South Tyrol, seen but never tested.
IV

IV. Leaving, and the ground they left 🇭🇷 🇩🇪 🇺🇸 🇦🇺 🇿🇦 🇦🇷 🇧🇷

Three movements across five centuries: weavers walking south out of the mountains, two men arriving at one port in the same eighteen months, and a twentieth-century scatter across four continents. Passenger manifests and naturalisation petitions follow the name abroad; imperial, naval and shipping paper show the work it did; the burial registers and the graves show where it lies; and seven walks go to the ground itself.

The movements

  1. JourneysWeavers out of the mountains, two men at one port, and a twentieth-century scatter across four continents.
  2. LeavingPassenger manifests, naturalisation petitions and draft cards, searched across every destination country.
  3. Where the Name WentWhole branches found by searching the migration indexes by country, the largest in southern Brazil.

In service and at sea

  1. The name in imperial serviceNinety-one years of Habsburg paperwork: the passport desk, the quarantine station, the port, the navy and the army.
  2. Julius DefranceschiA complete officer's career from 181 entries in the Austro-Hungarian navy lists; not proved kin.
  3. The name at seaSeventy newspaper articles, most of them shipping intelligence from Lloyd's List.
  4. Il Giornaletto di Pola, read end to endOne hundred and sixty-four issues of Pola's daily carry the family name; all read in full.

In the ground

  1. The Register of the DeadWhat the burial register tells that baptisms cannot: how many children a family kept.
  2. Where the Name Is Cut in StoneEvery grave recorded under any spelling of the surname, gathered from the memorial indexes.

Go there

  1. Walk the lineOne itinerary across four countries and five deeper ones, each an order to do things in.
  2. The Line, end to endThe descent walked in the order it happened, across four countries.
  3. Walk the Carnia lineForty kilometres of one valley, all of it still standing.
  4. Walk the Gologorica lineA triangle twelve kilometres on a side: Gologorica, Gračišće, Pićan.
  5. The Venice and Dalmatia walkThe oldest and best-documented line, whose evidence is in state archives rather than churchyards.
  6. The Kvarner walkThe coast the family came down to, where the archive already holds the register pages.
  7. The German legThe smallest district in the archive, and the one where the line turns.
V

V. How the lines join 🇮🇹 🇭🇷

A surname is one thread and the family is the weave. This part holds who the name married and which empire still holds the records of the families it married into, the pages of those families, the households rebuilt from the registers, the blood relatives drawn out from any person, and what DNA says when it is read against four hundred years of parish registers.

  1. The MarriagesWho the name married, and which empire still holds the records of the families it married into.

Families that married in

  1. BellinichA family that married into this one.
  2. BemboA family that married into this one.
  3. BergamoA family that married into this one.
  4. BuichA family that married into this one.
  5. De CanevaA family that married into this one.
  6. ChersinA family that married into this one.
  7. CorvaA family that married into this one.
  8. CosulichA family that married into this one.
  9. CrosillaA family that married into this one.
  10. FerrareseA family that married into this one.
  11. GiachinA family that married into this one.
  12. LazaroA family that married into this one.
  13. SubiottoA family that married into this one.

Households and relatives

  1. HouseholdsA family tree rebuilt: each household is a set of siblings who name the same two parents in the index.
  2. Household ExplorerEvery reconstructed parent pair with its children; search a name, drag the year, pick a region.
  3. Blood relativesChoose a person: parents above, brothers and sisters beside, children below, each line drawn in the colour of its evidence.
  4. The DNAMatches read against 1,129 named people and four hundred years of parish registers, and a Y-DNA haplogroup for the male line.
VI

VI. Everyone, and everything in order

The people, the names, the register, the places and the dates, each in one place: 1,992 person pages, a page for every name the archive can put in writing, and the places named with all of their names. Each person and name belongs to the chapter of its index and links back to it; a living person's page gives relationships, town and country, and nothing more.

  1. The PeopleThe whole roster, in one list.
  2. Every PersonOne page per person, not per name: each row is one human being with a page of their own.
  3. Every NameOne page per name, gathering every mention of that name from every page of the site.
  4. The Register1,508 entries for 1,095 distinct names, each linked to the record it came from.
  5. PlacesEvery place carries all of its names, because which name a document uses tells you who was keeping it.
  6. The TimelineSovereignty, pressure and family event on one scale.
  7. Lives on one scaleOne bar to a person, birth to death; a solid bar is a date read off a record, a hollow one came off a tree.
  8. David's MapThe family's Google My Map, imported from its KML and kept as it was drawn.
VII

VII. How we know, and what is missing

Everything looked at, whether or not it found anything, because a search that returns nothing is a result. The sources and what each one gave, the search register, the open questions, the claims taken back, what the archive needs from a building and what it means to do next; then the investigations: the registers that exist, the maps of what has been read, and the reckonings with the old site and the live tree.

The record

  1. SourcesEverything this archive is built on, what each one gave, and where each one is weak.
  2. The Search RegisterEverything looked at, whether or not it found anything.
  3. Open QuestionsWhat this archive does not know, so that a gap is never mistaken for a fact.
  4. CorrectionsEvery claim this archive has published and then had to take back.
  5. What changedEvery search this archive has run and every claim it has taken back, newest first.
  6. ErrandsEverything this archive now needs is in a building, written up so it can be sent.
  7. The work listWhat we are going to do next, kept in one register.

Investigations

  1. The ArchiveRead directly from the State Archives in Pazin inventory: books that exist, with dates, custodians and digitisation status.
  2. Parish BooksEvery register volume photographed for the places the family came from.
  3. Antenati — the Carnia registersThe Napoleonic and Austrian civil registers for Mione and Ovaro, each line opening the book at its first image.
  4. The MapOne map and four layers: where the record books are, how far we got, and where the family lies.
  5. Every collection walkedEvery FamilySearch collection that could hold a record for this ground, including those that hold nothing.
  6. Croatia filed abroadCroatian places filed inside Italian, Hungarian, Austrian and Slovenian collections, under names the map has never heard of.
  7. The undigitisedEvery register Pazin lists as not digitised, and whether anybody else has filmed it.
  8. Findmypast, sweptWhat a month's full subscription reaches that two expiring trials could not.
  9. The live tree, reconciledWhat the family's own tree holds that this archive has never read, and the reverse.
  10. defranceski.comThe old site captured and compared with this archive page by page, and what was written down as new.
  11. The Plate RoomEvery image from the family's own papers or from an archive that sent them on request.