Searching the migration indexes by country rather than by name turns up whole branches this archive had never seen — the largest of them in southern Brazil, where dozens of De Franceschi settled among the Veneto colonies of Rio Grande do Sul.
Every previous sweep in this project searched for people. This one searched for places, and it changes the picture: the surname is not thinly scattered across the world, it is clustered, and each cluster has a date and a reason.
Read the in-law surnames rather than the given names. They say which Italy a family came out of, and often which decade, more reliably than anything the migrant wrote on a form.
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
the largest of allfrom the 1880s
Arroio do Tigre · Cachoeira do Sul · Sobradinho · Candelária and Botucaraí · Júlio de Castilhos · Santa Cruz · Ibarama · Paraíso do Sul · Porto Alegre — and beyond the state, Concórdia in Santa Catarina and Campinas and São Miguel Paulista in São Paulo
Antonio de Franceschi and Verônica Loch
Antonio, and Francisco, de Franceschi with Josephina Marcato
Maximiliano de Franceschi and Luiza Catteri — and a second Maximiliano with Amalia Negri
Isidoro de Franceschi and Maria Barbiero, whose son Maximilhano was born in 1882
João de Franceschi and Anna Busatto
Bortolo de Franceschi and Angela Poletta
Pedro de Franceschi and Angelina Raminelli
José de Franceschi and Amabile Facco
Arnaldo de Franceschi, and Albondio with Albertina Fábio, at Porto Alegre
The in-law names are the tell: Marcato, Busatto, Poletta, Raminelli, Barbiero, Negri, Catteri, Facco. Every one of them is a Veneto surname. This is the great Italian colonisation of southern Brazil that began in 1875, and the De Franceschi in it are Venetians and Friulians, not Istrians. Several are entered as born «@ Italia» as late as 1907 and 1920, so the movement ran on well into the twentieth century. Note also Loch, Falkenberg, Schwantes, Drachler and Klafhe marrying in — the German colonies of Rio Grande do Sul lay next to the Italian ones, and the families mixed.
Argentina
thin in the indexes, thick in the treefrom the 1880s
Buenos Aires · Mercedes · Libertador San Martín, Entre Ríos · and, sixty years earlier, the whole of Santa Fe province — San Lorenzo · Serodino · El Trébol · Rosario · San José del Rincón · Oliveros
Dante de Franceschi, born 1887 in Italy, with Santiago de Franceschi and Virginia Di Safra
Francisco de Franceschi, born 1904 in Italy
Oreste Defranceschi, born 1875 in Italy
Antonio de Franceschi and Veronica Loch, at Entre Ríos — the same pairing as in Rio Grande do Sul, which suggests one family moving across the border
Luis De Franceschi, 1884–1956, and Carolina Gallucci, 1884–1978, at San Lorenzo and Serodino — four children in the parish registers
Vicente Defranceschi and Josefa Martí · Victorio de Franceschi and Elida Bono · Balbina De Franceschi and Antonio Belardo · Filomena De Franceschi and Antonio Polsino
The 2012 reunion album says Rotilio, eighth of the eleven children of Antonio DeFranceschi of Gallignana, married Albina Chinkopan and left for Buenos Aires with two daughters. The eleven showed that the album gave him his sister's husband's surname, and that no open index holds a Rotilio of this name in Argentina. What no page here had done was open David's own Argentine pen, and it holds five households and eight baptisms in Santa Fe between 1899 and 1918 — [read below](#argentina). Argentina's arrival records are still held by CEMLA at Buenos Aires behind a CAPTCHA, which this archive does not answer.
The United States
forty-nine graves and a great deal of paper1902 onward
Torrington, Connecticut · Norway and Dickinson County, Michigan · Brooklyn and Manhattan · Clifton, New Jersey · Maryland and Georgia · Chicago
Domme — Dominic — De Franceski, born 1880 in Italy, immigrated 1905, with Augusta born 1892 in Switzerland; children Ann 1911, Irene 1916, John 1918 and Joseph 1925, all born in Michigan. Their son John worked for the Penn Iron Mining Company at Norway, Michigan.
Antonio De Franceski, born 1875 in Italy, immigrated 1902, with Bertha born 1882 in Germany; children Pietro and Alberts born in Georgia, Aurora and Alba in Maryland.
The Torrington, Connecticut group — Giovanni «John» 1876–1934, Bartolo 1882–1952, Francesco 1886–1937, Maria 1878–1925, Clotilde Toffoletti, and the children Lina and Mario who both died in 1925.
Giuseppe «Uncle Joe» Defranceschi of Gallignana, born 1892, at Brooklyn, with Mary Vidovich.
Gioacchino «Bruno» deFranceschi of Gallignana, 1907–2000, at Millbrook, New York, with Gerda Seedorf.
Two distinct migrations, and the records keep them apart. The Michigan and Maryland families are Italians of the 1900s arriving through the industrial ports and going to the iron and the mills. The Gallignana people are Istrians arriving twenty years later, and they go to Brooklyn.
Britain
seven records and one newspaper phrasefrom 1677
Cardiff · London · and a ship taken as prize off Minorca
Emerico De Franceschi, married at Cardiff in Q3 1876 among Lussino maritime families — Bujanovich, Lacovich, Cattarinich
Signorina Defranceschi, who gave recitals at the Cardiff Exhibition in 1896 and whom a Cardiff paper called «an old Cardiff family»
Mark Franceschi, master of the Amabile, taken as prize and appealed at the Vice-Admiralty Court of Minorca in 1805
Lorenzo, Ernest and William C. Franceschi, three Great War medal cards, 1914–1920
Lorenzo Franceschi, from Italy, resident in London, naturalised 4 April 1934, wife Agnes Elizabeth
This cluster existed in the archive's own pages for a year and had no entry here, because Kew had never been asked. The National Archives' catalogue is free and keyless and holds seven records of the name, 1677 to 1934 — the sweep. None is joined to any Istrian line and none is claimed to be. What it does establish is that the name was in Britain long before the Cardiff family the newspapers knew, and that a Lorenzo who served in the Great War and a Lorenzo who naturalised out of Italy in 1934 are probably one man. The Cardiff household itself is still untested against any census between 1876 and 1911.
Australia
fifteen gravesfrom 1949
Horsham, Victoria · Broken Hill, New South Wales · Melbourne · Wollongong · Brisbane · Canberra · Ipswich, Queensland
Zdravko «Frank» Defranceski, 1921–1979, and Ruža née Hreljac, 1922–1996, at Horsham in the Wimmera — displaced persons resettled from Reutlingen in 1949.
Their son Anton, 1944–1999, at Willowbank in the City of Ipswich, Queensland.
Giacomo, John and Robert Defranceschi at Broken Hill — the silver-lead-zinc field.
Attilio De Franceschi at Melbourne General, d. 1969; Corrado at Fawkner, 1941–2000; Adelia at Lilydale, 1930–2013; Mario at Wollongong, 1924–2012; Mario at Brisbane, 1938–2013; Fabiola at Rookwood, d. 1985; Cesare at Gungahlin, d. 2005.
Two waves again. The Horsham family are Croatian displaced persons of 1949; the Broken Hill, Melbourne and Wollongong people are the Italian post-war assisted migration of the 1950s and 60s, to the mines and the steelworks. They are not the same movement and, so far as anything here shows, not the same family.
France and Corsica
small and oldfrom the fourteenth century
Levie, Corse-du-Sud · Marseille · Saint-Étienne
Pierre Defranceschi, born 1818, died 1853, son of Joseph Defranceschi and Françoise Guillellemont.
Pierre Defranceschi, born at Levie in Corsica on 4 March 1921, died at Marseille in 1990.
Isacco Francesco de Franceschi, born 1927 at Saint-Jean-Bonnefonds, died 2004 at Saint-Étienne.
The Corsican De Franceschi are of Florentine origin — a Taddeo Franceschi crossed to the island early in the fourteenth century and his descendants served Genoa. Levie is in the Alta Rocca, and the family is still there in 1921. Nothing connects them to Istria.
Switzerland
one plot
Giubiasco, Ticino
Pietro 1884–1957, Rosa 1885–1956, Remo 1919–1975 and Margherita 1921–1991 DeFranceschi, all in the Cimitero di Giubiasco.
Italian-speaking Switzerland, immediately over the border from Lombardy.
Philadelphia, 1954
one family of four1954
arriving at Philadelphia
Bosiljka Defranceski, born 1918, with Brank born 1942, Jela born 1946 and Mojuil born 1947.
Croatian given names, arriving nine years after the war in the years when the displaced-persons quotas were running out. Nothing here says who they were or where in Croatia they came from, and they are not in any Croatian register this archive has searched. One of the most promising loose threads on the site.
What this is not
It is not a family tree, and none of these clusters is claimed as kin to the Istrian line except where the page says so. De Franceschi was invented independently wherever an Italian-speaking clerk had to tell one Francesco's sons from another's — see The Name — and a shared surname across four continents is exactly what that predicts.
What it does show is that the two branches this archive can document, the Gallignana people and the Crikvenica people, moved inside much larger movements: the Istrians into Brooklyn and, after 1949, into displaced-persons resettlement; the Venetians and Friulians into Brazil, Michigan and, later, Australia.
The three best loose threads
The Philadelphia family of 1954. Bosiljka, Brank, Jela and Mojuil Defranceski — Croatian names, arriving nine years after the war, in no Croatian register searched here.
Rotilio in Buenos Aires. Named in the 2012 reunion album as the eighth of eleven children of Antonio DeFranceschi of Gallignana, married to Albina Chinkopan, with two daughters. The eleven showed the album gave him his sister's husband's surname; David's tree nevertheless carries the two daughters, and one of them has an Argentine baptism ark attached — read below, because its citation names a father who is not a de Franceschi. Argentina's arrival records are held by CEMLA and are free to search — but the search sits behind a CAPTCHA, which this archive does not bypass. It is a twenty-minute job for a human being.
Broken Hill. Three Defranceschi graves in the New South Wales silver field and almost nothing else. Trove needs no key at all to search from a browser — this page said it did, and that was wrong — and searching it on 17 September turned up one line: «DeFranceschi Bros, 716 Chappie Lane, Broken Hill», in the New South Wales Government Gazette of 17 June 1966. A business, at an address, in the right town. The newspaper columns have now been read — 170 articles across every spelling, harvested 27 September — and what they hold is not yet published here: the Trove key was issued on a written undertaking that the request would be metadata only, and whether this archive may quote an article is a question standing with David on work list item 156. The finding that the columns are read, and the finding that they must not yet be quoted, are both recorded there.
The American vital records, and one line that names Gračišće
A surname aggregation of United States vital records — Social Security applications and death claims, state marriage and death indexes, and Ellis Island passenger manifests — holds 127 entries for this name. Most are irrelevant to this family. Three clusters fall out of it, and one of them names the parish this archive is built on.
The one that names the parish
Basilio and Dario, of Gallignana
«DEFRANCESCHI, DARIO, also known as DARIO DE FRANCESCH, was born 26 September 1937 in GALLIGNANA, Austria, son of BASILIO DEFRANCESCHI and MARIA L ROVINA, was assigned Social Security number 076-32-0053 (indicating New York), and died 29 January 1991.» His father Basilio was born 29 September 1909, took a New York social security number in the same block, made his claim at the Jackson Heights office on 19 July 1971, and died on 15 June 1994 in Manhattan. Dario died in Brooklyn.
This is the first family the archive has been able to trace from Gračišće to America. The clerk wrote «Austria» for a place that had been Italian since 1918 and Yugoslav since 1947 — the old designation, given by a man born under the last of the Habsburgs or copied from a paper that was. Basilio was born at Gallignana in 1909 and his son there in 1937, and the two of them took consecutive social security numbers in New York, which is what a father and son do when they arrive together. They left in the exodus, and they are the exodus: of the twenty-five Defranceschi families counted in Istria on 1 October 1945, this is where some of them went.
Joined, September 2026. The Gračišće Status Animarum for house 24 — the household this archive calls the Eleven — lists the children of Antonius Defranceschi murator and Maria née Volhardt, and the last of them is Basilius, born 29-9-1909, married 28-2-1936. The American record gives Basilio's birth as 29 September 1909 and his son Dario's as 26 September 1937 at Gallignana. Same day, same month, same year, same parish, with a marriage eighteen months before the son. Basilio of Jackson Heights was the youngest son of the mason of Gračišće, and the family this page could describe but not place is the family on the obelisk in the Gračišće cemetery.
New York — the Istrians
Basilio and Dario of Gallignana; Joseph, born at Trieste on 12 March 1892, son of Anthony Defranceschi and Makia Valhart; Nella Bacchia, born at Pola on 4 February 1921, who married into the name; Lucio Degiorgi, born at Pola in 1927 to a Maria Defranceschi; and Duilio, born 1921 to Luigi De Franceschi and Libera Chimčić — a Croatian mother's name. A small Istrian group in New York, and the only one of the three with any bearing on this archive.
Torrington and Waterbury, Connecticut — the Friulians
Twenty-one entries at Torrington alone. The names they marry are Friulian and Venetian: Toffoletti, Mazzei, Bressolin, Devicenti. Bartolo Defranceschi was born at Venice on 9 February 1882 and filed at the Torrington office in 1948; Clotilde, born in Italy on 1 July 1886, was a Toffoletti. This is the Connecticut concentration whose thirteen graves this archive had already found, and it is a different family.
Harrison County, West Virginia — the coal country
Albino or Albeno Defranceschi and Carrie or Caroline Olen at Clarksburg: a son Angelo born 17 May 1927, a son Eugene born 5 September 1930. Two death entries for an Albino in 1932, three months apart, which is the kind of duplication these indexes throw up.
The passenger manifests behind the same index are worth naming, because they show the shape of the wider migration and not one of them is Istrian: a family of five out of an unnamed province on the Saint Germain from Le Havre on 13 April 1882; two coal dealers, Antonio and Benjamino, from the same village to Pennsylvania in 1901; brothers from Castelgomberto in Vicenza and from Voltago Agordino in Belluno in 1905; men from Brescia and from Cogoleto and Avegno above Genoa. Veneto, Lombardy and Liguria — the ordinary Italian emigration, under a surname that had formed independently in every one of those places.
sortedbyname.com, aggregating the Social Security NUMIDENT and death files, state vital indexes released through ReclaimTheRecords, and Ellis Island manifests. 127 entries under DEFRANCESCHI across two pages; no page exists for the Defranceski spelling.
Where they left from
And at last a departure region for the Brazilians
This page has carried the Rio Grande do Sul cluster as the largest of all for months, and has read the in-law names — Marcato, Busatto, Poletta, Raminelli, Barbiero, Facco — as unmistakably Veneto. What it has never had is the other end: the parishes they left. David's own map, archived before the old site is switched off, had that end all along, on a layer he had labelled «High Level of Emigration from Here».
Four Veneto parishes, and one named couple
Scorzè, Moniego in the commune of Noale, Cornedo Vicentino, Castelgomberto and Pederobba — all in the provinces of Venezia, Vicenza and Treviso, all pinned as places of heavy departure. And one couple named outright: «DE FRANCESCHI Luigi, spouse BAROLO Caterina Luigia, from Moniego, Noale, Venezia, Italy to São Paulo.» Beside it a second: Giuseppe Romano De Franceschi, born at Scorzè on 22 May 1835, died at Moniego. That is a father's generation and a son's, in two villages eight kilometres apart, with the emigration between them.
And a second departure region, which is not Veneto at all
The same layer pins Castelnuovo at 11.494 E, 46.052 N — which is not the Veneto Castelnuovo but Castelnuovo in the Valsugana, in Trentino, four kilometres from Telve and six from Strigno. That matters, because David's own family tree holds eighteen people of this surname baptised at the Assunzione di Maria Santissima at Telve, more at Strigno, at Fiera di Primiero and at Rovereto — a Trentino cohort this site has filed under namesakes and never looked at as a migration.
The Trentino emigration to Brazil is one of the documented ones
In 1874 some four hundred peasants of the Valsugana were called to Brazil by Pietro Tabacchi, a Trentino who had gone before them and made money in timber and land. By 1914 close to thirty thousand Trentini had chosen Brazil. Rio dos Cedros in Santa Catarina was founded in 1875 by Italian-speaking Tyroleans, most of them out of the Adige valley and the Valsugana. This archive's Brazilian cluster reaches into Santa Catarina — Concórdia is on the list — and it has never asked why.
Where the São Paulo pins actually are
Indaiatuba, Pirassununga, Ribeirão Preto, Ipuã, Itápolis, Limeira, São Joaquim da Barra, Santo Antônio de Posse, Santa Cruz da Estrela — with Bela Vista, Cambuci, Tucuruvi, Ipiranga, Jardim Paulista and Santa Cecília inside the city. Every one of the country ones is in the coffee belt, which is where the subsidised passage went from 1886. That is a different migration from the Rio Grande do Sul colonies of 1875, and this page has been treating Brazil as one thing when it is two.
How to close it. The Hospedaria de Imigrantes registers at São Paulo — enrolment books, ship lists and passenger records, 1882–1925 — are digitised, and FamilySearch carries them as «Brasil, São Paulo, Registros da Hospedaria de Imigrantes». That is where a De Franceschi off a ship at Santos would be entered by name, with the parish he came from written beside him. Two other routes were tried and are recorded as closed: the «Nati in Trentino» birth register for 1815–1923 exists and covers exactly the Valsugana parishes, but its search is behind an operator login and was not circumvented; and CISEI, the emigration database the literature still cites, is now a parked domain.
27 September — São Paulo answers again, and it is the biggest of the open doors.The museum's own enrolment-register search returned HTTP 500 to every query on 21 September and was written up here as broken. Six days later it works, and returns 184 records on the surname stem.The rows are not an index stub: each carries Chegada (the arrival date), Idade, Parentesco — CHEFE for a household head, SOZINHA for a woman travelling alone — Livro, and Família, a number that groups a household across the register.That last field is what turns a list of arrivals into families, and this archive has never had it for Brazil.Nothing is harvested yet, and the 184 sweep in Franceschini and other names the stem catches, which are a different surname.
David Defranceski's Google MyMaps «Defranceski Family», layer «High Level of Emigration from Here» and «Italian Lines», exported as KML and archived September 2026. Context on the Trentino emigration from the Museo Storico del Trentino's «Emigrazione trentina» and Altmayer on the Tyrolean emigration to Brazil.
The village sweep
The naturalisation petitions, and three towns the transcripts were said not to carry
This page and the work list have said since 16 September that the American naturalisation and passport records stop at «Birth place: Italy» and that the town is only on the image. That was read off four passport applications, where the blank is labelled «(Country.)» and Italy is the whole of the field.The naturalisation petitions are a different form and they carry the town. Ten were read on 27 September, off the transcript, with no image at all.
Joseph Defranceschi — «Gallignana, Austria», born 12 March 1892
That is Gračišće, the parish this family comes out of.Declaration of intention 22660, Brooklyn, 1912, spells it «Gaglinana»; petition 13838, certificate 1104860, 1915, spells it «Gallignana» — the same clerk's office, three years apart, and the second is right.(inf that he is the Giuseppe of Gračišće already on this site: name, year and parish agree, and no document joins them.)
Gerda De Franceschi — «Hollen, Germany», born 15 January 1913
This archive held «1913» off a gravestone at Millbrook and no birthplace at all.Note that the two place fields answer different questions: Millbrook is where she is buried; Hollen is where she was born. She takes the oath of allegiance in 1944, certificate 5742645.
Peter De Franceschi — «Basel, Switzerland», born 12 January 1902
A country this archive has never recorded for anyone of the name.Declaration 318057, certificate 2-147877, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1931 (NARA RG21, M1972), with further petitions in 1936 and 1937.
One paper, one household
Declaration of intention 284221, certificate 2-665402, Brooklyn, Kings County, 1939, names Bruno (born 12 August 1907), his wife Gerda and their son Richard together.It is the first spouse link in this archive written from a record rather than from the family chart — which was the bar the field was given when it was created the same day. Richard would be 94 and no death is recorded, so he is here as a name and a town and nothing else.
And one that really does stop at «Italy»
Giovanni De Franceschi, naturalised at Chicago in 1937, gives «Italy» and nothing finer — and the earlier reading is confirmed rather than overturned: NARA M1285 roll 41 is a Soundex index card, not a petition, so there is no town on it to find.
The first result of searching FamilySearch's full text for the village name rather than the family name. Nineteen documents mention Gologorica. Seven people have been read out of them; not one is a De Franceschi, and that is the point — this is what the emigration out of one Istrian hamlet of a few hundred souls actually looks like.
Tacoma and Ruston, Pierce County, Washington
Three men out of Gologorica, all labourers, all within a few blocks of each other.Josip Rabar, «known as Josip Robert Baron» — born Gologorica Istra, 18 January 1887; 5306 North 47th Street. Married Elisabeth on 10 May 1920, and she was born at Gologorica Estra too. Two people from the same hamlet, married in Washington State.
Frank Rudolph Baron — born Gologorica, 6 May 1890; 5145 North 46th Street; «visible distinctive marks: scar on chin». His wife Jennie was born at Mrkopalj, and they married at Seattle on 24 March 1919.
Joseph Kancijanich, who signs his declaration Josef Kancianich — born Gologorica, 2 February 1889; 5318 Commercial Street, Ruston. He came out of Hamburg on the Kaiser Auguste Victoria.
Rabar and Baron are the same name. One man is recorded under both, which is the whole anglicisation caught in a single line of a government form — and it makes the second Baron, at the next street over, a question worth asking rather than a coincidence.
New York
Giovanni Udovicich — born Gologorica, 21 February 1886; 239 West 10th Street; «ring finger left hand short». He came from Trieste on the President Wilson, where the Tacoma men came through Hamburg. Two ports, two routes, one village.
New Orleans, 1907 — and Rouses Point, 1945
Anton Flegar, twenty-six, «place of birth: Gologorica», a labourer landing at New Orleans in 1907 — the earliest of these and the furthest south. His nearest relative is a brother, Giuseppe Flegar, left behind.
Giuseppe Ghersanich, born «Gologorica, Italy», crossing into the United States at Rouses Point, New York, from Montreal in January 1945 — thirty-eight years later, by land, out of Canada, in the last winter of the war. His nearest relative is Francesca, at the same place.
One hamlet, and its people are entering the United States through New Orleans, New York, Hamburg-to-New-York and the Canadian border, across four decades.
What the clerks wrote in the race box
Seven people, one hamlet, and six different answers:
«So. Italian» · «Slavonian Italian» · «Croatian» · «Croatian», nationality «Italian» · «Slavonian» · «Slovenian»
And the country changes under them as the decades pass — the same village is «Gologorica, Austria» in 1929, «Gologorica, Italy» in the same year by a different clerk, «Gologorica Istra, Austria now Italy» in 1935, and «Gologorica, Italy» again at the Canadian border in 1945.
This archive has a whole page about who ruled Istria and when. Here is what that looked like at a counter, to a clerk who had to tick something — and the same man's neighbours came out Italian, Croatian, Slovenian and Slavonian depending on who was holding the pen.
FamilySearch full-text search, read 13 September 2026. Nineteen documents contain the word Gologorica; two are gazetteers and the rest are American and Canadian immigration paper. Seven people read.A limit worth stating. Several of the nineteen are passenger manifests — one page, thirty passengers, ruled into columns. The full-text transcript flattens the table, so the village name is found but the name in the same row is not recoverable from the text alone. On those, the search proves somebody from Gologorica was aboard and cannot say who. The image would have to be read by eye, exactly like a parish register.
None of these people is claimed as a relative. They are the neighbours.
Trove, 2026
Australia: the name in the Australian press
Findmypast's newspapers are British and Irish only. The Australian press is Trove, which is free and was searched separately on 9 September 2026. «Defranceski», the fused spelling, returns two items, both government gazettes. «Defranceschi» returns thirteen, and one of them is a story.
«Girl Saw Friend Drown» — The Age, Melbourne, Monday 25 January 1954, page 6
«… Giordano Defranceschi, laborer, swam out into the … but Defranceschi disappeared. She struggled to the bank just as two other members of the swimming … before the eyes of a girl he met here last week.»
Only Trove's snippet has been read, not the full column. What it says is enough. A labourer of this name drowned in Victoria in the summer of 1954, in front of a girl he had known for a week, while two members of a swimming club came for him too late.
And there is an arrival to set against it. The Australian inward passenger lists carry a Giordano de Franceschi arriving in 1950. Same name, four years earlier, in the first great cohort of post-war Italian migration to Australia. This archive believes they are the same man and cannot prove it. He came out in 1950 and was dead by January 1954.
doc for the drowning and the arrival; inf for joining them
DeFranceschi Bros, Broken Hill
«DeFranceschi Bros, 716 Chappie Lane, Broken Hill» — Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales, Friday 17 June 1966, page 2438. A firm of brothers of the name, in the silver town, in the middle sixties.
And what is not there
No nineteenth-century Defranceschi in the Australian press at all. The name arrives in Australia after the Second World War and not before — which matches the passenger lists exactly, where forty-odd Australian arrivals are all dated 1950 or later, with a single outlier in New South Wales in 1893 — and that one is now explained. He was a quartermaster. See The name at sea.
Trove, National Library of Australia, newspapers and gazettes: «Defranceschi» 13 results, «Defranceski» 2, searched 9 September 2026. Modern legal, corporate and electoral notices naming people who may be living are deliberately omitted.
The countries David had already marked, and this archive had never read
Every page on this site reconstructs the diaspora from records. David had already mapped it in his own family tree, and nobody here had looked.
A node called «PLACEHOLDERS Defranceschi's for Investigation (not real)»
It is a real node in the live tree with twenty-three children, and each child is a country: Austria · Puerto Rico · USA · UK · Brazil · Switzerland · Slovenia · Italy · Croatia / Yugoslavia · Germany · Canada · Uruguay · Argentina · Panama · Luxemburg · Mexico · Venezuela · Greece · South Africa · France · Australia and New Zealand, and one called simply «De franceschi others».
He labelled them «not real» himself. They are holding pens — somewhere to hang a person of the name until a join is found. That is a research agenda, written down, and this archive has been working beside it for a year without opening it.
And the Croatian pen is a parish list
CROATIA YUGOSLAVIA Defranceski has seventeen children of its own, and they are not people — they are towns: Bakar, Rijeka, Pula & Ližnjan, Fažana, Istra, Medulin, Zagreb, Umag, Gologorica, Gračišće. It is the same map the parish sweep arrived at from the other end, drawn by hand before any of that was done.
Australia is filed by state, and it settles an argument
AUSTRALIA NZ: De Franceschis holds VICTORIA, NSW and QLD pens, plus three named men — Matteo, John (died 2019) and Cesare (died 2005), both of whom this archive holds as headstones at Broken Hill and Gungahlin.
Mario Defranceschi of Brisbane, 1938–2013, hangs under the QLD pen. This archive flagged him as the compiler's own family and corrected it on 15 September on the evidence of his placeholder parents. David had filed him as unconnected himself, years ago.
Two South African women nobody here has heard of
The SOUTH AFRICA pen holds Rosemary Marie Michele De Franceschi and Maude De Franceschi — named, not placeholders, in the country this family spent thirty years in. This archive has never met either of them.
None of these people is claimed and none of them should be. What the scaffold is worth is as a list of questions somebody has already sorted — twenty-three countries and, under one of them, seventeen Croatian towns. The archive's own work list should be reading from it.
What is actually hanging in them
Walked pen by pen on 16 September 2026: forty-nine nodes, and 160 named people inside them. Not placeholders — people, with names, and in many cases dates.
Pen
People hanging in it
Brazil
22
United States
19
Italy
18
Croatia / Yugoslavia
16
Austria
14
Venezuela
10
Switzerland
8
Puerto Rico
7
Argentina
7
France
5
«De franceschi others»
4
United Kingdom
4
Australia & New Zealand — unfiled
3
New South Wales
3
Uruguay
3
Germany
2
Victoria
2
Greece
2
South Africa
2
Slovenia
1
Canada
1
Queensland
1
Panama
1
Luxemburg
1
Mexico
1
Brazil is the largest, and that is not a surprise — this archive has already written that more of this surname settled in Brazil than anywhere else on earth, and that Petar was screened for it in 1949 and did not go. Croatia's sixteen are sorted by town rather than by person, which is why that pen has seventeen sub-nodes of its own.
None of them is claimed and none of them is in this archive's roster. They are a sorted list of the questions this archive exists to answer, and reading them properly is on the work list.
Read from David's live MyHeritage tree, family tree 4, on 16 September 2026. Nobody in these pens is claimed as a relative; they are recorded because the sorting is itself a finding.
Argentina
The Argentine pen, opened
David's live tree keeps a node called «PLACEHOLDERS Defranceschi's for Investigation (not real)», and one of its twenty-three children is ARGENTINA De Franceschi. Nobody here had ever opened it. It holds five households and eight baptisms out of the parish registers of Santa Fe province, 1899 to 1918 — and, on the other side of the tree and not in the pen at all, two Istrians of the name who really did go.
Eight baptisms in Santa Fe, and six of them were new here
All cited to Argentina, Santa Fe, registros parroquiales, 1634–1975 on FamilySearch, and all five households sit under the pen, so none of them is claimed as kin to anything.
· Luis De Franceschi, 1884–1956, and Carolina Gallucci, 1884–1978 — four children. Twins Luis and Carmelita, both 17 January 1915, at San Lorenzo Mártir in San Lorenzo. Rosa, June 1917, at San José in Serodino. Antonia, 1918, at Serodino. Carmelita married Ciro Tornatoris and died in 1978 at Oliveros, in the Iriondo.
· Vicente Defranceschi and Josefa Martí — Tomás, 5 March 1910, San Lorenzo Mártir.
· Victorio de Franceschi and Elida Bono — Antonio Juan, 1899, at Nuestra Señora del Carmen, San José del Rincón. Indexed a second time, in Argentina bautismos, 1645–1930, as «de Franceschi Rovo» — the same child under the mother's other surname.
· Balbina De Franceschi and Antonio Belardo — Genaro, 10 August 1903, at El Trébol.
· Filomena De Franceschi and Antonio Polsino — Filomena and Jorge, both August 1904, at the cathedral of Rosario. (doc for the baptisms; the households are the tree's, unproved)
Why a surname search was never going to find them
Three reasons, and they compound.
They carry two surnames each, in the Spanish manner — de Franceschi Bono, Defranceschi Gallucci, Defranceschi Martí — so a query on the bare surname has to match a fragment, not a field.
In three of the five households the name is the mother's, which in Spanish practice puts it second: Genaro is a Belardo Defranceschi, Filomena and Jorge are Polsino de Franceschi. A surname index built on heads of household loses them completely.
And FamilySearch prints the father beside the child, so the entry for Genaro reads «Genaro Belardo Defranceschi and Antonio Belardo» — the surname being searched for appears nowhere in the pair. The spelling also splits three ways inside one province: Defranceschi, de Franceschi, De Franceschi.
And a second Istrian who certainly did go: Joso Defranceski of Ližnjan
Born 9 January 1906 at Ližnjan, died at Buenos Aires in 1970. Son of Antonius-Mario Defranceski, born 12 August 1876 at Ližnjan, and Justina Mizdarić. He married Nikica Ban of Podhum, and their son Nenad Defranceski is living, so named here and not dated.
He is not in the pen. He hangs off the real tree, out of a parish this archive already reads, and he is the first Istrian of the name this project can put in Argentina at all. (inf — the tree's, not yet a record)
Rotilio, who is still not proved, but is no longer alone
The eleven left him as «the least evidenced of the eleven», with Argentina dotted. The tree does not agree. It keeps two Albinas: his sister Albina de Franceschi, 14 April 1900 – 1945 New York, married to Frank Chinkopan — which is the marriage the Brooklyn death certificate proves — and a separate Albine Chinkopan, born in Italy and dead at Buenos Aires, married to Rotilio on 16 May 1928, the date the Gračišće register gives. Two daughters hang off her: Laura, and Nelida Albina, born at Mercedes in Buenos Aires province. (Her birth date is held and not printed: she is held as possibly living.)
Nelida carries the only Argentine ark ever attached to this family — Argentina, Buenos Aires, registros parroquiales, 1635–1981, ark 6ZP4-29WC. And its citation is wrong-shaped: it reads «Entry for Nélida Albina and Federico Nebbia, 30 de noviembre de 1931», and in every other citation from these Argentine collections the second name is the father. On the face of it the record is a Nebbia baptism, not a de Franceschi one.
That cannot be settled from outside: FamilySearch returns 401 on the ark to anyone not signed in, tested today. It is now the sharpest single question on this page, and the second sharpest is the Gračišće marriage register for 16 May 1928, which would name the bride Rotilio actually married. (lore, with one testable record)
The rest of the pen
Mario Alberto De Franceschi, son of Alberto and Carmen Teresa Medina, died 6 July 1909 at Corrientes — a civil registration, FHL microfilm 107371878, the only Argentine death record of the name this archive holds. María Julia Gonzalez de Franceschi, born 11 February 1908, daughter of Ramón de Franceschi. Pilar Gonzalez de Franceschi, born 12 March 1911 in Argentina and dead at Rio de Janeiro — which is the Brazil cluster and the Argentina cluster touching.
Nothing here is claimed. The Santa Fe people are in a pen David labelled «not real» himself, and this page has simply read it. What reading it changes is the shape of the question: the surname was in Argentina from the 1890s in numbers, in a province full of Piedmontese and Ligurian colonies — Gallucci, Martí, Bono, Belardo, Polsino, Tornatoris — which is a different Italy from Istria. An Istrian arriving in Buenos Aires in the 1920s was arriving where his name already lived.
Read from David's live MyHeritage tree, family tree 4, on 17 September 2026, with the FamilySearch citations it carries. The Santa Fe baptisms are indexed in Argentina, Santa Fe, registros parroquiales, 1634–1975; the images behind them have not been opened. Living people are named and never dated.
«The DeFranceschi Family Tree Album»Family · printed for the first family reunion, Crystal Springs Resort, 7–9 September 2012Printed album held by the family