The Gologorica Line

This page is the working face of the two Pazin reels, and it has grown a section at a time as the books were read. Every finding below is told here in full, with the frame it came from and the plate cut from it. The list is generated from the page itself, so it cannot fall out of step with it.

1. 1 What is actually on the two reels, frame by frame
2. 2 The French took the registers, and the priest wrote down what that cost him
3. 3 The bishop who signed this book names the archive the family's records are in
4. 4 ⚠⚠ The house-6 answer published yesterday was wrong — and the census refutes it in two lines
5. 5 ⭐ The census enters the same woman twice — which is the way to find who Joanna was
6. 6 ⚠ The pass was made and Joanna is not there — because the family's census pages are mostly empty
7. 7 ⚠ Neither bride was baptised here — and the parish they came from was already in this archive
8. 8 ⭐⭐ Both brides came from Gračišće — houses 4 and 5 — and the census said so in a column I never…
9. 9 ⭐⭐ The migration column, finished — Gologorica's exchange partner is Gračišće, by two to one
10. 10 ⚠ Reading the Gračišće house 5 page — which this archive had already read, and what checking it…
11. 11 ⭐⭐ The head of the direct line was not baptised at Gračišće — and in ten years of its baptisms the…
12. 12 «NASTAVLJA SE» — the Gračišće baptism book stops in May 1808, as this archive's own errand…
13. 13 ⭐⭐ A certificate loose in the book confirms the diocese — from a second parish, nine years earlier
14. 14 ⭐⭐⭐ «Josephus de Franceschi GOLLAGORICIENSIS» — the register says which village they came from, and…
15. 15 ⭐⭐⭐ Sixty-two years of Gračišće baptisms: six Defranceschi, every one a godparent, five of them «of…
16. 16 ⭐⭐⭐ The Gračišće register certifies its own gaps — a visitor in 1732 found entries missing and…
17. 17 ⭐⭐ The household the Defranceschi kept coming back to — six children of one Gračišće couple, and…
18. 18 ⭐⭐⭐ The sweep is finished — and the confirmation rolls at the back of the book, which the archive…
19. 19 ⭐⭐⭐ The column nobody read: twenty Defranceschi at the Gračišće font, 1791–1808, every one of them…
20. 20 ⭐⭐⭐ The renumbering is many-to-one — two old houses became one new house with two families, and the…
21. 21 ⭐⭐⭐ 9 June 1774 — the marriage register nobody had opened names the archpriest, the bride's father,…
22. 22 ⭐⭐⭐ The 1862, 1894 and 1921 censuses — two of them carry their own indexes, one Grah in all three,…
23. 23 ⭐⭐ Reel 214 lists its own contents on the way out — and the card this archive said did not exist is…
24. 24 ⭐⭐⭐ The 1894 register swept END TO END — three marriages the archive did not have, and a register of…
25. 25 ⭐⭐⭐ The 1894 census is a GENEALOGY — it gives Hector his parents, names a husband this archive could…
26. 26 ⭐⭐⭐ The 1862 census swept END TO END — two household BYNAMES, and a marriage this archive had been…
27. 27 ⚠⚠ The 1826 «Nrus. Domus» column — and two pages a house-number pair cannot explain
28. 28 ⭐⭐⭐ The baptism book's margins substitute for BOTH registers these reels do not hold
29. 29 ⭐⭐⭐ «GRAH-ŽIPAN» — the compound is confirmed, the second element is an OFFICE, and the Grah of…
30. 30 ⭐⭐⭐ Her burial entry exists — and the reels hold NO Gologorica marriage register after February 1788
31. 31 ⚠⚠ «Grah-Jopan» is withdrawn to a question — and the second element may be an OFFICE, not a family
32. 32 ⭐⭐⭐ TWO GRAH WIVES in one opening of the 1862 census — «GRAH-JOPAN», and a Rosalia who says she came…
33. 33 ⭐⭐⭐ Ruža née Salamon married THREE Defranceschi brothers — and the register puts the family «EX…
34. 34 ⭐⭐ Leonardus the weaver married twice — and the 1862 census says which children are whose
35. 35 ⭐⭐⭐ House 4 of the 1862 census — fourteen children in one opening, and it settles a birth year this…
36. 36 ⚠⚠⚠ «ex SILESIA» is «ex VOLOSCA» — one word, never magnified, and a research programme built on it
37. 37 ⭐⭐⭐ «Theresia grach Defranceschi» stands godmother in 1805 — and the register puts her AT GALLIGNANA
38. 38 ⚠⚠ The death register's own index STOPS IN 1827 — and the book runs to 1880
39. 39 ⭐⭐⭐ The 1921 census swept end to end — a clean nil for the Grah, and the register names the DECREE…
40. 40 ⭐⭐⭐ House 87 — the Defranceschi MERCHANT of Gologorica, and the dead man who was not dead
41. 41 ⭐⭐ The 1826 census swept end to end for the Grah: ONE of them in a hundred and twenty-one frames —…
42. 42 ⭐⭐⭐ The 1784–1880 baptism book has an INDEX nobody had opened — and its «G» is a clean nil for the…
43. 43 ⭐⭐⭐ CEROVLJE opened for the first time — and the GRAH are there, three households deep, under THREE…
44. 44 ⭐⭐⭐ The GRAH are found — a household at Gračišće, house 174, entered «Cives» — and a Defranceschi…
45. 45 ✔✔ Two Josephus rows adjudicated: ONE man, joined with «sameAs» — and the 1782 death the archive…
46. 46 ⭐⭐⭐ «Obijt JOSEPHUS DE FRANCESCHJ, MERCATOR, ætatis suæ annorum 64» — the question opened this…
47. 47 ✔✔✔ «LIBER BAPTIZATORUM II» IS FINISHED — all thirty-eight frames, 1764 to 1788, and its structure…
48. 48 ⭐⭐⭐ A fourth child for the weaver's household, the trade still in the family fourteen years on — and…
49. 49 ⭐⭐ For five years this parish kept TWO baptism registers at once — and the two entries for one…
50. 50 ⭐⭐⭐ «Domina Catharina Defranceschi nata SABLICH BUCCARENSIS» — three years earlier than the archive…
51. 51 ⭐⭐⭐ «Ego JOANNES MATHIAS FRANCESCHI, CANONICUS et PAROCHUS Gollogoritiæ» — the book answers this…
52. 52 ⭐⭐⭐ «Josephi Defranceschi MERCATORIS» — a trade for the man whose whole row was once the word…
53. 53 ⭐⭐⭐ The girl who died at ten with no parents attached gets her baptism — and she was born in the…
54. 54 ⭐⭐⭐ «Admodum R.do D.no CANONICO MATTHIA DEFRANCESCHI» — the canonry is seven years earlier than the…
55. 55 ⭐⭐ A loose slip lying inside the book — a Cerovlje extract of 1793 — names the archpriest this…
56. 56 ⭐⭐⭐ One opening, three months apart: «filius Leonardi» and «filius D.ni Josephi» — the parish tells…
57. 57 ⭐⭐⭐ A row that was a census line and a tree year gets its baptism, its parents and a second forename…
58. 58 ⭐⭐⭐ The same priest writes «Supani Joannis Baptistæ Defranceschi» three times in three years — and…
59. 59 ⭐⭐⭐ The first page of Liber II names a ŽUPAN of Gologorica in full — and puts the Defranceschi…
60. 60 ⭐⭐⭐ The priest tells the two Joannes Baptistas apart himself, in one sentence, by their wives
61. 61 ⭐⭐⭐ The second baptism book — a wife, four children, a canon, and a daughter married into Castel Roč
62. 62 ✔ The whole of «Liber Baptizatorum III et Mortuorum II», swept — eight Defranceschi events out of…
63. 63 ⭐⭐⭐ The old parish priest dies, a Canon Franceschi gives him the last blessing, and a Vicar General…
64. 64 ⭐⭐⭐ «TEXTOR EX CARNIA» — the parish register says it, in 1773, of a named man
65. 65 ⭐⭐ «1783. Sterilis et fames» — the priest headed the year, and the 1773 that should hold Leonardus…
66. 66 ⭐⭐⭐ The archpriest of Krbune came back to bury her — and the register unmakes three things this…
67. 67 ⭐⭐⭐ The župan's widow, dead at ninety and buried inside the church — and the arithmetic of the…
68. 68 ⭐⭐ The parish numbered its own registers, and the covers say which book is missing
69. 69 ⭐⭐⭐ A numbered list of every house in the village, dated by its own strikings to 1 July 1770 — and…
70. 70 ⭐⭐⭐ A perpetual calendar of this parish's dead — never opened, and it gave up eleven Defranceschi in…
71. 71 ⭐⭐⭐ 10 November 1783, at Bakar, in her father's house — the wedding this archive has been missing…
72. 72 ⭐⭐⭐ The marriage this walk went looking for is not in this book — and the archive has been holding…
73. 73 ⭐⭐ The priest of this surname was in this parish from 1768 — and here he is writing his own name
74. 74 ⭐⭐⭐ Twelve years with no child — the gap is in the family, not in the registers
75. 75 The village, as its priest saw it — 1892 to 1918
76. 76 Both sides of the Istrian quarrel used this village as their first exhibit
77. 77 What the village actually sounded like, recorded in 1930
78. 78 The band, the stones, and the grave they tried to refuse
79. 79 A marriage at Valle, 22 January 1795
80. 80 There is a coat of arms on the front of the house
81. 81 Casa 31, and a birthday that matches to the day
82. 82 The house at Gologorica, and the shield on it
83. 83 «L'illustre storiografo riposa nell'umile cimitero» — and here it is
84. 84 Whose village it was, from the Vatican side
85. 85 1661 — the first time the name is written in this village
86. 86 The village in the Croatian press, which did not like them
87. 87 Eighty-eight people, and some of what happened to them
88. 88 Gologorica before the family: six weddings, a boundary quarrel, and no De Franceschi anywhere
89. 89 Five people out of the family's own tree that this archive had nothing on
90. 90 The house and the ground, photographed
91. 91 An architectural survey of the village — and a hard date for the lease
92. 92 The Gologorica parish archive exists, and a 2024 paper has been reading it
93. 93 Carlo, cited eleven times in 1979 — and a Roman road under the village
94. 94 The house, 12 August 1945 — an eyewitness, in full
95. 95 The 1610 problem, solved — and it was never a problem
96. 96 Six households in 1820 — and one of them is «di Gallignana»

What is actually on the two reels, frame by frame

This page rests entirely on two microfilms, and until 30 September 2026 nobody had established what was on them. The archive held 1,463 page images, had cited twelve of them, and had one line in its search register for the whole run. The description it carried — «Gologorica, Gračišće and Lindar» — was wrong in both directions: Lindar is not on these reels at all, and a parish that is had never been named.

The Pazin paper inventory is not the authority, and it was wrong twice here. Its section headings file both Gračišće books under a GOLOGORICA heading, and it stops the Gračišće births at 1780 when the film says 1840. The films carry their own printed title cards, one before each book, naming the župa, the register and the years. Those are the authority, and they are what this table is built from — found by scanning every one of the 1,463 frames for the ink signature of a printed card, then reading each one. --- ⚠⚠ 9 October 2026 — AND THE TITLE CARDS ARE NOT THE AUTHORITY EITHER. ONE OF THEM IS WRONG ABOUT WHAT ITS BOOK IS. The card at M01069199 reads «ŽUPA: GOLOGORICA · MATIČNA KNJIGA UMRLIH 1646-1806 · SIGNATURA: 5.1» — a death register. The book it introduces is not a death register. Its own title page, at M01069202, says: «Catalogus mortuorum … ADULTORUM … ex antiquis et recentioribus paginis COACTUS A ME Antonio Ferdinando M[?]ocovrich, Parocho Loci, Anno Domini 1800» — a perpetual obit calendar, compiled in 1800 out of the registers. The whole item is now inventoried frame by frame and every one of the twenty-five is accounted for:

Three things follow, and none of them was visible before. The household censuses are the bulk of what is here and almost none of it has been read. The four Gologorica status animarum — 1826, 1862, 1894 and 1921 — are 628 frames, 43% of both reels together. A status animarum lists every soul in every house: the head, his wife, her maiden name, the children, the servants, the ages. Only 1894 has ever been opened, and only for the eleven. The other three have never been touched. The Gračišće baptisms run unbroken from 1667 to 1840. Two books, 294 frames, joining at 1745/1746 — and the second of them is titled 1746–1840 but runs off the end of the reel at 1807, behind a printed card reading «NASTAVLJA SE». The rest is ZM34K-216, which this family does not hold — and it is now the archive's first errand. This is the origin parish of the direct line, and it covers the 1679 arrival window the Carnia argument turns on. And there is a parish here nobody asked for. Cerovlje is the next place north on the Pazin–Rijeka road. Its status animarum sits in the first 139 frames of reel 214, under an unlabelled row on the paper inventory. Nothing is claimed from it — it has not been read — but the archive holds it.

House 1 is the parish house, and it names every hand that wrote these books

The first household of the 1826 status animarum is the plebania, and it was kept up for sixty years. Eight priests, each with his birth date and the place he came from, and for two of them the date they died and were buried at Gologorica. This archive has been reading these registers without knowing whose handwriting it was looking at. It matters: the working rule here is that a hand is only legible against itself, and that rule cannot be applied until the hands have names and dates. (doc — ZM34K-214, M01069319.) ⚠ 7 October: the third priest's origin, first read here as «e Zuckfeld», is «e Gurkfeld» — Krško. Corrected.

Priest	Office	Born	From	Died
Dnus Franciscus Brussich	Parochus	b. 15 Nov 1780	Vrbnik, on Krk
Petrus Milcetich	Parochus	b. 4 Jan 1809	Omišalj, on Krk	d. 22 March 1862, aged 58y 2m 15d — «mortuus et sepultus Gollogoricæ»
Blasius Zwölber	Administrator parochus	b. 1 Feb 1822	Gurkfeld — Krško, in Lower Carniola, on the river Krka (Gurk)	d. 22 May 1879, aged 57
Jacobus Sajovec	Administrator	b. 28 July 1825	«e Zirklach» — Cerklje, in Carniola
Joannes Dragovina	Administrator parochiæ	b. 10 June 1844	Pazin (Pisinum)
Josephus Flegar	Administrator parochiæ	b. 16 April 1845	Novaki
Antonius Fabris	Parochus	b. 23 Jan 1851	Lindar	d. 10 Nov 1885, aged 34y 2m — «mortuus et sepultus Gollogoricæ»
Bartholomaeus Vitezić	Parochus	b. 12 March 1856	Vrbnik, on Krk

Two of the eight came from Vrbnik on Krk and a third from Omišalj — so the priests of this inland Istrian village were being supplied from the Kvarner islands, which is a current running the opposite way to the family this archive follows. And the book itself was printed at Fiume, «presso Antonio Karletzky, Stampatore e Libraio», on its cover. (doc — M01069317.)

House 1 is the parish house — eight priests of Gologorica Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Antonius of house 6 was not Leonardus's son — the page says so three times

The pedigree on this page was drawn with Antonius (b. 14 April 1814) as the only child of Leonardus and Matthea. One opening of the 1826 status animarum takes him out of that household and puts him in another, and it does so three separate times in the same hand.

In the name column — «Antonius Defranceschi filius Usualdi et Apoloniæ».

In the annotation on the far right — «hunc in filium adoptivum accepit patruus Leonardus, et locatus hic sub N.º 6»: his father's brother Leonardus took him as an adopted son and settled him here under number six.

And at the foot of the page, under a house marked «non habitata» — «Usualdus … pater Antonii». His own house at Gologorica stood empty when the census was drawn.

Patruus is specifically the father's brother, which is the word that makes Usualdus a brother of Leonardus rather than an unrelated man. So the line runs sideways where this archive drew it straight. Leonardus and Matthea are now recorded with no children; Antonius sits under a new household, Usualdus Defranceschi and Apollonia, both of whom were new here. Every descendant already published under Antonius keeps its place — he did head house 6 — but his ancestry above that point changes.

That Leonardus and Matthea were childless is the obvious reason for the adoption, and the register does not say it. It is recorded as inference and marked as such.

The same opening answers a question about the wives. The provenance column — «Locus ex quo vel ad quem» — gives, against the marriage of 29 January 1840: Antonius «Ex Parochia Lindaris» and Francisca «Ex Parochia Gallignanæ sub N.º 5». Gračišće house 5 is the direct line's own second generation, the farmer Giovanni Battista — so this marriage may join the two lines. It is not claimed: the baptism that would prove it is on ZM34K-216, the one reel of this set the family does not hold, and it is the archive's first errand.

«Hunc in filium adoptivum accepit patruus Leonardus» — house 6, 1826 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

A death in 1826 and a baptism in 1789 turn out to be the same woman

This archive held four separate roster rows for her. One from David's tree with the birth three years out; one from this pedigree with no dates at all and the wrong mother; one raised at breakfast on 30 September from a death entry, explicitly refusing to identify her; and, three hours later, the baptism that identifies her.

The death came first. Page 3 of the 1826 status animarum enters a Maria Defranceschi, civilitas, died 30 September 1826, aged 37 years 2 months 10 days — no parents, no house that survives, the household struck through. That was published the same morning with a warning attached: «not identified with any Maria already on this roster — this estate holds some thirty Maria Defranceschis and a death date alone will not pick one out».

Then a second Maria turned up eight pages later, born 20 July 1780, and the two nearly collided: same day, same month, nine years apart. They were kept separate, and a work-list item named the test — walk July 1780 and July 1789 in the baptism books, both of which are on the same reel.

The test found her. The opening for the summer of 1789 gives, in the parish priest's ruled columns:

> «Maria Rosa=/lia Defrances=/chi ex Loco», house 36, baptised by a.R.D. Antonius Giacich ex abatia; father «Joh: Baptis[ta]»; mother «Catharina JOBLICH»; godmother «Rosalia Baxa uxor Petri, ex Lindar».

Thirty September 1826 minus thirty-seven years, two months and ten days is the twentieth of July, 1789. To the day. So the baptism and the death are one woman, and she was thirty-seven. The Maria born in 1780 is somebody else and stays unidentified.

And the entry corrects her mother. This pedigree had her as a daughter of Joannes Baptista and Mariana. The register says Catharina Joblich — the same wife who appears three years earlier standing godmother beside him as «Cath. ejus uxor nata Jablich ex Buccari», born a Jablich of Bakar. Her family now has a page, and Bakar is on the work list.

⚠ Only this child is moved. The other five of casa 36 keep Mariana, because no register has been read for them and a man may have two wives. Reassigning five children on the strength of one sibling would be the same error in the opposite direction, and this archive has made that error before.

The entry itself — house 36, 20 July 1789 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate Maria Rosalia Defranceschi, baptised 20 July 1789 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Cath. ejus uxor nata Jablich ex Buccari», 3 October 1786 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

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Carlo in the household book, with his mother's birthday

The archive's Carlo section was built from his baptism and from printed biographies. House 7 of the 1826 status animarum has the whole household on one opening, kept up for sixty years — and it confirms what was held, to the day, while adding two dates nobody had.

Confirmed exactly: «Carolus», born 17 October 1809, dead 8 January 1893; and, in the struck household above him, Jacobus Defranceschi, civis, born 21 July 1761, dead 3 December 1850 aged 88. This is verification, not discovery, and the archive says so.

New: his mother's birthday. This archive had Lambertina Peschle as «about 1786». The book writes her «Lambertina uxor nata Peschle», born 17 September 1786, with «Ex Volosca» in the provenance column — the town near Opatija that every printed life of Carlo names as his mother's — and her death on 16 July 1863, aged 76 years 10 months.

New: his father's. Josephus Defranceschi, born 4 March 1765 where the archive had «about 1763», married 3 February 1807, dead 12 December 1838.

⚠ And one thing the page cannot settle about itself. It gives Josephus's age at death as 74 years 9 months, which would put his birth in March 1764 — a year before its own birth column. The written date is taken and the discrepancy is left visible, because a register that disagrees with itself is telling you something about how it was kept.

⭐ And the book gives the whole household on one opening, eighty pages later. Page 89 of the same census repeats house 7 in full — «Dnus Josephus Defranceschi», Civilitas, with «Lambertina uxor nata Peschle» and ten children: Josephus, Charolus, Maria Aloisia, Franciscus Xaverius, Clementina, Maria Adelgidis, Maximilianus Antonius, Enrichus Jacobus and Aloysius. The last line is the one that mattered.

> «Aloysius … filius natus VOLOSCA» This archive had recorded him as «natus Polonia» — born in Poland — in three files. At five times magnification the word is not ambiguous: it is Volosca. And it is the obvious answer once seen, because his mother is entered «Ex Volosca» two lines above him. She went home to her own town to be delivered. «Polonia» and «Volosca» are not similar words; the error was a reading of the initial V as a P, made once and repeated without anyone going back to the page. The correction is here; the Volosca registers have still never been opened.

⭐ And on 1 October the baptisms themselves were found. Folio 51: «Die 19na 8bris 1809 · Carolus Josephus Defranceschi natus die 17ma hujus, vespere» — born on the 17th in the evening, baptised on the 19th, at house 17, with «Dnus Gioanni Curelich, Petinensis» of Pićan standing godfather. Folio 65: «Die 25ta Februarii 1816 · Franciscus Xaverius Joseph Defranceschi natus die 19na hujus mensis». Both carry the day of death written into the margin by a later hand* — «† 8/I 1893» and «† 4 Januarii 1893».

And between them they explain why this archive's dates kept disagreeing with the census. The archive held the births; the 1826 census in places recorded the baptisms. Nobody was wrong, and the gap is simply the interval between the two events — two days for Carlo, six for his brother. ⚠ So no date taken from that census can be assumed to be a birth: it gave Carlo's birth on one page and his baptism on another. The correction is here.

House 7 — the historian's own household, 1826 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Dnus Josephus Defranceschi» and ten children — and Aloysius born at Volosca Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate Carlo De Franceschi's baptism, 19 October 1809 — with his death written in the margin Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate Franciscus Xaverius Defranceschi, born 19 February 1816, baptised the 25th Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Enrichus Jacobus, 1830 — and the second set of house numbers

The eighth of Josephus and Lambertina's children had a birth date in this archive and no document behind it. It came off the family tree: 11 March 1830. Folio 89 of the Gologorica baptism book now carries the entry that date was taken from, and the register agrees with it to the hour — while correcting the archive on his name, and opening a question about this book that reaches far past one family.

> «Die 28va Martii · ENRICHUS JACOBUS DEFRANCESCHI natus 11ma Martii hora 5ta Mane» Born 11 March 1830 at five in the morning, baptised on the 28th, by Franciscus Brussich, parochus. Parents: «Dnus Josephus Defranceschi, Civilis» and «Domina Lambertina ejusdem uxor nata Pesle». Godparents «Giacomo Giacich» and «Jos.a Teresa Giacich»; midwife «Marianna uxor Stanislai Rabar». (doc — Gologorica baptisms 1784–1880 — DAPA microfilm ZM34K-214, M01069102, folio 89.)

This is verification, not discovery, and the archive says so. The date was already held. What it did not have was the page, the hour, the priest, the godparents or the midwife — and a date with no document behind it is a date on loan.

He is ENRICHUS, not Henricus. The register writes him without the H, and so does the 1826 status animarum of house 7, which lists him among the ten children as «Enrichus Jacobus». Two independent hands, the same form; ours came in off the family tree. The id is minted and frozen and is not moved for a spelling — a moved id is a dead URL — but his page now says which form is the family's and which is ours.

⭐ And his entry is where this archive noticed that the book counts houses twice. The Domus cell holds a number that has been written, struck through with a diagonal, and replaced by 104 written beneath it. The first instinct was to read it as a correction about this household — and that instinct was wrong, which is why the next four folios were checked before anything was published.

It is not about this family at all. It runs through the book.

What this does to the family's own puzzle. The Defranceschi household appears in this book under two numbers and always has: 17 in 1811, 1816, 1822 and 1828 — checked again at full magnification on the 1822 cell, where it is an unambiguous «17.» between a 118 above and a 101 below — and 104 in 1821, a single clean figure with no strike. The 1826 census calls the same household house 7. Three numbers for one door, and the archive had no account of any of them.

⚠ What the table shows, and what it does not. The second figure is almost always about half the first and the two columns run broadly in step — 9→4, 38→19, 42→21, 54→27, 72→36, 112→69 — which is the signature of a renumbering, not of error. Where a pair repeats it repeats exactly: Runco at 48→23 in 1830 and 1832, the same house at 6→2 in 1830 and 1833, 103→61 in 1831 and 1835, 28→11 for the Palmans in 1833 and 1836. Against that, a handful of pairs break step (37→73 beside 37→15; 94→52 beside 94→49), and this archive will not call those contradictions: at this magnification its own digit readings have already been shown to be worth less than it thought — one of them went out wrong this morning — and those are exactly the pairs a second look resolves. ⭐ And one figure in the table does not belong to the pattern at all. Every other lower figure is smaller than its upper one and none exceeds 69. The lower figure on Enrichus Defranceschi's line is 104 — larger than its upper figure and larger than anything else in that column. Which raises the possibility that his cell is not an instance of the general doubling but a correction of a different kind: the priest writing the household's usual 17, striking it, and substituting the 104 the same household carries in 1821. Both figures in that cell are numbers this family independently demonstrably has. It is a possibility and it is written here as one. What is certain is that the upper figure's visible digit is a 7 and that this archive does not assert it reads 17. Worklist 171 holds the question and the method for settling it.

And one quiet thing the opening says about the family's standing. Four fathers are named on folio 89. Three are «agricola» — Antonius Udovich, Joannes Cancinich, Antonius Gasparich. The fourth is «Dnus Josephus Defranceschi, Civilis», with «Domina» for his wife where the others' wives are «uxor ejusdem» and nothing more. This is the father's own condition, in the Genitores column under his own name — not the Conditio column, which on this page serves the godparents and which this archive has already been burnt by reading as a class.

Seventeen days from birth to font. His brother Maximilianus, two years earlier, was baptised the day after he was born; Clementina Maria in 1822 on the third day, Maria Aloysia in 1811 on the third, Franciscus Xaverius in 1816 on the sixth. Enrichus waited seventeen. No reason is given. It is recorded because it is the longest gap this family shows, and because anyone reconciling register dates against family-tree dates should know the gap can be that wide.

Enrichus Jacobus Defranceschi, born 11 March 1830 — and a house number corrected to 104 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Three Defranceschi women on one page, and not one of them a daughter

After ten folios without the surname, the year 1840 gives it three times in fourteen months — and every time it belongs to a woman who is somebody's wife or somebody's godmother. None of the three is entered as a child. The register that records them as adults does not record them as infants, and that is the shape of the problem this archive has with the Defranceschi women of Gologorica.

> «Februarii 20 · [domus] 2 · FRANCISCUS natus hodie · Joannes Sestan, agricola · SANCTA ALEXANDRA nata DEFRANCESCHI · Franciscus Marciolin, Clementina Defranceschi · ille clavium faber, haec civis» (doc — Gologorica baptisms 1784–1880 — DAPA microfilm ZM34K-214, M01069115, folio 102.)

⭐ SANCTA ALEXANDRA DEFRANCESCHI gets her first document. This archive held her from David's MyHeritage tree and nothing else — a name, «Sancta-Alexandra Defranceschi (Sestan)», born about 1819 at Gologorica, died 1887, with an empty note. The register now gives her a husband, a house and a child: Joannes Sestan, agricola, of house 2, and a son Franciscus, born and baptised 20 February 1840. The surname she was born with is written out in full in the mother's column: «Sancta Alexandra n. Defranceschi».

⭐ CLEMENTINA DEFRANCESCHI stands at the font, and she is entered «civis». The Conditio cell reads «ille clavium faber, haec civis» — he (the godfather, Franciscus Marciolin) a locksmith; she a citizen. Written as two clauses about two named people, so this one is not the ambiguous shared cell that burnt this archive before.

⚠ And her being alive in February 1840 lands on an open contradiction. This archive carries two Clementinas of this family — one baptised 28 January 1821 and one 3 October 1822 — and on 20 September 2026 it recorded that the tree and the archive disagree about a Clementina's death by thirty years: 1840 here, 1870 there. The archive's working inference has been that the elder died young and the name was reused, which is what families did. A Clementina Defranceschi standing godmother in February 1840, old enough to be chosen and entered as a citizen, is evidence in that argument and it does not settle it. She may be either of them. The burial register — 91 frames on the same reel, 2% read — is what settles it, and it has not been opened.

⭐ FRANCISCA DEFRANCESCHI, fourteen months later. Folio 102 again, lower down: «Aprilis 14 [1841] · domus 2 · Franciscus natus hodie · Vincentius Sestan · Maria n. Udovicich · Josephus Selesco ac FRANCISCA DEFRANCESCHI», the surname written in on the line below as if the scribe had run out of room for it. This is the Francisca the archive already knows — married to Antonius of house 6 on 29 January 1840, and entered in the census as coming «Ex Parochia Gallignanæ sub N.º 5», Gračišće house 5. Verification, not discovery: it adds that she was at Gologorica and standing at its font fifteen months into that marriage.

⭐ AND THE THING ALL THREE HAVE IN COMMON, which is the finding. Sancta Alexandra married into house 2. Francisca married into house 6 — and stood godmother at house 2. Clementina is a civis with no household given at all. Not one of the three has a baptism in this archive, a father, or a household she was born into. The folios that would hold their births — 1818 to 1822, folios 68 to 76 — have now been walked end to end, and the only Defranceschi baptisms in them are the children of Josephus and Lambertina. So either these women were not born at Gologorica, or they were born to a Defranceschi household this archive has not found.

That is a question with an address. Francisca's census line already says where she came from — Gračišće house 5, the direct line's own second generation — and the baptism that would prove it sits on ZM34K-216, the one reel of this set the family does not hold. It is the archive's first errand and has been for weeks. What is new today is that it would now answer for more than one woman.

Three Defranceschi women in fourteen months — Gologorica, 1840 and 1841 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Two Defranceschi daughters married into one Sestan house, and the register says so three times

The 1826 census already showed that two Defranceschi daughters came out of Gračišće into Gologorica in the early 1840s — Francisca from house 5 in 1840, Joanna from house 4 in 1843. The baptism register now shows what happened next, and adds a third woman the census did not name as a wife at all.

> «8bris 30 [1841] · [domus] 2 · FORTUNATUS natus hodie · Joannes Sestan, textor · Sancta nata DEFRANCESCHI · Franciscus Defranceschi ac Matthea Defranceschi · cives» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069116, folio 103.)

Sancta Alexandra's second child, eighteen months after the first — and this time both godparents are Defranceschi: Franciscus and Matthea, the Conditio cell entering the pair «cives». The register is showing a family standing for its own.

⭐ MATTHEA DEFRANCESCHI gets her first document. This archive has carried her as a name with an empty note — born 1772, died 1858, Gologorica — out of the family tree. She is sixty-nine here and still being chosen as a godmother, and she is entered civis.

> «9bris 11 [1843] · [domus] 2 · MARIA nata 7 hujus · Antonius Sestan · Joanna nata DEFRANCESCHI · Franciscus Defranceschi, Catharina Ivich» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069118, folio 104.)

⭐ So the two Sestan men of house 2 both married a Defranceschi. Joannes Sestan took Sancta Alexandra; Antonius Sestan took Joanna, out of Gračišće house 4, married 13 February 1843. And at both baptisms the godfather is the same Franciscus Defranceschi.

⚠ And the register and the census disagree about this child. The 1826 status animarum, read on 30 September, enters Joanna's eldest as Maria, born 8 October 1843, in house 3. The baptism register enters her born 7 November 1843 and baptised on the 11th, in house 2. A month and a house apart, and both are doc. The month figures were checked against each other on the same page — the «8bris 8ᵃ» of the row above and the «9bris 11ᵃ» of this one are written with plainly different numerals — so this is not a misreading here. The discrepancy is left standing and visible, because this archive has already learnt that the census records baptism dates rather than births, and a case where that rule does not close the gap is worth more as a question than as a patched date.

> «9bris 15 [1843] · [domus] 5 · TERESIA nata 14 hujus · Antonius Defranceschi · Francisca · Antonio Salamon et Maria soror · cives» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069118, folio 104.)

⭐ And a date made exact. The daughter of Antonius Defranceschi and Francisca has stood in this archive as «Theresia Defranceschi, ABT 1843», a tree estimate. She was born 14 November 1843 and baptised on the 15th, at house 5 — the household that was house 6 in 1826, when Antonius was the adopted nephew settled there.

⚠ THE GODFATHER'S SURNAME READS «SALAMON» — AND THE TEST WAS RUN BEFORE THIS WAS PUBLISHED. Four days ago this archive withdrew a «Salman» lead on the Salomon maternal line because the family turned out to be PALMAN and a patronymic proved it. So the word here was not written up until it had been set beside this scribe's own Palman. Petrus Milcetich writes «Franciscus Palman sutor» on folio 102, 28 April 1841, eleven folios earlier — and the two words, cut from the film at one magnification and put one above the other, are not the same word:

What that does and does not establish. It establishes that a man surnamed Salamon — not Palman — stood godfather to a Defranceschi child at Gologorica on 15 November 1843, entered civis, with «Maria soror» beside him, which makes him a household rather than a stray name. It does not establish a connection to Francisca Salomon's family. That would need this Antonio Salamon tied to Gračišće, four kilometres away, and nothing here does it. This is a lead, and it is the first one on the Salomon line that has survived its own test. The worklist carries what would turn it into a line.

Two Defranceschi wives and a Defranceschi daughter — Gologorica, November 1843 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate The test: Petrus Milcetich writing PALMAN and writing SALAMON, at one magnification Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

«Franciscus Defranceschi e Maria sorella» — the register names a sister

The surname that was absent for ten folios is now on nearly every page, and almost always in the godparent column. Through 1844 and 1845 Franciscus, Matthea and Francisca Defranceschi stand at the Gologorica font for one neighbour's child after another — and one entry describes a relationship instead of just listing two names.

> «Vitus Ancich · Maria nata Udovicich · FRANCISCUS DEFRANCESCHI e MARIA SORELLA · cives» (doc — Gologorica baptisms, DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069119, folio 105, 1844.)

Sorella — Italian for sister, dropped into a Latin entry. So there is a Maria Defranceschi who is the sister of the Franciscus Defranceschi who keeps appearing, and the pair are entered cives, the standing this household has carried since 1810. The same construction turns up a second time on this run of folios, at Teresia Defranceschi's baptism, where the godparents are «Antonio Salamon et Maria soror» — a different Maria and a different brother, and the two should not be confused.

Who they are, as an inference and marked as one. The only Franciscus-and-Maria pair of adult Defranceschi siblings this archive can name at Gologorica in 1844 is Franciscus Xaverius Joseph (born 19 February 1816, died 4 January 1893) and Maria Aloysia (born 14 August 1811, died 1897) — Carlo De Franceschi's own brother and sister, twenty-eight and thirty-three that year, both of the civis household. (inf.)

⚠ And the weakness of that inference, stated rather than buried. «The only pair this archive can name» is not «the only pair». These very pages have just produced three grown Defranceschi women the pedigree does not contain — Sancta Alexandra, Matthea and a Clementina who cannot be assigned to either of the two the family had. A village whose register knows Defranceschi the archive does not is a village where «the only known pair» proves very little. The identification is offered, not asserted, and no page is rewritten on it.

⭐ Meanwhile the women of house 2 keep bearing. Sancta Alexandra's third child — «Josephus natus hodie», 21 March 1844, house 2, godfather the locksmith Francesco Marciolin again (M01069119, folio 105). And Joanna's second — «Antonia nata heri», born 16 July 1845, baptised the 17th, house 2 (M01069120, folio 106).

⭐ Which sharpens yesterday's doubt instead of confirming it. This archive recorded that the 1826 status animarum and the baptism register disagree by a month about Joanna's eldest. They agree exactly about her second: the census gives Antonia born 16 July 1845; the register gives her born the day before her baptism of 17 July 1845. So the census is not generally unreliable on this family, and the gap over Maria is an anomaly in one entry rather than a property of the source. It stays open, and it is now a sharper question than it was.

⭐ And a date confirmed to the day. Maria Defranceschi, daughter of Antonius and Francisca of house 5, is entered «Maria nata 18 hujus», baptised 20 July 1845 (M01069120, folio 106). The tree already had 18 July 1845. Verification, not discovery, and the archive says so — but a tree date with a register behind it is a different thing from a tree date without one. Her mother is written «Francisca n. Defranceschi» once more, the n. for nata that settled her as a marriage inside the name.

«et soror Adelaidis» — the register places a woman the pedigree could not

The formula that turned up in 1844 as «e Maria sorella» turns up again in 1847, and this time both names are ones this archive already holds. It does something a godparent entry very rarely does: it puts a person into a family.

> «Jacobus Cocolet · Maria nata Petorin · MAXIMILIANUS DEFRANCESCHI ET SOROR ADELAIDIS · cives» 21 October 1847, house 7. (doc — Gologorica baptisms, DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069122, folio 108.)

⭐ Adelaidis Defranceschi has stood in this roster as «tree-derived, no register read for this person here», line unplaced. She is now placed. Her brother Maximilianus is Maximilianus Antonius Josephus, born 8 January 1828 and baptised the 9th — the entry this archive found four days ago — son of Josephus Defranceschi and Lambertina née Peschle. So Adelaidis is their daughter too, and the «Maria Adelgidis»* the 1826 status animarum lists sixth among their ten children is her.

And the register confirms it independently of the census, which matters: the census list and the family tree are two readings of the same household, and until now nothing outside them said these two were siblings. A godparent cell written twenty-one years later, by a different priest, says it in three words.

⚠ Which raises a question this archive is not closing. The pedigree gives Josephus and Lambertina a daughter Anastasia, born 8 December 1824; the 1826 census gives them a daughter Maria Adelgidis and no Anastasia; the roster carries Adelaidis, born 1824, as a separate and unplaced person. Three names, one birth year, and possibly one child. The worklist holds it. Nothing is merged on a suspicion, and no id is moved.

It also settles how to read the 1844 entry. «Franciscus Defranceschi e Maria sorella» was offered as an inference about Carlo's brother and sister, with its weakness published beside it. This entry shows the register using exactly that formula for exactly that household — two of the same ten children, named as brother and sister, entered cives. The inference is not proved by it, but it is no longer a guess about a form of words.

> «Januarii 23 · [domus] 5 · LEONARDUS natus heri · † 20.XII.1917» of «Antonius Defranceschi» and «Francisca nata Defranceschi». (doc — same frame, folio 108.)

⭐ A birth and a death, seventy years apart, on one line. This archive held Leonardus Defranceschi, 1847–1917, off the family tree with an empty note. The register gives the day — born 22 January 1847, baptised the 23rd — and a twentieth-century hand has come back to the page and written his death into the margin: 20 December 1917. Both years are confirmed and both are now exact. Verification, and the archive says so.

⭐ And the women of house 2 are still bearing. Sancta Alexandra's fourth child — «Francisca nata hodie», 7 February 1846 — and two more for Joanna, whose godmother in 1846 is «Lucia Defranceschi». This archive holds a Lucia Defranceschi born 1820 at Gračišće with an empty note, twenty-six that year. (inf, and no page is rewritten on it.)

⭐ Which makes a cohort, and it points at one parish. Three Defranceschi women of nearly the same age are at Gologorica in the 1840s and all three came out of Gračišće: Joanna, born 1818, «Ex Parochia Gallignanæ sub N.º 4»; Francisca, born 1819, «sub N.º 5»; and Lucia, born 1820, if she is the Lucia of this roster. Gračišće house 5 is the direct line's own second generation. The register that would name their fathers is on ZM34K-216, the one reel of this set the family does not hold, and getting it is the archive's first errand.

«Maximilianus Defranceschi et soror Adelaidis» — the register names a brother and sister, 1847 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

The register gives a child back her name, and takes fifty-one years off a blank

The family tree gave Antonius and Francisca a daughter «Joanna, born 9 June 1848», with no death. The baptism register of that week gives them a daughter too — and she is not called Joanna, she was not born on the 9th, and her death is written on the same line.

> «Junii 8ᵃ · [domus] 5 · ROSA nata heri · † 10/12 99» of «Antonius Defranceschi» and «Francisca nata Defranceschi»; godparents «Giovanni L— et ADELINA DEFRANCESCHI», entered cives. (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069123, folio 109.)

One child, not two. A mother cannot bear children on the 7th and the 9th of one June; no second entry stands anywhere near it; the parents, the house and the week are the same. So the tree's «Joanna, 9 June» and the register's «Rosa, nata heri» on the 8th are one girl, and the register is the document. The correction is published and her pid is kept — joanna-defranceschi-1848 will read «joanna» for ever, because a moved id is a dead URL. Only its id remembers the error.

⭐ And a later hand closed her life on the same line. «† 10/12 99» — Rosa Defranceschi died 10 December 1899, aged fifty-one, where this archive had no death year at all. She is the fourth person on these few folios whose death a twentieth-century register keeper came back and wrote into a page sixty or seventy years old; the others are Leonardus (1917), her nephew-by-marriage Antonius Sestan (1923) and a Gasparich of 1830 (1898). Somebody worked through this book closing lives, and the archive has been reading it as if it only recorded births.

A new given name, and a tempting one. Her godmother is «Adelina Defranceschi», entered civis — written large and unambiguous. This archive now knows an Adelaidis of the same household, placed four folios earlier as «Maximilianus Defranceschi et soror Adelaidis», and Adelina is the ordinary Italian diminutive of Adelaide. It is not claimed. Worklist 175 already holds three names round one 1824 birth — Anastasia, Maria Adelgidis, Adelaidis — and a fourth is a reason to go and read the December 1824 folios, not a reason to guess.

⭐ And Sancta Alexandra's fifth child. «Antonius natus heri», baptised 27 March 1848, house 2, godparents «Antonius Defranceschi et Teresia Udovicich» — and on his line too, «† 27.VIII.1923». Five children documented in eight years, for a woman this archive held with an empty note and no husband at the start of the day.

⚠ How the day was read, because it decided the correction. The baptism is «Junii 8ᵃ»; the row beneath it is «Julii 9ᵃ». The two numerals were cut from the film in one crop and compared: the 8 is a double loop, the 9 a single loop with a descender. That is the rule this archive learnt at eight o'clock this morning after publishing a 73 as a 75 — crop past the cell, not to it — applied the same day to a reading that changes a published name.

✔ And the margins were gone back over the same afternoon, which is how this archive found out what they are worth. Every Defranceschi baptism in the first hundred folios was re-cropped and read for its margin alone. Two of six carry one, and both were already known — Franciscus Xaverius († 4 January 1893) and Maximilianus Antonius († 6 August 1910). No new dates. ⚠ But the count is the point. On folio 73 one entry of three carries a dagger; on folio 89, one of five. The later keeper's sweep through this book is partial, so a blank margin is not evidence that anybody lived. That lands straight on an open question: the Clementina of 1821 has no dagger, and the inference that she died young is neither supported nor refuted by the silence. The burial register is still the only thing that settles her.

One household, two sources, and the first real test of the 1826 census

This archive leans hard on the 1826 status animarum. It gave Carlo's household, his mother's birthday, the adoption in house 6, and sixty maiden surnames of the village. Until today nothing had checked it against a second document for the same family, entry by entry. Joanna née Defranceschi's children are that check, because the baptism register has now given all five.

⭐ What the table says about the census is specific, and it is better news than a flat verdict. The day is right every single time. Where the two sources disagree they disagree on the month or the year, never on the day of the month — which is the signature of a figure miscopied when the household was written up, not of a source that is guessing. So a census date is good evidence for the day and weaker evidence for the month and year, and anyone using one should say which part they are leaning on.

⚠ And it omits a child. Catharina, born 1 October 1846, is in the register and not in the census. She may have died before 1826's book was brought up to date for this household, or been missed. Either way the census's list of a family's children is a floor, not a ceiling, and this archive has been reading such lists as complete.

> «Junii 7ᵃ · [domus] 3 · JOANNES natus heri · † 27/2 1935» of «Antonius Sestan» and «Joanna nata Defranceschi», godparents «Joannes Ivich et Francisca Defranceschi». (doc — M01069126, folio 112.)

⭐ Eighty-four years after his baptism somebody came back to this page and closed him. It is the latest of the marginal deaths this book carries, and the fourth in which a Defranceschi or a child of one is the subject.

⭐ And another «about» became a day. Antonia Defranceschi, daughter of Antonius and Francisca of house 5, has stood in this archive as «ABT 1849». The register enters her «Antonia nata heri» on 24 December 1849 — born 23 December 1849. (doc — M01069124, folio 110.) Her brother Antonius, born 4 June 1849 at house 2, is the Sestan child above and not to be confused with her.

And 1850 is a clean nil. Folio 111 (M01069125) carries fourteen baptisms and not one Defranceschi in any column — the first whole year of this walk with no sighting at all. It is recorded because a nil names the exact terms tried, and a year of silence in a village where the name stood at four fonts the year before is itself worth knowing.

A boy baptised in 1851 and a hand closing his life in 1935 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Enrico stands at the font with his sister, and two German names turn up in the Peschle house

The man whose baptism opened this day's work turns up in it again, twenty-two years older. On 13 March 1852 the godparents of Joannes Junco's child are «Enrico Defranceschi et soror Adelaidis», entered cives.

⭐ That is Enrichus Jacobus, born 11 March 1830 — two days past his twenty-second birthday. This archive knew him as a name on the family tree with a death at Trieste in 1906 and nothing in between. It now has him alive at Gologorica, of age, and chosen to stand at its font. (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069127, folio 113.)

And the register calls him ENRICO. The Italian form, after «Enrichus» in 1830 and «Enrichus» in the 1826 census. Three hands, three times, and not one of them writes the H this archive carries.

⭐ It is also the third time the book names this household's siblings by the same formula. «Franciscus Defranceschi e Maria sorella» in 1844, «Maximilianus Defranceschi et soror Adelaidis» in 1847, and now «Enrico Defranceschi et soror Adelaidis» in 1852. Adelaidis is named as a sister twice, by two different brothers — which is as firm as a godparent column gets, and it is what moved her from «unplaced» into Josephus and Lambertina's house.

> «Julii 28 · [domus] 2 · CONRADUS, JOSEPHUS ac VICTORIUS natus 20 hujus · Albertus Peschle, D.r Medicinæ, Civis · Victoria nata Calligarich · Cost. SCHROTT, Carolina WALSER · cives» (doc — M01069128, folio 114.)

This household the archive already had, and it says so: Dr Albertus Peschle, physician, head of Gologorica house 2 in the 1826 status animarum, with Victoria née Calligarich and their son Conradus Josephus Victorius, born 20 July 1853 — all of it on the married-in page since the census was walked. Verification, not discovery. What is new is small and specific: the baptism date, 28 July, and the godparents.

⚠ And the godparents are the reason this entry is worth a paragraph. «Cost. Schrott» and «Carolina Walser» — two unmistakably German surnames standing at an Istrian font, chosen by a Peschle. Worklist 170 asked whether the Peschle were a German family who arrived on the Kvarner rather than a Kvarner family. It rested on one godmother read as «ex Silesia» in 1822 — and [that word reads «ex Volosca», so the item is withdrawn.](/worklist/) What follows was written while the question was still open. This does not answer it. It is the second time the question has been raised by the company a Peschle keeps, and the first time by a household rather than a single visitor.

⚠ What it is NOT. Schrott and Walser are German or Austrian; they are not Silesian in particular, and neither name is tied here to any place. A doctor of medicine in Habsburg Istria moved in a German-speaking professional world as a matter of course. Nothing here says where his family came from, and the archive is recording two names and a question, not a conclusion.

⭐ And Joanna's sixth child, with the census out by two years this time. «Januarii 31 · [domus] 3 · FRANCISCUS natus hodie», of «Antonius Sestan» and «Joanna nata Defranceschi» — born and baptised 31 January 1853. The 1826 status animarum gives him 31 January 1855. The day and the month agree exactly and the year is two out, which is the third time this household's census dates have failed in precisely that shape. The pattern is set out in full here.

And a sixth visitation. «Vidi. Petinae die 16 Januarii 1854» — Coverlizza, Decanus, inspecting at Pićan for the sixth recorded year running. Worklist 169 carries them all.

Three collisions, one book, and the case for opening the register of the dead

This archive now holds three unresolved contradictions about when a Defranceschi of Gologorica died — and all three are closed by the same ninety-one frames, which sit on the reel the family already owns and have barely been opened.

A death year is usually the better-evidenced of a person's two dates, so a gap this wide normally means one side is describing a different person of the same name in the same parish — which in a one-name study is not an edge case but the ordinary condition. Three of them in one family is a pattern, and the pattern names its own remedy.

⚠ And note what the third one does to a comfortable assumption. Antonius's 1913 comes from the margin of his own baptism entry, written by a later keeper sixty years after the event; the 1918 comes from a family tree. Both are second-hand to the death. This archive spent an hour this afternoon learning to read those margins and must not now treat them as a burial register. They are partial, and a blank one is not evidence of life; a dated one is still hearsay beside the entry made on the day.

⭐ The book that answers all three. Gologorica deaths, 1784–1880 — DAPA ZM34K-214, frames M01069224 to M01069314, ninety-one of them. It covers every year the three disputes fall in except Antonius's 1913 or 1918, which the 1894 status animarum on the same reel reaches instead. About two per cent of it has ever been read.

It would also answer things nobody has asked it yet. Whether the Clementina of 1821 died a child, which is the hinge of the reused-name argument; when Matthea and Adelaidis died; and whether the Defranceschi women who came out of Gračišće were buried at Gologorica under their maiden name or their husbands'. Every one of those is a blank on a page a reader can already reach.

This section is not a finding. It is a decision written down, so that the next session does not have to rediscover the argument for it: when the baptism book is finished, the death book is next, and it is walked rather than sampled.

The census is now short by two children, and a priest from Krbune walks in

Folios 117 to 119 finish Joanna née Defranceschi's family in the baptism register, and the comparison with the 1826 status animarum gets worse in one way and better in another.

⭐ Three of the eight are exact, and the day of the month is right in all eight. That holds: where the two sources differ they differ on the month or the year and never on the day. But the census is short by two whole children, not one — Catharina of 1846 and Francisca of 1856, both baptised at Gologorica, both absent from the household page. A census list of a family's children is a floor, and this archive has been reading such lists as ceilings.

⭐ And Sancta Alexandra's seventh. «Maij 8ᵃ · [domus] 9 · FRANCISCUS natus 6 Maij», 1857, of «Joannes Sestan» and «Sancta nata Defranceschi» — with «† 18/1 1932» in the margin. (doc — M01069132, folio 118.) Seven children between 1840 and 1857, for a woman who had an empty note this morning.

> «1858 Februarii 1ᵃ · [domus] 55 · FRANCISCUS P— Ad.r PAR. CHERBUNIS» (doc — M01069133, folio 119.)

⭐ A priest of KRBUNE comes to Gologorica to baptise. The baptizans column, which has read «Petrus Milcetich, Parochus» for twenty-three years, names for one entry the administrator of the parish of Cherbune — Krbune. Worklist 168 was raised on 1 October because «Archipresbiter GRACH of Cherbune» stood godfather to a Defranceschi child in 1785, and the archive could find only one collection for the place against thirty-two for Gračišće.

What this adds is small and solid: Krbune was a parish in its own right with its own administrator in 1858, and its clergy and Gologorica's covered for one another. A parish that lends a priest keeps a register, and the one bound volume the atlas lists — births, deaths and marriages 1803–1870 — is the right book and not a fragment of somebody else's.

⚠ The priest's own surname is not settled and is not published here. It reads as Pasnich, Papich or Bascich and has not been set against the same hand writing any of those elsewhere. A hand is only legible against itself, and the office and the parish — which are both plain — carry the finding without it.

And the deanery keeps coming. «Vidi. Petinae» 15 January 1857, 8 January 1858, 7 January 1859 — all Coverlizza, Decanus. Nine consecutive Januaries (with one May), which makes the visitation annual and its protocols a series rather than a scattering. Worklist 169 carries them.

A Peschle stands godfather by proxy, and the next generation opens at house 7

Folio 121 is where this book turns a corner. For thirty years the Defranceschi in it have been godparents and wives; now Franciscus Defranceschi, civis, is a father, at house 7 — the house his own father Josephus held in the 1826 census — and the man he asks to stand for his daughter is a Peschle.*

> «1860. 9bris 4ᵃ · [domus] 7 · ANNA-MARIA FRANCISCA nata 28 8bris · Franciscus Defranceschi, civis · Clotildis Ortis · ANSELMUS PESCHLE … per procuratorem · Beatrice Ortis · cives» with «† Tergesti 22-6-1941» added above the entry by a later hand, and the midwife «Catharina Cattenar». (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069135, folio 121.)

The child this archive already had. Anna Maria Francisca Defranceschi was corrected on 13 September from a roster year of «1880» to born at Gologorica 28 October 1860, died at Trieste 22 June 1941 — and the register agrees with both, to the day. Verification, and said so. What is new is the baptism (4 November), the house (7), the midwife, and the godparents.

⭐ ANSELMUS PESCHLE, and he was not there. The godfather is entered «per procuratorem» — by proxy, the formula used when the chosen godparent cannot come and a stand-in holds the child for him. So Franciscus Defranceschi wanted a Peschle at his daughter's font badly enough to have one in absentia.

This archive has never met an Anselmus Peschle. It knows Lambertina née Peschle, Carlo's mother, married into this house in 1807; it knows Amalia Peschle «ex Volosca», godmother in 1822; it knows Dr Albertus Peschle, physician of house 2, whose own child's godparents were the German-named Schrott and Walser. Anselmus is the fourth.

⚠ What that is worth, stated carefully. Four Peschle across fifty years at one Istrian village, three of them standing at Defranceschi or Peschle fonts, one of them «ex Volosca», one a doctor of medicine, and this one summoned from somewhere else by proxy. That is a family with reach, and it is not yet a family with an origin. Worklist 170 asked whether they were German-Silesian who arrived on the Kvarner rather than a Kvarner family; [the word it rested on reads «ex Volosca» and the item is withdrawn.](/worklist/) Nothing here ever answered it, and a proxy godfather tells you he was away without telling you where.

⭐ And the house number is the quiet part. The baptisms of this family through the 1840s were at houses 5, 6, 8 and 9; this one is at 7 — the number the 1826 status animarum gives Josephus Defranceschi's household, Carlo's own. The son is baptising his children in his father's house. (Given what this archive has learnt about the book's two numberings, that is offered as the plain reading of a single figure and not as a proof of tenure.)

Meanwhile the two Sestan households finish their families. Sancta Alexandra's eighth child — «Catharina nata heri», 24 June 1859, house 9 — and Joanna's ninth, born 15 September 1859 at house 3, with Francisca Defranceschi godmother again. Between them the two Defranceschi daughters of house 2 bore fifteen children that this register names, where the archive this morning had none at all.

A Peschle stands godfather by proxy — Gologorica, 4 November 1860 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

The page where a parish priest stops writing, and a son is called «possessor»

Folio 123 does something no other page in this book does: it shows a man dying. Not in an entry — the deaths are not kept here — but in the baptizans column, which runs «Petrus Milcetich, Parochus» for twenty-seven years and then simply stops.

⭐ The 1826 status animarum says Milcetich died on 22 March 1862, aged 58 years 2 months 15 days, «mortuus et sepultus Gollogoricæ». The register brackets that date without naming it — his last signature is nine days before it and his successor's first is three weeks after. Two independent books, one man, and they agree. After a day spent finding places where the census and this register disagree, it is worth recording a place where they do not.

Blasius Zwölber is one of the eight the parish-house page names — born 1 February 1822 «e Zuckfeld», dead 22 May 1879 — so for once the roll of priests and the hand in the book are the same list. They have not always been.

> «1862 Aprilis 27 · [domus] 7 · VICTOR JOSEPHUS natus 22 Aprilis · Franciscus Xav. Defranceschi, POSSESSOR · Clotildis Ortis · Natalis Stefanovich, MARIA DEFRANCESCHI · cives» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069137, folio 123.)

⭐ Victor Josephus, the second child of this marriage to be found in a week. The pedigree had him as «1862»; he was born 22 April 1862 and baptised on the 27th, at house 7 — the same house as his sister Anna Maria Francisca eighteen months earlier.

⭐ And his father has a new word. Through the 1840s and 1850s the Defranceschi of this book are civis. Here Franciscus Xaverius is «possessor» — a holder of property, written in the conditio slot where the neighbours get «agricola». It is the first time the register distinguishes this family by what it owns rather than by its standing. ⚠ One word on one line is not an estate, and no page is rewritten on it; it is recorded because the 1820 cadastre is already on the archive's list and this is the kind of word that cadastre would answer.

The godmother is Maria Defranceschi — the same name that stood as «Maria sorella» to Franciscus in 1844. If that identification holds she is Maria Aloysia, fifty-one here, standing for her brother's son. (inf, and still inference.)

⭐ And Sancta Alexandra's ninth. «1862 Julii 8 · [domus] 9 · ELISABETHA nata 7 Julii 1862», of «Joannes Sestan, POSSIDENS» and «Sancta n. Defranceschi». Nine children, 1840 to 1862. And her husband too has changed word: sutor, then lapicida, then agricola, then textor, and now possidens. No trade is taken from this book for that man — it has given four and they do not agree — but a man entered possidens in 1862 is not the man entered sutor in 1840, and the drift is one way.

⚠ And a byname for the Grah, which worklist 168 should have. Two rows below Victor's, the mother and a godmother are both entered «Grah» with «Missan» written beneath the surname — «Mariana Grah / Missan» and «Cathar. Grah / missan». Whether Missan is a byname in the manner of «Flegar alias Sidre» or a place has not been settled here, and it is not claimed as either. It is recorded because the Grah are the family behind the Krbune item and a second word attached to a common surname is exactly what makes one findable.

--- ⭐ 6 October 2026 — AND NOW THE ENTRY THIS SECTION SAID DID NOT EXIST HERE. The paragraphs above read the baptism book and said, correctly, that it shows a man dying «not in an entry — the deaths are not kept here». Walking the death register to page 102 found them. > «22 Martii [1862] · M. R. D. Petrus Milcetich, Parochus loci, … sacramentis munitus, sepultus est 24. huj. · 58 · pleuropneumonia» Fifty-eight years old, dead of pleuropneumonia on 22 March 1862, buried on the 24th, having received the sacraments. The hand that stops mid-folio in the baptism book stops because of this. (doc — M01069280, p. 102.)

⚠ And the signature on his entry is worth as much as the entry. The Subscriptio column reads «Franciscus Coverlizza, Parochus, Decanus Petinae» — the Dean of Pićan. That name has been signing the annual inspection at the foot of these pages since the 1840s: «Vidi. Petinae die 12. Januarii 1847», «…die 10. Januarii 1845», year after year. The man who had been checking Milcetich's book for twenty years wrote the line that closed it. For the rest of 1862 the column reads «Blasius Zwölberr, Administrator Parochialis», with «Bartholomaeus Resmann» and «Franciscus Lazar, Cooperator» taking one entry each — the same pattern of borrowed clergy as the 1805 interregnum.

And the parish had a bad year on both counts. The priest died in March; then entries 8 and 10 to 13 of 1862 are all «dysenteria» — five deaths in August and September — and entry 7, in July, is «variola et hernia», smallpox in a man of seventy.

The page where one priest stops and another begins — Gologorica, 1862 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «M. R. D. Petrus Milcetich, Parochus loci» — the entry the baptism book could only imply Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

A second set of these registers left the parish every year

The strip this archive had been cropping off the bottom of every page turned out to hold the most useful thing on the film. Ruled across the foot of folio 98, beneath the last baptism of 1835:

> «Quae copiae collationatae anni 1835 concordant cum hoc originali libro. Ex officio Decanatus, Petinae die 7 Maij 1836.» — signed, Decanus «Which collated copies of the year 1835 agree with this original book. By office of the Deanery, at Pićan, 7 May 1836.» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069111, folio 98.)

⭐ Read it carefully, because it is a statement about a document that is not in the picture. The parish made a copy of each year's entries. The dean collated that copy against this original and certified that the two agreed. So a second, certified set of these registers went out of Gologorica every year, and this film holds the one that stayed.

This is the ordinary Habsburg practice and this archive had not registered that it applied here. A parish kept the original; a duplicate went up to the deanery, and from the deanery to the diocese. Where the originals have been lost, burnt or are closed, the duplicates are what genealogists read. Here the originals survive — so the duplicates are not a rescue. They are something better: an independent witness.

⭐ WHAT IT IS WORTH TO THIS ARCHIVE, CONCRETELY. 1. The reel the family does not hold. Gračišće house 5 and house 4 — where Francisca, Joanna and probably Lucia were born — are on ZM34K-216, and getting it is the archive's first errand. If Gračišće's parish also sent annual copies to the same deanery, there is a second route to the same entries. 2. The three death-year collisions. A duplicate death register is a second chance at the same burials. 3. Checking the book against itself. Where this register disagrees with the 1826 census — and it does, on five of Joanna's eight children — a contemporary certified copy is an independent third reading.

⚠ AND THE CAUTIONS, because this is a lead and not a holding. Nothing here says the duplicates survive; nothing says where they went after the deanery; and a certificate of 1836 proves the practice for one year at one parish, not for every year or every parish. This archive has not looked for them and is not claiming they exist. What it now knows is that they were made — which is the difference between a search with a target and a search without one. Worklist 178 carries it.

⚠ And a correction that comes with it. Earlier today this archive wrote that the deanery was «still seated at Pićan» fifty years after its diocese was suppressed, on the strength of five certificates reading «Vidi. Petinae». A sixth, of 15 March 1849, reads «Vidi. Pizinae» — Pazin, a different town, the letter unmistakable beside the others. Both forms are in the book. So the dean signed at Pićan in the 1830s and 40s and at Pazin in 1849, and «the deanery's own seat» was a claim the evidence did not carry. The named deans and the dates stand; the address does not.

«Quae copiae collationatae anni 1835 concordant cum hoc originali libro» — a second set of these registers existed Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

A Caesar Peschle is born at Gologorica, and an army doctor stops being a stranger

This archive has carried a man it could not place for weeks. Fifty-one hits on Hungaricana, almost all of them Dr Cäsar Peschle, medical officer of the K. K. Landwehr, commissioned 1 August 1895, Assistenzarzt with the 5th and 23rd Regiments, attached to the Landsturm district of Gorizia and still on the lists in 1918. Twenty-three years of a career, and the Peschle page said under it: «Nothing joins him to Lambertina.»

> «1864 Octobris 9 · [domus] 4 · REMIGIUS CÆSAR natus 1 Oct. · Albertus Peschle, Doctor medicinæ · Victoria nata Calligarich · Luigi De Franceschi, Celestina V.da Calligarich · industriante» midwife «Joanna Crismanich». (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069140, folio 126.)

⭐ A Caesar Peschle, born at Gologorica on 1 October 1864, to a doctor of medicine. Four things agree with the man on the army lists at once: the surname, the given name — uncommon enough to be worth something — the profession in the household, and the age: a man born in October 1864 is just under thirty-one when that commission is granted in August 1895, which is exactly when an Assistenzarzt is commissioned after his training.

⚠ It is an inference and it is written as one. The Hungaricana entries are army lists; they give rank, regiment and date and not a birthplace. Nothing in either record names the other. What this archive now has is a Gologorica birth that fits an Austrian career at four points, where before it had a career attached to nothing. (inf.) The Peschle page carries it, and so does the caution.

And it matters because of where he was. The Peschle page has long noted that Cäsar Peschle's Landsturm district was Gorizia — and that Gorizia is where Carlo De Franceschi was sent to the seminary. That was recorded as a coincidence of place and not evidence. It is still not evidence. But a coincidence between two strangers is worth less than a coincidence between a man and his mother's family's village, and this entry is what moves it from the first kind to the second.

⭐ And the godfather is a Defranceschi, in Italian. «Luigi De Franceschi» — Luigi is Aloysius. Aloysius Defranceschi, born 8 May 1832 at Volosca and dead in 1870 — the brother whose birthplace this archive corrected from «Polonia» to «Volosca» — was thirty-two in 1864. (inf.) The conditio reads «industriante», a tradesman — a word new to this register.

⭐ Meanwhile the house-7 family adds another daughter. «1863 Decemb. 20 · [domus] 7 · AMALIA LAMBERTINA nata 14 Dic. 1863», of «Franciscus X. Defranceschi, poss.» and «Clotilde n. Ortis»; godparents Raimondo and Marietta Baxa, cives. (doc — M01069139, folio 125.) The pedigree already had 14 December 1863 — from the 1894 census — and the register agrees to the day. Verification, and the baptism, the house and the godparents are new. Her second name is her grandmother's: Lambertina née Peschle, who married into this house in 1807.

⚠ And a reading corrected before it was published. At first look the figure read 19 December. Cut past the cell and enlarged, the second digit is an open-topped 4 with no loop — against the closed-loop 9 of the entry number «19» on the same line. 14 December, as the archive already held. The fourth time today that rule has stopped an error reaching the page.

«Remigius Cæsar», son of a doctor of medicine — Gologorica, 9 October 1864 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Twins, and the register says which came first

The pedigree has given Franciscus Xaverius and Clotildis two daughters born on the same day since the tree was imported, and said nothing about it. Two rows with one date is ambiguous — it is as likely to be a copying error as a twin birth, and this archive has found plenty of the first kind today. Folio 134 settles it in three words.

> «1868 Maji 31ma · [domus] 7 · MARIA HENRICA die 5 A[prilis] PRIUS NATA» > «1868 Maji 31ma · [domus] 7 · CLOTILDIS ADELAIDIS die 5 Aprilis nata» both of «Franciscus Defranceschi, possidens» and «Clotildis nata Ortis»; midwife «Matthæa Stojsich». (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069147, folio 134.)

⭐ Prius nata — born earlier. The priest wrote two entries for one birth and marked the order of it. They are twins, born 5 April 1868, and Maria Henrica is the elder. This archive had both dates and no idea they belonged to one morning.

⚠ And the gap is long enough to be worth a line. Born 5 April, baptised 31 May — fifty-six days, far longer than anything else this family shows. Maria Henrica's entry says she was «praesentata», presented — the word used when a child has already been baptised privately, usually at birth and usually in danger, and is later brought to church for the ceremonies to be supplied. (The reading of that one word is offered and not leaned on.) Twins born to a household that could afford a midwife, and nearly two months before the font: the register is not explaining itself, but it is not hiding anything either.

⭐ AND EACH TWIN IS NAMED FOR HER GODPARENT. Maria HENRICA has «Henricus Defranceschi» for godfather. Clotildis ADELAIDIS has «Henricus Defranceschi» and «ADELAIDIS DEFRANCESCHI», the pair entered possidentes.

Those two are the brother and sister of the «et soror» entries. Enrichus Jacobus, born 11 March 1830 — whose baptism opened this day's work — and Adelaidis, whom two of her brothers named a sister in 1847 and 1852 and who was «unplaced» in this archive until this afternoon. Here they stand together at their brother's font, and his daughters are called after them.

⭐ Which is the strongest thing yet said about Adelaidis. Worklist 175 holds the open question of whether she is the same child as Anastasia or Amelia. This does not answer it. But a woman who is chosen as a godmother in 1868, aged about forty-four, and has a niece named after her in the same entry, is a person with a life in this village — not a name that drifted into a pedigree. She was placed this afternoon on two godparent lines; she is confirmed this evening by a third and by a child.

And the house is still 7. Six children of this marriage are now documented there — Anna Maria Francisca (1860), Victor Josephus (1862), Amalia Lambertina (1863), Beatrix Hermengildis (1865) and these twins — in the house the 1826 census gives their grandfather.

Twins, and the register says which came first — Gologorica, 5 April 1868 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

A man who could not write acknowledges his son, and a Defranceschi witnesses it

Every Defranceschi in this book so far has appeared as a parent or a godparent. On the last day of 1870 one appears in a third role, and it is the one that says most about what the family was in this village.

> «Ego cum signo crucis signatus ANTONIUS RUP—OVIČ, agricola … declaro … esse verum me patrem hujus creaturæ ANTONII.» > witnesses: «JOANNES DEFRANCESCHI» · «FRANCISCUS PALMAN» Beside the baptism of 30 December 1870, house 26, the Infans column is given over to a declaration running the whole depth of the page. (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069150, folio 140.)

«I, signed with the sign of the cross» — the formula of a man who cannot write his own name. He is declaring, before the priest and two witnesses, that he is the true father of the child being baptised. A man who signs with a cross needs witnesses who can, and the parish found two.

⭐ One of them is a Defranceschi, and that is a role this archive has not seen the family in. Through ninety folios they are cives, then possidentes — words that assert standing. This is standing doing something: being the literate neighbour whose name on a page makes another man's word binding.

Who he is, as an inference. The obvious candidate is Joannes Baptista Defranceschi, born 19 June 1842 — whose own baptism was recovered today from the strip at the foot of a page — the eldest son of Antonius and Francisca of house 5, twenty-eight years old and of exactly the age and class to be asked. (inf.) The register gives him no patronymic and no house, and this archive does not know another adult Joannes Defranceschi at Gologorica in 1870 — which is a reason to suspect, not a reason to assert.

And the second witness is a Palman, the family whose surname cost this archive six days of public error. Here the two names stand side by side on one line, in one hand, three words apart. It is the cleanest specimen of the two surnames together that the book has offered, and it says what the palaeographic test said in November 1843: they are not the same word and the parish never confused them.

A man who could not write acknowledges his son — and a Defranceschi witnesses it, 1870 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

An Italian state office rules on the surname in 1920, and cites a birth certificate of 1626

Folio 142 carries something no other page of this book carries: a typewriter. A slip of typed paper is pasted across the entries of 2 and 10 July 1871, hiding the baptisms underneath — and what it says reaches four hundred years back and out of Istria altogether.

> «Giusta lettera del Commissariato Gen. Civ. per la Venezia Giulia dd 10/12 1920 N. 1x-4411/563 la grafia originale del cognome di questo battezzato è “de Franceschi”, ciò che risulta dalla fede di nascita del suo proavo LEONARDO DE FRANCESCHI nato a LUINCIO dd. 23/6 1626. > D’Ordine del Commissariato Gen. Civ. — Avv. Melone» «By letter of the General Civil Commissariat for Venezia Giulia of 10 December 1920, no. 1x-4411/563, the original spelling of this baptised person’s surname is de Franceschi, as appears from the birth certificate of his forefather Leonardo de Franceschi, born at Luincio on 23 June 1626.» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069151, folio 142.)

What the office was. The Commissariato Generale Civile per la Venezia Giulia was the Italian civil administration of the territories annexed after 1918 — the body that ran Istria between the armistice and the full incorporation of 1922, and that spent much of its time regularising the names of people who had been Austrian subjects the year before. This is a state act, signed by a lawyer, settling how a surname is to be written.

⭐ AND IT IS THE DEEPEST NAME THIS ARCHIVE HAS EVER BEEN HANDED. The Carnia chain begins with a Leonardo de Franceschi who is dead before 1785 and known only from the way his son styles himself. Its deepest document is a parish certificate of 1808 reaching back to a Giovanni Battista dead by 1789. Here an Italian official says he had in front of him a fede di nascita — a birth certificate — for a Leonardo de Franceschi born at Luincis on 23 June 1626.

⚠ AND LUINCIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE. This archive has already quoted the Book of Baptisms of Luincis: «Certifico io sottoscritto Parroco della Pieve Matrice di Gorto a parte Luvincis…» — the certificate of 1808 that gave the family its deepest name. The 1920 ruling cites the same parish’s register, a hundred and sixty-three years earlier. The mother church of the Val Degano is where this family’s baptisms were kept, and an official in 1920 was reading its 1626 volume.

⚠ WHAT THIS IS NOT, and the list is long enough to matter. 1. It is a 1920 ruling, not a 1626 record. This archive has not seen the fede di nascita. An official says it existed and says what it contained. 2. «Proavo» is being used loosely. It means great-grandfather; 1626 to 1871 is seven or eight generations, not three. The word here means forefather. 3. The office had a motive. A body regularising surnames after annexation wants a spelling settled, and a settled spelling is not the same thing as a proved descent. Nothing here shows the official traced the line; it shows he accepted it. 4. The slip hides the entry it annotates. This archive cannot read the baptism underneath — which is a small, exact irony: the document that reaches furthest back is pasted over the one it is about.

⭐ AND THE FILM ANSWERS IT, because it photographed this opening twice. The very next frame, M01069152, is the same two pages with the slip folded back. Underneath it: «[domus] 7 · VICTOR RICHARDUS die 15. Junii natus» — of «Defranceschi … possidens» and «[Clotilde] nata Ortis»; godparents Jodocus and Angelica Baxa. And in the margin of the entry, in the same hand as the slip: «vide … sub 30 protocoll.» — see the document under protocol 30, a cross-reference from the register to the ruling. So the 1920 act is about Victor Richardus Defranceschi, born 15 June 1871, baptised 2 July — a man of forty-nine in 1920, in exactly the position to need an Italian birth certificate. This was written up an hour ago as an inference. It is not one.

⭐ AND IT GIVES THE ARCHIVE TWO ADDRESSES INSTEAD OF A HOPE. The file itself — Commissariato Generale Civile per la Venezia Giulia, 10 December 1920, N. 1x-4411/563. A numbered, dated act of a named office. Its records are state records.* The register it cites — the baptisms of the Pieve di Gorto at Luincis for 1626. If an official read that book in 1920, the book existed in 1920.* Worklist 179 carries both. For an archive whose Carnia origin has rested on Carlo De Franceschi’s own word and a chain of inference, a state document naming the place and the year is a different kind of thing — and it is still not the record itself.

⚠ And a note for whoever walks this film next. The frame map records that these reels «shoot some openings twice», and the coverage check treats a duplicate exposure as noise to be discounted. Here the duplicate is the evidence. *One frame has the slip down and hides a baptism; the next has it lifted and shows both. A second exposure of a page is not redundancy when something on that page can move.

An Italian state office rules on the surname in 1920, and cites a birth certificate of 1626 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

The baptism book is finished — 1784 to 1880, and its own index at the back

One hundred and sixty-four folios, ninety-six years, and about a hundred and seventy frames. *It was being sampled at every third frame when this week began. It is now walked end to end, both halves of every page — after the crop that was cutting the feet off them was caught and the claim withdrawn — and the book closes with something this archive did not know was there: its own alphabetical index.

⭐ THE INDEX NAMES THE TWO JOANNES BAPTISTA HOUSEHOLDS AND TELLS THEM APART. > «Defranceschi Joan. Bapta defuncti Josephi · N.º 5» > Joseph (p. 2) · Franciscus (struck out) · Catharina «quæ obiit» (p. 4) · Catharina Helena (p. 6) · Maria Rosalia (p. 8) · Maria Antonia (p. 11) > «Defranceschi Joanes Bapta DETTI LEONARDI · N.º 12» > Franciscus Antonius (p. 3) · Joanes Bapta (p. 6) (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069167.)

«Detti Leonardi» — called the Leonardi. This archive has carried that byname as the name of the casa-31 branch, reasoned out of the family's habit of reusing the font-name Leonardus. Here it is in the register's own index, written by the priest who kept the book, and used for exactly what a byname is for: telling two men called Joannes Baptista Defranceschi apart.

⭐ And it bridges the two numbering systems. The archive's casa 31 is the «detti Leonardi» household; the index calls that household N.º 12. Worklist 171 has been asking since this morning what the book's second series of house numbers is — and this is the first place where a household appears under a number from each. 31 and 12 are the same door. (One pair is not a key, and the item stays open; but it is the first pair that comes with a name attached rather than a strike-through.)

⭐ CARLO DE FRANCESCHI STANDS AT THE FONT. > «1874 Octob. 11 · [domus] 11 · FRANCISCUS CAROLUS NATALIS die 6. Octob. natus · Franciscus Defranceschi, possidens · Clotildis nata Ortis · CARLO DEFRANCESCHI, Natale Stipanich · cives» — with «† Tergeste 17-2-1942» in the margin. (doc — M01069156, folio 150.) Carlo De Franceschi — born 17 October 1809, died 8 January 1893, the historian this entire archive leans on — standing godfather to his brother's son six days before his own sixty-fifth birthday. And the child carries both godparents' names: Carolus for Carlo, Natalis for Natale Stipanich. The archive has Carlo's writings, his letter, his book and his grave. This is the first time it has him in the register of his own village doing an ordinary family thing.

⭐ THREE DEFRANCESCHI HOUSEHOLDS THE ARCHIVE DID NOT HAVE.

⚠ AND THE FIRST OF THEM IS A PROBLEM. This archive carries Aloysius Defranceschi, born 8 May 1832 at Volosca, died 25 November 1870 — Carlo's brother, the one whose birthplace was corrected from «Polonia» to «Volosca». A man who died in 1870 cannot father a daughter in April 1873. So either this is a second Aloysius Defranceschi at Gologorica, or the 1870 death belongs to somebody else. Nothing is changed on his record; it is the fourth unresolved death-year collision in this family, and it goes on the same pile — which is now the strongest argument on this site for opening the burial register.

⭐ And Rosa closes a circle this archive opened this morning. At eight o'clock today a child the family tree called «Joanna, born 9 June 1848» was shown by her own baptism to be Rosa, born 7 June 1848, dead 10 December 1899. At the far end of the book she is married to Fortunatus Sestan — the second son of Sancta Alexandra Defranceschi, whose empty note was filled the same morning. Two Defranceschi daughters married into the Sestan house of Gologorica in the 1840s; in the next generation a Defranceschi daughter marries their son. (inf that this Rosa is that Rosa — the archive knows no other Rosa Defranceschi of the age at Gologorica, which is a reason to suspect and not to assert.)

⭐ And Sancta Alexandra is the parish midwife. Her name is in the Obstetrix column in 1873 and again in 1876 — «Sancta Sestan», delivering the village's children at fifty-four and fifty-seven, including Lambertina Lina Defranceschi's. A woman this archive held at breakfast with an empty note, no husband and no children: ten children of her own, a trade, and a place in every household in the village.

And the 1920 ruling is on the page twice. The typewritten slip over Victor Richardus's entry is not the only copy: the same text is written out by hand at the foot of folio 150, over the entry of Franciscus Carolus Natalis. The signature is clearer there — «Avv. Mellone». So the Commissariato's act was applied to the baptisms of at least two brothers, which is what regularising a family's papers looks like.

What is left of the reel. The baptism book is done. On the same two reels, unread or barely touched: the Gologorica deaths 1784–1880 (91 frames, ~2%), Cerovlje's status animarum (139 frames, never opened), and the 1862, 1894 and 1921 household censuses. The death book is next, and the case for it is already written.

The book’s own index names the two Defranceschi households, and the byname Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate Carlo De Franceschi stands godfather to his brother’s son, 1874 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

The death book opens, and answers in two pages what the archive had argued for a fortnight

The register of the dead of Gologorica, 1784 to 1880 — ninety-one frames, barely two per cent of it read, and the case for opening it was written yesterday on the strength of four unresolved death years. It has an alphabetical index at the back, as the baptism book does. The index names the pages. The first two pages the index pointed at settled the two oldest questions on this page.

> «1821. Die 30ma Januarii hora ½ 4ta a meridie · [domus] 104 · CLEMENTINA FILIA D.ni JOSEPHI DEFRANCESCHI · dierum 2 et horarum 11½ · Imperfecta Structura» > Sepulta fuit die 1ma Februarii 1821. — Ant. Ferdinandus Mocovich, parochus. (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069259, page 62.)

⭐ THE TWO CLEMENTINAS ARE NO LONGER A QUESTION. Her baptism, in the other book, has her born 28 January 1821 at four in the morning, at house 104. This entry has her dead on 30 January at half past three in the afternoon, at house 104, aged two days and eleven and a half hours. From four in the morning on the 28th to half past three on the afternoon of the 30th is two days and eleven and a half hours. The arithmetic closes exactly.

So the elder Clementina died at two days old, of imperfecta structura — imperfect formation — and her parents gave the name again to the daughter born 3 October 1822. This archive inferred that on 1 October, from nothing but the twenty-month gap and what families do. The inference was right, and it is now a document. And yesterday's caution was right too: her baptism carries no marginal cross, and a blank margin in that book means nothing at all.

⚠ And it moves a death year that was sitting on the wrong woman. This roster gave the 1821 Clementina a death of 1870. She died in 1821. So the 1870 cannot be hers, and the thirty-year dispute over the 1822 Clementina — archive 1840 against tree 1870 — loses one of its two explanations: it can no longer be settled by saying the 1870 belongs to her sister. Both rows are corrected and the remaining dispute is stated, not resolved.

⭐ And it identifies the godmother of 1840. A Clementina Defranceschi stood godmother at Gologorica on 20 February 1840, entered civis, and this archive wrote that she might be either of the two. She cannot be the elder. There is only one Clementina left.

> «1817. Die 19 Xbris hora 10ma noctis · [domus] 17 · MAXIMILIANUS JOSEPH DEFRANCESCHI, D.ni Josephi filius · annorum 4 · Vermes et Phthisis cum febri maligna» > Sepultus fuit die 20 … Solis occasum ob signa putrefactionis. (doc — M01069257, page 58.)

⭐ A SON THIS ARCHIVE DID NOT HAVE, AND A SECOND NAME REUSED. Four years old in December 1817, so born about 1813 — between Maria Aloysia (August 1811) and Franciscus Xaverius (February 1816), in a gap the pedigree had empty. The Maximilianus Antonius this archive knows was born 8 January 1828 — his baptism was found on Sunday — eleven years after this child was buried.

So Josephus and Lambertina reused two names, not one. Clementina in 1822 for the daughter of 1821; Maximilianus in 1828 for the son of about 1813. That is no longer an inference about what families did. It is the documented habit of this family, and it is a warning to anyone matching a Gologorica Defranceschi by given name alone.

⚠ And the burial tells you what December 1817 was like. He was buried the next day at sunset, «ob signa putrefactionis» — because of the signs of putrefaction. The page around him is dense with children: worms, consumption, malignant fever, a four-year-old, a two-year-old, an infant of five months. The register of a village in a bad winter.

What the index gives, which is a map of the rest. Under «Defranceschi Joseph · N.º 17» the book lists fourteen deaths with their pages — among them «R.dus Joan: Mathias, ex Parochus» (p. 15), a Defranceschi who had been parish priest; «D.na Helena, vidua q. Josephi» (p. 25); «D.nus Joan: Bapta q. Josephi» (p. 39); and «Amalia, filia Josephi» (p. 67). Two further households follow — «Joanes Bapta detti Leonardi · N.º 12» and «Leonardus · N.º 10». The index was read in this archive before. Its pages had never been opened.

Clementina Defranceschi, two days and eleven hours old — 30 January 1821 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate A Maximilianus Defranceschi who died in 1817, eleven years before the one this archive knows Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate The death book’s index of the Defranceschi, and the pages it points at Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

A Defranceschi who had been parish priest of Gračišće

The death book's index lists fourteen Defranceschi under house 17, and the third of them is a title rather than a name: «R.dus Joan: Mathias, ex Parochus». This archive held that man as a bare row with the single word «Don» against it, no dates, no place beyond Gologorica. Page 15 gives him everything.

> «Idem · [domus] 63 · 29 Martij [1798] · admodum R[everen]d[u]s D[omi]n[u]s MATH. DE FRANCESCHI, ex Parocho GALLEGNA[nensi] · annorum 62 · Paralisia» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069235, page 15 of the death register.)

⭐ Ex Parocho Gallignanensi — formerly parish priest of GALLIGNANA, which is GRAČIŠĆE. Not a neighbouring parish picked at random: Gračišće is where the Eleven are, and it is this line's own second home — the parish Francisca and Joanna came out of, the parish whose registers sit on the one reel the family does not hold. A man of this surname held that cure, and died at Gologorica on 29 March 1798, aged sixty-two, of a stroke. Born about 1736.

What the archive had instead. A roster row — joannes-mathias-franceschi-gologorica — carrying his name, the place «Gologorica», the line «carnia», and for a note the word «Don». That is all. He was a title somebody had written down and nobody had looked for.

⚠ And it is a lead, not a conclusion, about where he fits. The entry gives his age and his office and not his father. The index files him under «Defranceschi Joseph · N.º 17», which is the household this archive follows — but an index is a clerk's filing decision, not a statement of descent. No parent is attached to him on the strength of it. What is now worth doing is asking the Gračišće registers who their priest was in the 1760s–1790s, which is on the reel that is already the first errand.

> «Idem · [domus] 36 · 26 augusti [1804] · D.na HELLENA, vid[ua] q. JOSEPHI DEFRANCESCHI ex loco · annorum 84 · Maligna» (doc — M01069240, page 25.)

⭐ Domina Helena, widow of the late Josephus Defranceschi, dead of a malignant fever at eighty-four. Eighty-four in August 1804 puts her birth about 1720. This archive carries her as 1725–1809. The register disagrees with it at both ends — four years on the birth and five on the death.

⚠ That is the fifth collision in this family, and the first the death book has produced rather than closed. The other four are Clementina, Josephus Lambertus, Antonius and Aloysius. This one is different in kind: it is not a tree against an archive guess, it is a contemporary parish entry against a date this archive has published, and the parish entry is the better-placed of the two. Nothing is changed on her row yet — the book is four frames in, and the sensible thing is to finish it before moving dates one at a time.

And the dean signed both books on the same day. Ruled across page 25, above Helena: «Revisus in Visitatione Decanali die 17ma Julii 1804 — M. Franciscus Franovich, Canonicus, Cæsareus Regius Parochus et Decanus». The same inspection, the same date and the same dean that this archive found in the baptism book — so a visitation signed every register in the parish on one visit, and worklist 169 can expect its protocols to cover all three books rather than one.

A Defranceschi who had been parish priest of Gračišće — died 29 March 1798 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate Domina Helena, widow of the late Josephus Defranceschi — 26 August 1804, aged eighty-four Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

The French took the registers, and the priest wrote down what that cost him

Between two deaths of 1812, ruled across the column in the parish priest's own hand, is the only sentence in these books about who owned them.

> «N.B. Hic Liber cum aliis ex justa ordinationem regiminis GALLICI consignatus fuit MUNICIPALITATI PISINENSI die 20ma Julii 1812, et die 5ta Januarii 1814 fuere restituti ab Administratione Dominali; quamobrem Mortuorum eorum Nomina, qui per hoc intervallum obierunt, fideliter ex more solito hic retuli: ego idem Parochus Mocovich qui supra.» «This book with the others, by the just ordinance of the French government, was consigned to the Municipality of Pazin on 20 July 1812, and on 5 January 1814 they were restored by the Seigneurial Administration; wherefore the names of those who died during this interval I have faithfully entered here in the usual way: I, the same parish priest Mocovich as above.» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069247, page 38 of the death register.)

⭐ For eighteen months this parish did not have its own registers. Istria was inside Napoleon's Illyrian Provinces, and the French did what the French did everywhere: they took registration off the church and gave it to the commune. The books went to Pazin on 20 July 1812 and came back on 5 January 1814.

⚠ WHICH MAKES EVERY DATE IN THIS BOOK BETWEEN THOSE TWO DAYS A RETROSPECTIVE ONE. The priest says so himself: «quamobrem … fideliter ex more solito hic retuli» — wherefore I have entered them here afterwards. He is not hiding it; he is flagging it, which is more than most registers do. But an entry written up from memory or from a note eighteen months later is not an entry made on the day, and any Gologorica date this archive holds from July 1812 to January 1814 should be read with that in front of it.

⭐ AND IT NAMES A RECORD SERIES THIS ARCHIVE HAS NEVER LOOKED FOR. If the commune held registration for eighteen months, the commune registered. There should be French civil registers of the Municipality of Pazin, 1812–1814 — births, marriages and deaths for every parish in its district, Gologorica among them. This archive has never asked for them, and they are the only contemporary record of that window. Worklist 180 carries it.

And beneath it, a nil — recorded by a parish priest in 1812. > «N.B. A die 10ma Julii usque ad 19am Augusti exclusive nemo obiit in hac Parochia.» «From 10 July to 19 August exclusive, nobody died in this parish.» He wrote down an absence, with its exact bounds, so that nobody reading after him would mistake a silent page for a lost one. It is the rule this archive works to, set down in the same book two hundred and fourteen years earlier.

> «Die 22 Xbris 1826 hora 3tia postm. · [domus] 17 · AMALIA DE FRANCESCHI, filia Josephi · 8 Men[ses] · febres gastricæ, mali[gnæ]» — buried the 24th at ten in the morning. (doc — M01069262, page 67.)

⭐ Amalia had no dates at all. The pedigree carried her as a child of Josephus and Lambertina with neither birth nor death — a name in a list. She died on 22 December 1826 aged eight months, of gastric and malignant fever, at house 17, and was buried two days later. Born about April 1826.

⭐ And it unpicks one strand of a knot. Worklist 175 holds four names round one household — Anastasia, Maria Adelgidis, Adelaidis and Amelia — and asks how many children they are. Amalia died in infancy, so she cannot be the Adelaidis who stands godmother in 1847, in 1852 and at the twins' font in 1868. One of the four is now accounted for, and the question narrows to whether Adelaidis and Anastasia are one girl.

---

# ⭐⭐ 10 October 2026 — the same seizure, written a second time, in another book and another language

This page has carried the Latin note from the death register since it was read. Opening the baptism book of 1784 for an entirely different reason — looking for a house-number concordance — turned up its Italian twin on the flyleaf.

> «Sotto il fù Governo Francese. Li 20. Luglio 1812 fu consegnato questo Registro per ordine del Maire S.ʳ Fran.ᶜᵒ [—]ovaz all'Uff.ᵒ municipale di Pisino, e li 5. Gen.ᵒ 1814 restituito dall'amministrazione Dominale della Contea con li altri sei a mani di me Parroco Mocovich.» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069011, the flyleaf of «IV. Liber Baptisatorum»; cover at M01069010.)

⚠ This is verification, not discovery, and the page says so. The event, both dates and the municipality were already published from the Latin. What the Italian adds is three things the Latin does not say.

⭐ SEVEN REGISTERS went to Pazin and came back together. That is a number to take to any search for the French communal records — worklist 180 — because it says how much of this parish's paper passed through the Municipality of Pisino, and for eighteen months.

⚠ The Maire's surname is not legible here. It is «S.ʳ Fran.ᶜᵒ» followed by a short abbreviation — possibly «avv.», advocate — and a surname whose capital this archive cannot read, ending —ovaz. It is recorded as present and unread rather than guessed, because a Maire of Pazin in 1812 is a findable man and the next reader should know there is a name here to be got.

---

## ✔ And it discharges a flag set yesterday afternoon

The obit calendar was published with its compiler as «Antonio Ferdinando M[?]ocovrich», with the initial letter flagged as uncertain. The flyleaf signature is the same man and its capital is an unambiguous M. He is Mocovich — parish priest of Gologorica who compiled the catalogue of the dead in 1800 and was still in the cure when the French took his books in 1812 and returned them in 1814.

⚠ The archive's table of priests begins with the 1826 status animarum and does not carry him. Mocovich now has a documented span of 1800–1814 and no row.

---

## ⚠ And the nil this reading was actually looking for

The book was opened to see whether it declared a house numbering, the way the 1770 item carries its house list at the front. It does not. Cover, flyleaf, a certificate of 1824, and then the register. So the renumbering between house 45 in 1780 and casa 31 in 1785 is not declared where the first numbering was, and that route is closed.

⭐ One thing the cover does give: «IV. LIBER BAPTISATORUM In Parochia Gollogorizæ ab anno 1784». The parish numbered its own books, and this is the fourth. This archive holds what are probably I–III without knowing it — and a series number on a cover is a cheap way to find out whether a book is missing from the reels.

The French took the registers — and the priest wrote down what that cost him Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate Amalia de Franceschi, eight months old — 22 December 1826 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

A Defranceschi buried this parish — the surname is in the officiant column

The leftmost column of a death register is Sepeliens: who performed the burial. For most of this book it reads «Mocovich», «Bobich», «Brussich», «Zwölber» — the priests the parish-house list names. At the head of the year 1787 it reads something else.

> «[Defran]CESCHI, P[aro]CHUS LOCI» Defranceschi, parish priest of this place — and the entries beneath run «Idem», the same man, down the page. (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069230, page 5 of the death register.)

⭐ A man of this surname was burying the people of Gologorica in 1787 and 1788, and signing for it in the column that says who did. Not a visiting priest borrowed for a day — Parochus Loci, the parish priest of the place.

And the entry on page 15 is almost certainly the same man. «Admodum R.dus D.nus MATH. DE FRANCESCHI, ex Parocho GALLEGNA[nensi]», dead 29 March 1798 aged sixty-two. So a priest of this name held Gologorica in the 1780s and had held, or went on to hold, Gallignana — which is Gračišće, this line's own second home.

⚠ One man or two is not settled by these two pages, and the archive says so. The 1798 entry styles him by Gallignana and not by Gologorica, which is what you would expect of a man who had retired from the local cure years before — «ex Parochus», as the book's own index calls him. The index lists only one Defranceschi priest, which favours one man with two cures. It does not prove it. The Gračišće registers would, and they are on the reel that is already the first errand.

What this does to a surname. This archive has spent the week watching the Defranceschi of Gologorica be entered civis and then possidens — words that assert standing. A parish priest of the village, of the same name, in the 1780s, is what that standing looked like a generation earlier, and it is the reason a Defranceschi child could have a canon and dean for a godfather in 1828.

> «Admodum R.dus D.nus Martinus Sestan, PAROCHUS NOVACENSIS, de licentia mea parochi presentis · [domus] 17 · Die 23. Januarii 1813 · D.nus JOANNES BAPTA DEFRANCESCHI, VIDUUS, defuncti Josephi filius · annorum 60 · Phthisis» (doc — M01069248, page 39.)

⭐ The head of house 17 and of the titled branch, dead at sixty of consumption. This archive holds him as born about October 1752, died 23 January 1813, with the note «Dominus» and nothing else. The register agrees with the date to the day — verification, not discovery — and adds the rest: he died a widower, son of the late Josephus, at house 17, of phthisis, aged sixty years and three days over the months.

And he was buried by the parish priest of Novaki. «Martinus Sestan, Parochus Novacensis, de licentia mea parochi presentis» — by licence of me, the present parish priest. Novaki is where Clotilda Ortis came from, two generations later. The parishes of this corner lent each other priests constantly, and the baptism book showed the same of Krbune.

⚠ And a trap recorded so the next reader does not fall into it. Three rows below him stands «Josephus DE-PRATO, cœlebs, defuncti Joannis Baptæ filius», a student of twenty-five dead of consumption in the same March. At page scale the broken surname reads as a Defranceschi, and a man of that age dying two months after Joannes Baptista, styled son of the late Joannes Baptista, is exactly what one would want him to be. He is a Deprato. The line break did it. It is the fourth time this week a reading has had to be cut past its own cell.

«Defranceschi, Parochus Loci» — a Defranceschi buries the parish, 1787 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate Dominus Joannes Baptista Defranceschi, widower — 23 January 1813 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

House 36, in eighteen months

The man who died a widower in 1813 became one on a page this archive had never opened. Three Defranceschi deaths stand within eighteen months at house 36, and between them they turn a line in a pedigree into a sequence.

⭐ CATHARINA IS THE JABLICH, AND SHE HAD NO DATES AT ALL. This archive knows her from a single line of the baptism book — «Joh: Bapt. Defranceschi m.p. · Cath. ejus uxor nata JABLICH ex BUCCARI», both Cives Gollogoricenses, standing as godparents on 3 October 1786 — and from nothing else. She died on 21 May 1792, aged twenty-six, of apoplexy. Born about 1766, she was twenty when she stood at that font and twenty-six when she was carried out of house 36.

⭐ And ten months before her, their daughter. «MARIA ANTONIA DEFRANCESCHI · mens[ium] 6 · Vermes», 16 July 1791. This archive carried a Maria Antonia born 1791 off the family tree with no death; the register gives the death and confirms the birth — she was six months old.

So the shape of it is this. Joannes Baptista Defranceschi buried a daughter of six months in July 1791, and his wife of twenty-six in May 1792. He did not remarry. He died a widower twenty-one years later, in January 1813, at sixty. The pedigree had the two dates at either end and nothing in between; the death book is what joins them.

⭐ And a woman the archive did not have at all. «SANCTA DEFRANCESCHI, CŒLEBS · annorum 58», 26 April 1792 — unmarried, born about 1734, dead four weeks before Catharina in the same house. A spinster aunt of the household, and no roster row anywhere for her.

⚠ GRAČIŠĆE KEEPS TURNING UP AT THIS FAMILY'S GRAVESIDE. Sancta was buried by «Joh. Marinich, Canonicus GALLIGNANENSIS» — a canon of Gračišće. With the Defranceschi priest styled «ex Parocho Gallignanensi» , that is the second churchman of that parish standing over this family inside a decade. It is a pattern and not yet a reason, and what would turn it into one is the Gračišće register on the reel that is the first errand.

And one small tie that costs nothing to notice. Catharina was buried by «Petrus Anicich, P[res]b[yte]r Novacensis» — the priest of Novaki. Worklist 169 already names a «Petrus Anicich» as the DEAN who inspected this parish in 1808. Sixteen years apart, the same man: a village priest in 1792, a rural dean by 1808. The deanery was staffed from the parishes it inspected.

House 36 in eighteen months — a daughter of six months, a spinster of fifty-eight, a wife of twenty-six Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

⚠ The family that is not this one — DEPRATO of house 6

Yesterday a student of twenty-five, dead of consumption in March 1813 and styled «son of the late Joannes Baptista», was very nearly written into this archive as a Defranceschi. He was a Deprato, and the line break did it. The death book's index shows that it was not a near miss. It was a trap with a shape.

⭐ Two families in one village, and the same five people. Each has a Joannes Baptista; each has a Catharina who is the wife of a Joannes Baptista; each has a Reverend former parish priest; each has a widow; and the Deprato have a Josephus, son of the late Joannes Baptista, where the Defranceschi have a Dominus Joannes Baptista, son of the late Josephus.

⚠ AND BOTH OF THOSE LAST TWO ARE ON PAGE 39. That is the page this archive read yesterday. The Defranceschi head of house dies there on 23 January 1813, and three rows below him the Deprato student dies on 12 March — and the index put them on the same page because the clerk was filing two families whose men had the same names.

⚠ AND BOTH SURNAMES BEGIN «De—» AND BREAK ACROSS LINES. In a narrow column a scribe writes «Defran-ceschi» and «De-prato», and at page scale the second reads as the first. That is not a coincidence of handwriting. It is a coincidence of handwriting on top of a coincidence of names, in one parish, in one book.

What this archive is doing about it. Nothing is merged, nothing is split, and no Deprato is entering the roster — they are not this surname and this is a one-name study. What is published is the warning, because the next person to walk these books will meet it: > At Gologorica, a «De—» surname with a Joannes Baptista, a Catharina his wife, a Josephus his son and a Reverend ex-parish-priest may be a Defranceschi or a Deprato. Read the second syllable, past the line break, before you write the name down.

And two more Defranceschi deaths from the earliest pages, where the priest of the parish was one of them. > «Idem · [domus] 36 · 12 Martij 1786 · CATHAR[INA] DEFRANCESCHI ex loco · dier[um] 11 · Debilitas» > «Idem · [domus] 31 · 4 8bris 1786 · MARIANA DEFRANCESCHI · annorum 10 · Dissenteria» (doc — M01069229, page 3.)

Catharina, eleven days old — the first child of Joannes Baptista and Catharina née Jablich, born about 1 March 1786 and dead on the 12th, five years before the six-month-old Maria Antonia and six before her mother. That household buried three in six years.

Mariana, aged ten, of dysentery — and she is at house 31, not 36. So she belongs to the other branch, the «detti Leonardi» — and the index files her under «Defranceschi Joanes Bapta detti Leonardi · N.º 12». Which is the second independent confirmation that house 31 and index number 12 are the same door, after the baptism book's index said the same thing yesterday. Worklist 171 now has two anchored pairs instead of one.

And the officiant column pushes the Defranceschi priest back a year. «Defrances[chi] P[res]b[yte]r Loci» heads the year 1786, not 1787 as this archive wrote yesterday. A small correction to a sentence of its own, made before anyone else had to make it.

The family that is not this one — DEPRATO, house 6 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

Three «De—» surnames on one page, and the rule earns its keep the same day

This archive published a rule a few hours ago: at Gologorica a «De—» surname with a Joannes Baptista and a Reverend ex-parish-priest may be a Defranceschi or a Deprato, so read the second syllable past the line break before writing the name down. The next page it opened contained a case. It also contained a third family.

> «Defrances[chi] · [domus] 84 · 10 Augusti 1788 · ANTONIO DE-FRANICH · annorum 70 · febris putrida» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069231, page 7 of the death register.)

⭐ «DE-FRANICH», not Defranceschi. At page scale the entry reads as one of ours — an Antonio of seventy, in the family's own parish, with the surname broken after «De». Cut past the line break and the second syllable is «franich» — the same opening and a different family. No row is minted and nothing enters the roster.

⚠ So there are at least THREE «De—» families in this one village, and the officiant column of this very page shows two of them working side by side:

And the rule was applied backwards as well as forwards. Two entries this archive published yesterday had been read at the first syllable only. Both were re-cropped past the line break and both hold: > «Maria Anton: Defranceschi» (page 11) — written out in full on one line. > «D.na Hellena, Vid. q. Joseph: Defran-ceschi ex Loco» (page 25) — the second line reads «ceschi». Neither needed a correction. The point of checking was that this archive could not have known that without looking, and it had already been wrong once.

⚠ And the honest consequence. Every Defranceschi this archive has read off these two reels where the surname was broken across a line is now a thing to re-check, not a thing to trust. That is not a retraction — none of the published readings has failed — it is a backlog, and worklist 183 carries it with the list of where to start.

Three «De—» surnames on one page — Defranceschi, Deprato, Defranich Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

Smallpox, September 1789 — a child from each Defranceschi house, nine days apart

The cause column of page 8 says Pustulla almost all the way down. Seven of the nine entries in the lower half of that page are smallpox, and two of them are this family's.

> «Idem · [domus] 31 · 10 7bris 1789 · JOH. DEFRAN-CESCHI, fil. Ther[esiæ] · annorum 7 · Pustulla» > «Idem · [domus] 36 · 19 7bris 1789 · JOSEPH. DEFRAN-CESCHI ex Loco · annorum 5 · Pustulla» (doc — DAPA ZM34K-214, M01069231, page 8 of the death register.)

⭐ Both Defranceschi households buried a child inside nine days. A boy of seven from house 31 — the «detti Leonardi» branch — and a boy of five from house 36, the house that would bury three more in the six years after. Neither child is anywhere in this archive. They were born about 1782 and 1784 and nothing recorded them but their deaths.

⭐ And the elder is named for his mother. «Joh: Defranceschi, fil. Theriæ» — son of Theresia. The archive knows exactly one Theresia of house 31: Theresia née Grach, the wife whose family gave this archive the Krbune question — the Grach of «Cherbune», with an archpriest among them. So this is her son.

⚠ Why a mother and not a father, this archive does not know. Every other child on the page is «ex Loco» or «filius [N.]». A boy identified by his mother may mean a father dead, a father absent, or nothing at all but the clerk's hand. It is recorded because it is unusual and not because it is understood.

What the page is. An epidemic, told in a column. Maria Cosara of twenty-seven and Maria Cosara of six days; Vitus Selesco of thirty days; Joh. Bapt. Gasparich of three months; Mathæus Delgor Zaicich of sixteen days; Antonius Pascoli of one; Catharina Pascoli, wife of Josephus, of twenty-two. And two Defranceschi boys. This archive has walked a hundred and sixty folios of baptisms and has almost nothing on how this village died. One page of the other book gives more than all of them.

And it is the argument for this book restated. The case for opening the death register was four disputed dates. It has now produced, in a day: two settled questions, a fifth collision, three people with no row anywhere, a parish priest of the family, two more surnames to beware of, an eighteen-month gap under the French, and an epidemic. None of that was on the list.

Smallpox at Gologorica, September 1789 — a child from each Defranceschi house, nine days apart Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family’s own copy of the film Open plate

A man the archive had only from the family tree — and the index that calls him Leonardo's father

Antonius Defranceschi, born 1742, died 1802. That is the whole of what this archive knew about him, and every word of it came off the family tree. No register, no ark, no film, no note — a row with two years in it and nothing holding them up. Page 21 of the Gologorica death book holds them up, to the day.

> Gologorica deaths, image M01069238, page 21, the third entry under the year 1802: > «Idem · 29. · 17 7mbris · t. · Antonius De=franceschi ex Loco · t. — t. — · ann[orum] 60. · Hectica» House 29. Dead 17 September 1802. Male, catholic, aged sixty. Of hectica — the wasting consumption, which is what this book calls tuberculosis. Sixty years in September 1802 puts his birth about 1742 — which is the year the tree gives. (doc.)

⚠ The birth year is still the tree's, and it is worth being exact about why. An age at death implies a year; it does not state one. The register and the tree agree, and agreement from two directions is worth a great deal — but 1742 remains an implied year, not a recorded one, and this archive does not promote an implied year to a declared one. What changed today is the death, which is now a document rather than a tree entry.

⭐ And the book's own index does something the entry does not: it gives him a household and a son. Among the «D» blocks on image M01069301, between «Defranceschi Joseph N.º 17» and «Deprato Leonardus N.º 6», stands a third heading — «Defranceschi Leonardus N.º 10» — and under it exactly one name: > «Antonius Leonardi pater · 21.» Antonius, Leonardo's father. Page 21. The page is the one above. The priest indexing this book filed him not under his own name but under his son's house.

So the index names three Defranceschi households and one that only looks like a fourth: «Joseph N.º 17», «Joanes Bapta detti Lonardi N.º 12» — the byname that bridged casa 31 to N.12 in the baptism book's index — «Leonardus N.º 10», and then «Deprato Leonardus N.º 6», which is not this family at all. Four «De—» headings on one index page, and only three of them are ours.

⚠ AND HERE IS A TRAP WORTH SETTING A SIGN IN FRONT OF, because the archive already holds its mirror image. This man is «Antonius, Leonardi PATER» — Antonius the father of Leonardo. The archive also holds «Antonio q. Leonardo de Franceschi da Gollogorizza», who married at Svetvinčenat on 14 March 1785 — Antonio the son of the late Leonardo. Two Antonios, each defined by a Leonardo, in opposite directions. Set side by side the phrases are nearly the same words; they describe men a generation apart. The 1785 bridegroom's father was already dead; this man was alive until 1802 and was somebody's father, not somebody's son. They are not the same person, and nothing yet joins them.

What would join them — or separate them for good — is the page the index points at for Leonardus N.º 10's own death, and the marriage book that would name Antonius's wife. Neither has been opened. Logged, not claimed.

Antonius Defranceschi, 17 September 1802 — the entry behind a tree-only man Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Defranceschi Leonardus N.º 10» — a third Defranceschi house in the index Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Walking the death book from the cover — bells, two epidemics, and a column that says «hunger»

The death book had been opened at pages its own index pointed to. This is the first stretch walked — cover to page 22, 1784 to 1803, every entry of every page read rather than scanned for one surname. No Defranceschi died in any of these pages beyond the ones already published — and that nil is worth as much as a hit, because it is now a named nil. What the walk did turn up is the parish around them.

⭐ FIRST, A RECORD TYPE NOBODY HAD CATALOGUED — and it is not in Latin. Inside the front cover, on the flyleaf before the register proper, are five entries in Italian, 1801 to 1805, each to the same formula: > «Gollogoriza 30 Agosto 1801 è passata da questa alla miglior vita Ellena Moglie di Gio: Udonich q. Francesco, fù dato un Ducato o sian L. 6 alla Chiesa per suono di tutte tre Campane.» A ducat — six lire — to the church, for the ringing of all three bells. Five families paid it: Udovicich, Marion, Sestan, Zubran, Peer. No Defranceschi among them, which is itself a fact about what this family did or did not buy.

⚠ And it is a payment ledger, not a second death register — the dates prove it. Three of the five can be matched to the Latin register by name: Ellena Udovicich appears there under 30 August 1801, the same day; Catharina Marion vidua q.m Antonij under 3 March where the flyleaf says 2 March; Catharina uxor Joh: Sestan alij Pedre under 13 June where the flyleaf says 29 June — sixteen days apart. So the two books record the same deaths and count different events. Which event the Italian date marks — the burial, the ringing, or the paying — this archive does not yet know, and says so.

⭐ THE DEPRATO PRIEST NOW HAS DATES, which matters because his surname is the one that keeps being mistaken for ours. > p. 20, 17 October 1801, house 61: «Admodum R[everen]dus Dominus JOSEPH DEPRATO, ex Parochus Cerovgl[ie], Jubilatus, ex Loco Gallogor. · ann[orum] 80 · Senect[us]» A retired parish priest of Cerovlje, living at Gologorica, dead at eighty — so born about 1721. He is the man in this book's officiant column as «D. JOSEPH: DEPRATO, ex Paroch[us]», and he heads its index block «Deprato Leonardus N.º 6». The archive has twice had to pull this family apart from ours; it can now do it with a date. (doc.)

⚠ AND THE PARISH PRIEST'S HAND STOPS TWO YEARS BEFORE HE DIES. Through 1795 the officiant column reads «Defranc[eschi] P[res]b[yte]r Loci». From 22 November 1797 it reads «Felix Ant. Babich P[res]b[yte]r Loci» and never goes back. The handover is explained by an entry this archive already holds: Mathias de Franceschi, former parish priest of Gallignana, died 29 March 1798 of «Paralisia». A stroke takes the pen out of his hand about two years before it takes his life, and the register shows the gap.

Two epidemics, back to back, and the book lets you count them. 1789 — «Pustulla», smallpox: beyond the two Defranceschi children already published, six more between September and November, aged three months to thirty, at houses 74, 13, 11, 24, 9 and 90. Then 1790 — «Fluxus», dysentery, which takes almost the whole of page 10 through that August; house 102 buries three in seven weeks. Smallpox returns in 1797–98.

⭐ AND THE CAUSE-OF-DEATH COLUMN SOMETIMES SAYS SOMETHING A PARISH REGISTER IS NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY. 1797, a man of 68, in service since boyhood: «Egestas» — destitution. 1803, a woman of 70 at house 100: «Fames» — hunger. The same year, a man of 67: «Egestas» again. And in January 1795, a boy who lived two hours, at house 62: «Ignorantia obstetricis» — the midwife's ignorance. A priest filling in a printed column, naming poverty and blame where the form asked only for a disease.

Pages 1–22 are now walked, not sampled. The remaining frames of this book are not, and the worklist says so.

The bell-ringing ledger on the death book's flyleaf — in Italian, not Latin Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate Joseph Deprato, retired parish priest of Cerovlje, dead at Gologorica in 1801 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Fames» — a cause of death the parish wrote down in plain Latin Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Pages 23 to 28 — a hunger year, the Deprato collision made real, and a page that is unreadable on the frame that shows it

The walk continued through 1803–1805. Still no Defranceschi death — and three things that change how this archive reads the rest of the film.

⭐ FIRST, AND IT IS A WARNING ABOUT METHOD RATHER THAN A FACT ABOUT A FAMILY: this film shoots some pages twice, and the duplicate can be the only one you can read. Page 28 is on M01069241 and again on M01069242. On the first, a loose slip of paper lies across the page and blanks out seven entries. On the second the slip has been lifted away and they are all there. The two exposures share their top two entries exactly, which is how the pages are known to be the same page. A session that read M01069241 and moved on would have recorded page 28 as read and lost seven deaths.

And what the slip was hiding is a household coming apart in fourteen weeks. House 28, 1805: > 20 April — «Johanna Peer nata Luxetich, uxor Johanis · ann 34 · Parthus» — dead in childbirth, aged thirty-four. > 7 May — «Johanes Peer, fil. Joh: · ann 6 · Vermes» — her six-year-old. > 30 July — «Cath: … da Peer, filia Joh: · mens. 3 · Debilitas» — a three-month-old, so born about the week her mother died. The birth that killed the mother, the child it produced, and a brother in between. (doc.)

⚠ AND THE SLIP ITSELF IS A RECORD, of a kind this book is not supposed to contain. It is in Italian: «Fieni parochiali venduto all'ast[a] per il prezzo che segue» — parish hay sold at auction, three buyers: «Pietro Basilisco · f 37:60», «Giovanni Marcich · f 40:50», «Alberto D.r Peschle · f 13:3», together f 91:13. The Peschle are a family this archive already follows — Dr Albertus Peschle, physician, kept Gologorica house 2 and stood godfather to a Defranceschi child in 1869. ⚠ But the slip is LOOSE and carries no date of its own, and a loose slip takes no date from the page it happens to be lying on. It is recorded as undated, and whether this Alberto is that Dr Albertus is a question, not a finding.

⭐ SECOND — the Defranceschi/Deprato collision, which this archive has twice described as a hazard, actually happens on page 24. > «61. · 13 Xmbris [1803] · Catharina DEPRATO nata Rovisi ex Petin, uxor Joh: Baptista · ann 43 · Hidrope» Set that beside an entry already published here: «Catharina DEFRANCESCHI nata Jablich, uxor Joannis Baptistæ, house 36, 1792, ann 26, Apoplexia». Two women, each «Catharina, wife of Joannes Baptista», eleven years apart in the same book. The index files them under two different households — «Defranceschi Joseph N.º 17» and «Deprato Leonardus N.º 6» — and house 61 is where the retired priest Joseph Deprato had died two years earlier. Only the surname and the house number tell them apart. The rule that keeps them apart earned its keep again.

THIRD — 1803 was a hunger year, and the priest wrote it in the cause column five times. Beyond the «Fames» already published: «Cancrhrena famesque» (gangrene and hunger, a woman of 56), «Egestas» for a woman of 64, and — the hardest line on the page — house 6, 31 October: «Mattia Zabran … nata Ghersan, inventa mortua domi · ann 32 · Egestas». Found dead in her own house, aged thirty-two, of destitution.

One page, two exposures — and only the second one can be read Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Catharina Deprato … uxor Joh: Baptista» — the collision this archive had been warning about Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate 1803, page 23 — «famesque», «Egestas», and a woman found dead at home Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

The register stops inferring and says it: «36 vetus · 14 novus»

On page 30 the house-number column splits in two, and the priest labels the halves. This archive had worked the renumbering out by inference from two unlabelled columns in the baptism register and left it open, with the right test written down: «a consistent bijection is a renumbering; a scatter is error». The death register settles the first half of that question in its own words.

⭐ AND THE LINE THAT CARRIES THE LABELS IS A DEFRANCESCHI DEATH. > «Idem Parochus · 36 vetus · 14 novus · die 12 8bris 1806 · Catharina filia defti Josephi De=franceschi, CÆLEBS ex Loco · 56 ann. · Asthma» Catharina Defranceschi, daughter of a Josephus already dead, unmarried, fifty-six, of asthma — so born about 1750. She was found where the priest filed her: the book's own index lists «Catharina filia q. Josephi — 30». (doc.) She is the second unmarried Defranceschi woman in this book, after Sancta, «cælebs», fifty-eight, in 1792. ⚠ Her birth year is not declared: fifty-six in 1806 implies 1750, and an implied year is not a declared one.

Why the two words matter more than the one death. This archive identifies its two eighteenth-century households as «casa 31» and «casa 36», and it has already warned itself that a casa number in one book is not the same house in another. Here is casa 36 bridged in a single line: «36 vetus · 14 novus». Not inferred — written.*

⚠ BUT THE SAME PAGE BREAKS THE PATTERN THE ARCHIVE HAD GUESSED AT, and that is the honest headline. The earlier reading noted the second column running «almost always about half» the first — 9→4, 38→19, 42→21, 54→27, 72→36, 112→69. The labelled pairs on page 30 do not behave like that at all:

The table is extended as the walk goes on, exactly as the worklist asked. Four pairs is not a concordance. It is the start of one.

«36 vetus · 14 novus» — the register names both numbering systems, beside a Defranceschi death Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Pages 31 to 36 — who paid for the bells, who was buried «gratis», and a sixth priest from Krbune

1807 to 1812. No Defranceschi dies in these six pages — another named nil. But read together with the flyleaf, they make the parish's economy of death legible, which is not something this archive could do yesterday.

⭐ THREE LEDGERS IN ONE BOOK, and they answer each other. On the flyleaf, five families pay a ducat for the ringing of all three bells. In the register, 1803, people die of «Fames» and «Egestas» — hunger and destitution. And on page 35, in 1811, the priest writes a single word under his own name on three consecutive burials: > «gratis» The burial was free. Houses 83, 34 and 93. So the same book records who could pay for bells, who paid nothing at all, and who starved — and no Defranceschi appears in any of the three lists.

⭐ «Joannes Baptista DEPRATO, Viduus» — and the Deprato house moves number, which may be the renumbering again. > p. 32: «6. · die 30ma Martii 1809 · Joannes Baptista Deprato, Viduus · 56 · Inflammatio et Tussis» He is a widower, and this archive now holds his wife: «Catharina Deprato … uxor Joh: Baptista», dead 13 December 1803 — at house 61. He dies at house 6. ⚠ The 1803 entry predates the «vetus/novus» labelling and the 1809 entry follows it, so the obvious reading is that house 61 old became house 6 new. That would also agree with the 1826 census, which puts DEPRATO at house 6. It is an inference, not a labelled pair, and it is recorded as one — the concordance only counts what the priest actually wrote.

A SIXTH PRIEST FROM KRBUNE, and this time the arrangement is spelled out. p. 33, 1809: «R.dus D.nus Ant: Trinaistich … Cherbunensis, de Licentia mea Parochus» — by my licence. Worklist 168 was raised because an archpriest of «Cherbune» stood godfather to a Defranceschi child in 1785, and has collected sightings ever since. This is the sixth, and with the 1805 interregnum it is now clear the two parishes lent each other clergy as a standing arrangement, not an accident.

The village had strangers in it. p. 33, 9 June 1809, house 1: «Gertrudis Zwey, Vidua, ex HYPERLABACO» — a widow from Oberlaibach, which is Vrhnika above Ljubljana — dead at forty-six, with a long marginal note of absolution signed by the administrator of Cerovlje. A German surname, a Carniolan town, and a parish register that normally runs on twenty local families.

And two human details the columns were not designed to hold. p. 32, 1808, a six-hour-old girl: «fuit ab obstetrice baptizata ob necessitatem et periculum in mora» — baptised by the midwife, for necessity and the danger in delay. Thirteen years after the same column had blamed a midwife's ignorance for a death. And p. 36, 1 January 1812, house 9: «Joannes Peer defti Joannis filius POSTHUMUS», two months old — a son born after his father was buried, and the father is on page 36 too, dead of phthisis the previous August at forty-three.

The book is also being inspected. «Revisus in Visitatione Decanali die 11a 7mbris 1807», «Revisus et approbatus … die 25 Junii 1808» — both signed Petrus Anicich, Cæs. Reg.us Parochus et Decanus — and again «die 5 Julii 1816 In Visitatione decanali». With the 1805 note that is four decanal visitations in eleven years, which is a layer of administration above the parish this archive had not seen.

«gratis» — the register says which burials were not paid for Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Joannes Baptista Deprato, Viduus» — and a dean's signature across the foot of the page Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

1815–1816 — thirteen months of hunger, counted entry by entry

Page 41 carries three deaths from want in eleven weeks, and the last of them is not a death at Gologorica at all. It is the parish recording one of its own who left, and why, and where he was buried — with a certificate from the priest who buried him.

> 27 April 1815, house 80 > name: «Joannes Ancich q.m Judicis Joannis filius ex Rismagnizza» > age: «annor. 40» · cause: «FAMES» > when: «obiit in Istria ex Veneto, quo egestatis causa cum familia sua se contulerat» > who buried him: «Adm. R.dus D.nus Matthæus Loganis, Parochus Foscolini in Istria ex Veneta, sepelivit ibi in Ecclesia S.ti Rochi, uti ex ejusdem Parochi Attestato patet» He died in Venetian Istria, where he had taken himself and his family for reason of destitution. Buried in the church of St Roch by the parish priest of Foscolino, and entered here on the strength of that priest's written certificate. And he was the son of the «Judex» — the village judge. Not a landless man. The office appears elsewhere in this book, on Andreas Cancianich in 1800 and on Martinus Zabran in 1808. The headman's son starved at forty, in another country. (doc.)

⚠ Two things this archive is NOT claiming. Where «Foscolino in Istria ex Veneta» is today — not identified here, and guessed at nowhere. And why 1815 was a hunger year is not explained: Tambora erupted that April and the famous failed summer was 1816, but this man was already dead on 27 April 1815, so whatever emptied his house happened before that. The register states the fact; the cause is somebody else's research.

He is the third on one page. 12 February — a stranger «ex Parochia Paasbergensi», about forty, «inventus mortuus in via in Doll» — found dead on the road. 6 March, house 54, at eight at night — «Matthæus Flegar alias Sidre … Inopia consumptus», consumed by want, at fifty-four.

Set beside 1803, this is the parish's second hunger crisis in twelve years — and the second time its priest reached past the printed column for a word that means poverty rather than disease. ⚠ No Defranceschi is among them, on this page or on any page of the walk so far. The family that this archive follows was not in the lists of those who paid for bells, nor those buried «gratis», nor those who starved. That is four kinds of absence, and all four are now documented rather than assumed.

⭐ AND THE WALK KEPT GOING, SO THE COUNT GOT WORSE. What page 41 shows in eleven weeks runs for thirteen months. Pages 42 to 44, read after the above was first written:

⚠ And it is not the poorest houses alone. The man who died in Venetian Istria was the son of the «Judex», the village judge. The woman at the foot of page 44 is the wife of the «Suppanus» — the župan, the headman. Two of the village's officeholding families are inside the casualty list. Whatever this was, it did not stop at the bottom of the parish.

The Ancich of houses 79 to 81 are hit hardest of all — four deaths in 1815: Joannes at forty in another country, Catharina at forty-six of hunger, Mathia at sixty-five, and Joannes the widower at seventy-two, who had to be «sepultus … ob signa putrefactionis» — buried the next morning because the body had already begun to go.

1815 — a village judge's son, starved in another country, entered on a certificate from the parish that buried him Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate 1 April 1816 — «Lucia Rabar, ann. 4, FAMES» Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

The famine of 1817 — fifty-two deaths and still counting, off a register nobody had read

Page 51 of the death book carries seven burials between 26 April and 8 May 1817. The cause column reads the same for every one of them. > «Fames» Hunger. The earlier write-up of this crisis counted seven deaths over thirteen months and said so. Walking on to page 51 shows that was the beginning of it.

⭐ THE COUNT, and it is made by reading every entry rather than by sampling.

⭐ THE COUNT, revised upward as the walk went on — which is why it is given as a floor and not a total.

⭐ AND IT RAN THROUGH WHOLE HOUSEHOLDS. The youngest are one year old; the roll runs 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18, 20. · House 81, the Rabar «haeredis Ancich» — FOUR: Lucia, 4 (Apr 1816); Anna, 3 (Jan 1817); Joanna, 7 (May 1817); and on 18 May their father Georgius, 40, «Fames et hydropisis». · House 46, the Zabran Schina — FOUR: the father, «Tabes famelica», Feb 1816; Maria, 5; Josephus, 18, «inventus mortuus ruri» and buried only «post sectionem a chirurgo factam»; Joannes, 16. · House 105, the Rade «alias Picin» — THREE: Antonius, 39, found at daybreak «sub dio in abysso»; Helena, 3; Joannes, 8. · House 73, the Udovicich «alias Scloch» — two brothers five days apart, 6 and 7. · House 75, the Udovicich Giacotich — THREE: father 58, daughter 14, mother 55 («hydropisis famelica»). · House 117, the Pelesco — THREE: 9, 55, 11.

The register also records what people did to survive, which a parish register is not designed to hold. · They begged. 25 April 1817, house 19: «Joannes Batta Crismarich … Debilitates fame mendicando, Pleuritide obiit» — weakened by hunger while begging. · They left. 27 April 1815 — Venetian Istria, «egestatis causa cum familia sua se contulerat». 1 April 1817 — Maria Schina «obiit Paalbergæ», buried by the Paasberg parish priest. Both entered here on the receiving priest's written word. · They died where they fell. «inventus mortuus in via» (1815), «inventus moribundus sub dio in abysso» (1817), «inventus mortuus ruri» (1817), «inventa mortua» (1817).

⚠ WHAT THIS ARCHIVE IS AND IS NOT SAYING ABOUT THE CAUSE. The peak — 22 deaths in the first five months of 1817 — falls exactly where the post-Tambora failed harvest of 1816 would put it, and the European famine of 1816–17 is well known. But the register proves a famine at Gologorica; it does not prove its cause, and the 1815 deaths are a separate and earlier phase that cannot be Tambora at all — Joannes Ancich was already dead on 27 April 1815, eleven days after the eruption and long before any harvest could fail. Two phases, one of which the famous explanation does not fit. Stated, not explained.

⚠ AND THE REASON THIS SITS ON A DEFRANCESCHI PAGE: no Defranceschi is in any of it. Across pages 1 to 51, every entry read, the family appears five times and never once among the hunger dead, never among the five households that paid for the ringing of all three bells, and never among the burials marked «gratis». An absence across fifty-one walked pages is not silence. It is a finding, and it is the kind this archive exists to make.

⭐ AND THE WALK FOUND THE SHAPE OF THE WHOLE CRISIS, which one page could never have shown.

Three small things the walk picked up that no index would have. · A girl of ten on page 55 is entered as «muta et surda» — deaf and mute, the only disability named anywhere in the walk. · Burials begin to be ordered the same day «ob signa putrefactionis, et nimium foetorem» — in a hot summer with more dead than the parish could keep up with. · And a death on 2 July is entered among the September burials, with the priest explaining himself: «Hic inscriptus, quia mense 7bri demum mors ejusdem scripto tenus ab eodem Parocho annunciata fuit» — entered here because only in September was the death announced in writing. It is a sixteen-year-old, dead of «Fames» at San Pietro in Selve — the fourth of this parish's people to die away from home in the crisis.

⚠ One note for whoever films or orders this reel next. A conservation label is photographed with page 56: «WATER DAMAGE · OŠTEĆENO OD VLAGE». The archive at Pazin has flagged damp damage at this point in the volume, and this archive records that rather than discovering it twice.

One page, seven entries, one word: «Fames» Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate January 1817 — the children Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Debilitates fame mendicando» — weakened by hunger while begging Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate A death entered two months late, and the priest explains why Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

The death book's index is not a list of names — it is a directory of houses

Every Defranceschi block in the index is headed with a name and a «N.º» — «Joseph N.º 17», «Joanes Bapta detti Lonardi N.º 12», «Leonardus N.º 10», and beside them «Deprato Leonardus N.º 6». The walk has now read enough of the pages those blocks point at to say what the number is.

⭐ IT IS THE HOUSE NUMBER. Five tests, five matches — and the two that fail, fail for a reason.

⭐ WHICH MEANS THIS ARCHIVE NOW HAS ADDRESSES FOR ITS THREE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DEFRANCESCHI HOUSEHOLDS, in the numbering the 1826 census and every later register uses: > Joseph — house 17 · Joannes Baptista «detti Lonardi» — house 12 · Leonardus — house 10 and, next door and not ours, Deprato Leonardus — house 6.

⚠ AND IT YIELDS A PREDICTION THE CONCORDANCE CAN BE TESTED AGAINST. If «Leonardus N.º 10» is house 10 new, and the one man the index files under him — Antonius, «Leonardi pater» — died at house 29 in 1802, in the old numbering, then 29 vetus should equal 10 novus. ⚠ That is a hypothesis, not a pair: it is not written in the book the way «36 vetus · 14 novus» is, and the concordance counts only what the priest wrote. It is offered as something the next pages can confirm or kill.

And the entry that completed the table is itself worth having. Page 66, 30 September 1826, house 12: «Maria filia Defti Jo:is B:tæ Defranceschi · 37 · hectica», and then the part no census could hold — «Ca[pell]anus ad S. Petrum in Barbana, ibi sepelivit». This archive already knew she died that day, from the 1826 household census, which gives her age to the day and fixes her birth at 20 July 1789. What was new is that she was buried at Barban, forty kilometres south, and not in her own parish. ⚠ Why she was there is not known, and is not guessed at here.

Maria Defranceschi, house 12 — and the chaplain of Barban buried her there Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «Defranceschi Leonardus N.º 10» — a third Defranceschi house in the index Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Two numbering systems, not one — which is why the renumbering would not come out

From 1830 the death register writes the house as a fraction. Five of them on page 71: 65/32 · 103/61 · 41/17 · 111/68 · 31/12. The upper number runs between 1.6 and 2.6 times the lower.

⭐ AND THAT IS THE «ABOUT HALF» PATTERN — which means it is NOT the pairing the 1806 entries label. This archive had noticed two unlabelled columns in the baptism register running «almost always about half» — 9→4, 38→19, 42→21, 54→27, 72→36, 112→69. And earlier in this walk the death register labelled a different pair outright: «36 vetus · 14 novus», «8 vetus · 52 novus», «107 vetus · 76 novus» — which scatter, and one of which more than sextuples.

⚠ WHAT IS NOW SETTLED AND WHAT IS NOT. Settled: the village was renumbered about 1806 — the priest says so in his own words. Three labelled pairs stand: 36→14, 8→52, 107→76. Not settled, and not guessed at here: what the 1830s fraction is. It behaves like a ratio, not a permutation, which is the signature of something other than a renumbering — a conscription number, a cadastral parcel, or houses grouped in pairs would all do that. Which number is the house and which is the other thing is not established, because unlike the 1806 entries nobody labelled these.

⚠ AND ONE PAIR IS WORTH A SECOND LOOK, as a lead and not a finding. The fifth fraction on the page is 31/12. This archive's two eighteenth-century Defranceschi households are «casa 31» and «casa 36», and the baptism book's own index bridges «Defranceschi Joanes Bapta detti Leonardi · N.º 12» — the same 31 and the same 12. ⚠ But the 1831 entry at 31/12 is a CRISMANICH, not a Defranceschi, and Maria Defranceschi died at house 12 only five years earlier. So either houses changed hands, or the fraction does not mean what it looks like. It is recorded as a coincidence worth testing, not as a bridge. The worklist carries it.

⭐ THE TABLE, COLLECTED — nineteen pairs, and it answers the test the worklist set itself. From the death register, pages 71–73 (1830–33), and the six already held from the baptism register: > 9/4 · 31/12 · 38/19 · 41/17 · 42/21 · 54/27 · 55/25 · 57/36 · 61/29 · 64/31 · 65/32 · 72/36 · 80/43 · 85/44 · 92/50 · 94/52 · 103/61 · 111/68 · 112/69 ⭐⭐ AND TWO OF THEM — 72/36 and 112/69 — ARE EXACTLY PAIRS FROM THE BAPTISM REGISTER'S TABLE. So the baptism book and the death book are using the same pairing. That is worth having: it means the evidence from the two books can be pooled, which it could not be while they were separate puzzles.

What the nineteen pairs actually show, stated flatly:

⚠ SO THE HONEST POSITION, and it is better than the one this item started with. Established: a single consistent pairing, used in both registers, between a series running past 110 and a series stopping near 70; near-2:1; not order-preserving; and distinct from the labelled 1806 renumbering. Not established, and deliberately not guessed: what the lower series is. A conscription number, a cadastral parcel, a tax unit or a hamlet-level numbering would each fit a smaller series paired to the houses. This archive will not name it without a document that names it. ⚠ And two readings in the table above are this session's and uncertain — 57/36 and 103/61 were taken at page scale. They are flagged rather than dropped, because a table nobody can audit is worse than a short one.

1831 — the house number written as a fraction, and it is not the 1806 pairing Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Twice now, the duplicate frame has been the only one you can read

This reel photographs some openings twice, and the archive's own coverage check says two attempts to detect that automatically FAILED. Walking the book has now found two pairs by eye — and in both cases the first exposure was the defective one.

⚠ SO THE WORKING RULE, and it is cheap to follow: before accepting a page as read, look at the frame on either side of it. It costs two seconds and it has twice been the difference between a page recorded as read and a page actually read. ⚠ And it means the frame counts overstate the book. The coverage figure counts frames cited, and two of the frames counted here are one opening. The true number of distinct pages read is lower than the frame count says, by an amount nobody can yet state — which is recorded rather than quietly corrected.

Both pairs were found by walking. Neither would have been found by going to a page the index pointed at and stopping there.

The same page twice again — and again only the second one is complete Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate One page, two exposures — and only the second one can be read Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

«Civis», not «agricola» — and a child named for a man who had fifteen months left

Page 84 of the death book, under 1848, in a column of farmers: > «Aprilis 14° · 5 · Leonardus Defranceschi, CIVIS, refectus SS Sacramentis moribundorum et sepultus die 15° hujus · 82 · febris cum senectute»

⚠ FIRST, WHAT IS NOT NEW: the archive already had this death, to the day. @I20@ has carried born 30 January 1766, died 14 April 1848 for some time. Finding the entry is a verification. But the roster row carried those two years and NOTHING ELSE — not a note, not a citation. The third such row found in one afternoon.

What the entry adds. The house — 5 — the cause, the burial on the following day, the last rites received, and one word that does a great deal of work: > «CIVIS» Every other adult on that page is «agricola», a farmer. He is a burgher. The same distinction follows this family through the registers — it is why the 1826 census enters them as cives, why Dr Albertus Peschle married into them, and why their sons appear as students, a painter and an army doctor while the village around them works the ground. And the arithmetic closes: eighty-two in April 1848 lands on the birth already held, 30 January 1766.

⭐ AND THE THING THE TWO BOOKS SAY TOGETHER, which neither says alone. On 22 January 1847, at house 5, a boy was baptised Leonardus Defranceschi. On 14 April 1848, at house 5, Leonardus Defranceschi died at eighty-two. Fifteen months. The child was not named for a dead grandfather, the usual pattern in these books — he was named for a living one, and the old man had over a year to be called by his own name in the same house. The boy lived until 1917, and his death is written into the margin of his own baptism seventy years later.

And two children on the same page who had no family at all. 8 August 1848, house 46: «Emilia Emerling, ex expositis», aged one. 10 December, house 23: «Antonius Vincentius …, ex expositis», nine months. «Ex expositis» — from among the exposed: foundlings, boarded out from a city hospital to village families who were paid to keep them. ⚠ Neither surname is local, which is the usual mark of the traffic. This archive had not seen it in these registers before, and records it as a category to watch, not as a finding about anybody's line.

«Leonardus Defranceschi, civis» — house 5, 1848, aged eighty-two Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

1850 — twenty-eight days and eighty-eight years, and the register argues with us twice

Page 88 opens and closes the year with a Defranceschi. At the head, 21 January, a child of twenty-eight days. At the foot, 8 December, a man of eighty-eight. Between them, eight neighbours.

⭐ THE CHILD'S DEATH STOPS BEING THE FAMILY TREE'S. > «1850 Januarii 21° · 53 · Antonia Defranceschi, agla, sepul. die 23° huj · dier. 28 · debilitas physica» Her row had said so plainly: the death year was held «from the family tree», and «the burial register, barely opened» was named as where it would be settled. Opening it settled it. She was born 23 December 1849 and baptised on Christmas Eve; she lived four weeks. (doc.)

⚠ BUT THE HOUSE DOES NOT MATCH, and the number was tested before it was believed. The baptism gives house 5 — the direct line's house — and the death gives 53. Rather than read one digit in isolation, the whole house column of the page was taken at once: 53 · 47 · 59 · 13 · 54 · 30 · 65 · 17 · 33 · 7. It is two digits, and it sits among two-digit neighbours in the same hand. Three readings, and this archive prefers none of them: the household moved in a month; the baby was away from home, with kin or a nurse, and the priest wrote the house she died in; or one of the two numbers is a slip. Logged, not guessed.

⭐ AND AT THE FOOT OF THE PAGE, «CIVIS» AGAIN. > «Decembris 8° · 7 · Jacobus Defranceschi, CIVIS, munitus ss. moribundorum et sepultus die 10 hujus · 88 · febris et senectus» House 7 — the house the 1826 census gives him — and «civis» where the other men on the page are «agla». That is the second «civis» in eight pages, after Leonardus in 1848: the word is not an accident of one entry but how this parish files this family.

⚠ AND HERE THE REGISTER CONTRADICTS THIS ARCHIVE TWICE, which is worth more than another confirmation would have been.

⚠ NOTHING IS CHANGED, and the reason is the honest one. A precise birth date beats an age at death if it came off a baptism — and nobody has written down where 21 July 1761 came from. @I33@ carries a single line, «Bachelor (celebs), listed at the head of house 7 in the 1826 status animarum», and no source for either date. So the dates stand, the register's reading stands beside them, and the worklist now carries the job of finding which is which — starting with the 1646–1806 baptism book on this same reel, which is eight per cent read and would settle a birth of 1761 outright.

1850, page 88 — two Defranceschi, twenty-eight days and eighty-eight years Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

«Ex expositis» — the parish was raising other people's children, and the register counts them

Walking 1848 to 1853 turned up a word this archive had never met in these books, five times in six years. It is written where the dead person's condition goes — beside «agricola» and «civis» — and it means the child had no family of its own.

⭐ AND THE SURNAMES DO TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, which is the useful part. Emerling · Schniker · Frauttmann are not Istrian names. They are German, and they are the names the children arrived with. But Gasparich is as local as a name gets here — it is all over this register — so that child had been given the fostering family's surname. ⚠ WHICH IS A WARNING FOR EVERY ONE-NAME STUDY, THIS ONE INCLUDED. If a foundling could be entered under the surname of the house that took him in, then a «Defranceschi» in these books is not necessarily a Defranceschi by blood. None of the five is one. But the mechanism is now documented in this parish, and the archive records it as a hazard rather than discovering it late.

And on the same page, a word that dates a medical practice. House 41, 3 April 1853: «Josephus Udovicich … 62 · VARIOLAE SPURIAE» — false smallpox, the term for a modified attack in someone already vaccinated or previously infected. Set against the rest of the book that is a small arc: «Pustulla» for the epidemic that killed two Defranceschi children in 1789, «Variola» plainly in 1811, and now «variolae spuriae» in 1853. ⚠ It does not prove a vaccination programme — it is one priest's choice of term — but the distinction only exists if somebody was making it.

⚠ And one cause on page 91 cannot be read at all. For a boy of two months and twenty-two days, 3 December 1851, the priest wrote a cause, struck it out, and wrote another on top of it. At every magnification this archive can reach, the two inks sit over each other and neither resolves. It is recorded as illegible — not guessed at, after a first glance suggested a reading the page would not support.

--- ⭐ 6 October 2026, later the same walk — THE REGISTER NAMES THE CITY, and an inference becomes a fact. The section above said these children were «boarded out from a city hospital» and marked that as the obvious reading, not a documented one. Page 119 documents it: > 4 January 1872, house 36: «Anna Cima d'or EX EXPOSITIS TERGESTI, et sepulta die 5. h.» «Tergesti» — of TRIESTE. Twenty-four years after the first «ex expositis» in this book, the priest finally writes down where they came from.

And the name is itself a mark of the trade. «Cima d'or» — «peak of gold» — is not an Istrian surname and not anybody's family name. Foundling houses invented surnames for children who had none, which is why Emerling, Schniker, Frauttmann, Gherghetta, Vatzat, Dorgan, Princzic, Maizan, Danel, Dubaz, Zerer and Angius all sit oddly in a register otherwise made of twenty local names. ⚠ And it sharpens the hazard rather than removing it. If Trieste was inventing surnames and Gologorica was sometimes substituting the fostering family's, then a surname in this book can be the child's, the foster-house's, or a clerk's invention. None of the dozen is a Defranceschi — but the mechanism is now fully documented, and a one-name study that did not know about it would be building on sand.

«ex expositis» and «variolae spuriae» — two words on one page, 1853 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate «ex expositis TERGESTI» — the foundlings came from Trieste, and the register says so Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

⚠ I had the rule backwards: what «Mathaea Defranceschi» in the Deprato house actually means

Earlier today this page argued that Mathaea Defranceschi, dead at house 6 in 1858, was born a Defranceschi who had married a Deprato — and that the two «De—» families of this parish were therefore joined by marriage. The argument rested on a premise about how this register names married women. Two hours later, page 104 disproved the premise. The claim is withdrawn.

What the page still says, and this part stands. > 14 May 1858, house 3: «Ane Maria DEPRATO, agla · 66 · febris» > 8 September 1858, house 6: «Mathaea DEFRANCESCHI, agla, munita s. sacramentis moribundorum, sepulta vero 9° hujus · 86 · hydropisis» The two surnames are plainly different words in one hand; eighty-six lands on the birth already held, 20 February 1772; and her death, carried as «about 1858», is now exact. House 6 is still the Deprato house — the index block «Deprato Leonardus N.º 6» and three Deprato deaths in it.

⚠ WHAT WAS WRONG. The argument ran: these registers enter a married woman under her birth surname, so «Mathaea Defranceschi» at the Deprato house must be a woman born Defranceschi who married in. They do the opposite. Page 104 settles it, because it names a woman this archive independently knows: > «1863 Julii 16 · 7 · Lambertina DEFRANCESCHI, civis, sep. 17 Jul., munita omnibus s. Sacramentis · 77 · senectus» Lambertina was born Peschle* — of Volosca, wife of Josephus Defranceschi, mother of Carlo De Franceschi the historian. The register calls her «Defranceschi»: her husband's name, not the one she was born with.

And the rest of the book agrees, once it is actually looked at.

⭐ SO THE CORRECTED READING, which is a smaller claim and a better one. «Mathaea Defranceschi» was the wife of a Defranceschi — which is exactly what the line record already said: «Wife of Leonardus (house 6). Maiden surname not captured.» Her husband was a Leonardus DEFRANCESCHI, and her own birth surname is still unknown. ⚠ And the real question is now a different and sharper one: why does a Defranceschi wife die in 1858 in the house that was demonstrably Deprato in 1801, 1809 and 1817? Houses change hands; this archive has watched house 31 pass to a Crismanich. But it is worth asking, and the worklist now asks it in those terms.

⚠ What this cost, and what it is worth. The withdrawn claim was published for about two hours and is on the corrections page rather than quietly edited away. It was killed not by a check but by continuing to walk — the disproof was eight pages further on in the same book. A premise about how a register behaves is a claim about every page of it, and this archive has made that exact mistake before, on a sentence about when the book stops using Latin. The rule earns its keep by being broken.

«Deprato» and «Defranceschi» four months apart, in one hand — and the second dies in the first's house Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Typhus takes a four-year-old at house 7 — and a page where the name column is a dash

Pages 105 to 110, 1863 to 1866. One Defranceschi, and he is four years old.

> p. 109: «1866 Septemb. 11 · 7 · Victor Josephus Defranceschi, cives, sep. die 12. Sep. · 4 ann · Typhus» This archive already had his birth and the day he died — born 22 April 1862, baptised the 27th at house 7, son of «Franciscus Xav. Defranceschi, possessor» and «Clotildis Ortis». What the death register adds is what killed him. Typhus, and he is the third in this book in four years: a man of 27 in October 1863, a boy of 15 in January 1865, and this child. ⚠ Three deaths across four years is a presence, not an epidemic, and the register is not asked to say more. And «cives» again — the fourth time this book marks the family out from the «agricolae» around it, after Leonardus in 1848, Jacobus in 1850 and Lambertina in 1863.

⚠ AND ON PAGE 105, THE HARDEST ENTRY IN THE BOOK TO READ ALOUD. > 6 September 1864, house 46: «— Rabar, agricola illegit.» · male · «mortuus natus, sepultus a mulieribus» The name column begins with a dash. There is no forename, because the child was never baptised; there is «illegit.» where the condition goes; and where every other entry on the page carries the parish priest's signature, this one says «buried by the women». An unbaptised stillborn had no name to enter and no priest at the grave, and the register records both absences in four words. It is the only entry in a hundred and ten pages where the officiant column names nobody at all.

The orphans and foundlings keep coming, and the words multiply. Beside the five «ex expositis» of 1848–53, these pages add «Hugo … ex expositis» (1864), «Joannes Gherghetta, orfanus» (1863), «Joannes Josephus Vatzat, orfanus», «Maria Dorgan, orfana», «Andreas Princzic, orfanus» (all 1866) and «Casimirus Maizan, orfanus» (Christmas Day 1866). Six more in three years, and the surnames — Gherghetta, Vatzat, Dorgan, Princzic, Maizan — are no more Istrian than Emerling and Frauttmann were.

Two changes of apparatus worth recording for whoever reads on. From 1862 the Aetas column splits into years, months and days, so every death from here carries a birth date to the day rather than a rounded year. And from January 1866 the annual inspection is signed by a new hand — «Jac. Bariha[s], Decanus» — where Franciscus Coverlizza had signed every year since the 1840s and had written Petrus Milcetich's own death entry in 1862.

«Victor Josephus Defranceschi, cives · 4 ann · Typhus» Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate A dash where the name goes — «mortuus natus, sepultus a mulieribus» Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

1870 — diphtheria empties house 28, and a death year moves thirty years

The year opens with five burials from one house in a fortnight. 3 to 17 January, house 28, and the cause column reads the same for every one of them: > «angina polyposa» Diphtheria — the membranous croup that closes a child's throat.

⭐ AND IN THE MIDDLE OF THEM, AT HOUSE 7, A DIFFERENT ILLNESS AND A THIRTY-YEAR CORRECTION. > «1870 Martii 10ma · 7 · Clementina Defranceschi, POSSIDENS, munita SS Sacram. et sepulta 11. Martii · 47 · Phthisis» This archive published that she died on 10 March 1840. She died on 10 March 1870. The day and month were right; the decade was not. Forty-seven on 10 March 1870 closes exactly on her birth of 3 October 1822 — a birth her own baptism confirms, «CLEMENTINA MARIA nata die 3 8bris hora 10 pomeridiana», house 17. At 10 March 1840 she would have been* seventeen.

⚠ AND THE ROW HAD SAID, THREE WEEKS AGO, EXACTLY HOW TO FIND OUT. A note of 20 September reads: > «The tree and this archive disagree about the DEATH year by 30 years, and that is the serious kind. … This needs the burial register, not a judgement.» The burial register was the thing walked today, and it answered in one line. A second pointer had been sitting beside it since 5 October: a Clementina Defranceschi stands godmother in 1841, which a woman dead in 1840 cannot do. The tree was right and this archive was wrong; the year is moved and the pid re-declared.

And the status word has shifted. Where this book called the family «civis» in 1848, 1850, 1863 and 1866, Clementina is «possidens» — a property-holder. The baptism register had already moved the same way: her nephew's 1862 entry calls his father «Franciscus Xav. Defranceschi, possessor». ⚠ Whether that is a change in the family's standing or only in the clerk's vocabulary, this archive does not know — but it is a consistent change, and it is recorded.

January 1870 — five from one house in two weeks, «angina polyposa» Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Two Defranceschi households in one village, at two different standings

> p. 123: «1874 Septemb. 12 · 6 · Virginia Defranceschi, agla, sepulta die 14. h. · 1 anni · Hydropisia» A tree row with two years, no place and an empty note now has a parish, a house, a cause and a burial. She was one year old. (doc.)

⭐ AND THE HOUSE SETTLES SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN OPEN SINCE THIS MORNING. House 6 is where Mathaea Defranceschi died in 1858 — the entry that prompted a claim this archive had to withdraw. It was demonstrably the Deprato house in 1801, 1809 and 1817. A second Defranceschi dying there sixteen years after the first makes the plain reading much the strongest: the house changed hands. This archive has watched the same thing happen to casa 31, which is a Crismanich address by 1831. Houses in this village are not family property for ever, and a house number is a place, not a lineage.

⚠ AND A DISTINCTION WORTH HOLDING ON TO BEFORE ANYONE SAYS «THE DEFRANCESCHI OF GOLOGORICA».

The foundlings keep arriving in these years too — «Maria Marsch», «Maria Angela Follo», «Antonia Bellunovic», all «ex expositis», all in 1873, and all from Trieste on the evidence of the entry a year before.

«Virginia Defranceschi, agla» — house 6, aged one Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

A bishop signs the book, and a child born dead is given a name

Page 128 carries two things this register has not done before in a hundred and twenty-eight pages.

⭐ FIRST, THE INSPECTION IS NOT A DEAN'S. > «Vidi in visitatione canonica die 7. Julii 1876. G. Dobrila, Ep[iscopu]s» Every other inspection in this volume — and there are dozens, from 1805 to 1875 — is signed «Decanus»: Petrus Anicich, Franciscus Coverlizza, Jacobus Bariha. This one is signed by a bishop, and it calls itself a canonical visitation rather than a decanal one. ⚠ The name reads «G. Dobrila», and this archive stops there. A Bishop Dobrila in Istria in 1876 points hard at Juraj Dobrila, the Croatian national-revival figure who founded «Naša sloga» — but which see he held in 1876, and whether Gologorica fell under it, is not something a signature settles. Logged as an identification to verify, not asserted.

⭐ SECOND, AND IT IS FOUR WORDS. > «1876 Septembris 24 · 14 · Maria De=franceschi, MERCATOR, die 25. Septembris sepulta est» > cause: «Nata mortua» · above it: «in manu baptizata» Born dead. Baptised in the hand. The emergency rite, given during a delivery that was going wrong, before the child could be lost unbaptised. And that is the whole difference between this entry and the stillbirth of 1864, where the name column is a dash, the child is «illegit.», and the officiant column reads «sepulta a mulieribus» — buried by the women, with no priest at the grave. Baptised, she has a forename, a burial on the following day, and the parish priest's signature. Unbaptised, the other child has none of the three. The register is not recording a difference of family or of standing. It is recording a difference of sacrament.

⚠ AND «MERCATOR» MAKES THREE. This book now styles the surname three different ways in three different houses:

⚠ AND HOUSE 14 IS WORTH A SECOND LOOK, as a lead and not a conclusion. The only labelled pair this archive has from the 1806 renumbering is «36 vetus · 14 novus» — and casa 36 is one of the two eighteenth-century Defranceschi households, where Catharina died in 1786, Sancta and Catharina Jablich in 1792, and where Maria Rosalia was baptised in 1789. If 36 became 14, then a Defranceschi dying at house 14 in 1876 is dying at the family's own eighteenth-century address. ⚠ Eighty-four years is a long time and houses change hands — this walk has watched casa 31 become a Crismanich address and house 6 pass from Deprato to Defranceschi. So it is suggestive and it is logged; it is not a line of descent.

A bishop's own visitation, and a stillborn child who was baptised in the hand Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Two death years wrong by decades, and the day and month right in both

> p. 132: «1878 Decembris 22. · 7 · Josephus Defranceschi, POSSIDENS, munitus SS. et sepultus die 24. Dec. 1878 · 70 · Senectus» This archive had published that he died on 22 December 1857. Seventy on 22 December 1878 closes on his birth of 13 March 1808 — seventy years and nine months. At 1857 he would have been forty-nine.

⚠ AND IT IS THE SECOND SUCH CORRECTION IN ONE DAY, which is what makes it worth a section rather than a footnote.

That pattern names the fault. Both rows had worried, in the same words, that «a gap this wide means one side is describing a different person's death — most often a namesake in the same parish». It was not a namesake. A confusion of two people scatters the day and the month as well as the year; a slip that keeps 10 March and 22 December intact and moves only the decade is a transcription error, and the ages in the register close on the declared births to the month in both cases.

⭐ And both rows had already written down the remedy. «This needs the burial register, not a judgement.» The burial register is the book walked today, and it answered both — in the family tree's favour, twice. Published on corrections, re-declared, and the worklist now carries the third and last row with that note — Lina Defranceschi, tree 1923 against 1925 — to be opened with the expectation that the tree is right.

He died at house 7, «possidens», where Leonardus, Jacobus, Lambertina, Victor and Clementina had died before him — the sixth of that house in this book, and the last Defranceschi it records.

«Josephus Defranceschi, possidens» — 22 December 1878, and the second decade corrected in one day Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

The death book is finished — ninety-six years, cover to «Segue libro nuovo»

The Gologorica death register 1784–1880 has now been walked from its front cover to its last written line. Not sampled, not searched for a surname — every entry of every page read. > p. 135, the last: «23 Januarii 1880 · 35 · Theresia V.a Joannis Udovicic Gospod · 76 · Apoplexia» > and beneath it, in Italian, where the whole volume is Latin: «Segue libro nuovo · Vol. IV»

⭐ WHAT THE WALK WAS FOR, and the honest shape of the answer. About twenty-five Defranceschi lie in this book across ninety-six years — and ten of them were found by walking pages no index pointed at. Four people who existed only on the family tree now have register entries: Antonius of house 29, Maximilianus aged four, Antonia aged twenty-eight days and Virginia aged one. Two were newly minted — Catharina «cælebs» of 1806 and the stillborn Maria of 1876. And two published death years were wrong by decades and are now corrected.

⭐ THE BOOK BURIES THREE OF ITS OWN KEEPERS, each entered by somebody else.

And the parish it describes is not the one this archive started with. The walk turned up a famine of at least fifty-two deaths, a bell-ringing ledger and burials marked «gratis», twelve Trieste foundlings, diphtheria emptying a house of five in a fortnight, smallpox under three different names across eighty years, two emergency baptisms of a presenting limb, a child buried by women because no priest would, and a bishop's signature where every other inspection is a dean's. None of it is about this family. All of it is the ground they stood on.

⚠ WHAT IS NOT DONE, stated plainly. · The deaths after January 1880 are in «Vol. IV», which is on neither reel this family holds. It is wanted for the third disputed death year and for every Defranceschi who died after 1880 — an errand, not a search. · The book's own index was read only for its «D» blocks; the rest of the alphabet is unwalked, and it is the fastest route to the married-in surnames. · The baptism book is walked; the 1826 census is at 25%, the 1862 at 3.5%, the 1894 at 1.2%. Cerovlje and Gračišće are barely opened. Of 1,461 frames on the two reels, 239 are cited.

«Segue libro nuovo · Vol. IV» — the last page, 23 January 1880 Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

Four of the married-in surnames are not in the parish at all — the index says so by leaving them out

The death book's index is a household directory of Gologorica. Every block is a surname, a byname, a house number and then its members with the page each died on — «Flegar alias Giacotich N. 76», «Crismanich alias Covacich N. 18 et 19», «Gherbaz faber ferrarius N. 22». Which means its gaps are evidence too.

⚠ FOUR OF THE TWELVE SURNAMES THAT MARRIED INTO THIS FAMILY HAVE NO BLOCK IN IT.

⭐ WHY THAT IS WORTH HAVING, and it is the opposite of a disappointment. This archive has been looking for the Grach at Gologorica because Theresia née Grach bore the casa 31 household and an «Archipresbiter GRACH of Cherbune» stood godfather here in 1785. The index says the looking should stop: in ninety-six years no Grach household buried anybody in this parish. That is a redirection, not a dead end — [worklist 168 already points at Krbune, four kilometres away, and this is the strongest reason yet to go there instead of staying here.* The same applies to the Jablich, the Peschle — who kept Gologorica houses 2 and 4 but, as Lambertina's own entry shows, were buried under the Defranceschi name they married into — and the Orlis.

⚠ WHAT THE ABSENCE DOES NOT MEAN, because this is a HOUSEHOLD index and not a name index. · A married woman is filed under her husband's surname, so a Grach or Jablich woman who married a local man is in this book under his name and will never appear under hers. · A person who died here without a household — a servant, a visitor, one of the twelve Trieste foundlings — may head no block. · The index stops at page 67, about 1826, so it describes the households of the first forty years, not of the whole book. So the claim is narrow and it is the one the evidence supports: none of these four surnames held a house at Gologorica in the period the index covers.

And the walk through the alphabet handed over some things worth keeping. · «Gherbaz, faber ferrarius, N. 22» — the blacksmith's house has a number. · «Bobich N. 54 · R.dus Felix Ant. Parochus · 29» — the parish priest who died in 1805, indexed under his own family's house. · «Palmano N. 28» — the family whose name was the subject of a palaeographic test against SALAMON, finally with an address. · «Pavetich Simon, obiit 20 Jan 1783, N. 98» — a death the index records that is a year before the book begins. · «Peer alias Agostinich N. 9 … Joanes q. Joanis filius posthumus — 36» — the posthumous son found on page 36, confirmed by the index. · And house 28 has been Palmano, the Peer of the 1805 childbirth deaths, and the Flegar the 1870 diphtheria emptied. Three families, one address, in eighty years.

The letter G in the death book's index — and no Grach in it Državni arhiv u Pazinu, microfilm ZM34K-214 — the family's own copy of the film Open plate

A house-number map of Gologorica — and the trap it springs on «casa 31»

Reading the death book's index through the alphabet produces something this archive has never had: a list of the village's households against their house numbers. Forty-eight of them, each from a block headed «Surname alias Byname N.<number>».

⚠⚠ AND THE FIRST THING IT DOES IS SPRING A TRAP THIS ARCHIVE WAS WALKING INTO. > «Rabar alias Tomelincich · N. 31» House 31 is a RABAR house. And this archive identifies one of its two eighteenth-century Defranceschi households as «casa 31» — a number taken from the 1780s baptism register. They are not the same house. The index numbers households in the NEW system, the one introduced about 1806 and labelled «novus» in the register itself; the 1780s baptisms are in the old one. So «casa 31» of the 1780s and «N. 31» of the index are two different buildings, and nothing may be carried between them. The archive had already warned itself that a casa number in one book is not the same house in another — this is what that warning looks like when it comes true.*