The Lines

Seven households of the surname can be traced to a place they came from, or stand as a family in a register long enough to be one. These are the only things this archive calls families, and nothing joins any two of them. Four have an origin in documents — Carnia, Venice, Crete, Corsica. One is inferred: Svetvinčenat is Carnian on Kandler's list and the company its godparents kept, which is not a document of arrival. Two have no origin at all — southern Istria and Vodnjan are families because the registers hold them for generations, not because anyone can say where they came from.

Gologorica, Gračišće, Crikvenica, Senj, Pfullingen are stops on one road — our road — not separate lines. So are Perinuša and Opačac on the Venetian road, and Umag, Brtonigla and Koper on the Cretan one. They have pages because there is a lot to say about each; they are not additions to the count.

Corsica is the clearest case, and it is now drawn as a line rather than buried in a footnote. It has everything the other six have — a place, a first generation with dates, six documented generations, a route out and a diaspora — and it has no connection to Istria whatever. That is exactly why it is worth drawing. A reader who finds a Franceschi in Puerto Rico or Caracas should be able to see, on the same picture, that there is a fully documented family of the name that goes there and is not this one.

De Franceschi means only «of the Franceschi» — the household of a man called Francesco. It was invented independently wherever an Italian-speaking clerk had two Francescos to tell apart. So a De Franceschi in Corsica or Bologna or Rio Grande do Sul is not evidence of anything at all until a document joins them, and this archive will not pretend otherwise.

The index gives the place of these baptisms as «Croazia, Austria» — no parish at all, which is why they have sat unplaced. But every FamilySearch index entry carries the ark of the image it was read from, and every image ark resolves to a DGS film number. These resolve to DGS 005497884, and the catalogue entry for that film reads: «Matična knjiga, 1568–1917 · Rimokatolička crkva. Župa Svetvinčenat» — the parish register of Svetvinčenat, held by the Croatian State Archive in Zagreb. So the register is named even though the index is not. The method is repeatable and it is now the archive's standard practice for any «Croazia, Austria» entry.

This archive's fourth family opens: «Pula, 1667 — Anto De Franceschi, with children entered in October 1667 and November 1669 — the earliest of the cluster.» Those are Franceschina, baptised 23 October 1667, and Mattia, born 8 November 1669 — both children of Anto De Franceschi and Marta. They are not Pula entries. They are Svetvinčenat entries, forty kilometres north, in a different parish and a different world. The southern-Istrian line's earliest evidence has been standing on a place-name the index never gave it.

That matters because Svetvinčenat is not an unknown. It is the cluster this archive lists as not placed — one hundred and forty-two records from 1666 — and three separate authorities call it Carnian. Kandler names the Carnian families settled at Sanvincenti. Doblanović, reading the Status animarum of 1734, finds the surnames that occur inside the castello and nowhere else in the parish — «De Franceschi, Crosila, Bergamo, Moro, Fiorencis» — and says they «came from the area of Carnia» and were «mainly in trade». Brhan finds a Stanzia De Franceschi on the 1820 cadastral map, a farmstead the family had held and already lost. So the oldest records of the «origin unknown» line are records of a documented Carnian colony.

Pulled out of the index and sorted, the parish gives a continuous presence: 1657 Francesco, son of Zuanne and Orsola · 1666 Colotta, daughter of Nadal and Fiora · 1666 Fioretta, daughter of M.ro Batta and Domenica · 1667 Franceschina and 1674 Mattio, of Anto and Marta · 1670 Luca, of Francesco and Giacoma · 1671 Giacomo, of Andrea and Zuana · 1673 Giovanna and 1688 Zuana, of Gaspero, with Marietta then Anta · 1701 Veneranda, of Gasparo and Antonia · 1703 Domenica, of Piero and Vittoria · 1704 Antonio, of Mattio and Zuanna · 1707 Piero, of Lunardo and Eufemia · 1709 Maria, of Nardo and Zuanna · 1722 Martino, of Mattio and Elisabetta · 1733 Maria, of Giacomo and Anzoletta · 1734 Pietro and 1735 Bata, of Nadal and Anta · 1737 Andrea, of Vitorio and Francesca. That is at least twelve distinct fathers of this surname in one small town between 1657 and 1737 — and the earliest of them, Zuanne, is four years before the surname enters the Moncalvo book and twelve years before the Mione headmen's list.

Lunardo — Nardo — Leonardo. A Leonardo De Franceschi is baptising children at Svetvinčenat in 1707 and 1709. The Gologorica house's own byname is «detti Leonardi», and its pedigree carries Leonardus 1697–1773, Leonardus 1766–1848 and Leonardus 1847–1917. Leonardo is not a common name in these registers, and it is now in both places at once. Inferred Vitorio. A Vitorio De Franceschi is baptising at Svetvinčenat in 1737 — and Vitorio, Vittorio and Victorius run right through the Pula–Fažana–Medulin group: Vitorio born 1720, Vitorio 1758, Vittorio 1795, Vittorio Giovanni 1849. Neither is proof. A shared font-name is the weakest evidence there is, and this archive has said so about better cases than this. What they are is two threads to pull, both bounded: the Svetvinčenat register is filmed and readable, and it will say whether these are the same men.

The Lines page draws the fourth family as «Out of southern Istria — origin unknown», documented from 1667 at Pula. Two of those three words now need work. The 1667 is right; the Pula is wrong; and «origin unknown» may not survive, because the register those earliest entries come from is a parish whose De Franceschi are called Carnian by everyone who has studied them. What this archive will not do is redraw the diagram on this. Two of the twelve Svetvinčenat fathers could be the ancestors of the Pula group, or none of them could; the town sat on the road between the county of Pazin and the Pula country and people moved both ways. The lane keeps its dotted origin, the correction to «Pula» is made, and the Svetvinčenat cluster is now the first place this archive will read page by page rather than by index.

«Alì 21 Decembre / Elena fiola di Francescho di Franceschi et di Eufemia sua consorte fu batezata da me piovano sopra deto. Fu compare s.r Zan Piero Quelo. Comare Chiara consorte di Tomaso Ostricich.» Svetvinčenat, Births 1589–1646, image 58 — a book this archive had never opened. A father, a mother, a daughter, a godfather and a godmother, all named. Thirty-eight years before Colotta of 1666, which this page has called the family's first appearance here since September. And the godfather is a Quelo. Seventy-nine years later, at the baptism of Nardo's son Piero in October 1707, the godmother is «la Sig.ra Andriana moglie del Sig.r Can.co Ottavio Quelis». The same house standing at the font for a De Franceschi child at both ends of the eighty years.

It moves the Istrian sequence. The archive's earliest dated Istrian occurrences ran Labin 1615, then Moncalvo di Pisino 1661, then Svetvinčenat 1666. Svetvinčenat now stands at 1628 — thirty-three years before Moncalvo, not five years after it. (And the Labin 1615 has since been withdrawn: its Aloÿsius is a Vižinada man born 1790, its Gasparo is in none of the data, and the 1615 is the date of a Labin volume — «Deaths (Umrli) 1615, 1585-1649» — not of a record. On what can actually be produced, Svetvinčenat 1628 is second in Istria only to the Rovinj burial of 1619.) The «first recorded appearance at Moncalvo at the other end of Istria» sentence above is wrong in its ordering and is left standing with this correction beneath it. It does not join Francescho to the 1666 household. Thirty-eight years is one long generation or two short ones. Nadal, Batta, Anto, Andrea and Gaspo of the 1660s and 70s could be his sons or his grandsons or no relation of his at all, and no entry says. What the register shows is that the surname was already here in 1628, with a wife and a child and two godparents of the parish's own gentry — a settled household, not an arrival. Inferred And it is the only one. The 1589–1646 book was checked entry by entry through its index: one De Franceschi record in fifty-seven years. The 1568–1588 book holds none. The 1581–1589 and 1622–1623 marriage book holds none. So 1628 is a first sighting, not the top of a run.

Two sweeps had already read past this entry, and the reason is the same both times: its place field says «Croazia, Austria» and nothing else. No town. The September sweep kept only records whose place text named a town, so it threw this one away — the identical failure that produced the «Pula 1667» error, where an entry with no town in it was given one by guesswork. The fix is not a better place string. It is to stop using the place field. Every image on FamilySearch belongs to a waypoint, and the waypoint is the parish: Croatia, Church Books → Roman Catholic → Svetvinčenat → Births 1589–1646. Fetch the list of image arks under each of the parish's nine books, then match records to books by their image ark. A record cannot be at the wrong parish if the page it is written on is bound into that parish's book. Done that way, Svetvinčenat yields 118 indexed records across six of its nine books — and the place field of almost every one of them says only «Croazia, Austria».

This archive's own reference note says that on the records endpoint every q. term except q.surname is silently ignored. That is not quite true, and the exception is the one that matters. q.fatherSurname=Franceschi is honoured — but only when it is the sole name term. Supplied alongside q.surname it is discarded, which is how it came to be written off. On its own, against the Croatian church books, it returns 1,364 records where q.surname returns 3,550 different ones. Why that matters here: in the 1589–1646 book the child has no surname indexed at all. The Name column reads «Elena», «Eufemia», «Fumia», «Tomaso». The only surname in the record is the father's. A search by the person's surname can never see this book — and every early parish register that names children by forename alone is invisible the same way.

The same method opens the 1762–1858 marriage book: nineteen records. Eight are daughters of the house marrying out — Pasqua to Domenico Martincich, Anta to Gio Batta Stefanutto, Ellena to Mattio Santalezza in 1751, Sinforosa to Andrea Vernier in 1801, Veneranda to Antonio Subiotto in 1837, and Maria, Rosa, Euphrosia and Anna, all daughters of Joannes Defranceschi and Joanna Cleva, between 1859 and 1865. Three more are marriages of the men, and they reach back before the book: Zuanne son of Giacomo, Antonio son of Leonardo, and Vittorio son of Antonio, whose bride is Eufemia Bergamo. Bergamo and Fiorencis — Anna-Maria Fiorencis is the mother of the Vernier groom of 1861 — are two of the Carnian surnames Kandler lists as settled at Sanvincenti beside Defranceschi. The company the family keeps is still the only argument for where it came from, and it is still keeping it in 1861.

«Elena fig.la di Giacometta Redol, et di Cate sua mog.e, fu battezata da me D. Vicenzo Sines Can.co. Comp.i furno M.ro Nadal de Franceschi, et Elena mog.e di Sue Milicich.» Five months before his own daughter is christened, Nadal de Franceschi stands as godfather at Svetvinčenat. Godparents are almost never indexed, which is exactly why the page had to be opened. And he is styled M.ro — maestro, a master craftsman.

«Colotta figlia di M.ro Nadal de Franceschi et di Fiora sua consorte, nata li 10 d.o, et batt.a da me D. Vic.o; Comp.ri furno Giacometta Rebas, et Cata mog. di Dom.co Calcetta.» The name Colotta is written again in the margin, in the priest's own hand, the way this register indexes itself.

«Fioretta figlia di M.ro Batta de Franceschi, et di Dom.ca sua cons.te, nata li 18 d.o, et batt.a dal sud.o D. Pieu.o; Comp.ri furno M.ro Matte Felicer, et Dom.ca fig.la del q. M.ro Franc.o Sovardo.»

Read the godparents across these two openings alone and the parish's Carnian colony assembles itself: M.ro Nadal de Franceschi · M.ro Zuanne Spinoti · M.ro Matte Fiorenza · M.ro Matte Felicer · il M.co Angelo Fabri, fattor · M.ro Tomaso Selucer · M.ro Franc.o Sovardo. Spinotti. Fiorencis. Felice. Fabris. Those are not four names that happen to be in a Croatian village in 1666. They are the Canale di Gorto — the same set that stands on the gravestones at Santa Maria di Gorto and on its war memorial, and the same set Doblanović finds inside this town's castello in the household book of 1734. In 1666 they are all standing at each other's fonts, and a De Franceschi is among them, called maestro like the rest.

Eight years later, same parish, same register: «Vittoria fig.a di Giac.o Zebelin e di Elena sua leg.ma consorte… fu battezzata da me P. Fran.co Andreis Pievano. Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Ant.o di Franceschi e la Sig.ra Franceschetta Marchesi.» And twelve days later, his own son: «Mattio figlio del Sig.r Ant.o di Franceschi e della Sig.ra Marta sua leg.ma consorte, nato li 13 del sud.o mese, fu battezzato da me Pievano… Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Conte Luciani … et la Sig.ra Cattarina Pinco.» M.ro in 1666. Sig.r in 1674, with a Count for compare. That is a household changing class inside eight years, written down by two priests who had no reason to flatter anybody. It is also the first time this archive has watched it happen to a De Franceschi anywhere. Refined, after reading further. The change is not as clean as one opening made it look. As a godparent Anto is already «il S.r» on 20 October 1669 and again on 27 October 1669; but in his own family's entry three weeks later, 11 November 1669, the priest still writes «M.ro Ant.o». The two styles run side by side through 1669, and it is by 1674 that Sig.r has won in both places. This archive published the tidier version first and is correcting it here rather than quietly.

It is worth this: the Svetvinčenat family was Carnian, artisan, and rising, and it was doing in the 1660s and 1670s exactly what the literature says the Carnians did — trade, credit, marriage inside the group, and then a title of respect. It sits beside the Gologorica house's own eighteenth-century business of lending money and buying up debts, and beside the Stanzia De Franceschi that Brhan finds on the 1820 cadastre and which had already passed out of the family. It does not join them. Nothing read so far names a place of origin, and no entry ties any of these people to Mione, to Agrons, to Moncalvo or to Pula. Reading continues.

«il Sig.r Conte Lucciani da [D/R]ignan» — the word after da is a place and its first letter will not settle between a D and an R, enlarged five times. The surname will: it is Lucciani, with the double c, in a clear hand. So who was he? The index carries a Luciani family baptising children in exactly these years — Bartolomio Zuane on 12 November 1674, Margherita Zuanna 1693, Maria Elena 1693, Matta 1682, Zuanne Domenigo 1684, Maria 1692. Resolved by film, every one of them is in the parish register of Labin — Albona, DGS 005494791 and 005494792, «Matična knjiga 1536–1910». The Luciani are an Albona house. That is what the literature says too, and it is the family of the man who compiled the seventy-eight principal families of Albona. A count of theirs, standing at a De Franceschi font at Svetvinčenat in February 1674, is a man from the other side of Istria who had a reason to be there.

The name Luciani is already in this archive, twice, and neither time as a godparent. Carlo De Franceschi names him. In L'Istria: note storiche (1879) Carlo thanks, among his sources, «Signori cav. Tomaso Luciani e Dr. Antonio Scampicchio di Albona» — the two Albona antiquaries he worked with. And their books are on his shelves. The 2022 survey of the family library now in Zagreb finds, among the ex libris of previous owners, those of «Tomaso Luciani of Labin, the lawyer and politician Antonio Scampicchio, the historian Pietro Kandler». And Hauptmann, sorting the wrecked house at Gologorica in August 1945, lists among the manuscripts «letters of Gabriele D'Annunzio, of Tomaso Luciani and others». So: a Conte Lucciani of Albona stands godfather to a De Franceschi child in 1674; a Tomaso Luciani of Albona is Carlo De Franceschi's collaborator in the 1870s, his letters are in the house, and his bookplate is in the library. Two hundred years, one surname, one town, and no proved descent between them — the archive states the pairing and stops there. But it is the sort of thing that stops being a coincidence when it happens three times.

This is the second count of consequence in these registers. The first is in this archive already, and he carries our own name. «Die 25 Martii 1720 … Bartholomeus filius legitimus Domini Comitis Damiani de Franceschis ac Ursulae eius coniugis, sacris undis renatus est» — the only occurrence of the surname in seventy-five years of the Gallignana baptism book, read leaf by leaf. Count Damian de Franceschis is in no source this archive holds. He is not in the Blasonario's four families, not in Kobler's Fiume stocks, not in the Gologorica pedigree, and — checked now — not in Carlo De Franceschi's own history of Istria, whose index this archive has searched for him. A count of this surname in the County of Pazin in 1720, with a wife called Ursula and a son called Bartholomew, and nobody in two centuries of local historiography mentions him. One small thing worth noting rather than claiming: the Svetvinčenat register's earliest De Franceschi couple, in 1657, are Zuanne and Orsola — Orsola being Ursula. It is a common name. It is also the second time this archive has met the pairing.

Two days after his own daughter is christened, Anto stands godfather again — and this time the priest writes him out in full: «Gieppo fig.o leg.mo di M.ro Mattio Peleer e di Maria sua consorte, nato li 22 d.o, fu battezzato da me P. Fran.co Andreis Pievano. Comp.ri furono M.ro Ant.o di Franceschi di Piero, et Lucia moglie di Zuanne Bellauich da Barbana.» «di Piero» is a patronymic, not a place. Anto de Franceschi was the son of a Piero — and that pushes the family at Svetvinčenat back a generation before any of the twelve fathers the index knows about, into a man born around the 1610s or 1620s. It is the single most useful line read so far, and no index carries it, because indexes do not transcribe godparents.

«Franceschina fig.la leg.ma di M.ro Anto de Franceschi, et di Marta sua cons.te, nata li 6 del sud.o, et batt.a da me D. Vic.o Pineo Can.co. Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Angelo Ferri, et la Sig.ra Anna fig.la dell'Ill.mo s.r Nicolò Vieli, moglie di Gieppo Cacheda.» He is still M.ro here — but the godmother is already the daughter of an Illustrissimo. The climb this archive watched complete by 1674 has begun by 1667.

«Catarina fig.a di Sue Iacovich et d'Elena sua m.e… Comp.ri furno il S.r Ant.o de Franceschi, et Dom.ca mog. di Piero Bucich del Berro di Due Castelli.» — 20 October 1669. «Zuanne fig.o di Michiel Bratolich et di Santa sua consorte… Compari furono il S.r Ant.o de Franceschi, et Zua mog. di Matte Reba.» — 27 October 1669. Twice in eight days, for two unrelated households. Anto de Franceschi is one of the men this parish asks. Standing godparent was not a courtesy in a small Istrian town; it was a working relationship, and the register shows him in five of them in four years.

«Mattia fig.a del M.ro Ant.o de Franceschi e della S.ra Marta sua cons.te, nata li 8 [del] sud.o mese, fu battezzata da me P. Fran.co Andreis Pievano. Comp.ri furono il Sig.r Vicenzo Quelis, e la Sig.ra Cattarina Piero.» The index gives «Mattia De Franceschi, born 8 November 1669» without a sex. The register settles it: «fig.a … nata». Mattia is a daughter, not the son this archive had assumed from the name. And the godfather is a Quelis — the same family that supplies «il s.r Vicenzo Quelis» in 1666 and «l'Ill.mo s.r Nicolò Vieli» in 1667. The Quelis stand for this family repeatedly, which is worth more than any single entry.

«Mattio fig.o di Michiel Bratolch e di Pasqua sua leg.ma consorte, nato li 6 d.o… Comp.ri furono Ant.o di Franceschi, e D.na Pasqua moglie di M.ro Mattio da Llosta.» Here he is neither M.ro nor S.r — just Anto di Franceschi. The same priest, the same year. The honorifics in this register are not a ladder; they are a habit that varies with the hand and the moment, and this archive is recording that rather than building a story on it.

«Comp.ri furono M.ro Ant.o de Franceschi, et la Sig.ra Veneranda mog. del s.r Zuane de Cheri.» Worth a note for a different reason. Veneranda is a name this family goes on using: a Veneranda de Franceschi is baptised here in 1701, daughter of Gasparo; a Veneranda Defranceschi née Subiotto is in the record in 1837; a Veneranda Defranceschi née Demarin later still. Here in 1671 it belongs to the woman standing beside Anto at the font. Font-names travel that way, and it is worth writing down where a family's names come from.

Page 437, 10 June 1673: «Fran[cesco] fig.o di Michiel Festa, e d'Antonia sua legit.ma consorte». Festa is one of the families Brhan lists at Gallignana — «Gortan, De Franceschi, Festa, Picot, Baldè» — the Carnian households of the Pazin country. Here it is at Svetvinčenat, forty kilometres south, in 1673, in the same register as ours. That now makes Spinotti, Fiorencis, Felice, Fabris and Festa all present in this one parish in these years — and every one of them is a name Brhan or Doblanović places in the Carnian migration, and three of them stand on the gravestones at Gorto.

«Zuana figlia di M.ro Gaspero de Franceschi et d'Ant.a sua legg. consorte… fu Batt.a da P. Piero Palin. Compari furono M.ro Martin Ioancovich et Marina figlia del q. M.ro Batta de Franceschi.» Two new facts in one line of godparents. There is a Marina de Franceschi, adult in 1688 and therefore born by about 1670 — a daughter of the Batta whose child Fioretta was christened in 1666, and a person no index has. And «del q.» — del quondam, of the late — means Batta de Franceschi was dead by July 1688. A death this archive could not otherwise date at all.

In October 1692 a «D.a Marina moglie di M.ro Martin Francovich» stands godmother; in March 1701 the godmother at Gasparo's daughter's baptism is «Maria figlia di Martin Francovich». Set those beside 1688, where Marina de Franceschi stands with a M.ro Martin. Inferred The likeliest reading is that Marina de Franceschi married Martin Francovich, and that the Maria of 1701 is their daughter — which would make Batta's granddaughter the godmother at Gasparo's child's font, and tie two branches of this family together by choice rather than by guesswork. Two cautions, both real: the 1688 surname is written Ioancovich and the 1692 one Francovich, and standing as co-godparents does not make two people married. It is a reading, and it is labelled one.

«Giorgio figlio di Mico Matred e Zuana sua leg.ma consorte… fu hoggi batt. dal M.to R.do sig.r Can.co Pietro Quelis con lic.a mia. Compari furono M.ro Gasp.e di Franceschi e Cat.a moglie di Martin Bercovich.» — 17 March 1701. «Veneranda figlia leg.ma di Gasparo de Franceschi et Antonia sua consorte, nata li 12 d.o, fu hoggi batt.a dal M.to R.do sig.r Can.co Pietro Quelis di S. Vincenti. Comp.ri furono Zue de Blasio et Maria figlia di Martin Francovich.» — 20 March 1701. The same pattern as Nadal in 1666 and Anto in 1667: a De Franceschi stands at somebody else's font days before his own child is carried to it. Three generations of this family do it, in the same parish, across thirty-five years.

A faded entry, and the word after the surname will not resolve: «Comp.ri furono M.ro Mattio de Fran[ceschi] de …, et Cata figlia del q. Zuane Lucian…» The Christian name and surname are clear enough. Mattio de Franceschi is standing godfather in 1692 — and he is very likely the Mattio who fathers Antonio in 1704 and Martino in 1722. The other godparent is «Cata, daughter of the late Zuane Luciani» — the Albona name again, this time as a resident of the parish.

«Giacoma figlia leg.ma di M.ro Leonardo de Franceschi, et Eufemia sua leg.ma consorte, nata li 30 d[el] passato, fu hoggi battezzata dal R.do P. D. Vicenzo Francas. Comp.ri furono Sime Bercovich e moglie di Ghergo Doblanovich.» The index knows this man only as «Lunardo» and «Nardo», in 1707 and 1709. Here the priest writes him out: Leonardo. And Giacoma is a child of his the index does not have. That matters for one reason only, and it is worth stating carefully. The Gologorica house's byname is «detti Leonardi», and its pedigree runs Leonardus 1697–1773, Leonardus 1766–1848, Leonardus 1847–1917. A Leonardo de Franceschi is raising a family at Svetvinčenat from 1702. It is a shared font-name in a family that reuses font-names, and this archive is not going to pretend it is more than that. But it is now a documented Leonardo, not an abbreviation.

«Domenica figlia leg.ma di Piero de Franceschi et di Vittoria sua cons.te, nata oggi et battezzata di mano del Capell.o Salambat di mia licenza. Furono compari Nardo Franceschi et Maria r. q. … Giacomo Gambero.» This is the first De Franceschi standing godparent to another De Franceschi in this parish. Nardo — Leonardo — carries Piero's daughter. Two households of the name in one town, and they are close enough that one christens the other's child. Brothers, or uncle and nephew, on the ordinary reading; the register does not say which, and neither will this page.

«Dom.ca figlia leg.ma di M.ro Pietro de Franceschi et Vittoria sua moglie, nata li 5 d.o… essendo stati Padrini M.ro Mattio Lupieri, et Donna Antonia moglie del M.ro Fran.co Mandau.» Stop on that name. The Lupieri are the Carnian family of the Canale di Gorto — of Luint above Ovaro, four kilometres from Mione and Agrons. Brhan devotes a study to their Istrian correspondence; another to the Stanzia Lupieri at Sanvincenti, which stood on the road between Svetvinčenat and Canfanaro and is on the 1820 cadastre; a Valentino Lupieri was podestà of Sanvincenti in 1824. So in May 1707 a Lupieri of the Canale di Gorto stands godfather to a De Franceschi child at Svetvinčenat. Of every name in these registers, that is the one that ties this household hardest to the valley our own line came out of — not by descent, which nothing here shows, but by company. These people were each other's compari.

«Vittoria figlia leg.ma di S. Gieppo Pelizer e di Martina sua moglie, nata gemella con la sud.a in d.o parto li 22 sud.o… Furono compari S. Mattio de Franceschi, et la Sig.ra Madalena Pilastro.» By 1703 Mattio is Signor without qualification.

Page 557, 1704: «…li Butcovich della contrada di [B/R/S]ignano». That is the same word — the same first letter that would not resolve — as the place after «da» in «il Sig.r Conte Lucciani da …» in 1674. Which changes what kind of word it is. It is not a distant town; it is a contrada of this parish's own territory, used twice by two different priests. So the count of 1674 was not a visiting grandee from the other side of Istria: he held land here. The Lucciani are an Albona house, and one of them had a holding in the Svetvinčenat country. Inferred

«Mattio figlio leg.o de And.a Saia… Furono P.ni assistenti M.ro Nardo de Franceschi e la S.a Andriana…» — 6 September 1706. «…Comp.ri furono D. Nardo de Franceschi, et Elena Machier.» — later in 1707, and now styled D. With the christening of Piero's daughter in 1703 that is three godparent turns for Leonardo in four years. The role passes down the family: Nadal holds it in 1666, Anto through 1667–74, Gasparo in 1701, Mattio in 1692 and 1703, Leonardo from 1703. In this parish there is nearly always a De Franceschi being asked.

This archive said three days ago that opening 578 carries no De Franceschi. It does. The right-hand page opens with one, and the entry was missed. Both of the index's two Pieros have now been found on the film, and they are not what this page first said they were. Opening 578, 6 October 1707 — «Piero fig.o leg.mo di M.ro Nardo de Franceschi e di Eufemia Jugali, nato li 17 Settembre passato. Fu Battezzato da me medesimo. Assistenti P.ni furono Martin Salambat e la Sig.ra Andriana moglie del Sig.r Can.co Ottavio Quelis.» Opening 579, 15 October 1707 — «Piero fig.o leg.mo di M.ro Lunardo de Franceschi et d. Eufemia Jugali, nato li 05 corrente. Fu Battezzato di mia mano. P.ni assistenti P.re Martino Salambat … et la Sig.ra Andriana…» Two baptisms, nine days apart, of a boy called Piero, to a mother Eufemia both times and a father written Nardo once and Lunardo once. The stated births are eighteen days apart, which no mother manages. And the godparents are the same pair — Martino Salambat and Andriana Quelis, in the same order, in both entries. That is the proof. The duplicate is in the register, not in the index. The priest entered this child twice and never struck the first, and the top of the second page carries his own dating correction — «15 8bre qui sotto», scribbled above a heading he had first written 16 October. He was already confused about the dates on the page where he wrote it twice. The index then compounded it. It reads the first birth as 17 September and the second as 25 September — but the register says «nato li 05 corrente», the 5th of October. Neither index date is the baptism, and one of them is not the birth either.

Nineteen openings of DGS 005497884 read band by band: 397, 398, 402, 415, 423, 428, 437, 442, 496, 514, 516, 545, 549, 555, 557, 564, 571, 578, 579. They cover the baptisms of 1666, 1667, 1669, 1671, 1673, 1674, 1688, 1692, 1701, 1702, 1703, 1704, 1706 and 1707. Twenty occurrences of the surname that no index carries. Sixteen of them are godparent roles — the one category of entry no index transcribes — plus a daughter of Leonardo's the index does not have, and two probable appearances of Marina under her married name. Eleven baptisms confirmed word for word. One filiation recovered — «Ant.o di Franceschi di Piero». One death dated — Batta, before July 1688. Three people added — Marina, Giacoma, and a probable Maria. One sex corrected — Mattia of 1669 is a daughter. One duplicate found in the register itself — the two Pieros of October 1707, proved one child by their identical godparents. One within-family godparent link — Nardo for Piero's daughter, 1703. And the Lupieri. One correction to this page, published under the claim it corrects: the reading that opening 578 held no De Franceschi was wrong. It holds the first of the two Pieros. Reading a page and finding nothing is a claim like any other, and this one failed. What the film has not given is an origin. (Answered elsewhere on 13 September 2026 — not at Svetvinčenat, but at Šterna: «Bortolo figlio del q. Gio: Batta de Franceschi dalla Cargna, Diocese d'Udine», 12 November 1777. The first entry this archive has found that states where an Istrian De Franceschi came from. It does not speak for this household, and the sentence below still stands for Svetvinčenat.) Not one entry in fourteen years of baptisms says where these people came from. No «da Carnia», no «di Mione», no «q. di Agrons». The Carnian identification of this household still rests entirely on the company it keeps — Spinotti, Fiorencis, Felice, Fabris, Festa, Bergamo, Lupieri — and on Doblanović and Brhan. That is a great deal, and it is not the same thing as a document. And the film is 595 images. Nineteen have been read. The rest hold this parish's marriages and deaths, which is where a place of origin is most likely to be written down, and where Batta's burial and Leonardo's second marriage would be. This archive has read the pages the index pointed at. It has not read the book.

Births 1709–1764 carries its own contemporary index, at film images ~196–214, and it is the reason the next fifty years came cheap. It is arranged by the child's forename, each line reading «‹Given› di ‹father› ‹SURNAME› ‹date› — c. ‹carta›». Sixteen images stand in for two hundred and sixteen. On most of those frames an index leaf faces a register leaf, so both pages of every frame have to be looked at. Letters B, C, D, E, F, G and part of M are read. What they give:

A trap on the same page, worth naming. «Battista fig.o di m.ro Piero Defranzieri 7 mag.o 1712» reads exactly like the name in a list and is not it — magnified, ‑ieri against ‑eschi. Dissolved, not adopted. Of these, Gio Batta's three — Gasparo, Cattarina, Battistina — are new to this archive. Giacomo's son was already on the roster.

Carta 66, under «Adi 5 Febbro 1728»: «Catta[rina] fig.a leg.ma di S.r Batta de Fran.chi et di Anzoletta sua Consorte, nata li 10 d.to, fu battegata da me Arcip.te Quelis; Padrini furono al S. Fonte il S.r Bortolo Francal Giudice et la S.ra Madalena moglie del Sig. Vic.o Quelis.» The company is the point, as it was in 1666 and 1674. The father is Signore; the godfather is the village's own magistrate; the godmother is the Vicar's wife. Sixty years after M.ro Nadal stood godfather in a leather apron, the house is standing at the font with the bench and the presbytery. The climb this section watched begin has not reversed. The register clips the surname to «de Fran.chi»; the volume's index writes it out, «Defranceschi».

The index's D page gives «Dom.co Gasparo di Giacomo Defranceschi 9 Ag.to 1732 — c. 80». And the register leaf facing that very index page carries the baptisms of February 1764, where the godfather on the 9th is «D. Gasparo de Franceschi figlio di Giacomo» — the child of 1732, aged thirty-one, standing at the font himself. Two independent entries in one volume give the same man twice, each naming his father. And the godparent role passes down the family again, exactly as it did from Nadal to Anto to Leonardo in the previous century. Two things to be straight about. Domenico Gasparo was already in this archive — the roster has him at Svetvinčenat, and the families list above has his sister «1733 Maria, of Giacomo and Anzoletta». What the index adds is his carta and an exact date; what the 1764 leaf adds is the man alive at thirty-one, which is new. And the dates disagree by a year: the roster carries 1731, the volume's own index says 9 Agosto 1732. Carta 80 settles it and has not been opened.

Births 1764–1791, image 81, one frame, both pages: «Anno D.ni 1780. Die 16 Aprilis S. Vincentij» — Maria, daughter of Matthæus Pieder; «Patrini ad Sacrum Fontem fuere Dominicus Defranceschi, et Fosca Uxor ejus». «Anno D.ni 1780 Die 1 Maij S. Vincentij» — Joannes, son of Gregorius Mathes; among the godparents «Mathea uxor Antonij Defranceschi». Two households at the font sixteen days apart, in the exact year Atti 48 names. That article says the Defranceschi surname was the only one with continuity in the castle of San Vincenti, and that «guidati da Antonio Defranceschi, nel 1780 avevano ottenuto l'esonero dal partecipare alla difesa armata». The register has an Antonius Defranceschi there in 1780, with a wife and a place in the parish's godparent circuit. The article's leader stops being a footnote and becomes a man in a book. Both are godparent appearances, not baptisms of their own children — which is, as this section keeps finding, the one category no index will ever carry.

This page carries, from the index, «1733 Maria, of Giacomo and Anzoletta»; carta 66 gives «Batta de Fran.chi et di Anzoletta sua Consorte» in 1728. Two husbands, one forename — and the index settles what kind of problem that is.

Giacomo had two wives. Maria bears in April 1731 and vanishes. Anzoletta bears from November 1733. And Gio Batta's household stops dead at Battistina, 23 December 1731. Inferred Two households of the name are widowed within a year of each other, and the surviving husband of one marries the surviving widow of the other. The dates leave room for nothing else tidy. But Svetvinčenat's marriage register is not filmed between 1623 and 1762 — so the wedding cannot be reached, and neither can the dispensation for affinity that would have been needed if Batta and Giacomo were brothers, which the shared grandfather-name Gasparo already suggests. The archive states the reading and the hole in the same breath.

Between 1738 and 1752 the FamilySearch index of Births 1709–1764 is simply blank for this surname, and the only way through is to open every frame. Film 005497885, images 115–162. It produced a parish, not a list. Four households of the name baptising at the castle at once — Jacobo × Pascasia, Matteo × Francisca, Pietro × Jacoba, Vittorio × Dominica — with Gasparo × Maria beside them, and the children running 1737 to 1759. None of them is in any index anywhere. The frames also killed five lookalikes — Dassanich, Blasan, «Jurca uxor Antonij», Defranzieri and «Del Ferri» — every one of them found on a low-resolution spread and dissolved at 3×. The sweep's discipline is that the spread finds and the magnification decides.

The mother of Casparus, baptised 1 June 1743, was read as «Francisca» and published. She is Pascasia. What settled it was not magnification. Going from 2.4× to 8× settled nothing — at every scale the word was a plausible squiggle and the reader kept supplying the name already in mind. What settled it was finding the same clerk writing both candidate names elsewhere in the same volume: his «Franciscus» on the facing leaf, eight weeks later, and his «Pascasia» nine images on, in an entry this archive had already transcribed correctly. Set at one magnification, the disputed word is the second stroke for stroke. It moved the child from one household to another — [h113] to [h107] — and it took 1743 away from the «two Jacobos» case, which had rested on two wives appearing eight days apart that year. There is one wife in 1743. The case now stands on 1752–53, where the evidence is better. See /corrections/.

The godfather at that baptism was published as «Dominicus Xaverii Bosponi». He is Francesco Saverio Profumo, chancellor of the parish — verified on three frames in three years, in Latin and in Italian, in two different hands. The name was wrong in four files. He turns up again in the marriage book, and it dates him: 5 July 1762, his daughter Antonia marries Giuseppe Basilisco, the castle's sitting chancellor — and Profumo is «q.m», already dead. The man who stood godfather in 1743 was buried before his daughter married his successor.

This worklist carried «the marriage film number was never recorded» as a blocker for days. Every one of these films opens with a target board, photographed at the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb in June 1997, naming the register, the years, the item and the roll in plain capitals.

And film 886 does not stop at 1623: the 1762 volume opens at frame 43, frame 300 is a printed Austrian «Liber Copulatorum» of 1887, and there is no index — about 2.3 frames to the year, four marriages to a frame.

Frames 43–71, July 1762 to December 1775 — about 230 marriages, twenty-six appearances of the name. Three of them are marriages of the name, two are widows remarrying, the rest are witnessings. · 22 Oct 1765 — «Domenico Calluzzi q.m Pietro … con Pasqua Ved.a q.m Giacomo de Franceschi in 2di uoti». Pascasia a widow, and the first dated death of any Jacobo at this castle. · 9 Feb 1766 — «Con Elena figlia di q.m Mattio de Franceschi», marrying Mattio Santalezza of the Albona territory, twelve years resident, admitted on a letter of credit. · 17 Nov 1773 — «Marc'Antonius Jacomini … Parenzensis, et Fusca filia q. Mathiæ de Franceschi», a third daughter of the same house, witnessed by Mathias Santalezza — her sister's husband. · 10 Jun 1771 — «Dominicus de Franceschi … cum Victoria Trecento … Testibus … ac Victorio de Franceschi». A Defranceschi marrying with a Defranceschi standing witness. · 13 Aug 1766 — «Gaspare de Franceschi q.m Ant.o ex hoc Castro», a patronymic that excluded two of three candidates outright. The pattern is the point. The castle's daughters married out and in — to Albona, to Parenzo, to Carnia — while the sons stayed. Three of Matteo's five daughters are now documented leaving, and every husband came from somewhere else in the province.

Three endpoint calls to the frame, seventy calls to the batch — and at about seventy FamilySearch served a bot check. The sweep stopped there rather than being throttled, retried or disguised; it resumed later at a third of the rate and finished clean. The rate is part of the method now. And the archive learned to sort its own claims. Twenty-one published readings rested on this film. Seventeen of their notes say «magnified»; four do not. The four went first — and the one that had never claimed magnification carried two errors, while all three controls held. A small sample, but a defensible order to work in — and only true because the notes were honest when the reading was quick.

One name appears on more Svetvinčenat marriages than any other of the family, and for two years this archive could not say why. «Antonio de Franceschi» witnesses at least a dozen weddings between January 1773 and April 1775 — never a bridegroom, never a father, always the man standing beside the couple. Frame 72 explains him in three words. > «…alla mia presenza del R.do Sig.r D. Giuseppe Crisanaz, e del Campanaro Antonio De Franceschi: Testimonj.» — 25 October 1775 «Campanaro» is the bell-ringer, and here the word stands in front of the name, where «del Sig.r» or «del R.do» would stand. Four other entries put it after — 29 January 1774, 3 February 1774, 27 February 1775, 19 October 1775 — and this archive left the reading open for a day because a trailing word can attach to the wrong man. In front of the name it cannot. So he was not a well-connected householder. He worked at the church. The parish asked him to witness because he was already standing there, and a dozen appearances stop being a social fact and become a job. ⚠ And he was not the only bell-ringer. «Zvanne Sain Campanaro» carries the same title a dozen times across the same years. The register explains it without meaning to: it marries people at S. Vincenzo, S. Rocco, S. Germano and S. Maria Maddalena. A parish with four churches has more than one bell to ring. (inf — the register never says which church either man served.)

Three daughters of Matteo and Francisca left the castle by marriage, and the register followed two of them. Elena, born 5 August 1742, married 9 February 1766 to Mattio Santalezza, an incomer from the territory of Albona — twelve years resident, admitted on a letter of credit before the parish would marry him. She did not live long. On 26 May 1777 the same book reads «Ved.o Mattio Santaleza q.m Micho ha contrato matrimonio … con Maria figlia del q.m Ant.o Bolich». «Ved.o» is vedovo: a widower. Same patronymic, same parish, eleven years on — he is her husband, and he has buried her. So Elena died between 1766 and 1777, at thirty-four or younger, and no year can be printed: the bracket is eleven years wide and Svetvinčenat's deaths before 1859 are on no film this archive can reach. Fusca married on 17 November 1773 to Marc'Antonio Jacomini of Parenzo, and it is her wedding that proves she is of this house: the witness is «Mathias Santalezza» — Elena's husband, standing for his wife's sister. Irena, born 1752, has not been found marrying. She was fourteen when her father died and twenty-one when Fusca married; the volume runs on past both dates and does not name her. The pattern is the castle's. *The daughters married out — to Albona, to Parenzo — and the husbands came in, from Albona, from Parenzo, from Carnia. The sons stayed.

On 7 January 1779 a daughter of this house married a man out of the mountains this whole archive begins in. «Gio: Batta Stefanuto di Nicolò da Cargna ha contratto matrimonio per verba de presenti con Ant.a figlia del q.m Giac.mo Defranceschi di q.sta mia Parrochia … alla sua presenza, di D.no Mattio Bergamo, di Vitorio Defranceschi Testimonj.» — film 005497886, frame 82, read at 2.1×. (doc.) She is Antonia, baptised 20 October 1747, daughter of Jacobo and Pascasia — thirty-one, and her father already dead, which agrees with her mother remarrying as a widow in 1765. A Defranceschi stood witness at her wedding: «Vitorio», though the act does not say which of the two. ⚠ «da Cargna» is the word that matters. This archive's long argument is that Svetvinčenat is a Carnian colony — the 1660s baptisms are ringed with Carnian godparents, and Kandler lists the Carnian families settled at Sanvincenti after the plagues. A daughter of that colony marrying a Carnian in 1779 is that argument's shape a century on, and she is the second on this film in five years, after Nicolò Corva «dà Cargna», diocese of Udine, in January 1774. What is doc and what is not. The marriages are doc; that the family descends from Carnia is not proved by them and is not claimed here. What they show is a parish that was still, after four generations, marrying along the same road it had arrived by.

Six days after Antonia's wedding, at the same altar, Domenico married for the second time. 13 January 1779: «Ved.o p.mi voti M.ro Dom.co Defranceschi di questa Parrochia ha contrato matrimonio per verba de presenti con Fosca f.a Giuseppe Placich della Parrochia di Simino» — frame 82. (doc.) Three facts are packed into that line. · «Ved.o p.mi voti» — widower of first vows. So Victoria Trecento, whom he married on 10 June 1771, was dead — married at about twenty-one and gone inside seven and a half years. No year can be printed: the bracket is 1771×1779 and the deaths of Svetvinčenat before 1859 are on no film this archive can reach. It is the second time on this page that a woman's death is known only from her husband's next wedding. · «M.ro» — Maestro, a master of some craft. He is the second of this family styled so at the castle, after Gasparo in 1762; the register never says the trade. · ⚠ And it corrects this archive before it got something wrong. The baptisms of April 1780 give godparents «Dominicus Defranceschi, et Fosca Uxor ejus» — and there is already a Fusca de Franceschi on this page, Matteo's daughter, married to a Jacomini of Parenzo in 1773. They are two different women. The 1780 wife is Fosca Placich of Šimuni, married fifteen months before. Two Foscas in one small parish in one decade, and only the marriage book separates them — which is the argument for reading the marriages at all.

Frames 79 to 85 also close a small question about who stood at the parish's weddings. Antonio the bell-ringer was the fixed witness of 1773 — six weddings in ten months. He is still there on 22 November 1779: «alla sua presenza, d'Ant.o Defranceschi, e di D.no Z.ne Volfe Testimonj», frame 85. His run on this film is January 1773 to November 1779. But on 29 November 1777 the parish priest married four couples in a single day, and the witness beside Simon Manzoni on every one of them was Domenico — «di Simon Manzoni, di Dom.co Defranceschi, ed altri molti Testimonj», frame 79, confirmed at 2.2×. (doc for all of it.) Neither man is the parish's officer; neither act gives either a title. What the pages show is only that for seven years running there was a Defranceschi standing at the back of the church whenever the parish married anyone — first Antonio, then Domenico beside him — which is what belonging looks like in a register that records no offices. Frames 81, 83 and 84 are nil for the name. Frame 83's bell-ringer is a Gasparo Bratalich — not ours — and frame 84's «Benedetto Fiorencis» is a Carnian family this archive has checked and set aside. The nil frames are named because a nil that does not name what was read is not a nil.

Six more openings, 1780 to the close of 1782 — and the family is thinning on the page. 11 November 1780, frame 86. A Gregorio Defranceschi «q.m Ant.o» stands witness, beside the campanaro. A son of a dead Antonio, and a man this archive had never met. ⚠ An ink blot eats the end of the surname; the reading rests on length, on the surviving «Defrance—», and on the undoubted «q.m Vitt.o» written on the next line in the same ink. The blot is stated, not hidden. If his father is Antonio the bell-ringer, Antonio died between 22 November 1779 and 11 November 1780 — but the act does not say so and this archive does not claim it. (doc for the name; the identification is inf.) 29 April 1782, frame 90. «…qual esposero alla mia presenza, di Vittorio Franceschi, Sig.r Francesco Fabris, e molti altri.» ⚠ The «De» is gone — not because the family changed its name, but because the parish changed its priest: D. Paolo Cossaich had replaced D. Antonio Massalini, and he writes plain «Franceschi». This is how a family vanishes from an index, and why this archive reads films instead of searching them. The act names no patronymic, so it fits either Vittorio; it is recorded on both pages and claimed on neither. And the bell-rope has gone to another house. Through 1780–82 the register names the campanaro five times, and every time it is a Bratulich — Gasparo q.m Vittorio, then Zorzi q.m Vittorio. After twenty years in which a Defranceschi was at the back of the church for every wedding, the parish's standing witnesses are Bratulich, Fabris and Bonich. (doc.) Frames 87, 88, 89 and 91 are nil for the name — named here because a nil that does not say what was read is not a nil. But frame 91 is not empty of the argument. On 1 June 1782 the book marries «Pellagio q.m Dio: Giacomo Colla nato nel luoco di Muina nella Carnia» to «Orsola figlia di Domenico Verona pura nativa in Carnia», both now living in the parish. Muina is in Ovaro, in Carnia. Two more Carnians, a century after the settlement, still arriving at this castle and still marrying each other in it — which is the pattern Antonia's 1779 wedding belongs to, and the reason this archive keeps reading past its own surname.

Frame 93 is the best opening this film has given, and it begins by proving this archive wrong. 13 March 1783: «Vittorio figlio di Capo Antonio de Franceschi contrasse li primi sponsali con Eufemia figlia di Mattio Bergamo ambi di questa Parrocchia … dispensati dalla solita trina Publicazione, e dal tempo corrente feriato … interrogati da me sottoscritto nella Chiesa della B.V. degli Angioli di Parenzo … alla mia presenza, e di Capo Mattio Buzzalovich q. Zuanne da Lisignano, e di Zuanne q. Zuanne Fabretti da Parenzo.» 28 April 1783: «…qual esposero alla mia presenza di Capo Antonio de Franceschi, di Mattio Percich q. Piero…» (doc for both — film 005497886, frame 93, read at 2.2×.) ⚠ «Capo», not «quondam» — so Antonio was alive in 1783, and this archive had published the opposite that same morning. Frame 86 had been read as «Gregorio Defranceschi q.m Ant.o», of the late Antonio, from a glyph with an ink blot on it. The comparison was made against the right line and still reached the wrong answer, because the thing compared was never fully visible. The reading is withdrawn; the correction stands on the record. The rule earned: where ink covers the decisive letter, the honest reading is no reading. The clerk hands over the control himself. In these same two sentences he marks his dead — «Fosca figlia del deff.o Antonio Gigante», «Mattio Percich q. Piero», «Capo Mattio Buzzalovich q. Zuanne» — beside the living «Capo». A register rarely offers a cleaner test than a death-mark and a title in one line. And «Capo» is a second title in this family, recorded and not translated. Gasparo was «M.ro» in 1762 and Domenico «M.ro» in 1779; now the head of the other house is «Capo». What it meant at Svetvinčenat is not established here — head of a contrada, head of a household, master of a boat. The one thing the act adds is that the other «Capo» in it comes from Ližnjan and the wedding is celebrated at Parenzo, both on the sea. Suggestive, and not evidence. Three things the marriage settles outright. It names Vittorio's father in a document for the first time, where before the link rested on a baptism. It gives Eufemia a maiden name and a father — Bergamo, daughter of Mattio Bergamo — filling in a page that had sat in this archive as an empty stub from the family tree, a name with no evidence behind it. And it explains the «pariter» of the September 1783 font: she carried the name by marriage. ⚠ They married out of the parish, in Lent, under a double dispensation — from the three banns and from the closed season — with witnesses from Parenzo and Ližnjan and none from the castle. The register gives the dispensation and not the reason, and neither does this page. And a small thread ties back: a «D.no Mattio Bergamo» witnessed Antonia Defranceschi's wedding in January 1779 — four years before his daughter married into the same family. (doc for the witnessing; that he is the same man is inf.)

Three more openings, and 1784 gives up two things the register had never said. 19 July 1784 — the house of Jacobo finally produces a son. «Zuanne figlio del q. Giacomo de Franceschi contrasse li primi sponsali con Antonia figlia del q. Antonio, ambi di questa Parrochia» — film 005497886, frame 96. (doc.) Until today this line knew Jacobo's household only through its women — Antonia marrying in 1779, and Pascasia widowed and remarrying in 1765. Zuanne is the first son of it the marriage book names. ⚠ Not assigned to a father, though: the castle's Giacomo is the man this archive files as «at least two men», and this act does not decide which — or whether the two are really two. A son of a dead Giacomo de Franceschi of this parish is all it says, and all this page says. 21 February 1784 — and Antonia is dead. «Gioan Battista Steffanutto nativo della Carnia, vedovo della q. Antonia nata de Franceschi» marries Angiola, widow of the late Domenico Galluzzi. So she died between 7 January 1779 and 21 February 1784, at thirty-six or younger — no year printable; the deaths of this parish before 1859 are on no film reachable here. It is the third woman on this page whose death is known only from her widower's next wedding. ⚠ And it settles her past argument: «nata de Franceschi», born a de Franceschi. The 1779 act had given only «figlia del q.m Giac.mo», and the match to the girl baptised 20 October 1747 rested on the patronymic. Five years on the same register names her birth family outright. ⚠ A thread left open, not tied. The bride of 1784 is «Angiola relitta q. Domenico Galluzzi» — and Antonia's own mother Pascasia had remarried a Calluzzi. One letter, one clerk's hand. This page records the coincidence and refuses the kinship. And the Carnian road is now countable. Reading forward frame by frame, this one small castle marries five people out of Carnia in ten years:

Two of the five are marked as coming from the diocese of Udine, and two name the village. Muina and Prato are both in the upper Degano valley, a few miles apart. ⚠ This is the pattern this archive has argued for from the 1660s godparents onward — and it is still only a pattern. That Svetvinčenat kept marrying along the Carnian road in the 1780s is doc. That the Defranceschi themselves came down it is not proved by any of these acts, and is not claimed. Frames 94 and 95 are otherwise nil for the name; 1783 closes at 26 marriages.

Frame 98 is the entry this whole film was worth opening for, and it is not about Svetvinčenat at all. 14 March 1785: «Antonio q. Leonardo de Franceschi da Gollogorizza Diocesi di Pedena contrasse li primi sponsali per verba de presenti, con Maria figlia q. Giacomo Corva da Muina Diocesi d'Udine, soggetta però alla mia cura spirituale…» Gologorica is the parish this archive's own direct line comes out of. Muina is in Carnia, four hundred kilometres away, and is where the house this archive follows four generations deep was farming. The place name was magnified to 2.4× before a word of this was written, and «Diocesi di Pedena» settles it: Gologorica sat in that diocese and no other Istrian place carries the name. It is the join drawn in one sentence. The banns were read for the bride here and for the groom by his own parish priest, whose letter of 13 March the archpriest cites; the Curia of Parenzo dispensed the closed season. She was living at Svetvinčenat — «soggetta però alla mia cura spirituale» — though of Muina by origin. What it does to the Carnia page is set out there: it supplies that household's missing marriage, names the bride's father Giacomo Corva for the first time, and pushes Leonardo's death back before 1785. (doc for the entry; the identification with the Muina household is inf and argued there, not here.)

Frame 103 answers a question raised eight frames earlier, and it answers it by accident. 16 January 1788: «Zuanne Contossich q.m Pietro contrasse i primi Sponsali per verba de praesenti con Maria figlia del S.r Antonio Defranceschi, ambi di questa Parochia…» — witnessed by «Antonio Civitico, e Domenico Defranceschi». Two of the name on one page, and the spelling has changed back. This page has already recorded that the «De» fell away in 1780 when D. Paolo Cossaich took the book over, and that a name-indexed search loses the family at exactly that point. From 18 February 1787 the book changes hands again — D. Giovanni Venica performs the marriages and D. Agostino de Caneva, canonico ed economo, registers them — and the «De» returns with them. So the spelling never belonged to the family at all: it belonged to whoever was holding the pen. That is the single most useful thing this volume has taught about searching it. Maria's father is styled «Signor». The Antonio Defranceschi of this parish is the man who, by the Italian account this page already quotes, «guidati da Antonio Defranceschi, nel 1780 avevano ottenuto l'esonero» — who led the castle's tenants to their exemption, and whom frame 93 showed alive in 1783 as «Capo Antonio». That his daughter marries here in 1788, with the honorific on his name, fits him exactly — but the register does not say so, and neither does this archive. (doc for the entry; inf for the identification with the Antonio of 1780, and there may have been more than one man of that name.) And Domenico is alive. He married for the second time in January 1779, a widower; nine years on he is standing as a witness at a Defranceschi wedding.

This page has followed the parish bell-rope since 1773, because for a while it was in this family's hands. Antonio the bell-ringer was the fixed witness of 1773; by 1780–82 the campanaro is named five times and every time he is a Bratulich. Frames 99 to 104 carry it two houses further. Through 1785 and 1786 the man named campanaro at wedding after wedding is Antonio Gionello — he stands at seven of them. From 1787 to 1790 it is Antonio Civitico, and by the end he is at almost every entry on the page. It is a small thing and it is cheap to have: the campanaro is written into nearly every marriage act, so the succession comes free with reading the book. De Franceschi, then Bratulich, then Gionello, then Civitico — four houses holding one rope in seventeen years, in a parish of a few hundred people. (doc for each name as witness; the succession itself is the obvious reading of a continuous series and is inf.)

The marriage register ends, and the last thing it gives is the rest of one woman's life. Frame 106 closes the volume. After the marriage of 7 March 1791 there are no more acts. In their place is a note in Latin: «Die 28. Maji 1791. In Castro S. Vincentii, in 2da Visitatione Generali … praesentatus ab Adm. Rev.do D. Can.co Plebanum; quo viso et reviso restitutus fuit», signed by the Vicar General and marked gratis. The book was produced at the bishop's second general visitation, inspected, and handed back — and the remainder of the leaf is struck through with a single great X. What follows is not a register at all. Frames 107 and 108 are loose slips laid into the volume, in a different and hurried hand, each marriage reduced to one line: a date, a groom, a bride, and nothing else — no publications, no dispensation, no witnesses, no priest. Twenty-six marriages are kept this way, from June 1791 to November 1792. Somebody was keeping the parish's marriages on scrap paper, and somebody else thought the scraps worth binding in. ⚠ And on one of those slips is the end of a story this page began three frames earlier. > Addì 30 [X]bre 1791 — … incontrò matrimonio con Maria relita q.m Contossich nata Defranceschi. On 16 January 1788 «Maria figlia del S.r Antonio Defranceschi» married «Zuanne Contossich q.m Pietro». Not four years later a Maria, widow of a Contossich, née Defranceschi, marries again in the same small parish. The slip names her by both her married and her maiden name, which is exactly what makes the two entries lock together. So the archive can follow her: married at twenty-something in 1788, widowed before Christmas 1791, remarried within the year. (doc for both entries as written; inf, strongly held, that they are one woman — the parish is small, the surname pair is exact, and no second Contessich–Defranceschi couple appears anywhere in the frames read.) What the slip does not give is her new husband's name legibly, or the word after «Defranceschi»; both are left unread rather than guessed.

The slips run on to 1794, and the last of them gives Jacobo a daughter. > Addì 19. Maggio 1794 — Domenico Martincich incontrò matrimonio con Pasqua figlia del q.m Giacomo Defranceschi. One of the most legible lines on the whole film, and magnified before it was written down. That is the third child of that house this page has now found, and they arrive fifteen years apart:

Their father was already dead in 1779 and is still «q.m» in 1794, so he died before the first of these weddings and the three are consistent with one man's family. ⚠ And there is a Pasqua before her. This page records, at 22 October 1765, «Domenico Calluzzi q.m Pietro … con Pasqua Ved.a q.m Giacomo de Franceschi in 2di voti» — a Pasqua who was the WIDOW of a Giacomo de Franceschi, remarrying. A daughter named for her mother is the obvious reading, and this archive has just used that very reasoning on the Kalanj stones, where a Rozalija stands beside a Rosalia. It is not claimed. (doc for both entries; the mother–daughter reading is inf and nothing more.) Two things argue for caution. The widow remarried in 1765 and a daughter marrying in 1794 would be at the far edge of one generation; and this archive already holds that there were at least two men called Jacobo at this castle, so «q.m Giacomo» in 1765 and in 1794 need not be the same dead man. What is certain is that the house of Jacobo now has three named children instead of two.

The flight of 1669 is carried in every compilation and documented in none of them — Puhmajer's only authority for it is an encyclopaedia of 2001. Two other things are much harder. In 1674 the Republic assigned Zorzi de Franceschi a pension for his services in the War of Candia; after the Turkish conquest he went from Candia to Zante and from Zante to Sebenico, and a document of 1730 directs that the pension be drawn at Capodistria «probabilmente perchè la famiglia viveva già a Seghetto». The French suspended it and the Austrians restored it. That is a hundred and fifty years of a Venetian war pension following one family from Crete to Istria. And Marc'Antonio de Franceschi (1671–1758), the physician who bought the Seget estate in 1720, married in 1727 «Crissulla Marulli» — Chrysoula Marulli, a Cretan noble surname — and had eleven children by her. Puhmajer names her and moves straight on. She is the best evidence in his whole book for where these people came from.

This archive had this wrong and corrects it here. The mills on the Vrljika are not named for a Franceschi called Perin. They are named for the Perinović — Perin — a Zadar family the Franceschi brought in at the start of the eighteenth century as estate managers, and who followed them to their other properties. The by-name attached itself to the place and then to the owners, so that Andrija Kačić Miošić, in the Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga of 1756, sings of the taking of Imotski and calls the commander «Perinović Ive». A Venetian officer walked into Croatian epic verse under his steward's surname. A Venetian cadastral sheet of 1777 draws the stone bridge and the «Molinari di Franceschi» with eleven grindstones; fourteen were built in the end, and they ran until the end of the twentieth century.

By nobiliary compilation, mostly. A single surname with a Venetian count in it attracts everything else of that surname within a hundred miles. The most recent version of the error is online: a MyHeritage tree of 8,286 people descends the Crikvenica household from Zuane of Imotski, and it has been copied outward through Geni and Smart Matching since 2017. It is a magnificent pedigree and it is not ours. What separates the three is not argument but trade and register. The Klenovica baptism of 1890 names this family's place of settlement as «Gallignana u Istriji» — Gračišće in Istria — four generations downstream of the Gologorica house. The 1863 Gračišće entry gives the father as lapicida. The 1906 Crikvenica entry gives the son as «vešti klesar sada tvorničar», a skilled stonemason now a factory worker. Stonemasons coming down off an Istrian hill are not Venetian landowners on the Vrljika, and they are not Cretan counts.

The clinching detail is not in a document at all — it is on two walls. The Seget house and the Seget tomb both carry a lion. The Gologorica house and the Gologorica tomb carry a Greek cross with two arrows and a pomegranate. The Blasonario Giuliano lists four separate families of this surname in the region: one with a stork on a mount of three peaks, one with a lion, one with Carlo's cross and arrows and pomegranate, and one at Pisino with a half-castle. And Carlo De Franceschi himself, of the Gologorica house, writing in 1879 about the owners of Seget, called them «la nobile famiglia De Franceschi, attuale posseditrice, emigrata dall'isola di Candia» — the noble De Franceschi family, the present owner, emigrated from the island of Candia. Our own ancestor, describing them, described them as somebody else. One qualification, added September 2026. The Dalmatian family bears a lion too — Heyer von Rosenfeld draws the Franceschi shield party per fess, a lion rampant within it and a second lion issuing from the crown above, azure over or. So of the three arrivals, two bear lions and one does not, and the one that does not is the one this archive descends from. That is not an argument that Seget and Omiš are the same house; a lion in that posture is one of the commonest charges there is. It is a reason not to lean on the arms alone.

Nothing here proves the three are unrelated at some depth — a Franceschi is a son of Francesco, and the name was made independently wherever Italian was spoken. What is claimed is narrower and firmer: no document in this archive joins any two of them, and the people best placed to make the join declined to. Kobler had the Fiume civic registers and Carlo's own letters in front of him, and refused to unite even the three Fiume stocks he had found. The Seget family's own 1896 descent chart has not been read; the Imotski family's Zadar and Omiš papers have been read by a local historian and produce no Istrian link. Until one of those turns up a name in common, three arrivals is what the evidence supports, and three is what this site publishes.

Darko Darovec's survey of early-modern migration into Istria opens with Prospero Petronio, writing in 1681 from the bishop of Novigrad's notes of forty years earlier, listing the gente then living in the province. The second of them: «The Carni — many called them Cargnelli or Karnjeli — were related to the Friulians, who were their neighbours.» They spun wool and wove cloth and linen, and worked as tailors, smiths, shoemakers and stonemasons. They were reasonable and frugal, «so that many soon at least recovered materially, if they did not get rich as well». Their qualities were very useful to the province. They lived in fortified villages — castelli — and in the small towns, and they had not arrived before the Slavs. That is not a description of a peculiar family. It is a description of a class of immigrant, written down by a contemporary, and the Gologorica house sits inside it without adjustment: Carnian, artisan and small-owner, in a castello, comfortable enough within three generations to raise a small palace with an arcaded portico and a shield on the façade.

Darovec is precise about where the Friulian-Carnian stratum settled on the Austrian side: «a stratum of Italian and Friulian-Carnian origin had established itself in the small towns and other settlements of Austrian or Inner Istria, particularly in Pazin, Pićan, Gradišće, Žminj and Tinjan.» Gologorica lies between Pićan and Gračišće, in the County of Pazin, and Gračišće is the parish this line's registers are in. Every place in his list is within fifteen kilometres of the house. The Carnian arrival about 1700 stops being a family story and becomes a late instance of a documented movement.

The same page carries the thing the Name page has been arguing from surname evidence alone: «the immigrant Friulians and Carnians were eventually Slavicised or Croatised (for example, Callegarich, Furlanich) in the countryside and the Slavs Italianised (for example, Ivich, Bellasich, Slocovich) in the towns». Cossar, writing in 1930, found that Friulians «assimilated surprisingly swiftly» among the local population. Furlanich is literally the Friulian with a Slavic patronymic ending. So the change this archive tracks — De Franceschi to Defranceschi to Defrančeski — is the standard Istrian outcome for exactly this kind of family, in exactly this country, and not a peculiarity of ours.

The Seget tradition says a family came out of Crete when Candia fell. Darovec supplies what the tradition never does — the machinery. Venice attempted twelve organised settlements of some 4,000 Greeks from Nafplio, Monemvasia, Crete and Cyprus into Istria between 1530 and 1669. They were ineffective: harsh conditions and conflict with the locals sent many home or elsewhere. But of those who stayed, «those that remained integrated into the predominant Italian population, since they were mostly settled in urban areas». Two things follow. The terminal date of the whole programme is 1669 — the year Candia surrendered, and the year the Seget tradition names. And the outcome Darovec describes — settled in a town, absorbed into the Italian-speaking population, leaving no Greek trace behind — is exactly what the Umag family looks like: an Italian-speaking house at a coastal town, with one Cretan surname surviving in it, Crissulla Marulli, married in 1727. Inferred The paper does not name this family. What it does is move the Crete story from unlikely to the ordinary case.

In November 1600 the captain of Rašpor, Francesco Correr, counted his garrison by nationality: 330 Italians, 48 Frenchmen, 106 Croatians and 90 Corsicans. So there were Corsicans in Istria, in numbers, three generations before either of our arrivals — as paid soldiers. It changes nothing about the Corsican line, which this archive has closed as unconnected. It is here because it is the kind of fact that would otherwise be used, one day, to connect them.