Ližnjan

A marriage at Ližnjan on 10 June 1874. The principal is Gregorius Defranceski, and the clerk records his age: 22, which puts his birth in 1851. The record is filed under Croatia-Slavonia, Magyarország — the Hungarian half of the Monarchy — with the place tagged Ližnjan, Istria.

Maria Vojnić. She is named as the mother in every one of his children's baptisms. Vojnić is one of the great Ližnjan surnames — and it is one of the names standing beside «Defrančeski Ante» in the «Pučki prijatelj» subscription list of 27 February 1920.

Gregorio Defranceschi and Agata Skifić, who appear across the Ližnjan books from the 1840s. The indexer has repeatedly merged the two surnames into «Gregorii Skifić» and «Agathæ Skifić», which is how a machine reads a Latin entry giving a father, a mother and her maiden name in one line. Read against the Italian-language entries of the same couple — «Gregorio Defranceschi» and «Agata Schiffich» — the household is unmistakable.

Anastasia, baptised 23 February 1875 and again a child of the same name on 23 February 1876 — the second almost certainly named for the first. Maria, born 4 January 1878, baptised the 5th. Justina, born 3 October 1879, baptised the 4th. Maria again, born 25 January 1882, baptised the 26th — so the 1878 Maria had died. And Josephus, March 1887. Six baptisms in thirteen years and at least two of them replacing a dead child, which is the ordinary arithmetic of an Istrian village.

Justina Defrančeski — spelt there with the háček — married Josephus Fedel at Ližnjan on 22 November 1898. Stana Defranceski married Jacobus Vojnić on 7 August 1899. Two Ližnjan houses, in two years.

Gregorio and Agata's own children run back to the 1840s: Maria, 8 December 1846; Cattarina, 31 October 1847; a Giovanni; Agatha, born 30 December 1867 and baptised on New Year's Day 1868; a Maria who married Josephus Ruman on 17 November 1869; and a Lucia who married Joannes Sandalj on 11 February 1874, four months before her brother's wedding. Behind them stands a Mattio De Franceschi with a wife Madalena Peucovich, given as Gregorio's own parents.

At Ližnjan on 6 October 1879, a Lucia died aged twenty-five, born 1854, buried the next day. The indexer could not tell from the page whether her husband was «Joannis Sandalj» or «Gregorii Defranceski» and wrote both. If she is the Lucia Defranceschi who married Joannes Sandalj in February 1874, then Grga buried his sister five years into her marriage and three days after his daughter Justina was baptised.

Two Gregorios at Ližnjan, either side of the one found here. Gregorio de Franceschi, born 23 May 1822 at Ližnjan, died there 25 November 1861 — old enough to be the father of the Gregorius who married in 1874 at twenty-two. And Gregorius «Grgo» Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb — the man on the pin. Four generations of the name in one village, and the family knew about the last of them all along.

A line drawn from Ližnjan to Monheim, and a separate pin, «Petar Moves to Metzingen». The coordinates on the Monheim pin are 10.8537 E, 48.8427 N — which is Monheim in Bavaria, in the Donau-Ries, not Monheim am Rhein. It matters: Bavarian Monheim is about a hundred kilometres from Metzingen, and Metzingen is four kilometres from Pfullingen, where this family's own wartime papers were issued.

Nothing. The pin has no note, no date, no name and no document behind it, and neither does «Grga dies in Zagreb». They are David's own knowledge, drawn on a map some years ago. This archive has searched for both and found neither: no Defranceschi at Monheim in any index reachable from here, and no death for a Grga at Zagreb in the newspapers or the burial indexes.

Read directly out of the live MyHeritage tree the same evening: «Gregorius ‘Grgo’ Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb.» That is the Grga of the map pin, and he is not the Gregorius born in 1851 whom this page had just reconstructed out of the registers. He is four generations later. The pin was right and the reading of it here was wrong: this archive found a Grga at Ližnjan, decided it must be the one, and had to be corrected by the tree.

The Ližnjan parish registers at the Državni arhiv u Pazinu, read as images rather than as an index — for Grga's own baptism about 1851, his death, and any emigration note in the margin. And Zagreb's Mirogoj burial records for Marija Defrančeski, 1884–1971, which would give a birthplace.

This page has been reading the pin's coordinates literally and searching Bavaria. That was a mistake, and a consequential one. Germany has two Monheims, and the one that matters is Monheim am Rhein in North Rhine-Westphalia — a Rhineland industrial town in the Kreis Mettmann, between Düsseldorf and Cologne, and the kind of place Yugoslav labour went to from the 1960s. Bavarian Monheim, in the Donau-Ries, is a market town of eight thousand people with no such history. A pin dropped by autocomplete lands on the wrong one very easily.

The German public telephone directory, searched nationally in every spelling, returns exactly one private listing of «Defranceski» in the whole of Germany — fused, no particle, spelt precisely as this family spells it. It is at Langenfeld (Rheinland): five kilometres from Monheim am Rhein, in the same district, Kreis Mettmann. (The only «Defranceschi» listing in Germany is a company at Mannheim — the German arm of the Italian winery-equipment firm, and nothing to do with anybody.) They are living people, so this archive names no one. What it can say is this: the pin is no longer sourceless. A line drawn years ago from Ližnjan to Monheim, with no note and no date, turns out to point at the one corner of Germany where the surname is actually written the way this family writes it. That is not proof of a connection, and it is not being counted as one. It is the first thing that has ever supported the pin at all, and it converts a dead end into an address to ask at.

Three routes, none of which this archive will take on its own. The Croatian Catholic Mission for Monheim–Langenfeld–Leverkusen keeps its own registers and would know when a family arrived. The Kreis Mettmann Einwohnermeldeamt holds registration records, restricted but obtainable by the family. And the simplest of all: the family at Langenfeld can be written to. That is David's to do, not this archive's.

Milan Defrančeski, died 24 May 2001, aged 78 — so born about 1923 — Mirogoj RKT 96A/II/61, parents entered as «GRGO I MARIJA». And Dragutin Defrančeski, died 17 May 2004, aged 79 — born about 1925 — Mirogoj RKT 136/II/26, parents «MARIJA I GRGA». Two brothers, in two graves, both naming the same father and mother. This is the Grga of the pin, and he is now the father of two men whose graves can be visited.

David's MyHeritage tree gives «Gregorius ‘Grgo’ Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb». But a man whose sons were born in 1923 and 1925 was not born in 1931. Either the tree's year is wrong, or its Grgo is a third man of the name — a grandson, perhaps, named for him. Grga the father of Milan and Dragutin was born somewhere around 1890 to 1900. The archive is not going to pick a year; it is going to say that two independent records disagree and that the cemetery's is the one with a document behind it.

Marija Defrančeski, died 3 June 1971, aged 87, so born about 1884: Mirogoj RKT 147A/II/58. In the same grave, Zdenka Defrančeski, died 16 March 1945, aged two, and not buried until 24 December 1971 — which means the child's remains were moved into her grave after Marija died. A little girl who died in March 1945, in the last weeks of the war, and waited twenty-six years to be laid with her.

Antun Defrančeski, died 5 June 1943 aged 67 — born about 1876 — and Justina Defrančeski, died 26 November 1963 aged 78 — born about 1885. Both Mirogoj RKT 136/II/43, and both buried on the same day, 28 November 1963: he was moved to lie with her when she died, twenty years after his own death. Justina is the name of Grga's daughter, baptised at Ližnjan on 4 October 1879 — nine years off, and this archive is not going to make them the same woman on a name.

Uršula Defrančeski, died 7 July 1963, aged 71, so born about 1892 — Miroševac RKT 240/I/45, sharing the grave with two men both called Josip, one dead 21 February 1976 aged 88 and the other 3 December 1979. Uršula is the name David's own great-grandmother carried. This is a different woman in a different city, and it is worth writing down that the name is in both branches.

Blanka Defranceski, born 16 December 1928, died 17 April 2019 aged 90, Markovo polje RKT 34/I/1610, parents «ANĐELA I JOSIP». Štefica Defrančeski, born 7 December 1927, died 15 October 2016, parents «PAVAO I CECILIJA», buried in Milan's grave — so his wife. Ana Defrančeski, buried at Miroševac 3 May 1990, and a Josip Defrancevski, dead 29 April 1955 aged 48. Thirteen burials of the name in the city, spread over four cemeteries and eighty years.

«U matici umrlih hrvatske Staro-katoličke župe sv. Križa u Zagrebu, svez. I, str. 13, br. 17» Died «jedanaestoga novembra, Hiljadu devetstotina trideset i prve» — 11 November 1931. «Grga Defranceschi, bravar kod sekcije Držav. željeznica u Zagrebu» — a fitter with the State Railways at Zagreb. Spouse: «Marija rodj. Lovrencin, supruga mu». Born: «Ližnjan (Istra)». Resident and died at «Zagreb, Mošćenička ul. 12». Religion: «starokatolička».

The Zagreb section above says of the tree's «Gregorius ‘Grgo’ Defranceski, born 1931 at Ližnjan, died at Zagreb»: «a man whose sons were born in 1923 and 1925 was not born in 1931. Either the tree's year is wrong, or its Grgo is a third man of the name … The archive is not going to pick a year.» It is the first. 1931 is the year he DIED. The tree carries his death year in a birth field — not a third man, a transposed column. The refusal to guess was right, and the document rewards it.

The Mirogoj graves give Milan (d. 2001, b. ≈ 1923) and Dragutin (d. 2004, b. ≈ 1925) with parents «GRGO I MARIJA». The certificate gives a Grga, wife Marija, born Ližnjan, died Zagreb. Wife, birthplace, city and the fit of the dates — a father dying in 1931 leaves sons of eight and six. ⚠ Four agreements are not a proof, and no register entry here names Milan or Dragutin as his children; the join is stated as an inference.

«Marija Lovrencin / Lorencin (Defranceschi)» sat on the roster out of David's tree with no dates, no place and no note at all. She is now the named widow of a man with a date, a trade, a street and a parish. ⚠ And a further step is left untaken: the same Zagreb section records a «Marija Defrčeški, died 3 June 1971, aged 87» at Mirogoj. Widowed in 1931 at about forty-seven, dead at eighty-seven — it fits, and «Marija Defrančeški» is not a rare enough name to carry it. No dates are written onto her row.

«starokatolička» — the Croatian Old Catholic Church, founded 1923, which kept its own registers outside the parish system this archive has walked for weeks. The word appears nowhere else in this archive. Any Defranceschi who joined it between 1923 and the 1940s is invisible to every search run here, and Zagreb was where the Istrian diaspora of those years was going. Raised as its own row.

The row beneath the birthplace — «dan, mjesec i godina rodjenja» — is below the bottom edge of the frame. His birth date is on the sheet and not in this archive. A second photograph was taken and dropped in on 8 October — it is the plate below — and it has the same framing, so the row is still clipped. At the very bottom edge what may be an opening «17» is visible and nothing more; it is not read here. One more photograph, aimed a few centimetres lower, would give the date and probably his parents. Raised. And the form is a re-issue. The printed «KRALJEVINA JUGOSLAVIJA … Banovina Savska» is overstamped «Hrv. st. katolička Crkva · Nezavisna Država Hrvatska», with «Za regulisanje penzije kod Financijske direkcije» across the head. So the copy was drawn under the NDH, 1941–45, for a pension claim on a death of 1931 — the paper is evidence of two moments, ten years apart.

1667. «Croatia, Church Books» has Franceschina De Franceschi and Anto De Franceschi, 23 Oct 1667, and another child of the same father on 8 November 1669. Then Gaspero, with children in 1688 and 3 April 1692. Then Mattio, whose son Antonio is entered in November 1704. That is four generations before the first date this site had for Ližnjan, and it is in the same registers this archive has been reading for Gračišće.

Not Ližnjan. Pula above all, and Fažana (Fasana), and Premantura, and Medulin, and Barban — the whole southern tip of the peninsula, Venetian territory, a different world from the Habsburg County of Pazin where our own family was. Baptisms and marriages at Pula in 1736, 1737, 1810, 1818, 1841, 1849, 1869; at Fažana in 1813, 1815, 1816, and a death there in 1846; at Premantura in 1809 and 1859. Ližnjan is where the family was still living in 1931, not where it came from.

A Matto De Franceschi dead at ROVINJ on 27 December 1728, and a Bortolo whose son Felice Antonio is baptised at ŠTERNA on 20 September 1778 — up in the Buje country, a hundred kilometres north. Southern Istria and the Bujština in one household file is either two families merged in the tree, or a family that moved twice.

Giambattista De Franceschi, born before 1765, has two children entered at ZOPPOLA in the province of Udine — one in 1779 and one on 19 January 1811, the latter cited to «Italia, Udine, Stato Civile (Archivio di Stato)». Zoppola is in Friuli. If that entry belongs in this cluster rather than being a Smart-Matched stranger, it points this family at Friuli and therefore at the Carnian direction, not the Cretan one. It is the single most testable thing in the whole node, and it is testable: the Zoppola civil registers are filmed.

Three ways, and all three are the twentieth century happening to Istria. Antonio Defranceschi, born 9 April 1894, died 11 February 1946 at Pula and buried in the k.u.k. Marinefriedhof — the Austro-Hungarian naval cemetery, which by 1946 was a Yugoslav city's memory of an empire. Grgo, born 1931 at Ližnjan, dead at Zagreb. And two born at Barban who went to France: Marie, 22 February 1924 – 16 February 2002 at Charleville in the Moselle, and Ivan, 29 August 1931 – 16 September 2016 at Cannes. That is the esodo, and France is a destination this archive's diaspora table did not have.

The Ližnjan page was written round a pin on a map and a note saying «Grga dies in Zagreb». Grga is real, and so is his family, and it is four times older and four times larger than this page assumed. Ližnjan should stop being counted as a fourth family and start being described as what the evidence shows: the last address of a southern-Istrian household that is in the Pula registers by 1667. Whether that household is Carnian, Cretan or neither is not yet settled — and the Zoppola entry is the thread to pull.

This page said the Friulian entry was «the single most testable thing in the whole node». It has been tested, and it is not evidence. It is a Smart Match. Four things kill it. Two living Lucias. The tree gives Giambattista a daughter Lucia born 1779 and dead 1813, and a second daughter Lucia born 19 January 1811 — the second born while the first was alive. No Italian family names a second living daughter after her sister. These are two different men. The alias names a local family. The 1813 citation reads «Giambattista De Franceschi o Samassa» — or Samassa, the Friulian plain's ordinary way of distinguishing branches. And Samassa is a Zoppola surname in its own right: Samassa Rachele and Samassa Giovanni are both in Zoppola's own civil registers. He is a Zoppola man of a Zoppola family. The surname is everywhere there. A full-text sweep of the Friulian plain returns De Franceschi at Azzano Decimo in 1897, Cordenons, Pordenone in 1888 and 1898, and Zoppola — the commonest patronymic in Italy, behaving commonly. And even at best it was the wrong Friuli. Zoppola is on the plain twenty-five kilometres west of Pordenone. Carnia is sixty kilometres north, in the mountains. A Zoppola link would not have been a Carnian link.

Where it was, and honestly. Thirty-one people, in the Pula and Fažana registers from 1667, with no origin. The one clue that pointed north was a graft, and removing it is worth more than keeping it would have been — the point of naming a testable thread is that it can fail. What remains testable is nearer home: the outlier deaths at Rovinj in 1728 and the baptism at Šterna in 1778, and Bertoša's study of Pula surnames from the confirmation lists of 1825, which is exactly the place and period this household is thickest.

This page has carried «Pula, 1667» as the oldest record of the southern-Istrian family: Anto De Franceschi with children entered in October 1667 and November 1669. The index gives their place only as «Croazia, Austria», and the Pula reading was this archive's own. Resolved properly — index entry to image ark, image ark to film, film to catalogue — those baptisms are on DGS 005497884, «Matična knjiga 1568–1917», the parish register of Svetvinčenat. Forty kilometres north, a different parish, and a town whose De Franceschi are called Carnian by everyone who has studied them. The 1667 date stands. The place does not. The whole finding →

Everything above this row came from citations in a tree or from baptism indexes. This row comes from the marriage register itself, which FamilySearch has never indexed and no one had opened: Matična knjiga vjenčanih 1762–1815, film 005497885. Twenty-two of its openings have now been read line by line, and they put six households of the name into the very years this page has always called a silence: - 9 February 1766 — «Elena figlia di q. Mattio de Franceschi, nativa di questo Castello» marries Mattio Sandalezza of Albona. Her father is dead, and is known from nothing else. - 23 November 1771 — a witness entered as «Jacobo q. Jacobi de Franceschi»: a Giacomo whose father Giacomo was already dead. - 10 June 1772 — that same man marries: «Giacobus filius Giacobi de Franceschi, et Nicolina filia Nicolai Teserati». The first wedding of the name in the book. - 25 January – 31 October 1773 — Antonio de Franceschi stands witness six times, usually beside Joannes Sain. - 4 February 1773 — «Victorio de Franceschi filio Antonij». A father and a son of the name, named together, in one line. It is the first such line this archive has for Svetvinčenat. - 30 March 1773 — «Maria relicta q.m Gasparis de Franceschi» remarries under a Lenten dispensation. A Gasparo is dead, and his widow is in a hurry. What it changes. The web is no longer nine households with a ninety-year hole in the middle; the hole has been entered, and it has people in it. What it does not change is the joining: not one of these six is merged with anyone already on the page. (doc for every entry above; every identification is open.)

doc. Medulin deaths, 30 September 1896, entry 43 — read at native resolution, the word magnified until it could not be anything else: > «Fusca Kirac filia Petri et Mariae Defrancesco. agr: cath.» — ten months old, a lung complaint, buried the next day by Bylica. The dead child is a Kirac. The Defranceschi is her mother — Maria Defrancesco, wife of Petrus Kirac, labourer. The spelling is «Defrancesco», with an -o, and it is the only time that form has been seen in this parish. ⭐⭐ What makes it worth more than one entry is that it completes a shape. Three bearers of the name have now been found in the whole of the Medulin deaths book, 1801–1899, and not one of them is a Medulin householder: - 1833 — Mathæus Defranceschi q. Ant. fil., miles — a soldier, dying where he was stationed - 1873 — Maria, Ant. Verinic uxor — a Defranceschi daughter, married into a Verinic household - 1896 — Maria Defrancesco, wife of Petrus Kirac — again a daughter, married into a Kirac household > At Medulin the name arrives as a bride or a soldier. It never holds a house. And that is exactly what the 1825 Pula confirmation lists already said from the other direction: «De Franceschi» stood at Premantura and Fažana, and not at Medulin, Ližnjan or Šišan. Two independent sources, seventy years apart, agreeing that this village is where the name marries — not where it lives. ⚠ No join is claimed. Neither Maria is given a father, an age or a birthplace in her child's or husband's entry, and nothing here attaches either woman to a known household. They are two more women of the name in southern Istria, and the register that would name their fathers is the Medulin marriage book — forty-one frames, not yet opened. --- ⭐⭐⭐ LATER THE SAME DAY, THE MARRIAGE BOOK ANSWERED IT. Medulin marriages, 30 July 1874, entry 3: > «Petrus Kirac Simonis fil. agr., Medulin house 143, aged 29 — Maria Defranceschi q. Tommasi, Medulin house 143, oriunda e Pomer, aged 22» That is the same couple. Twenty-two years later their daughter Fusca dies and the priest writes the mother's name as «Defrancesco»; here, at her wedding, it is written «Defranceschi». Same woman, two spellings, one parish. And it gives the two things the death entry could not. Her father was Tommaso, already dead in 1874 — «q.» for quondam. And she was not a Medulin woman at all: she was oriunda e Pomer, six kilometres round the bay, and had moved into her husband's house. ⭐⭐ So the pattern holds and gains a direction. The name still does not hold a house at Medulin — but we now know which way it came in from. Pomer. And Pomer is not new to this archive: it already held Pietro Defranceschi, born 1793, and Lucia Defranceschi — but every Pomer row was tree-only. Maria and her father Tommaso are the first people of the name at Pomer that this archive holds on a register entry it has read with its own eyes. ⚠ No descent is claimed from Pietro b. 1793 to Tommaso. A shared village and a shared surname are not a join, and nothing in this entry names a grandfather. The book that would settle it is Pomer's own register, and Pomer is a separate parish this archive has not opened. ⭐⭐ And the facing page gives her mother. The right-hand page of the same opening carries the parents of both parties, and the row reads: «Simon Kirac · Catharina Lazarić vid. · def. Tomas De-franceschi · Magdalena Davić». > Tomas Defranceschi × Magdalena Davić, of Pomer — and their daughter Maria, born about 1852. That is a whole household of the name, recovered from a single opening of a register nobody had read. And note the spelling: «De-franceschi» here, broken across the line; «Defranceschi» on the bride's own line four inches away; «Defrancesco» when her daughter dies in 1896. Three forms, one parish, one family, twenty-two years.

12 October 2026. «Tusca Defranceschi, 1870–1870» stood on the family tree and nothing else. Both her registers have now been read at the page. Baptisms, page 15, Annus 1870, first entry — «9ⁿᵃ Januarii 1870», house 3, «Fusca, nata hodie», of «Matthæus Defranceschi», agricola, and «Maria n. Primus». Deaths, page 54 — «mortua 6. Julii, sepult. 8 ejusdem», house 3, the same house, «Fusca filia Matthæi Defranceschi q. Matthæi et Mariæ n. Primus q. Paschalis», «6 mens.», of «debilitas». Born 9 January, dead 6 July — five months and twenty-seven days, and the two books agree with each other on house and on parents without being asked. ⚠ And she was never called Tusca. The register reads Fusca in both entries. A hand is only legible against itself, and the burial page hands over the comparison unasked: its own first entry, same page and same hand, reads «Catharina filia di Giovanni Garbin e di Fosca». Fosca is a name this parish uses. Tusca is not a name. Corrected — though her id and her URL keep the old spelling, because ids are frozen once minted and a moved id is a dead link. ⚠ The part that should sting: this archive was already holding both halves and had not joined them. Its own register.json carried «Fusca · b. 9 Jan 1870» and «Tusca · d. 6 Jul 1870» as two separate leads with identical parents, while the roster ignored both and copied the tree. The register did not tell us anything we could not have suspected from our own files — it told us we had not read them. Sixteen of the seventeen to go, and fifty indexed Ližnjan records of the name are now harvested and tied to their books by ark, so the rest are located rather than hunted.

Anastasia and Maria both stood on the tree with nothing but «1875–1875». They are entries 5 and 6 of 1875 in the burial register — and the scribe wrote them as one entry with a brace, the parents, the cause and the priest written once across both rows: > «mortua die 22 Febr., sepulta die 23 ejusdem, 1875» — house 61 — of «Gregorii Defranceschi» and «Mariæ Vojnić», agr. And both rows carry the same birth: «nat. 20/2 75», with an age of «dies 3» and a cause of «ordin.» against each. Born on the same day, dead on the same day, buried on the same day, and bracketed together by the hand that wrote them: they were twins. This archive had them as two unrelated children who happened to share a year. ⚠ The arithmetic is left as the register wrote it — born the 20th and dead the 22nd is two days, and the scribe put «dies 3» against each. He may have counted inclusively, or counted to the burial. It is recorded rather than quietly fixed to fit.

«Justina», carrying «1879–1952» from the tree, is page 56, entry 22 of 1879, house 61 — and her name in the book is «Magdalena Justina», born 3 October 1879, «hora circ. 3 pomer.», to «Gregorius Defranceschi» and «Maria Vojnić». She is the twins' sister, same house, same parents. ⭐ Beside her baptism, in Croatian and a later hand: > «Umrla u Ližnjanu dana 18. V. 1952 (mat. knj. umrlih str. 36 d. 2/52 Ližnjan.)» The bare «1952» is now 18 May 1952, and the margin cites the death register's own page and entry number. This is exactly what the Gologorica margins do — a baptism book standing in for a register nobody here can reach. ⭐ And a second thing the page gives away: a column of «Anagr. p. 305 III.7» references, one against every entry — page and family number in a Status Animarum. Ližnjan has an anagrafe, and its baptism register indexes it entry by entry. Neither the book nor the index was known here.

«Mattheus Defranceschi, 1891–1891» stood on the tree with no document. He is page 108, entry 7 of 1891, house 3: > «mort. 18 Febr., sepul. 19 ejusdem, 1891» — «Mathæus Defranceschi, Mathæi et Annæ Skoko» — «nat. 25/1 90». Born 25 January 1890, dead 18 February 1891 — and this archive already held him, as «Mathæus Defranceschi, 1890–1891», from the burial index, with the right year. Two rows, one child. Corrected; nothing deleted, because ids are frozen and the join is written on both. ⚠ And it is not one row. Comparing all thirteen remaining tree-only Ližnjan people against the register-sourced ones of the same name and neighbouring years turns up FOUR pairs that look like the same child entered twice — once from a document, once from the tree, a year or a spelling apart:

Page 99, entry 7 of 1888 — and the scribe wrote the name in the left margin as well as in the column: > «Josephus Defranceschi» · «Mort. — Martii, Sep. — ejusdem, 1888» · house 82 · Anagr. p. 305, III. 9 · «Josephus Defranceschi, Gregorii et Maria Vojnić» · «an. 1, mens. 11» · «nat. 15/4 86» Born 15 April 1886, dead in March 1888 at a year and eleven months — the age and the birth agree with each other, and the day/month/year form of «15/4 86» is the one this book uses throughout («nat. 2/5 851» against an age of «ann. 23, m. 8, d. 26»). ⚠ THE DEATH DAY IS BLANK IN THE REGISTER ITSELF. The scribe wrote «Mort. — Martii» and «Sep. — ejusdem» and never filled the days in. That is the book's gap, not a failure of reading, and no day is invented here. ⚠⚠ TWO ROWS, ONE CHILD — and this time the TREE was right and the INDEX was wrong. This archive held josephus-defranceschi-1887 from the index («b. Mar 1887») and josephus-defranceschi-1886 from the family tree («1886»). The register says 15 April 1886. The tree had it; the index did not. That is the exact reverse of the Mathæus duplicate settled the same week, where the index was right and the tree a year out — and it is a useful corrective to assuming an index outranks a tree. ⭐ And the anagrafe reference ties the household together ACROSS A MOVE. This entry cites Anagr. p. 305, III. 9; Magdalena Justina's baptism cites p. 305, III. 7 — same page, same family, different person number — though she was entered at house 61 in 1879 and he at house 82 in 1888. The house number moves; the anagrafe family does not. That makes the anagrafe the better key for this parish than the house number. The household of Gregorius Defranceschi and Maria Vojnić now stands at four children buried small: the twins Maria and Anastasia (20–22 February 1875), a Maria of 1878 still unread, Magdalena Justina (1879–1952, who lived), and this Josephus.

Nine carry an image ark — a reference to a photographed page, not to somebody's index card. As of 11 October each of those arks has been traced to the volume it is physically bound into, by listing every ark in every Ližnjan book and finding ours inside: Births (Rođeni) 1816–1883 (9R2Z-44D), Marriages (Vjenčani) 1815–1902 (9R2Z-44C) and Deaths (Umrli) 1815–1900 (9R2Z-4WG). These nine are as solid as this archive gets: Maria Schiffic b. 1817, Matteo b. 1835, Cattarina b. 1844, Mattio b. and d. 1850, Joannes b. 1875, Anastasia b. 1876, Maria b. 1882, and Maria Marcorich and Lucia Sandalj by marriage.

Twenty-one carry a persona ark — FamilySearch's index of a record, which is a transcription made by somebody else from a page this archive has never seen. An index is a finding aid, not a document. It is good evidence that a record exists and poor evidence of what the record says — every wrong parent, wrong year and wrong spelling this archive has corrected came through one.

Seventeen have no ark of any kind, and their source is myheritage — the live family tree. They may be perfectly right. Nothing has ever been checked against a register. That is a third of Ližnjan's people resting on a copy of a copy, and it is recorded here rather than left to look like documented fact.

This is the part worth acting on. The three Ližnjan volumes are now pinned, so their year ranges can be set against the seventeen: THIRTEEN have a birth year inside Births 1816–1883 — Mathaei 1821, Madalena 1827, Antonio 1848, Guiffina 1851, Mattheus 1858, Paschalis 1863, Fusca 1870, Ana 1873, Anastasia 1875, Maria 1875, Antonius-Mario 1876, Justina 1879, Maria 1883. EIGHT have a death year inside Deaths 1815–1900 — Madalena 1828, Fusca 1870, Paschalis 1873, Anastasia 1875, Maria 1875, Maria 1884, Josephus 1888, Mattheus 1891. ⭐ And the death register reaches two the birth register cannot: Josephus, born 1886, and Mattheus, born 1891, both fall after the birth book closes in 1883 — but both died inside the death book. Where a child is unreachable at one end of its life it may be reachable at the other. Only two of the seventeen cannot be reached at all: Catarina Kisdaris and Josephi — and both are bare parent-names carrying no date whatever, so there is nothing to look up.

No Ližnjan register page has been read for this. The volumes were identified, not opened. FamilySearch serves its images only to a signed-in account, and this archive does not enter credentials — David signs in and a session drives. The waypoint work above needed no login because the volume tree is public while the images are not. So what stands here is a reading list with every entry's book and year range established, not a set of findings. The distinction is the whole method.

⭐⭐ The pattern behind all of this week's Ližnjan work, now counted. Three separate times in two days, a Ližnjan person turned out to be sitting in this archive's own register.json as an indexed lead nobody ever took up, while the roster carried the tree's version of the same person — or nothing at all: 1. Fusca, 1870 — both halves of her life held as two leads, parents identical, never joined; the roster took the tree and the wrong spelling. 2. Mathæus, 1890–1891 — held from the burial index with the right year, and duplicated by the tree with the wrong one. 3. Fusca née Lazarić, d. 1888 — a wife of the name, held as lead XQM3-P992 and never in the roster in any form. So the files were counted. register.json holds 24 leads placed at Ližnjan. 15 of them are cited by no roster row at all. Three of those fifteen are people documented from the page this week — Fusca 1870 and the twins Maria and Anastasia of 1875 — whose roster rows now cite the register image rather than the index lead, so the lead still reads as unused. That is a bookkeeping artefact and is said so here rather than counted as a gap. The rest are genuinely untaken, and most are children of Defranceschi daughters who married out — Ruman, Perković, Jelčić, Našković — plus «Mattio Franceschi, 1799 – 20 Dec 1839» and «Giovanni Defranceschi, 1845 – 11 Nov 1846», who are of the name outright. ⚠ The lesson is not that the index is good. It is that this archive kept finding things it already had. The register settles what the index garbles — «Antonii Defranceschi Or Lazarić» is a flattened parent list that the page resolves instantly into «uxor Antonii Defranceschi nata Lazarić» — but the lead was the thing that should have sent somebody to the page years ago. The newest of the three was read on 12 October: page 101, entry 23 of 1888, house 75 — «Mort. 17 Augusti, Sep. 19 ejusdem, 1888 — Fusca uxor Antonii Defranceschi nata Lazarić». She is in the roster now, without a birth year, because the index's «1821» can only come from an age this session did not reach, and an index is not a document.

But the opening gave something it was not asked for. Page 69, second entry, Parentes: > Pater «Antonio Nascovich fu Giovanni» · Mater «Maddalena Defranceschi fu Matteo» A Defranceschi daughter married out, and a Matteo already dead by 1857. She is not the Maddalena this archive holds, who died in 1849. She is in the roster now. ⭐ And she had a household of seven. The harvested index carries seven Našković children to a «Maddalena Defranceschi» at Ližnjan — Euffemia 1852, Cattarina 1855, Cattarina 1856, Cattarina 1857, Antonius 1859, Joannes 1869, Josephus 1873 — three daughters given the same name, which usually means the first two died. None of the seven is in this roster and none has been read. Leads, not people. ⚠ Her father is not asserted. The entry says «fu Matteo». This archive's register.json holds lead XQM3-21M6 — «Mattio Francesch, b. 1799, d. 20 December 1839» — which fits, and which no roster row has ever taken up. A date that fits is not a match, so it is named as a candidate and left there. ⚠ WHAT WAS LOOKED FOR AND NOT FOUND — the exact terms, because a nil that names no terms is an assertion about a list nobody kept. The target was the Mattheus 1858 / Mathæus 1857 pair — the roster holds both, one from the tree and one from the index, and the register was to settle whether they are one child. The index record that put a Defranceschi birth on this frame is «Matteo Defraceschi · Maria Primus», 1857. Both pages of the opening were read down the Parentes columns, every entry — page 68 and page 69, about eighteen entries. No birth to a Defranceschi father and a Primus mother is on this opening. The fathers on page 68 are Fedel, Giuseppe, Bucovich, Millasevich, Costip…, Bolsun, Carmin; on page 69, Voinich, Nascovich, Clinich, Mocorich, Baldessi, Legovich, Sebetich, Millosevich. So the pair is NOT settled, and the 1857 Defranceschi birth is somewhere other than where the frame number put it — most likely the facing frames 31 or 33, which were not opened.

Page 68, entry 10 of 1875, house 71, Anagr. II. 2: > «Mortuus die 19 Sept., Sepult. 21 ejusdem, 1875» · «Joannes fil. Justinæ Defranceschi» · «dies 22» · «nat. 28/8 75» · «ordinaria» · D. G. Smak, parochus Born 28 August 1875, dead 19 September, buried the 21st, aged twenty-two days — and the arithmetic agrees with the register's own figure for once, which it did not for the twins. ⚠ THE ENTRY NAMES HIS MOTHER AND NO FATHER. Every other entry on the opening names both: «filia Antonii et Antoniæ Fedel», «filia Joannis et Luciæ Perković nata Josephi Klunić», «filia Antonii et Annæ Fedel». That contrast is what the register says, and nothing beyond it is asserted. This parish's death register carries no legitimacy column — the baptism register does — so the shape of the entry is the only evidence there is. ⚠ A SECOND JUSTINA. His mother is not Magdalena Justina, who was born in 1879, four years after this child died. Another Justina Defranceschi stood at Ližnjan in 1875 and this archive holds no record of her at all. He is the third child of the name buried at Ližnjan in 1875. The twins went together on 22 February; he followed in September. Three of the parish's Defranceschi children in one year. And he clears a flagged lead. The gate's new check-leads had him as one of six people the roster already held with an unlinked lead (XQM3-118S). Linked, and read. The count falls 6 → 5.

⚠⚠ READ THE CORRECTION FIRST. This section was written claiming the death register had been covered end to end. It had not: the crop read about the top 44% of every page. The full account is on /corrections/. The eleven people listed below are real and were read on the page; what is withdrawn is the claim of completeness. The book is being re-scanned. --- ⭐⭐⭐ THE WHOLE BOOK, FRAME BY FRAME — 72 frames, 1815 to 1900, every opening looked at. Not a transcription: the NOMEN DEFUNCTI column of both pages of every opening was rendered at native resolution and read for the surname, with every doubtful word magnified. That is a scout, not a walk, and the row says walked:false for that reason. ELEVEN people OF THE NAME are buried in this book. Four were already documented here this week; two are new; one is still unverified.

⭐⭐⭐ THE EARLIEST DEFRANCESCHI EVENT IN ANY LIŽNJAN BOOK — the marriage that starts the parish's line. Ližnjan «Liber Copulatorum», page 1, entry 2, the second marriage the book ever records: > «12 Novembre 1815» · house 17 · SPONSUS «Mario de Franceschi deto Marulin di Antonio», catolico, Ætas 21, celibes · SPONSA «Maddalena Percouich di Antonio», catolica, Ætas 27, celibes · TESTES «Giacomo Bubich di Iseppo», «Antonio Clunich di Stefano», «Gregorio Iucopila» Aged twenty-one in November 1815, so born about 1794. His father is Antonio. And this is the couple whose children fill house 17 in the baptism book — Antonio 1819, Mattia 1821, Gregorio 1822 — all to «Mattio Franceschi di Antonio» and «Mandalena Pecouichi». ⭐ HE CARRIES A BYNAME: «deto Marulin» — detto Marulin, «called Marulin». ⚠ And the byname was nearly read as a PLACE. The same book, sixteen years later, writes a groom as «Giacomo Micalouich figlio di Giorgio della Carniola di Madolin» — Carniola, and Madolin for Medulin, the next parish. Against that, «ma—rulin» looked like it might be «Madolin», which would have made it an origin rather than a nickname. It is not: at nine times magnification the letter has no ascender, and this scribe gives every d a tall one — «di Antonio», «de Franceschi», «deto» itself, all on the same line. It is an r. The hand decided it, not the plausibility. ⚠ NO PLACE OF ORIGIN IS GIVEN, and that is worth stating carefully. The book does record origins when it wants to — «della Carniola di Madolin» proves it — but that entry is from 1831, in a later and far more verbose format. The 1815 page is terse: four columns, no Conditio for the spouses, no parents named. So the silence here is weak evidence at best, and no conclusion is drawn from it. A nil names the terms tried: what was looked for was a «di» or «della» phrase in the Nomen cell, and there is none beyond the patronymic. ⭐ A second marriage, and a daughter going out. Page 15, entry 113: «23 Febbrajo 1848», house 41 — «Martino Mocovich» and «Maria figlia Matteo Defranceschi», with «Defranceschi» written again in the Genitori della sposa column. A daughter of a Matteo, marrying out in 1848.

Ližnjan «Liber Defunctorum», page 93: > «Addì 20 Xbre 1839» · house 17 · «Mattio Franceschi d.to Marulin, agr.» · «ann. 40» He married into house 17 in 1815 and died in it in 1839. Antonio was born there in 1819, Mattia in 1821, Gregorio in 1822. ⭐ The byname is on him twice. The marriage called him «Mario de Franceschi deto Marulin di Antonio»; the burial calls him «Mattio Franceschi d.to Marulin» — different book, different hand, twenty-four years apart. That closes the reading that nearly made «Marulin» into «Madolin», i.e. Medulin: a place does not follow a man to his grave as a «detto». ⚠ His age does not agree with itself. 1815 says 21; 1839 says 40. Born about 1794 or about 1799 — five years apart, both the parish's own figures, neither corrected here. ⚠ And this archive had the lead all along. register.json held XQM3-21M6 — «Mattio Francesch, b. 1799, d. 20 Dec 1839» — cited by no roster row. It was named as a candidate yesterday and left unproved. It is read now.

Ližnjan «Liber Copulatorum», page 22, entry 168: > «1 Junii 1861» · house 59 · «Antonius Defranceski q. Matthæi, agr.», Ætas 41, Viduus · «Fosca nata Lazarić q. Simeonis, V[idu]a q. Antonii Mohorić agr., nata e Medolino» Fusca née Lazarić was born at MEDULIN — Medolino is the Italian name for it, five kilometres down the cape. Her burial of 1888 gave «nat. 30/4 1821» and an age of 67; this gives the place to go with the date. ⭐ Both were widowed — he «Viduus», she «vidua q. Antonii Mohorić». Before 1861 she was a Mohorić, which is why she appears in no earlier Defranceschi entry. ⭐ And he is the 1815 groom's son. «Antonius Defranceski q. Matthæi», forty-one in June 1861, so born about 1820 — and the baptism book has an Antonio born 15 September 1819 at house 17 to the couple of the 1815 marriage. Age and patronymic both fit; no single entry says so, so it is recorded as a chain and not as proof. ⚠ And Medulin is now the open question. The lines diagram carries it as a household not yet placed: the only two people this roster puts at Medulin are tree-only — a Mattheus b. 1793 and an Antonio b. 1819, which are the Ližnjan founders' own dates. Ližnjan's books begin in 1815 and cannot say where the first Defranceschi came from. Medulin's marriages run 1666–1704 and have never been opened.