Our line, drawn
This is one family of the five — ours. Eight generations of a single descent, each as the couple it actually was. Every mother is named, with her own birthplace and — where her family keeps one — a link to her own archive. Every child is listed, not only the one who carried the line.
Eight generations, and the seven places that hold them
Out of Carnia, for work
Eight generations · Gologorica to Brisbane · 1750 to 2026
The channel is the movement of the line. Each stop is a place it actually stood in. The names beneath a stop are the people born there; the arrows coming down are the families that married in, each bringing a town of its own.
- Gologoricaby 1750where it starts
Caroiba · the house with 1711 over the door
- 1Giovanni Defranceschi1750 – 1829
- CorvaMaria Corva, of Muinaout of Muina, in Carniam. 14 Mar 1785married a man styled «of Gologorica» — the one act naming both ends of this channel
- Gračišće1787? · 1825 · 1863stood longest
Gallignana · house 5, then house 19 — ⚠ the 1787 is from the Status Animarum, not a Gračišće register entry
Three generations born at the one house-number town
- 2Giovanni Battista Defranceschib. 13 Aug 1787 – 1846⚠ His birth of 13 August 1787 is on the Gallignana Status Animarum of house 5, not in a baptism register. The Gračišće baptism book has now been swept and his baptism is not in it — the August 1787 entries are 30 July (Fernasar), one cancelled rescissa, and 23 August (Vojscovich). Across 1746–1808 the surname never appears as a father at Gračišće at all, and its six appearances there are all as godparents, five labelled of Gologorica. His descent is not in doubt; his birthplace is not established.
- 3Antonio Defranceschib. 20 Sep 1825 – 1894
- 4Josip Defranceschib. 22 Mar 1863 – 1951
- SalomonFrancisca Salomonout of Gračišćeb. 17 Mar 1797a family with a palace on the square, facing the bishop's
- FernasarMaria née Fernasarout of Gračišćeb. 17 Oct 1832written Fernasar in one hand and Tornasar in another; Tornasar now retired
- Crikvenicafrom 1863a move
over the mountain, onto the coast — out of Istria
- 6Ivan Defranceskib. 1925 – 1995
- KalanjAnna Kalanjout of Klenovica, in the Vinodolb. 3 Jan 1864the valley directly above Crikvenica — she did not move far
- Klenovica1890a stop
house 22 · «Gallignana u Istriji» written in the register
- 5Anton Rudolf Defranceskib. 20 Jan 1890 – 1943
- KovačinaUršula Kovačinaout of not knownb. about 1890her own birth record has not been found
- Pfullingen1941a rupture
taken to work in the Reich at sixteen
- Senjto 1995a stop
buried under IVAN DEFRANČESKI
- 7Ivan Defranceskid. 2026
- BlaževićHedviga Blaževićout of Senj1926 – 2001out of a line of Senj carriers reaching back past 1768
- Johannesburgfrom 1960sa move
the second leaving
- 8D. Defranceskiliving — named only
- LerenaC. A. Defranceskiout of Johannesburgliving — named onlyher family is kept in The Lerena Archive
- Brisbaneto 2026where it ends
What each joint will bear
- provedThe Eleven of Gračišćefrom gen 3Antonio's elder brother's eleven children — New York, Buenos Aires, Tuscany, Slovenia, Croatia. Same house, proved kin, a different branch.Read it →
- inferredGologorica ↔ Muina, in one act of 1785above gen 1The only document this archive holds with both places in a single sentence. At Svetvinčenat on 14 March 1785 «Antonio q. Leonardo de Franceschi DA GOLLOGORIZZA Diocesi di Pedena» marries «Maria figlia q. Giacomo Corva DA MUINA Diocesi d'Udine». Identified on inference with the household the Carnia page follows four generations deep — name, patronymic, a Corva wife of Muina, a son born at Muina in 1788. Film 005497886, frame 98.Read it →
- inferredGologorica before 1750above gen 1A candidate generation above Giovanni, read but not proved. This is the wall the line stops at.Read it →
- not joinedPaluzza, one valley east—Eight people of the name in the same Carnia, unworked. Same ground, no join shown.Read it →
Backwards — the ancestry
Every line that runs into this family, worked backwards from the keeper of the archive. Each box is a person a document names. A wall is a place where this archive knows a person existed and cannot name their parents — and the reasons differ, so each wall says which it is. Seventeen ancestors are named; there are eleven walls.
The 11 walls, and why each one is a wall
An ancestor chart for D. Defranceski, worked backwards. Every box is a person a document names. A WALL is a place where this archive knows a person existed and cannot name their parents — and the reasons differ. Living people are shown by initials and surname, with no dates. Where a line continues in one of the sibling archives the wall links straight into it.
Carried on the family's own descent chart. The Status Animarum entry for his son calls that son Joan. Bapt. Defranceschi, and the next generation is styled q. Joannis — son of the late Giovanni — so a Giovanni stands at the head of the line. The 1750–1829 dates come from the family chart, not yet from a register page. What is no longer in doubt is the place: the Klenovica register of 1890 records Gallignana as this family's zavičaj, its inherited commune, four generations downstream. There is now a candidate for him too, and he is not simply Giovanni: the Joannes Baptista Defranceschi who headed casa 31 at Gologorica, husband of Theresia née Grach, whose son of the same name was baptised on 13 August 1787. If that identification holds, the family chart's Giovanni is a Giovanni Battista, and behind him stands the Leonardus who gives the casa-31 branch its byname «detti Leonardi».
Status Animarum of the parish of Gallignana, house 5. Name, condition, birth, marriage and death in the ruled columns; wife and four sons beneath him. And a candidate for his baptism has now been read off the Gologorica film: a Joannes Baptista Defranceschi baptised at Gologorica, house 31, on 13 August 1787, son of Joannes Baptista and Theresia née Grach — the same name and the same day. It is an inference, not a proof, and it is set out with its objections on the Gologorica line.
Status Animarum, house 19, with the cross of death before his name. He is styled q. Joannis, which welds this household to house 5. His trade comes from the 1863 baptismal entry for his son, where he is entered as lapicida. His eldest son Antonius, born 6 August 1856, is the man at the head of the chart the American branch printed for its first reunion in 2012 — the same date, to the day. That family's eleven children went to New York, Buenos Aires, Tuscany, Slovenia and Croatia.
Baptised at Gallignana on 23 March 1863, born the day before, son of Antonius the stonecutter. He is the generation that leaves Istria for the Kvarner coast: his son is born in 1890 at Klenovica, in the Vinodol — not at Crikvenica, which this page said until 17 September 2026 and which the generation below it contradicts in its own evidence. The family identifies his wife as Anna Kalanj, and her own baptism survives — Ledenice register, entry 2 of 1864, daughter of Josephus Kalanj and Rosalia née Perković, at Klenovica house 22, in the Vinodol valley directly above Crikvenica. That is very probably the reason a Gračišće stonecutter's son ended up on that stretch of coast: he married into it. The 1951 death date is the family's. The Crikvenica death register of 1906 gives his trade: «vešti klesar sada tvorničar» — a skilled stonemason, now a factory worker. His father Antonius was a lapicida at Gračišće. The stone came down to the coast with him.
The marriage itself has still not been found. And the family's own genealogy file gives Josip a wife Ana Grubišić, 1863–1936, whose gravestone it photographs — a different birth date and a different maiden name from the Ana Kalanj the registers name in all four children's entries. The registers govern here; the stone is an open question worth a letter.
Entry 9 of the Klenovica baptisms for 1890: Anton Rudolf, legitimate, son of «Josip Defranceschi i žena Ana Kalanj rodjena», at house 22 — and in the column for the parents' place of origin, «Gallignana u Istriji». That is the zavičaj, the inherited Austrian commune of legal settlement, and it is the register itself stating that this coastal household's home commune was Gračišće. Fifty-seven years later he is on the Pfullingen list of foreigners, and a certificate of 1950 gives his birth as 20 January 1890 at Crikvenica — the same day, the same man, the coastal parish named by its market town rather than its village.
The mayor's certificate is dated seven years after the death year the family carries. Retrospective certificates of this kind were commonly obtained by a surviving son for a pension or restitution claim, but the point is open.
On the Pfullingen list as Iwan, born 24 June 1925 at Crikvenica — but the card, not the list, is right: 25 June 1925, ruled by David on 17 September 2026, and the Arolsen indexers preserved the disagreement, carrying him four times over as Iwan, JVAN, IWAN and JWAN, twice under each date. His own German sickness-fund card gives 25 June and puts him at Brunnenstraße 7, Pfullingen, entering work on 21 October 1941 as an unskilled hand. He was sixteen. He went home, married Hedviga Blažević, and is buried on his own coast under polished granite cut with a plain cross and the name in Croatian orthography: IVAN DEFRANČESKI, 1925–1995.
Died in 2026. The same name in three languages — Ivan in Croatian, Giovanni in Italian, John in English: one man, three registers. His birth date is not yet in this archive, which is the next thing it should hold about him.
Living — named only, by the archive's rule. Keeper of this archive. The line does not stop here. Generation 9 is Alessio David Defranceski and Mateo Cristian Defranceski, David's sons by Cristina Adele D'Arcy. They are named and nothing else about them is published.
Built from the direct line, which carries the working and the objections. Where a generation's evidence is an inference it says so here, in the same words.
The full bibliography, with what each source gave and where it is weak →
The brothers and sisters, and where their branches go
Eight generations carried the name down. Beside them stood 15 brothers and sisters who did not — and whose descendants are as much this family as the line that happens to reach the keeper of the archive. This is the line widened by one step. Every child the registers give, the one who carried it marked; and where a sibling founded a branch this archive has worked, the branch is linked.
It widens the line by one step — children, not grandchildren. To go further sideways the archive needs the siblings' own households, and it has them for exactly one: Antonio of 1856, whose eleven children are worked in full. For the other 14 the registers have not been followed past the baptism. That is the honest limit, and it is a to-do rather than a wall — every one of those names has a parish and a year.