Over the last few years we have had a fair number of enquiries and indeed some success in helping to find visitors’ ancestors… though we are by no means expert and we are not professional genealogists. But it has been the most tremendous fun. One time we actually managed to find relatives (of the visitors in question), who actually had the visitors’ names on the family tree, much to everyone’s joy and satisfaction – the Italian branch knew all about their having moved from Sacramento to Atlanta 20 years before, even if the Americans knew little of the other’s actual existence!.
The area of the Mediavalle, north of Lucca, has hundreds of little villages from which people have migrated across the world; Lucca itself every September 13th, invites delegations from Lucchesi comunities from as diverse places as Cape Town, Adelaide, San Francisco, Vancouver and Chicago as well as others, to take part in its annual Santa Croce Festival.
Many villages, even next door to one another, often have different areas of “specialisation”; for instance: Limano on the Lima, is largely ‘Canadian’(most especially Toronto)-oriented; Montefegatesi is ‘American’-oriented; Fornoli has a good share of ‘Australians’; whilst Barga tends to be more “Scottish”.
Obviously outside our relatively small area we are not able to help – and that would include the City of Lucca itself…it’s just too big a task. However if you have some basic information about your family who came from around this part, we’ll give it a go and see how far we can get.
Several points should be borne in mind:
- Names can get changed – fundamentally and/or only slightly, for lots of reasons (for instance in one village, a group of people from Lucca of varying families moved in in about 1825 and all got called ‘Lucchesi’ regardless of their original family name). Ellis Island has become famous for having changed things around, not least by mis-spelling…remember many of those who got on boats couldn’t speak a word of English and the officials on arrival were not of a mood to assist too much, so anything was written down – the most wellknown example is perhaps Sam Goldwyn, the film magnate, whose jewish father from Russia acquired the surname ‘Goldfish’ on disembarkation at New York; Sam changed it on going into partnership with Ed Selwyn, when he was about 26. So it is fairly crucial to get as near as one can to the original.
- The surnames of both ‘parents’ and as many other near relatives as
possible, are helpful – most villages have graveyards containing lots of
graves but few family names and as, often, people only know the name of
the principle location (eg Barga) finding a ‘specific’ can be difficult.
So if you know that your uncle, “Gaspare Serra”, married a “Luciana Pardini
from Fornaci di Barga” that can provide useful leads, insofar as Gaspare
may not actually have been a Bargesi but from, say, the village of Tiglio
7 kms away…so he would be unfindable in Barga, even though that was where
he always said he came from! We had an instance where guests said that
“Grandma was adamant she came from Coreglia” but after lengthy searching,
we only found one mention of her surname in some 2000 other names in 3
separate graveyards. If she really came from Coreglia that is just not
possible; the average family unit in these villages, around 1900, was something
nearer 10 – ie at least 8 children. OK a number would assuredly have died
prior to maturity but the remainder would have survived, married and had
their 8 children too. In that particular case, evidence now suggests that
her father assumed another name on reaching England; as indeed did a lot
of Italians given the onset of the first World War, when to have an Italian
surname for a child at school in London was not likely to help in having
a pleasant school-life! Sadly xenophobia is like that.
- Rough dates are good, of course – most particularly to identify which
particular “Salvatore Pellegrini” was yours, insofar as given names in
little Tuscan villages do tend to get repetitious as generations pass.
In one little cittadino there are at least 8 men who meet at the same bar
regularly, all are called Silvano even if they don’t all have the same
surname.
- To go back more than 100 to 150 years in most graveyards can be difficult; families tend to have catafalques in which the whole clan has been placed for eons, but with only the more recent names inscribed on the frontal tombstone itself and unless it is a family of ‘local note’ – which to be fair is rare for those who have emigrated (for obvious reasons) – the tree going back more than 4 generations can get very obscure
Anyway it’s fun finding out! And it’s often not too difficult, the graveyard,
the war memorial, the local phone book and village store/bar can prove
to be a fount of information even if the Garfagnino accent can occasionally
be hard to follow. With any reasonable luck, your ‘cousins of cousins of
cousins’ will almost assuredly still be here – leastways they have been
for about a dozen or so guests in the last 2 years.
