As a
follow-up on my
conversation with Dr. Sergio Nelli last spring, I did some online searching
for sources on the Seghieri Bizzarri family. I found very little, but I did
uncover enough to tie together some information I learned several years ago
from sister-in-law Rosemary Spadoni.
Thankfully, Rosemary’s passion for family history took hold much earlier
than mine did, when there were still enough people around from the previous
generation to gather family stories. Rosemary had been told that Anita
Seghieri, the Italian grandmother I never had the privilege of meeting because
she died before I was born, served as a nanny for the children of some wealthy
relatives in Montecarlo, Italy. She served so well that the relatives took her
with them when the family moved to France because the father had some sort of
ambassadorial position.
This probably
would have taken place sometime between 1903 and 1908. During those five years,
Michele Spadoni lived in America as a single man, likely saving up money so
that he could return to Italy and take Anita as his bride. The other side of
the story goes that Anita moved to France with the wealthy family, learned to
speak French and lived in first class accommodations while she watched over the
children.
When I
learned about the noble Seghieri Bizzarris, Rosemary and I speculated that a
branch of this noble line may well have been the family that Anita worked for.
Now I have found an Italian
archive that shows we were most likely correct. The
archive says Giovan Francesco Sanminiatelli, a member of a noble family of Pisa,
married Luisa, the daughter of Prior Simone Seghieri Bizzarri, and they had
eight sons and two daughters. It goes on to say that one of the sons, Donato,
became a lawyer and then attorney general to the Court of Appeals of Florence.
Later, he became a member of the Parliament
of Tuscany, a minister of the Department of Interior, the prefect of Florence and a counselor
of the state. His highest positions were held during the 1840s and 1850s.
Anita
was not born until 1883, so this was not the family she served. However, Donato
had a son, Fabio, born in 1837, and the archive goes on to say that both Fabio
and his son, also named Donato, were both “officers for the ministry of foreign
affairs between 1860 and 1915.” It seems obvious, then, that both Fabio and
Donato would have had ties to Montecarlo, as descendants of Luisa Seghieri
Bizzarri. It is then quite possible they would have traveled to neighboring
France as foreign ambassadors. I can’t prove our theory without going to much
more trouble than I am willing to take, but this information adds much
plausibility to the family story. I am willing to accept it as highly likely.
This
also adds to my respect for my grandmother, the daughter of a musician, who
left a life of relative ease and prestige to marry my grandfather. Michele was
the youngest son in a farming family, and he would inherit nothing from his
father. Then the couple left everything that was familiar to start over in a
new country for the purpose of giving their children a better future. Anita
learned to shoot a gun to protect the family and became a chicken farmer to
provide extra income. Although she wished to return the family to Italy, she
stayed in America for the sake of her children. I wish I could tell her what a
large and respected extended family she and Michele founded. I wish I could
tell her, “Thank you for your sacrifices, Nonna. I appreciate my life here
every day.”
I have since discovered that Donato Sanminiatelli had a son, born in Firenze in 1896, who would then have been 13 years younger than Anita; thus she would have been the right age to have been his nanny. His name was Fabio Sanminatelli. One of his three children, Ranieri (1929-1997), immigrated to the United States, had three daughters and died in Fairfax, Virginia.
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