Sunday, March 16, 2014

Unproductive morning capped by some interesting new discoveries



Friday, March 14, part 2
At the parish archives this evening, I continued my long-term project to record the name of every Spadoni baptized in Ponte Buggianese up to about 1920. It is a boring and somewhat mind-numbing project, and I probably won’t finish it for a couple of years. However, during a coffee break, I told Andrea the story of my run-around earlier in the day, and how in the end I had been told to call the “ragazzo che sa tutto.” Did Andrea really know how to find the state of the family document I was seeking? Instead of answering directly, he said that the baptism records for Egisto Seghieri’s family would probably be in the ledger for Chiesina Uzzanese. He pulled out the books and almost immediately found the baptism of Egidio Seghieri, and seconds later he had found a brother of Egidio that I had not known about previously.

This is much more interesting than the Spadonis of Ponte Buggianese during the 1600s, I said, and I put the other book aside to focus on the new one. I recorded the baptism dates of three previously unknown siblings of Egidio: Ulisse, Adolfina and Alduina. Of equal interest, I noted the records of some Spadoni children as well. These must be the descendants of one of my great grandfather Pietro’s brothers. Two years ago, I had found records of two of Pietro’s brothers, Francesco and Angelo, when the family still lived in Pescia. The books in Pescia said Francesco and Angelo moved to Montecarlo in the late 1800s, but I lost the trail because Montecarlo had nothing on their families. Now I knew that Angelo had actually moved to Chiesina Uzzanese, because he was named as the grandfather of some of the children baptized. Before the archives closed for the day, I found that a son of Angelo’s, Pietro, had fathered at least three children: Anita (1901), Bruno (1905) and Quarta (1908). If I continue to look in the weeks to come, I’m sure I will find more, and I may find other Spadonis living here that I can definitely attach to our family tree, relatives that will not be as distant as the ones from Ponte Buggianese. After finding nothing in the morning, I am now re-energized and excited to return to my research next Wednesday.

1 comment:

  1. I can relate on being reenergized when finding a new discovery.

    CL

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