When Sharon started researching her ancestral line in a small town in Abruzzo she was a little shocked at the apparent comportment of her ancestors.  She remarked ‘the women in my family certainly got around!’

After studying the records she found I saw a potentially different story.  It all began with Maria Proietta who gave birth to a baby boy and was not married in the eyes of the law. The midwife declared the birth and even though the mother is named on the birth record of her son he was given the surname Abbandonati.  Why?  Why would the town clerk give the child a different surname than the mother?  By law, the father couldn’t be named if they were not married in a civil ceremony and in these cases the child, who is recognized by one parent was usually given the surname of that parent.    In this case the child is given a different surname.  This was the law.  The mother was not present to ‘recognize’ him as her child so the clerk was required to invent a surname for the child. I assume Maria provided the name Antonio. Usually when a couple was living together the children were given the surname of the parent who made the declaration of birth.  In this case neither parent made the declaration.  I believe Maria’s name was entered so the town would know the disposition of this ‘abandoned’ baby and so no payments would be made for its care.

Antonio eventually had a child with Carminarosa (who was not an abandoned child) but they were not married and her daughter was given her surname when she presented the child for registration, in the normal way.  The couple did eventually marry civilly three years later but not until after the birth of her second child who was given the surname of her father since he was the one who declared the birth and in this case her mother was also named in this ‘natural union’.

Six years later their son was born.  This son married a 26 year old woman who had been abandoned at birth.   Her birth had been declared by the midwife who lived in the same street as the rest of this family.  Antonio may well have been aware of her true ‘family history’ and wasn’t really marrying an unknown entity.

It is possible in this small town that these couples were married in the church but did not register their marriages civilly.  This occurred more frequently in the towns under the former Papal (Vatican) States but it did happen in other areas also.  So Sharon should make an effort to check the parish records.

There may have even been reasons they could not marry civilly or religiously.  Divorce was not legal until 1962 so if a wife or husband had dementia, or war-induced paranoia and were committed to the local ‘manicomio’or if the man who made his girl pregnant never returned from the war.  Or perhaps the local ‘lord of the manor’ took his ‘rights’ or she was raped in the fields.

Since all the participants in this story were illiterate much of this bureaucratic naming may have gone unnoticed.  It would have come to light only when documents had to be completed.  Death records, birth or marriage records.

I think Sharon will be spending a lot of time in the on line records of this town, discovering who else lived in Borgo San Rocco and looking for other evidence of her family’s lifestyle.

We were happy to evaluate Sharon’s research and put it in context with the times.