From an Italian birth record, what does this mean - from a marriage with an unmarried man who is....
This is the birth of my grandfather. So who was the father? Was his last name Bondi? Thank you.
Answers
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@RichBondi You're working from an incomplete translation/transliteration.
I suggest you obtain the original, in Italian, and post it in the Italy Research Group where members who are fluent in Italian will help you understand the record. If you need help obtaining the Italian version, members in the group can also point you in the right direction.
Best of luck with your research.
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Wow, quick response!
I have the original and paid to have it translated...
I just wondered if the colloquialism of 1892 in Italy, was a polite way for my grandfather to be able to be baptised without identifying the father.
Thank you.
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Trust me - asking your question by posting the original in the Italy Research Group is the way to go about it. Right now, you're asking someone to guess what the translator did/thought/meant instead working from the original.
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First off, this is a translation of a civil birth record. It has nothing to do with baptism. After 1865, civil birth records did not have baptism information. You would have to find the church record for that.
Under Italian law in this era, children took the surname of their father if the father was known. If not, they took the surname of the mother. If neither parent was known (an abandoned child / foundling), an invented surname was assigned to the child. The father is not named, so there's no way to know who he is unless he came forward later to legally recognize the child as his. If this happened it should have been annotated in the margin.
Almost certainly the original language is the record is dalla sua unione con uomo celibe non parente nè affine nei gradi che ostano al riconoscimento. A better translation is "from her relationship with an unmarried man not related by blood nor marriage within a degree to prohibit legal recognition (of the child)".
This phrase is commonly found on Italian birth records from that era. The simple answer is that the parents weren't legally married and under the law, a parent of an illegitimate child was allowed to remain anonymous if he or she chose, to prevent the shame of being named.
But there's a more complicated backstory that may or may not apply here. From 1866 until mid-1929, the Kingdom of Italy did not recognize religious marriage for legal purposes - only civil marriages counted. Obviously in a heavily Catholic country, the Church and the people weren't too thrilled with this and there was a good deal of civil disobedience - couples continued to get married in the church and many ignored the legal requirement for a civil marriage. And under the law, if you weren't legally married, any children born of the relationship were illegitimate, and illegitimate children couldn't inherit property. So most couples eventually gave in and had their civil marriage, after which their children were magically legimitized retroactively.
As I said, that may or may not be the case here - you would need to research church records. It may be that Angela Bondi and the father had a one time thing and disappeared from the scene. But it may be that Pietro had full blood siblings that were registered by his father and on which the mother was not named. More research is needed.
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