Was this person my great-grandmother?
Since this group like mysteries, maybe you can help me solve this one. I've been able to research my great-grandfather's line extensively, but not my great-grandmother's. The sticking points are her birthdate and mother's name. Quick facts about my GGM:
- Name: Filomena Bellizzi;
- Born in Frascineto, date uncertain;
- Father was Gennaro Bellizzi, who died before 1891-01-14;
- She arrived to NYC in 1891. This is noted on several census records. It's consistent with her passport, which had my GGF's name written on another part.
My GGP had eight kids, starting ~1891. For the certificates I've found, the ones from 1892, 1900 (Anny/Annetta/Anna), and 1903 had the informant as Maria Rosa Filomena. This will be important later. On the first two, it doesn't show her as having taken my GGF's surname.
She married my GGF, from San Basile, on 1919-12-17 in NYC. On the original marriage certificate, it lists her as widowed, her birthplace as Frascineto, her father (Gennaro Bellizzi) as dead, and her mother as 'Anna Di Fingaro' (also dead). After discussing this with another user, he said, based on the certificate's handwriting, the surname is 'Di Zingaro' and I agree. The church in NYC no longer have the marriage process records.
On the five censuses I've found, her age is 1-5 years older than my GGF, born on 1869-10-01. Her death certificate shows her birth date as 1868-05-15, with her parents being Gennaro Bellizzi and Anna Di Fingaro. When I sent a request for her birth certificate extract to the comune in Frascineto, they returned with a Filomena Bellizzi, born on 1862-10-17, to Gennaro Bellizzi (from San Basile) and Anna Filomena. Here's where the facts related to my direct line end and the fun begins.
I found no other Filomena Bellizzi born to Gennaro Bellizzi in the ten-year birth index (1866-1875): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-997V-1HGZ?i=1343&cc=2043557&cat=220844. Same in the yearly index until 1860. Those are:
- 1860 - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQG-ZS4B-5?i=2520&cat=220844
- 1861 - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQG-ZS8F-2?i=2825&cat=220844
- 1862 - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQT-JSGB-R?i=294&cat=220844
- 1863 - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQT-JS2F-Z?i=765&cat=220844
- 1864 - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQT-JSGC-7?i=1237&cat=220844
- 1865 - https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQT-JS5R-R?i=1718&cat=220844
Gennaro Bellizzi died on 1867-05-21 and Anna Filomena on 1903-04-29. I haven't found the birth record for a possible Maria Rosa Filomena. However, I have found many birth, marriage, and death records listed below. A quick graph of the genealogy of this line is:
- Gennaro Bellizzi & Anna Bellizzi
- Luca Bellizzi & Domenica Ferraro
- Gennaro Bellizzi (all from San Basile)
- Luca Bellizzi & Domenica Ferraro
- Pietro Filomena & Catarina Ferrari
- Francesco Filomena & Angela Grisolia
- Anna Filomena
- (and Carmela, Catarina, Domenico, Pasqualina, Pietro - all from Frascineto)
- Francesco Filomena & Angela Grisolia
- Gennaro Bellizzi & Anna Filomena
- Filomena Bellizzi
- (and Domenica - born in San Basile, Antonio, Caterina, Francesco, Maria Rosa, Pietro - all born in Frascineto)
Now, it gets more interesting. Filomena Bellizzi married Francesco Groppa on 1884-12-14 in Frascineto. I haven't found any records of their having children, nor of his death, nor of his immigration to the US. I have no records of my GGM's immigration to the US either, apart from knowing there's an A file (A1787810) which might not be hers. Thus, the questions are:
- Is my GGM the Filomena Bellizzi described in the previous block?
- Why would GGM's mother's surname be incorrect on her marriage certificate to my GGF and death certificate?
- Are there any other records I'm missing to remove any doubt that these are one and the same?
More useful links for Frascineto:
- 10 year birth index (1876-1885): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L97V-1HNR?i=1353&cc=2043557&cat=220844
- 10 year birth index (1886-1895): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-997V-14Q1?i=1934&cc=2043557&cat=220844
- 10 year death index (1876-1885): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-897J-BGTR?i=2178&cc=2043557&cat=220844
- 10 year death index (1886-1895): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L97J-BG4V?i=2352&wc=MC5P-1P8%3A349483701%2C349560202%2C349561401&cc=2043557
I'd appreciate any help anyone can provide. Some of the documents referenced are available on Antenati now. I can post a link to the files I've collected for ease of viewing if the above isn't enough.
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I'm confused that you say she has kids in NY as of 1891, but only marries in 1919? It would be good if you could send over the links to all her children's births as well as her marriage, death, and the family's census records in the USA.
It's definitely troubling that this Filomena Bellizzi 1862 marries in 1884. This is not necessarily a problem, but you should try to prove that this husband died. You should also confirm that no death record exists for this Filomena Belizzi in Frascineto from 1884-1910. It's interesting that the marriage of your great-grandparents in the USA says the bride was a widow, that does lend credence to this being the correct person.
That said, I too do not like that mother's name is different and the birthdate is so far off.
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Thanks for your response. Yes, that's how it happened. The marriage wasn't registered either.
The US birth certificates and some census records are not available publicly. However, I can share my private images plus what's available online. Here's the link:
https://mega.nz/folder/EfpB0YyT#EeV69mizb1OgzET2CuAwAA
I agree that record of Francesco Groppa's death would need to be found. Also, that would seal it for me if I found that Maria Rosa Filomena, the informant on three of her children's birth certificates, were her aunt or cousin. That is a good suggestion for checking on a death record for Filomena Bellizzi in Frascineto. I don't remember if I did that beyond 1891, but I'll rerun the search.
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It's very important to try your best to disprove any theory, and this means searching all possible records that might contain something contradictory. If only the online civil records extended beyond 1910, that would be even better!
What bothers me is that Italian passport! This would have been issued by the local questura office (Castrovillari in your case), but they absolutely would have used the civil records to confirm the person's identity. So, if the age says 23, it really should be 23! Her profession, "fornaciara", is interesting, basically someone who works with/operates a furnace to make ceramics.
Additionally, if she was born in 1862, she would have died at age 94, which is by no means impossible, but should still be considered exceptional, another factor for you to consider in weighing the alternative conclusions.
That said, you obviously searched Frascineto, San Basile, etc, very thoroughly, and if no couple named Gennaro Bellizzi x Anna Di Zingaro exists, then there's really very little more you can do!
In terms of other sources, the "stato di famgilia" or "foglio di famiglia" is a type of residency record, lists everyone living in a home, with birthdates, and sometimes death dates or emigrations. These would be conserved by the comune anagrafe office, and are not open to the public, so any study would be by the pure goodwill of the comune staff. It'd be rare for these to survive before 1900 though. I'd want to see what these might have to say about the 1884 couple and where they ended up. No other source really comes to mind here. What you have in NY is a church marriage certificate, so I wonder if the actual church record itself would give more information, but I doubt it.
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I agree with you. Sometimes, we have to ask ourselves how true something is vs. how true we want it to be. This being correct would make extending my line possible, but would be meaningless if it weren't real.
The passport is a pickle. If you look at her age, it looks like 27 or maybe 29 was there originally before it was 'corrected'. Also, I assume her mother's not being listed is due to her being alive, because the mother appears on my GGF's passport.
My grandfather, her son, lived to 98, so her dying at 94 wouldn't be outlandish although rare. The new marriage certificate from the church in NYC doesn't have their parents' names nor birthplaces on it. The Archdiocese's archivist confirmed the process records aren't retained that long, too.
The second search I sent to the comune was for 1864-1869, IIRC, and they returned the record from 1862. I asked the comune in San Basile for the 'stato di famiglia' some time ago and they didn't have it. That's a good idea to see if it exists in Frascineto. Not sure what else I can do here except research Anna Filomena's brothers to see if they had any children named Maria Rosa.
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There's some rights/permissions issue with the 1866-1910 Italian civil records on here. Films we were viewing and discussing yesterday are unavailable temporarily. FamilySearch are aware of the issue and working to get it sorted. Edit: it's fixed.
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Yeah, I agree the 2 on the age on the passport looks quite different than 2 just below it for the height. It indeed looks like it's been altered by someone else.
For the mother being missing, I wouldn't read anything specific into that. Many Italian documents will just say "XX XX di X" or "fu X", giving only the father.
It's absolutely essential to try to find out what happened to the 1884 couple, so requesting a stato di famiglia from Frascineto or even a death record search is definitely a good idea. However, the stato di famiglia records from this long ago are unlikely to still be conserved, and they're also unlikely to agree to search deaths over an indeterminate period for you. Sometimes, it's actually easier to gain access to the church (useful for pre-1809 research of course) and then take some of that time to study modern records too.
I really don't know what to make of all this! Between getting married way after the births of her children, not to mention the family name changing in the USA, it's almost as though they didn't want to be identifiable! The mother's maiden name could be completely invented, or it could also be true. Most people know the names, origins, etc of their 4 grandparents, so any of Domenico + Filomena's children would likely have known the full story, but I imagine they would all have passed away by now. By the time you get to great-grandparents, people don't usually know anything except by genealogy research of their own, so I doubt your parents or aunts/uncles/cousins would know anything, though I'd still recommend talking about it with them.
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Not only different but also the original being crossed out completely. The two that was deleted looks like the two from the line below as well. See:
I rolled through the death indices in Frascineto for 1884-1910 again and manually for the years which didn't have them. No matching Filomena Bellizzi nor Francesco Groppa were found. Like you said, that wouldn't rule out their having died post-1910 in Frascineto.
That was one of my questions as well. How would a child not know the surname of her mother? Zingaro appears few times in Portale (https://www.postercosenza.beniculturali.it/) although it's more prevalent outside Cosenza. The user with whom I discussed this with here said it could have been an error during transcription, which is not unusual, but, even so, it seems this would have made it to her death certificate via oral history at some point.
It might have taken them a long time to procure the documents required for a church marriage if they left Italy with nothing. They were illiterate, so I'd imagine that wouldn't have been easy. It wasn't uncommon for couple who married in Italy to remarry in the US, but I found no notification records of the former case in their respective ancestral comunes.
My last uncle from that part of the family is alive at 87 and he remembers quite a lot having been 22 when she died. He told me her brothers moved to Argentina to become farmers. There are a few Bellizzi entries, with names of men who could have been her brothers, in CEMLA, but I haven't explored this further having been unable to confirm her lineage.
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FamilySearch has some post-1910 Frascineto records in the images section. For whatever reason they don't show up in the catalog. Many are allegati but there are bona fide record books also. You just have to dig into them a bit.
https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/search-results?place=7061664&page=1
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That's amazing. How did you find that? The interface and image viewer is way faster than the old one.
There were some marriage and death records for my distant relations in San Basile. I didn't find the death record for my GGF's mother, which is calculated to be 1890-1919, nor a marriage/death certificate for the foundling she adopted. Going through the Frascineto indices now.
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@Cousin Vinny Wow! I had no idea the FS catalog was actually incomplete. This is a new tool to use for us all to use!
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I searched the indices until 1935 without finding the death certificates of Filomena Bellizzi nor Francesco Groppa in Frascineto. Same for marriage records of Domenico Filomena and Pietro Filomena starting at 1860 until the ten-year indices. I've yet to find a birth certificate for Maria Rosa Filomena, of any parentage. Didn't find any more children of Francesco Filomena and Angela Grisolia either.
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It's a constant source of frustration for me. I don't know why you have to search on several different levels in FS to find everything (catalog, images, records, genealogies) to touch everything they have available.
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@joseph99929 I had a lengthy conversation with the Civil Registry in Frascineto. There's no stato di famiglia for Francesco Groppa with that Filomena Bellizzi nor do they have records of another Filomena Bellizzi born to Gennaro Bellizzi. On their respective birth certificates, there are no notes in the margins about deaths either. I checked the WWI soldier database and didn't find him:
Also, I checked the records in Argentina of the Pietro Bellizzi who could be her brother. The surnames of the godparents on these records are common in San Basile (Frega, Francomano, Vaccaro, Quartarolo, etc). Those are here:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9396-XRS8-BG?i=62&cc=1974184
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9396-XT9P-J9?i=904&cc=1974184
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9396-XT9Q-3W?i=31&cc=1974184
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939D-VB9C-BC?i=36
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939D-VB99-PK?i=316
I'm not sure what to do at this point. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence but nothing conclusive. Maybe some new users to this group will have some ideas.
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I contacted USCIS and the A file for Filomena Bellizzi isn't my GGM. If any new users to the group have any feedback on this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
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I think I found the smoking gun for tying the Pedro Bellizzi in Argentina to the possible great great uncle, Pietro Bellizzi, referenced in a previous post. Another user added a child to this union:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GHBJ-3QV
whose birth record is:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G97V-14DB?i=592&cc=2043557&cat=220844
The parents' marriage records appears on the 10-year index:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-897V-1H5H?i=117&cc=2043557&cat=220844
however, the book is damaged, so I can't verify if he's the son of Gennaro Bellizzi and Anna Filomena. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to say for sure their daughter, Filomena Bellizzi, is my GGM, which was the original point of this thread.
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I dropped the wrong link to the birth certificate in the last post. Here is the correct one:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L97V-1463?i=803&cc=2043557&cat=220844
Surely, the allegati of the marriage referenced above is in the collection, but it's 4500+ unorganised images. I'll wait until they get indexed. Haven't found the birth record of Nicoletta (Nicolasa) Sicilia, based on her age, in the Frascineto files either.
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@SantaNinfa I'd be interested in your take on this if you have some time.
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@DangKwei Hi! Just leaving you a note here to let you know I've seen this. I'm happy to take a look, but it will definitely take some time. I will let you know if I find anything useful.
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