Italian Family Tree

Gervasi Family Tree - Part 4 (Final)

This is probably the final post relating to researching and documenting the Gervasi Family Tree that I started about 1 month ago.

My objective since the last post was to find the 6 remaining direct ancestors of Pietro Gervasi (born 1915) that would enable the family to trace their ancestors back to the late 1700's.

The quickest way to do this was to find the marriage record of two couples (Damiano Trua and Anna Comito) and (Domenico Musuraca and Teresa Petrolo).

If I was able to find these marriage records, not only would they provide further evidence that the ancestors previously discovered were correctly recorded, but we would also obtain details of the names of the relevant parents and hence go back an extra generation.

Searching was a relatively simple task of starting from the year of birth of the relevant child then working backwards reviewing relevant marriage records.

So for example, Annarosa Trua was born on 1842. Her birth record indicated her father was 42 and her mother 36. In order to narrow the search I proceeded on the assumption that her mother was at least 18 when she was wed. Allowing for errors in ages "recorded" by the town's scribe, I came to the conclusion that the marriage took place sometime between 1819 and 1842.

The next step then involved working backwards from 1842 towards 1819. Eventually, I found the marriage record in 1823 which specified the names of the parents .

I followed the same approach to find the marriage record of Musuraca to Petrolo which occurred in 1831.

With these people found, the 5 generation fan chart was now complete (see image).

So in the space of a month, we have been able to discover the identity of 28 individuals belonging to the direct lineage of Pietro Gervasi that the family was not previously aware of.

Are there more family members that can be discovered?

In short yes. I have left the family with a project to look for the death records of the oldest generations. The death records for the village of "Riace" commence in 1809 so there is a good chance many of the records can be found.

Finding these death records will provide details of parents thereby enabling the tree to stretch back to the mid 1700's.

There is also an opportunity to try to find birth records of siblings of the ancestors, which will further expand the tree.

I'm quite pleased with the results that were achieved and so was the family that volunteered.

Records for the other side of the family have been difficult to find so there is not much I can do to assist at this time.

So I look like closing off the Gervasi family tree research and look forward to a new volunteer who needs assistance.

If you or someone else is interested, please reach out and we can discuss how I can assist.

John

Gervasi Family Tree - Part 3

In my last post I documented a few discoveries that were made in a short period of time. Besides persistence and focused research, as always I had a bit of luck with the right records being available.

My next objective was to try to find the direct lineage of Damiano Gervasi (1867) going back to the beginning of the 1800's, which is the limit of the Antenati Records.

Annarosa Trua's birth record (ie. Damiano's mother) was relatively easy to find. Since I had the name of her father, as well as Damiano's father's (ie. Cosimo) approximate birth year, I concentrated on searching birth records that would place Annarosa being between 18 years old to 4 to 5 years older than Cosimo.

So I concentrated on searching birth records between 1837 - 1849.

Trua was not a common name, which made the search easier to find the correct person. I found what I believe to be the correct match, showing she was born in 1842 (25 years of age when she had Damiano), the record indicated her father was Damiano (which was a necessary criteria) and she was of similar age to Cosimo. Finding her birth record also gave me details of her mother.

Next stage was to work on finding Cosimo's birth record. As I already knew he was born around 1842, this allowed me to narrow my search. I also knew (from experience) not to 100% rely on recorded ages of parents when a child is born. I therefore expanded my research ~+/- 10 years of the anticipated birth year.

The following possible matches were found:

Cosimo Gervasi born in 1830 to Giuseppe and Carmela Luca
Cosimo Gervasi born in 1835 to Giuseppe and Carmela Salerno
Cosimo Nicola Gervasi born in 1840 to Giuseppe and Carmela Salerno

I ruled out 1830 Cosimo as it would make him 37 when Damiano was born in 1867. Damiano's borth record said his father was ~25 when he was born so this 12 year discrepnacy appeared too much.

Then I had to decide which other Cosimo could be the father (1835 or 1840 Cosimo).

It seemed unusual that the parents would give the same name to 2 brothers, so I explored the possibility that 1835 Cosimo could have died before 1840, then the parents had a 2nd son whom they decided to again name Cosimo.

Sure enough my hunch proved correct, I found a death record for 1835 Cosimo. This meant Cosimo Nicola Gervasi (1840) was the very likely father to Damiano Gervasi (1867). As I now had Cosimo's birth record, I now also had an extra generation to add.

Filling in a few more details, the objective of finding the direct lineage of Pietro Gervasi (1915) back to the early 1800's was achieved as shown on the fan chart extract.