Topics of Related Interest

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The above is the birth record of my great-great-great-grandmother Fortunata Cutillo. Fortunata's birth record  lists her birthday as June 7, 1827 which was an estimate because Nicoletta Possemato the woman who presented the baby to  the town office to be registered, stated the infant was found in front of the door of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Cautano.   Her parents were listed as “incerti”/uncertain. Fortunata was what is known as a "foundling".  The records of some foundlings indicate that the child was given to a lactating mother in town or placed with a family or in a foundling home to be raised but Fortunata’s birth record has no such details. While that is probably the end of my research into her branch of the family, the fact     that she was a foundling led me to learn a lot about child abandonment in Italy in the 13th - 19th centuries, a surprisingly common situation.

A foundling is not an orphan. An orphan is a child whose parents are known and both deceased. Family members almost always took in the child and raised it as one of their own. Foundlings were abandoned children. In Italy, the poverty was so extreme, families were large (birth control was non-existent), and it was common for mothers to abandon their infants because they knew that one more mouth to feed would put their other children in jeopardy. 

Other babies were abandoned because they were born out of wedlock, sometimes the result of a love affair with a man who promised marriage but then reneged. All too often the child was the result of rape or incest. Once in a while, a single mother raised her own illegitimate child and that was usually because the “unknown” father provided some financial support, most likely “hush money”.  However, the men that fathered these children bore no legal responsibility for their care.  Since the shame of an illegitimate child was unbearable for both  the mother and her family, some desperate mothers chose to "dispose" of the baby in the river or leave it in the woods. It was such a problem that in the 15th century the Catholic Church set up places where the child could be left in secrecy at a house or convent with a revolving compartment (la ruota) in the outer wall. The mother would open the door to the compartment, place the baby inside and rotate the compartment so that the door could be opened from the inside.  The infant would be accepted by a woman (la ruotaia) who tended the wheel without knowing the identity of the person who abandoned it. Sometimes the mother would place a colored rag, piece of ribbon, a broken coin, or other token in the basket with the infant when she left it in the wheel. The ruotaia made careful notes of every detail in a special book. On rare occasion the situation of the mother improved, or the out-of-wedlock couple married, and the mother went back to the founding home to reclaim her child. The mother would describe the token that she left with the baby and the foundling home could then confirm her identity. 

While this sounds like a charitable thing to do, it was a very complicated situation with political, economic and moral/ethical ramifications that were debated over the centuries. Unwed mothers were assigned as wet nurses to as many as five or six other  babies at a time as “punishment” for their “sin” of bearing an illegitimate child, but they were not allowed to nurse their own.    Living conditions in the foundling home were extremely unsanitary, there were not enough healthy, nursing mothers to feed the babies, and most died before their second birthday.

Small towns like Cautano did not have a foundling home and infants were left in the piazza or at someone’s door during the night.  The infants were given to lactating women in town who served as wet nurses. There was no formal adoption but sometimes this woman and her family raised the child as their own. The church sometimes paid a small stipend to the family for taking care of the child. Unfortunately, Fortunata’s birth act does not give any such details.

Though the circumstances that led to Fortunata’s abandonment and her subsequent upbringing are lost to time and secrecy, it is fortunate that she was found, raised by a good family, and lived to adulthood. 

Abandoned infants were a very sad but almost inevitable fact of life. Once you find one on your family tree, your eyes are opened to a history that changes your perspective on a lot of life and death matters.

Italians  had very precise traditions for naming their children. They weren't always followed to a "T" and like any "rule" there are exceptions but  knowing this will help you sort out who's who among all the similarly  named ancestors.

The most important thing in naming a child was to honor the baby's grandparents. The first son was named after his paternal grandfather, the second son was named after the maternal grandfather. The first daughter was named after the baby's paternal grandmother and the second daughter was named after the baby' s maternal grandparents. If a child died, the next child born of the same sex was given the same name to honor the grandparent the first baby was named for and the sibling that died. 

The only time a male child could be named after his father was if the father died before the child was born. And if the mother died and the father re-married, as they often did because they needed someone to care for the children, the first girl born to the second wife was given the name of the first wife. It can be confusing but it can also be helpful in sorting out which Antonio or Giuseppe belongs to whom!

Subsequent children could be named for aunts and uncles, the town's patron saint and of course, Mary and Joseph.

These articles go into greater depth.

1. https://www.italiangenealogy.com/articles/italian-culture-traditions/italian-naming-traditions-and-their-ramifications
2. https://www.italiangenealogy.com/articles/italian-culture-traditions/italian-naming-traditions-and-their-ramifications

Foundlings, such as my great-great-grandmother Fortunata, had a different naming tradition. Because the names of the parents were at least “officially” unknown, the child was named by the woman who found the infant or the town official who registered the birth.  In Cautano there seemed to be a trend to name an abandoned child Fortunata (girl) or Fortunato (boy) meaning “lucky”, marking the child as illegitimate.

Many of the surnames given to the foundling such as Esposito = exposed, Proietta = tossed out, or Salvati = saved also identified the child as illegitimate. Because everyone knew these surnames were given to illegitimate or abandoned children, the children were ostracized throughout their lives because of something they had nothing to do with. Eventually that naming practice was officially dropped but small towns being what they are, most people knew anyway. Cutillo was an uncommon surname in Cautano but very common in Torrecuso. This is another indication the child was born out of wedlock. Mothers rarely gave birth or left the baby in the town in which they lived. Cutillo could have been the surname of one of the birth parents but in her case, there is no way to know.

If you are searching for marriage or death records for the years 1865-1930 from the towns of Benevento province (not the city - that's different) I have bad news. They are lost. Of all the  frustrating situations I have encountered since beginning this journey  into the past, this is at the top of my list.  A real brick wall.   What's the story? 

When  vital records were created at the comune=town, the registrar had to  create two copies, one to keep at the town office and one to send to the  tribunal or state archives. I quickly learned that the marriage and  death records from the years 1865-1930 are nowhere to be found.  

 According to the website of the Archivio di Stato (State archives) of  Benevento, "Mancano del  tutto i registri delle pubblicazioni, dei matrimoni e delle  morti del  periodo 1861-1930 e, nonostante reiterati tentativi fatti  dall’Archivio  di Stato per appurare se e dove siano conservati,  il Tribunale di  Benevento non è stato finora in grado di fornire notizie  certe al  riguardo." in other words, "The registers of publications,  marriages and deaths from the period 1861-1930 are completely missing  and, despite repeated attempts made by the State Archives to ascertain  whether and where they are kept, the Court of Benevento has so far been  unable to provide information certain about it." http://www.archiviodistatobenevento.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/169/stato-civile

Maybe  someday someone will find boxes of record books in a closet or attic or  barn and we'll get to see them. For now, the best one can do is attempt  to contact the comune that should have the one remaining original copy (another post on that later) and  accept that like everything, this too has its limitations.

So what did your ancestor do for a living?   What was their "condition" or status? Here are lists of occupations you  might see on a document and their English equivalents: 

1. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~mmange/genealogy/itengocc.html
2. http://www.conigliofamily.com/SicilianAndItalianOccupations.htm
3. http://www.lodico.org/mike/html/occupations.html#A
4. If you have a subscription to Ancestry,com (and maybe even if you don't - try this link) https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Occupation-Terms-Italian-to-English-Part-1?language=en_US
5. https://www.oocities.org/irishkenj/italjobs.html

This  is a myth that apparently got started with "The Godfather" movies.  The  ship manifests were filled out at the point of embarkation. The  spellings were taken from the documents the passenger had to present,  and we are back to a shipmate trying to quickly read all that scratchy  handwriting.

Sometimes,  once in the new country, the immigrant chose to change their name to  assimilate. Names like Calogero, Baldassare, Crocifissa, and Addolorata  do not have English equivalents so Calogero may have become Carl or  Baldassare changed to Barney, Crocifissa became Gertrude and Addolorata  became Dora or Dorothy. Sometimes a name was changed to something it  sounded like. Innocenzo and Vincenzo were often shortened to "Chenz,"  which sounded like "chainz," which then morphed into James. These new  American names were sometimes chosen but more often assigned by a boss,  or in the case of my Uncle Gennaro, it was his teacher who had never  heard of the name, so she declared she would call him Charlie. Years  later, he had to get an affidavit to prove he was the same person as on  his birth certificate!

All  this is to say yes, names sometimes changed, and sometimes what they  changed to has no logical explanation, but they were NOT changed at  Ellis Island.

The Story Tellers

(attributed to Della Joann McGinnis Johnson)

We are the chosen. In each family, there is one who seems called to find the ancestors – to put flesh on their bones and make them    live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.  

To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but breathing life into all who have gone before. 

It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am and why I  do the things I do.  It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, and their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. That we might remember them. 

We are the storytellers of the tribe. Those who have gone before cry out to us: tell our story.  So we do, with love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence. And in finding them, we somehow find ourselves. 

It is up to that one called in the next generation to take their place in the long line of family storytellers.  And so I do.  I tell the story of my family.   

Honestly, I wish I could say this better, but I can't, so I re-print this with gratitude to the author.

I have created four family history books, with a  fifth in the works. Here is where you can see and order them: https://angelasgenealogysite.com/books

I do have several pages of tips and resources typed and printed out. If you would like, please email me and I will send things to you. 

Details coming soon.

Not written by me but excellent sources of information. Click the underlined title to take you to the book. More coming soon:

Although mainly focused on larger cities, this is a very thorough study of infant abandonment:

Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control by David I. Kertzer

What does Napoleon have to do with my research?  Stay tuned for all the scoop!

Because  they are your family, of course you'd go out on a limb for them!   Seriously though, most of the time we think of genealogy as building a  tree from self to father to grandfather to great-grandfather as far back as you can go. But there will inevitably be a snag or something that you can't verify, or as we say in  the business  "a brick wall".  Sometimes, there will be a birth year given in one place and an age stated in another document, and the math  doesn't add up. How do you get around, over, or through this thicket?  This is where it's necessary to go sideways on the tree and look for  children, siblings, aunts/uncles, and gather as much information as you  can that may corroborate, triangulate or at least narrow down the  possibilities. Plus you have the added bonus of seeing the complete  picture of the family. If your ancestors lived in a small town like mine  you will be fascinated to see all the interconnections with other  families in town. You will undoubtedly learn about more births,  marriages and deaths, occupations, trials and tribulations,  and get  more experience looking for documents, reading old handwriting, and  translating the language of your ancestors - all of which will enrich  your family's story in countless ways.  So go ahead, go out on a limb!  It's for family after all!