Researching genealogy is tricky, because it’s not as if all the records for everyone exist somewhere. That’s just not the case, especially when you’re researching lives from hundreds of years ago. And even if all the records exist for all my ancestors (which they don’t, but let’s assume) they aren’t all digitalized or indexed, so without traveling to the four corners of the world and combing through dusty basements of churches (which, let’s face it, would be amazing!) you have to make do with what you have.
Ancestry.com is a great resource for finding new information. Not only does it have records, it has the research done by others, and it combines that with the DNA connections, and helps users find potential ancestors. This is a tool I’ve used on occasion, but always with a grain of salt. I don’t like to make assumptions, and I want verification, so having actually documented connections from person to person is very critical.
This morning while scrolling through their ThruLines feature I came across some names I hadn’t seen before, so I started looking into them. Fortunately for me there was one connection to an existing Ancestry family tree that belonged to a researcher whose name I recognized, and who I know to have documented their findings. Unlike many people who don’t note the source of a person or event, this guy does, and it includes links to things like Antenati, an invaluable online resource for historical records from what’s now known as Italy.
The connection to this family tree was my 5x great-grandmother’s name, whose spouse I already had record of. I needed to dig further to see how the connection was made. This is one of those cases where a slight assumption has to be made.
What I did have already was my 4x great-grandmother, Maria Cantalupo (b. 1780, Castelluccia, Principato Citra which is modern-day Salerno region of southern Italy), and her father Andrea Cantalupo. This ThruLine hint told me that Maria’s mother and Andrea’s wife was Angela Lucia. So what’s the source? Her death record, which noted she died February 22, 1813 at the ripe old age of 80, and provided a wealth of other information as well. Many times death records from this period don’t provide numerous familial relationships, but this one did, and the information aligned perfectly with info I already had. This includes:
- Her deceased husband was Andrea Cantalupo*
- She had two sons and one daughter, named Nicola, Antonio, and Maria*
- One of the witnesses was Francesco Letizia, age 33, a bracciale, who lived on Strada Cono, and is noted as the son-in-law of the deceased*
- Her parents were Nicola Lucia and Vittoria Tancredi
In my records, my 5x great-grandfather Andrea Cantalupo died before 1811 and his daughter Maria was my 4x great-grandmother, so both of those are matches. Maria married Francesco Letizia, of the same age as this witness, who was a bracciale (a farm laborer), and they lived on Strada Cono. This all seems to be a realistic and valid connection.
Living to 80 in that time period, is quite an accomplishment, much beyond the average life span. Angela’s birth would’ve been in or about 1733, which means Angela’s parents, my 6x-great-grandparents Nicola Lucia and Vittoria Tancredi, would likely have been born around 1700, perhaps even earlier in the 1600s. Records beyond this point become rather rare to find.
There’s only one thing that gives me pause, and it could be significant. My records tell me that “my” Maria was born in 1779 or 1780. If Angela is her mother who died in 1813 at the age of 80, that would mean Angela was 46 or 47 when she gave birth to Maria. Not unheard of, certainly, but also, if she were having children at that age it would seem she likely had more than three. Could it all be a case of mirrored families? Not likely. While family names often repeat and cousins may have the same first and last names, and while many of the same families in the village intermarried, what would be the odds? It seems unlikely.
For now, I’m recording this a valid connection, and will continue looking for other sources – marriage records of Angela’s children or grandchildren, etc. – to further validate this new discovery.