Its been just a little over a month (although it feels like AGES) since I came home from my ancestral journey in Trentino. Im only just now realising just how MUCH information and materials I received from my cousins and from the archivist in Trento. Its almost unbelievable. Ive been working on cataloguing it almost every evening (and on weekends...all last night and today/tonight, for example) and Im only just beginning to scratch the surface of it all. Im finally almost done with all the parish records (births, marriages, etc., going back 400+ years). The photos are about one-third done, and the videos...well...those are going t take a LOT longer. I cannot believe how much Im learning. Sometimes a single birth record can tell you about 3 generations AND even about relatives you didnt even know you had. Tonight, I FINALLY worked my way up to the beginning of the 20th century (I started in 1590) and was translating (from Italian) my fathers birth/baptismal record from 1919. In the parish records, they often list the midwife (levatrice) who delivered the baby. Usually its not someone from the family, but an actual midwife (Ive gotten to recognise which families they tend to come from). But on my fathers birth record it said the midwife was P. Serafini. The only P Serafini (female) I know of who would have fit the right age is my grandfathers sister Palma, who is the grandmother of my cousins Luigia, Miriana and Adelia. Wouldnt that be wonderful if their grandmother was actually responsible for bringing my father safely into the world? It makes my affection for Palma even stronger, even though I never met her.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 20:54:15 +0000