youtu.be/s3kzxuJm95w VERY EXCITED! Just uploaded my 23-minute mini-movie Via Freri – The Serafini Family Explore their 16th Century Roots on YouTube: youtu.be/s3kzxuJm95w SUMMARY: High in the Italian Alps is the Province of Trentino. My father was born here in 1919, before his family emigrated to the United States in 1923. With the help of Dott. (Doctor) Claudio Andreolli, the archivist for the Archdiocese of Trento, I had done some preliminary research on the Serafini family. But feeling the need to go deeper, in July 2014, I visited Trentino, hoping to discover more. In advance, I arranged to meet with Dott. Andreolli in the magnificent city of Trento. My dear friend Vanessa (who is from Rovigo, but lives not far from me here in England) came along with me to help translate. Dott. Andreolli was incredible. On my behalf, he had taken upon himself to research the Serafini family name as far back as he could. For this, he used the parish records of Santa Croce del Bleggio (a parish in the Giudicarie Valley). Through this, he discovered that my Serafini ancestors lived in the same tiny village of Duvredo al the way back to 1685. He scanned dozens of baptismal and marriage records and gave me copies, both in paper and in digital format. That was all very exciting to me, of course. But the crowning glory of the research was the final document he showed us – a baptismal document of my 8x great-grandfather Antonio Serafini from 1620, revealing the names of my x great-grandparents (Innocente Serafini and his wife Cattarina), who were most likely born around 1590. Wow. What was even more fascinating was the fact that these ancestors did not come from Duvredo, but from an entirely different part of the Giudicarie, in a village called Favrio, which is the original and most ancient ‘zone’ within the village of Ragoli. It was not until 1685 that their grandson, Marco Serafini, married a woman named Pasqua Painelli from Duvredo and left Favrio, effectively starting a new branch of the family in the Santa Croce parish. So now I became curious, and so many questions sprang to mind. I wanted to know about Favrio: Where is it? What kind of place was it in the 1500s? Why might my 7x great-grandfather Marco have left there? And finally, were there any Serafini families still there today? Later that week, I made a trip to Favrio, along with my newly-discovered second cousins Adelia Serafini and Luigina Serafini, as well as Luigina’s daughter Elena Zambotti, who (thankfully!) translated for me. (Side note: the way I discovered my new cousins is itself an interesting story, but I’ll leave that for another day). In this 23-minute video, I document our day in Favrio – called ‘Freri’ in local dialect – sharing the discoveries we made. You’ll learn a local legend about the plague of 1630, see breath-taking views of La Chiesa the San Faustino, Monte Irone and Monte San Martino, discover the ‘sorgente’ (or source) of the mountain spring that gives life to this ancient village, learn about the practice of ‘filò’ and visit fascinating mountain houses – with their tiny wooden doors and rounded stone archways – built in 1571. You’ll also hear me huffing and puffing, as this mountain village is just never stops going up, up, up! I’ve also used some beautiful traditional Trentini songs by the musical group Abies Alba as a soundtrack here and there throughout the video, to help set the mood. But most of all, I hope you’ll be able to feel what I felt when I walked the same streets and visited the same houses my ancestors would have seen (and possibly lived in) over 400 years ago. This video was just the beginning of my exploration, and there is so much more I want to research about Favrio after this. But even though I have already learned a great deal since this video was made, there is nothing like the moment of first discovery. This video will always be a record of those precious moments for me.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 18:42:30 +0000
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