This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme is Harvest. A few years ago I came across the tithe records for my ancestors from San Leonardo Abbate in Arienzo, Caserta.
Tithe records, or decime in Italian, were collected once a year, during harvesting time in August, and were supposed to be one tenth of a parishioner’s annual production. I was excited to see anything to have to do with my ancestors besides the church’s usual birth, marriage, and death records.
In the parish decime I found surnames from my tree such as Barbarino, Porrino, Bernardo, Dragone, Delle Cave, Zingariello, Ferraro, Affenita, Bionillo, Carfora, Cioffi, etc. These tithe records start in 1710 and continue through 1742. Either the tithes weren’t recorded or they were lost for a few years between 1728 and 1742.
The largest measurement of the harvest yield they used was tomolo, then mezzo, and then quarto. In 1714 my 7th great grandfather Silvestro Ferraro had a good year and was the biggest decima contributor to the parish. The parish priest Giuseppe Lettiero, who transcribed the records, wrote that Silvestro gave:
un tomolo di grano buono;
un tomolo e mezzo d’orgio;
un tomolo e quarto di fave; and
un tomolo di grano d’india.
In 1717 my 8th great grandfather Marzio Porrino, who was likely in his eighties at this point, gave mezzo cinque di grano buono, and mezzo quarto di grano d’india. I had no idea he was still alive! That is very valuable. That same year my 7th great grandfather Domenico Zingariello contributed tre mezzo di grano buono and cinque mezzo di grano d’india. I was not sure he was still living in Arienzo or that he was even alive. His surname means Little Gypsy. In 1724 I still found Marzio Porrino donating tithes to the church. He was likely near 90 at that point! Or it could be a man with the same name!
It is not just the men listed in these records. Female heads of family like Elisabetta Porrino, Carmina Delle Cave and parishioners like Catarina Dragone, who provided significant decime, were also listed. I assume that the smaller-portioned harvests in my tree belonged to the Zingariello, Delle Cave, and Porrino families based on the amounts of their decime. However, one could guess the Zingariello harvests increased, because their decime rose through the years. The largest decime in my tree belonged to the Barbarino, Dragone, and Ferraro families.
If you would like to view the decime records I am discussing, they start here on Family Search. The first years are hard to decipher but get easier to read as you progress to the 1720s. If you would like to read more about the tomolo, and are willing to translate from Italian, you can go here. From that link, note that Arienzo is in Caserta and the measurement of the tomolo in meters is not listed there. Benevento and Avellino are close provinces geographically. If you average those together, maybe a tomolo is a little less than an American acre.
Do you have any questions, corrections, or comments? Please feel free to email me: cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.
Next week: An update on my hunt for the slaveholders of David Dedford’s family in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
Talanico, San Felice a Cancello, Caserta, Campania – When Vito Barbarino and Angela Nicolino are appearing in your pedigree twice as your forebears, you know two people in your Ferraro ancestry must’ve been related. It turns out that great great grandfather Immigrant #3 ~ Retired Army Captain and Merchant Angelo Ferraro‘s parents were related because Vito Barbarino and Angela Nicolino from Roccarainola are in his ancestry on both sides of his family. They were his great great grandparents twice through their daughter Giulia Barbarino – the ancestress of Angelo’s mother Angela Maria Delle Cave and Giovanna Barbarino – the ancestress of Angelo’s father Francesco Antonio Ferraro.
Giulia and Giovanna Barbarino were sisters, both daughters of Vito Barbarino and Angela Nicolino.
Baptism of Giulia Barbarino, 1696, San Pietro Apostolo, Talanico, San Felice a Cancello
This all makes the parents of Angelo Ferraro third cousins.
Vito Barbarino and Angela Nicolino began to appear in the Talanico, San Felice a Cancello’s San Pietro Apostolo’s church records around 1690, with the notation that they were from a parish of Roccarainola, which is about 5 miles from the ancestral town of Angelo’s parents, San Felice a Cancello.
What can be gleaned from the online church records from the Diocese of Acerra concerning the Barbarinos is that their son Giacomo Antonio was at one point contributing the largest amount of tomolo of grain in tithes to the parish of San Leonardo in San Felice a Cancello. Tomolo is an old Southern Italian measurement.
You can see the from pedigree of both parents of Angelo that, yep Barbarino and Nicolino are indeed in each one.
Giulia Barbarino married Lorenzo Delle Cave in 1721. Giovanna Barbarino married Leonardo De Lardo in 1716. Descendants of both sisters married approximately 100 years later and had Angelo Ferraro.
So. They were related. At least they weren’t 1st cousins HA!
After a long search I finally found where our Ferraro ancestors were from. Our Ferraros were from frazioni Piedarienzo, Talanico, and San Felice in San Felice a Cancello, Caserta, Campania. Carmine Ferraro’s ancestors lived there for hundreds of years (at least back to 1590) before Francesco Antonio Ferraro left in 1824 with wife Angela Maria Delle Cave. I was also right – Francesco Antonio Ferraro’s father WAS Filippo and Francesco Antonio did name his oldest son after his father. I had to search for the marriage of Francesco Antonio Ferraro and Angela Maria delle Cave for over a year to discover this information. It led me to the place where the Ferraros lived before Francesco Antonio joined the army of the Bourbon king of Naples, Ferdinand IV, and raised his family and my g g grandfather Angelo Ferraro in Santo Prisco, Caserta!
What a painful challenge Family Search’s San Felice a Cancello civil records gave me. Family Search has early 1800s through 1900 available. They were photographed in the 1980s and put on microfilm. They were missing years and lablled incorrectly by village. Researchers can’t avoid ordering the incorrect films because of that. Anyone researching towns in this area of Italy using the Family Search records probably want to pull their hair out! So a friend told me to get the Marcianise records where Francesco Antonio’s son Filippo was born to at least give me a clue about the Ferraro. I did. It gave me the important detail that Antonio Ferraro was not just Antonio. He was FRANCESCO ANTONIO. What a gigantic clue that was. By pure chance, after discovering that, I was able to locate his marriage record in his wife’s birth town of Sei Casali D’Arienzo, which was, again, labeled incorrectly at Family Search. Francesco Antonio Ferraro was also born there according to the record! (Sei Casali d’Arienzo is now known as San Felice a Cancello and Arienzo is a separate comune.)
Unfortunately, the attached marriage documents were supposed to be available on another film, also incorrectly labeled, and to my disgust, once that filmed arrived, that too was labeled incorrectly. Then I discovered that the 1824 marriage documents for San Felice a Cancello WERE NOT FILMED at all! More headaches. The Caserta archives told me they didn’t have them either. So any information that could be gleaned from them about Francesco Antonio’s military service in the Terzo Cacciatori is not available for us there.
Angelo Ferraro, 2 x ggfather, Captain in the Royal Army, son of Francesco Antonio Ferraro and Angela Maria delle Cave
As of the date of this post, Caserta records are not on the glorious Italian archival site Antenati San Beniculturali. I have not heard rumors they are close to being up there either. Something about a backseat to Napoli records…I am sure Caserta is next after Piemonte’s records…rolling eyes…
After previously mentioned roadblocks, and maybe because the San Felice a Cancello records were a labeled incorrectly, I discovered that Family Search filmed the Diocese of Acerra church records which included present-day San Felice a Cancello and made all of those church records available for viewing online at Family Search. How lucky!!!!!! .
There are six parishes in historic San Felice a Cancello, a.k.a. Sei Casali D’Arienzo (it’s historic name). If you know your Italian you know “six” was in the historic name. The town was originially 6 separate hamlets, all with their own parish, but not united until the last part of the 18th Century. One of these parish’s records go back to the 1500s in San Felice a Cancello and, the surnames in our tree, including Ferraro, are visible in the 1500s in that parish. The current tag photo at the top of the blog is the ruins of a castello in present-day San Felice a Cancello.
Present-day San Felice a Cancello, Caserta
The bulk of our Ferraro lived in Casale Talanico before Francesco Antonio and wife Angela Maria left and their parish was San Pietro Aspostolo. Before that it was Casale San Felice in the parish San Leonardo. Before that it was in Casale Piedarienzo and the parish Sant’Agnese. One of the hamlets of San Felice a Cancello is Cave. The delle Cave in the Ferraro tree either take their name from the hamlet or the hamlet is named after them. Delle Cave appears in the parish records in San Felice a Cancello in the 1500s. I wonder which is older – the surname or the hamlet? In the late 1600s the Barbarino and Nicolino surnames in our tree left nearby Rocca Rainola, Napoli and made their permanent residency in Casale San Felice. The ancestors of Angela Maria delle Cave named Olimpia Librera and Sandra Dragone, may have blood from Rocca Rainola, Napoli where some Dragone in San Felice a Cancello came from. Dragone – I love that name. Sandra Dragone’s mother was Artemia. I love that name too.
These are some of the surnames in the Ferraro Caserta branch: Dragone, Librera, de Lardo, Fruggiero/Fruggieri, Iaderosa, Barbarino, Nicolino, Bonnillo/Bionillo, Ventura, Gammella/Gammelli, Papa, Paciello (peace of heaven), D’Ambrosio, Bernardo/Benardo, Martenisi/D’Addico, Magliulo, Gerardo, Porrino, Piscitella, and now Cioffi. In newer records Iaderosa became just ‘de Rosa.’ In our tree it was always Iaderosa.
DON’T FORGET TO CLICK ON ANY INSERTED PHOTO OR GRAPH FOR LARGER VIEWING.
Ancestry of Francesco Antonio’s mother Giuseppa Fruggieri
What do I know about these branches of ancestors? From what can be gleaned from Francesco Antonio’s and Angela Maria’s marriage record, Filippo Ferraro, wife Giuseppa Fruggieri, Luca delle Cave, and wife Olimpia Librera’s occupations were farm workers. I read a blurb in a google book that in 1822 the Terzo Cacciatori were selected from the sons of the nobles in Campania. I don’t know if this applied to Francesco Antonio. The marriage record definitely said his father Filippo was a farm worker.
Because their marriage documents aren’t available for researchers at this time I went to the marriage documents of siblings of Francesco Antonio to get information on the Ferraros and Fruggieri. Filippo’s father was Salvatore and Olimpia’s father was Gennaro. Those names helped me trace back in all of their lines to the late 1500s and early 1600s. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the marriage documents for any of Angela Maria’s siblings and refuse to go through more of the ordeal of ordering the incorrectly labeled film to get them. Family Search is slowly making them available for viewing online at a Family History Center. We can wait.
Direct back to 10 ggmother in the line of Angela Maria delle Cave to Aurelia Ferriello
Another graph showing the ancestry of Angela Maria delle Cave’s mother Olimpia Librera
Anyway, I was able to trace back to 10 x ggparents in Angela Maria delle Cave’s mother’s lines, part of which is pictured above in the descendancy graph. Directly back in the Ferraro name I was able to trace back to a couple who are likely our 11 x ggparents named Santillo Ferraro and Pordenzia Cioffi living in Casale Pierdarienzo in the late 1500s.* They would have been born in the mid-1500s. My 10 ggfather was born in 1590. He appeared to be a twin. Santillo later appeared to remarry to a Cecilia.**
Baptismal records of Giovan Battista (10 ggfather) and Giuseppe Ferraro, May 18, 1590 from Sant’Agnese in Pierdarienzo
Filippo Ferraro’s (father of Francesco Antonio) Ancestry Part 1
Part II of Filippo Ferraro. The last name of Vincenzo Ferraro’s wife Angela isn’t readable
Or another descendancy graph below:
Direct back in the Ferraro surname to Piedarienzo
What else do I know about these branches besides baptism, marriage, confirmation, and some death dates? The parish of San Felice’s tithe records f0r 1698-1740 were included in these online church records. Silvestro Ferraro (7 ggfather) and the uncle of Andrea Ferraro’s wife (Giacomo Antonio Barbarino) were big contributors to the church. Sometimes Silvestro Ferraro gave the most to the church in a year and later it was his second son. Another big contributor was a Dragone. I have not been able to establish a relationship between our Dragone and him though.
Not much else is known but names, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and death dates. The records of Sant’Agnese are numerous and may also contain tithe records. Some Stato D’Anime have also been thrown in with these filmed church records! You have to leaf through every record to find them. Stato D’Anime are census records kept by local parish priests. I will continue to look for a few marriages to see if they name parents and also continue to double-check relationships at the 10th ggparent levels in the tree.
*Cioffi, according to Cognomi Italiani, means ruffian, silly, and thief in some Southern dialects.
**I am confident Santillo Ferraro and Pordenzia Cioffi are ancestors. At 11 ggparents that is the furthest I have researched in any tree. I want more proof they are the right people. A marriage record or death record would help and it takes time to leaf through all the records as the Family Search photographer wrote different numbers on the pages than were originally indexed by the priests who wrote them.
For more reading on San Felice a Cancello check out the Italian Wikipedia entry on the commune and follow San Felice a Cancello, Caserta news online. It seems a world away from the town I am used to researching – Farindola.
Cinziarosa's Descendants (c) 