My Genealogy

Friday, November 30, 2012

Across the Globe and Back in Time to Unravel the Mystery of Pietro's Ancestry PART ONE

It's Wednesday night and I'm connected via Skype with my newly found cousin in Michigan USA, Teresa. We both have a copy of her family tree as reported by a Maltese genealogist and at the top she has the elusive Pietro Barbara and his mysterious wife Margarita.

So we're looking at the notary records as per geneanum and we find the entry related to the marriage of Domenico Barbara with Maria Farrugia that we found in the Malta Diocese archives in the last post of this blog. Domenico's details has the name of his parents:

Pietro Mro x 1622 fils de Domenico et Gioannella PACE.

So his father is Mro Pietro Barbara, who got married in 1622, and who is the son of Domenico BARBARA and Gioannella PACE. Thus we have gone one generation upwards from the reported family tree my cousin has. GREAT!

Then we look at his mother's details, and apart from confirming her name as Margarita, we also have her surname: AQUILINA. GREAT!

Onto the details of the bride: Epouse veuve de Mario Cilia. This confirms my earlier blog's  transcription of the entry in the parish records: Maria is a widow of the late Mario Cilia. But here we also get her parents' names: Mro Giuseppe FARRUGIA and Giovanna (Sorry no surname there!). Lots of Mro around... I wonder if that's a Maestro as in Musical Composer or some other social status at the time - anyone has any idea about this? Please share!

Knowing the year of marriage for Pietro (1622) we go further up in the notary records to find HIS marriage now. His father's name is confirmed: Mro Domenico BARBARA, whilst his mother's name gives us further information: Gioanella dite Nella. Meaning Gioanella known as Nella.

Looking at his bride, we learn something more beyond her surname: her parents' names: Mariano AQUILINA and Imperia FORMOSA who got married in 1578 in Siggiewi. GREAT!

However our journey came to an end, as there was no marriage listed for a Domenico BARBARA and a Gioanella PACE.

BUT.

That 'Gioanella dite Nella' was taunting me. I looked up the marriages of a Domenico BARBARA before the date of marriage of Pietro BARBARA. And the search bears the fruit of a marriage in Qrendi between a Mro Domenico BARBARA and an Antonella CAMILLERI.

Let me say that again.

between a Mro Domenico Barbara and an AntoNELLA Camilleri.

You see what I did there?

That's another NELLA!

So the mother could be not a GioaNELLA pace but an AntoNELLA Camilleri.  Of course the only way we can confirm that is if we have some record of either Pietro Barbara's marriage or his birth but he is from Qrendi and the records of Qrendi are not online at the Malta Diocese Archives...

On another line of thought... further up in the notary records, we find the marriage of a Natale Barbara, son of Mro Domenico Barbara and Antonella Camilleri in 1619. On the Malta Genealogy website this was listed as

2.1. Mro Natale (Pietro) Barbara, married 1619 Qormi to Margherita Ciantar, , with issue.

Thus Natale and Pietro were being deemed to be the same person, but we know that Pietro Barbara married in 1622 to a Margarita AQUILINA. So this is definitely not right, but this Natale chap is interesting...



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