Arrival of the Two Acts!

Surprises Ahoy!

Monday I received the SMS notification that the acts were dispatched, and today, Thursday, they arrived:
two full extracts of two birth records, for a grand total sum of EUR18.64.

These are the records of Emmanuele Giuseppe Grazio VELLA and Maria Gaetana Marianna BUSUTTIL, being the paternal grandparents of my mother-in-law.

The first surprise was that the paternal grandfather of Emmanuele VELLA was a Michele, and not a Lorenzo as per my records. I have as yet to pinpoint the exact source of my error but I do believe it to be an error from my wife's 3rd cousin who had been researching the Maltese Govt database.  This means that I do not know name of the paternal grandmother.

The second surprise was that Emmanuele's father Antonio was 70 years old at the time of his birth! SEVENTY! Still going strong! And his wife Francesca, was 38 years younger than he. A big possibility that she was his second wife, and she was born in Zejtun to Felice Cardona.

A third surprise, but to a lesser degree, was that his wife was not born Marianna, but Maria Gaetana Marianna, with her given name being Maria, not Marianna. This name, by which it was known by her granddaughter, may have been more used within the house - but not officially. Her two grandfathers were Giovanni Busuttil and Giuseppe Frendo, both from Gudja.

This leaves us with SIX remaining ladies to be found from my wife's tree - just like my Decade Challenge.
Two of them are GGGrandmothers of her father, the other four GGGrandmothers of her mother.

A Second Attempt

In A Second Objective I attempted to find my wife's missing elements to complete my kids' family tree up to 7 generations, and I failed miserably when I tried to find the below marriages through the Malta Public Registry online form.

The marriage of Andrea Fenech to Maria Galea
The marriage of Antonii Vella to Francesca Cardona
The marriage of Antonii Busuttil to Feliciana Frendo
Having completed my own six-generation family tree, the interest is back to a second attempt.

This time I will attempt a different strategy: I will seek the full birth-certificate of the children of the above couples (see orange boxes below), namely

Maria Anna Busuttil,
- born 4 Aug 1892 in Gudja Malta
- daughter of Antonii Busuttil and Feliciana Frendo

her husband, Emmanoel Joseph Gratio Vella,
- born, 17 Oct 1885 in Zabbar Malta
- son of Antonii Vella and Francesca Cardona

The full birth-certificate will give not only the parents of the child (so possibly correcting any spelling mistakes in the names) but also his/her grandfather's name.

This should help retreive THREE (yellow boxes below) of the EIGHT missing 6th generation ancestors of my wife.

A friend in need is a friend indeed - even if he's your cousin's friend!

Mission accomplished! Delayed by six months... and through a helping hand from my cousin's friend Kevin - who I salute and thank wholeheartedly.

In Decade Milestone, I described how on the decade of my research I set myself the challenge to find the six missing great-great-great-grandmas to complete all six generations. I had found four, with only two remaining:

Mrs Micallef,

wife of Saverio Micallef and mother of Carmelo Micallef who was born abt 1854 in Rabat, Malta

Mrs Galea
wife of Fedele Galea and mother of Teresa Galea born abt 1862 in Rabat, Malta

Kevin helped me by looking up the birth records of Carmelo Micallef and Teresa Galea at the Mdina Parish Records, and surely enough, their mothers' names were listed there.

Mrs Micallef was born Theresa Camilleri whilst Mrs Galea was born Grazia Camilleri.

Now in Planning the Search for the Five , I had remarked:

INTERESTING POINT: Targets 4 and 5 would most probably have met each other, at least at their children's wedding. Questions come to mind: were they acquaintances before? were they always trying to keep up with each other? did they seek each other's company, or avoid it best they could? Sadly, no records would be able to cement these for us in their future...


Coincidentally, Targets 4 and 5 were both Camilleris. Were they even related? Cousins perhaps!

Only further research will unravel the mystery!

For now, I will cherish the complete six-generation tree, reproduced below: