Atti di Notaio

Records from Notaries

I have four very interesting records from the period after 1755. My friend, Michele Cartusciello, from the Museo di Cognome, in Padula, uncovered these records for me at the Archivio di Stato in Salerno.  I need to interpret and understand these documents, and it is not going to be an easy task, but it will be worth doing if I can get some genealogical data from the effort.  I will need your help.  And by the way, if these records indicate that I am the sole survivor of a large estate in Italy, I will share it with you:-)

Take a look at a portion of one of the documents.

Look carefully and you will see the name Martino Barbella.  Martino is not on my family tree yet.  I hope he will be in place on the tree once I've figured out exactly what this document says. 

I've been told this record is written in "church Latin".  The Wikepedia article about church Latin doesn't seem to add much to my ability to interpret what the document is saying.  

It is clear that the Notary who wrote this document, Gerardo Arenare, used several shorthand notations.  For example, here is the first line of the first document.

It is, of course, recognizable as an opening invocation to God.

Look closer at that third word.

 

This, I'm told, is the word Domini.  Apparently, that apostrophe "thing" is shorthand for the missing letters "omi.   

But then, what is this word, following "Domini"?

Is that an H or an St?  What missing letters are connoted by this "apostrophe"?

In his book, "Italian Genealogical Records", Trafford Cole states, "Until around 1865, the official language used by notaries was Latin, and they used abbreviations and codes to make documents as obscure as possible so that only notaries could read them".  As far as I'm concerned, they did a pretty good job.  We're going to have some fun trying to break these "codes" in this blog.

Here are the first few lines put together:

What I see here is:
Today (oggi) the 19th (diecinove) of the month of March (mese di Marzo) in the year 1755 in the village of Sassano............?????

Does anyone know what this is (third word in the bottom line)?

It appears in the main document several times.  I believe that first letter is an F and I'm wondering if, in 1755, Sassano was a Frazione of some larger area, perhaps Sala Consolina. Then "nella F'ra di Sassano" would translate to "in the village of Sassano", or something like that.

In any event, there is much more to come in future posts.  This document will reveal some type of transaction between two couples.  They are Arcangelo Caputo and his wife Isabella Fruglio and Martino Barbella and his wife Arcangela Borgia.  We will have fun breaking this document apart, and who knows what we will find?

So this is the start.  There is much more to come.  Stay tuned, and if you can help, please post comments below or email me directly at nonobar@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!





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