Many genealogists talk about brick walls - and the goal of busting them down. It's a common theme in genealogy. The phrase "brick wall" means different things to different people. Typically, a brick wall refers to a stubborn genealogical research question that is seemingly unknowable.
Busting through a brick wall occurs when after years or decades of research you come upon the answer. Some people would actually say that a true brick wall occurs when you've run out of available sources, and you conclude that the information you are searching for is truly unknowable - in this sense a brick wall is more like a dead end.
In my research I have tackled several challenging genealogical questions that seemed impossible at first. Some I've answered, others I am still working on, and still others are set aside for the future.
Of course, it is kind of fun to think of these research “problems” as brick walls and envision myself busting through them with great panache. Wahoo! But truthfully, when I answer a particularly difficult genealogical question, I think of it less like breaking a wall and more as the discovery of another brick helping me to lay the foundation of my global family home. Our collective brick house if you like.
I added a brick to the house a few weeks ago when I confirmed the location of my great grandfather Giovanni Balzarini's hometown in Italy. It was an exciting discovery that unfolded steadily one night while I was sitting on my couch paging through hundreds of online but unindexed Italian records on FamilySearch (and yes, that is my idea of a perfect Saturday night!).
Not that this discovery was quick or easy by any means. It took many, many hours of work over a period of about 15 years, and involved conversations with family, record searches, analysis of DNA evidence, and even a little sleuthing while on vacation in Italy. Believe me when I say this one has been nagging me for years.
The truth is that in genealogy curiosity and persistence pay off. Let me explain.
When I was a teenager my now deceased paternal uncle-in-law enjoyed genealogy research. He prepared a family tree of mostly descendants of his wife's (my aunt's) grandparents, Giovanni Balzarini and Ernesta Casazza. Regarding Giovanni, the tree noted that he was from a place called "Ravillia," Italy.
My uncle placed the family tree he prepared, including the information about Ravillia on a variety of free online genealogy services at the time and at a local historical museum. This coupled with the family story has led most of us to believe Giovanni's hometown was a place called Ravillia, Italy. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone ever knew exactly where it was located, or even if it was a real place.
The story I heard growing up was that Ravillia was in Tuscany just across the border from "Genoa" (in the Liguria Region). The story was that the Italian miners in Black Diamond, Washington where Giovanni lived and worked were primarily from the Genoa area. They embraced Giovanni as an honorary Genoese because he had married a Genoese woman, my great grandmother Ernesta, and because his hometown was situated in close proximity to the border. They teased him and gave him the nickname "Ravillia" after his village.
Naturally, based on this story, I spent time searching for a place called Ravillia in Tuscany on the border of Liguria. When I was in Italy in the fall of 2009, I even asked a local woman who had lived in that border area her whole life about Ravillia. She told me with certainty that there was no such place. But she also gave me a tip about a nearby village in Liguria, not Tuscany, that sounded somewhat similar when spoken in Italian. Based on this, I spent time searching online for genealogical records from the village she mentioned. I also purchased a detailed local map and scoured it for other Ravillia-sounding towns. Sady, it was all to no avail.
As time passed, I worked on this problem off and on but not with great emphasis. I felt a little hopeless and was wondering if my uncle had gotten it wrong. There was not much Italian genealogical information available online back then, and certainly not when the town of origin was unknown. So, I focused instead on my mom's equally challenging French-Canadian paternal line.
A few years later, an interesting exchange with my dad's cousin led me to renew my efforts. He said that in his family, in which his grandmother was Giovanni's youngest daughter, the same story was told, but they heard that it was spelled "Ravila" and was located just across the border - not in Tuscany - but in the Lombardy Region. That information was a revelation and opened my research to new possibilities. Off I went to search the internet and maps for towns called Ravila in Lombardy. But also.... to no avail.
Eventually, it was with DNA matches that I got my first real leads pointing me toward Ottone and Gramizzola in the Piacenza Province of the Emilia-Romagna Region. Starting about 2018, I had my dad take autosomal DNA tests at Ancestry and 23andMe and a Y-DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA. I took tests at Ancestry and MyHeritage as well. I was hopeful that the Y-DNA results would solve our mystery with direct evidence of my dad's paternal line. Yea, I found out it doesn't work that way. He has very few Y-DNA matches and none that are even remotely close enough to provide any assistance with this question.
The good news is that Ancestry turned out to be a bonanza of autosomal DNA matches for my dad's Balzarini line. Numerous people who were DNA matches had family trees online in which Balzarini's appeared. The bad news is that I could not connect any of their Balzarini ancestors to our known family members.
And my efforts to contact the people who were DNA matches did not lead to anything meaningful. I either got no response, or I got a friendly response but no helpful information.
So, left to my own devices, I did what a good genealogist does. I studied every DNA match for Balzarini ancestors, and I created what I call my "Balzarini Matches Tree," a separate research tree unattached to my main Balzarini tree.
On my Balzarini Matches Tree I built out two separate lines of Balzarini families both of which are anchored by individuals born in the mid-to-late 1880s or later and who immigrated to the United States long after Giovanni came to the US in the early 1880s. Based on the amount of shared DNA and/or birth year none of the Balzarini ancestors of my dad's DNA matches could have been direct descendants or siblings of our Giovanni. But using DNA Painter's shared cM tool I determined that they were likely his nieces and nephews or the children of cousins.
By doing all this work I made an exciting discovery that led me down the path toward determining Giovanni's hometown. While researching and developing my Balzarini Matches Tree, I discovered time and again through immigration records, obituaries, and other genealogical records that these Balzarini's were primarily from Ottone, Italy and its surrounding villages.
Some of these individuals were identified as hailing from Gramizzola, which I learned through research is a small village (or frazione) within the municipal boundaries of the comune of Ottone. One individual was noted as coming from "Lavilla" on a ship's manifest upon immigration to the U.S. Could it be a misspelling of the illusive Ravila or Ravillia?
Given the large number of DNA matches with Balzarini ancestors from Ottone and Gramizzola - located in the Piacenza Province of the Emilia-Romagna Region - I decided to set aside the family stories about Giovanni's hometown being in Tuscany or Lombardy. Instead, I shifted my focus to finding records from Ottone. My instincts told me this was the right decision.
So, in fits and starts I began to try and use the Italian records on FamilySearch focusing on Ottone and the Piacenza Province. These records are not indexed or searchable. This means that while FamilySearch has made digitized volumes of historic Italian birth, marriage, and death records available online you must look through an entire digitized parish book - page by page - to find records, if any, in that volume. This is a laborious process and can require looking at hundreds and even thousands of pages of records, all written in the Italian language using old Italian handwriting and abbreviations.
Even though I had done the same sort of research for my French-Canadian line using old Quebec parish records written in French, my initial efforts with the Italian records on FamilySearch did not go very well. I got lost in the records.
I did, however, manage to find a set of military records from the Piacenza Military District that would eventually lead me to a key document. The problem was that I was initially looking in the wrong series of records not knowing that the men were listed in classes by their birth year as opposed to the year in which they would have started their military service (at age 21 according to FamilySearch Wiki). In fact, I spent many hours looking for Giovanni in the 1877 through 1879 records for the Piacenza Military District with no success when I should have been looking in the volume covering the 1858 class (his birth year). At that time, not knowing this detail, I thought perhaps I was wrong about Ottone, or that some records were missing online, so I set the project aside.
Then last fall things started to come together. I began a serious study of the Italian language. At the same time, I happened to sit in on two webinars on Italian genealogy research that just so happened to occur within a couple weeks of each other.
Inspired, I decided to write a fateful letter directly to the comune of Ottone.
I had sent emails over the years to towns and Catholic dioceses in Italy regarding research on other lines of my Italian family with mixed results. I always wrote in English with a few well-known Italian words thrown in for good measure and maybe an awkward "cut and paste" from Google Translate.
This time, I had the courage to use my new but still limited understanding of the language to write an email mostly in Italian. Was it perfect? Not at all. But at least I understood better how to phrase my inquiry in Italian. And I kept it simple. I just asked the town administrator if there was a village in the vicinity of Ottone in the 1800s and early 1900s named Ravilla or Lavilla and if so, could they tell me where to find vital records. I did not even mention Gramizzola because at that time I had no way of knowing that it might be... the one!
To my utter amazement, I received an email reply from the comune office a short 8 hours after I sent my inquiry. This is what it said, in part: "Ravilla sarebbe il vecchio nome della frazione di Gramizzola, del Comune di Ottone, si usa ancora oggi per chiamare la stessa, nel linguaggio dialettale." This translates to: "Ravilla would be the old name of the hamlet of Gramizzola, in the Municipality of Ottone, it is still used today to call the same, in dialectal language."
I repeat - Ravilla is the local dialect name for the village of Gramizzola in Ottone!!!! WHAT???!!!
I almost fell out of my chair when I read that email. What a thrill! I did not expect an answer at all, let alone within hours of my inquiry and one that likely solved a long-standing family mystery.
The email from Ottone also said that the comune does not hold civil records prior to 1866, and therefore for vital records I would have to contact the Catholic Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio, which I have done. The diocese has kindly replied that they will search their records when time allows.
Around the same time that I sent the email to Ottone, I also dug back into Italian military records. Using the Italian national archives website Antenati (Ancestors Portal) and its link to the State Archives of Piacenza, I was able to find a listing for Giovanni in the military records for the military district of Piacenza.
The actual records are not available on the website, but they do have the indexed information and Giovanni's entry shows his birth year, father's name (which I knew), and comune: Ottone! It also contains his identification number and his military class year, 1858.
Keep in mind, a simple search of the national Antenati website for Giovanni Balzarini with his known birth year derives no results. That is because the website does not have records for every province in Italy yet - it is a work in progress.
Had I not been pointed toward Ottone in the Piacenza Province of Emilia-Romagna by DNA matches and then by the email from the comune, I would not have known to click on the link to the State Archives of Piacenza on the Antenati website, nor to focus my research on the Piacenza Military District.
Instead, I would still be looking for records in provinces situated along the Ligurian border in the regions of Tuscany or Lombardy.
Once I found the indexed military information for Giovanni on the website of the State Archives of Piacenza, I was also able to find him in the digitized online Italian military records on FamilySearch. Using his class (1858) and identification number, it was only a matter of navigating to the correct series of records and then relatively quickly finding him by number. Wowee!!
The military record that I found appears to be part of a series of records for the class of 1858 called the Ruoli Matricolari or a register of young men in the province who served in the military. I am still working with this document to translate portions that I cannot read, but it is obvious that it refers to our Giovanni. It identifies him by his known birthdate (which is confirmed by family knowledge and his death record), and it identifies his parents by the same names included on his Washington State marriage record in 1901 - confirming too the spelling of his mother's surname, Zolezzi. It also again states that he was born and residing in Ottone. From my initial attempt to translate the rest of the document, I have some theories forming regarding what else the record tells us about Giovanni and his military experience. I intend to publish a blog post in the future detailing this information.
Once I found this military record, I turned to the local Catholic parish records, which are also available unindexed on FamilySearch. Whether all parish records for Ottone are included is not clear to me. So far, I have not found Giovanni's baptism record despite scouring the entries for 1858 and surrounding years. Maybe I missed something, maybe the collection is not complete, or maybe his baptism record is in a different volume - a different parish? I clearly have more work to do on that one and of course there's always the off chance that the local diocese will find the record and send it along as promised! Here's hoping!
My research into the local Ottone Catholic parish records has not been a total loss - to be sure. There are numerous Balzarini entries for births, marriages, and deaths in Ottone and Gramizzola. Lots of work ahead to sort out all the relatives noted in these records. And I also found - burying the lead here - an extremely exciting record called the Stato Delle Anime (State of the Souls) for Gramizzola which contains information about Giovanni's family. Finding this document after paging through thousands of pages of records in the parish books was another true "gotcha" moment!
The Stato Delle Anime is similar to a government census but prepared by the Catholic church. The one I found identifies Giovanni as a one-year-old child. Given that he was born in October of 1858, this census was likely taken in 1859 or 1860. Giovanni was the only child listed in his family's entry.
The Stato Delle Anime also identifies Giovanni's parents' names and ages as well as his grandparents. I am still working on a full translation of the entry and will cover it in more detail in a future post. But suffice it to say that there is a wealth of information in the document about the family, including who was living or deceased at the time the census was prepared. I look forward to using the entire Stato Delle Anime for Gramizzola to try and connect the dots between my Balzarini Matches Tree and my main family tree.
The bottom line is that my genealogy research into Giovanni's family continues. However, I do have reasonable confidence based on my findings described here that his hometown was Ottone, Italy and most likely the village of Gramizzola!
I prepared this blog post to share the information now because I am aware that at least one cousin is pursuing Italian dual citizenship and needs to know Giovanni's hometown so that they may obtain official documentation of vital records. Please let me know if you are doing the same. I'd love to compare records so that I may continue researching our family and building Giovanni's family tree, one brick at a time! Grazie!
Please contact me if you have any questions or if you have additional information, corrections, or ideas you'd like to share!
Note: The two photographs of Ottone and the map of Italian regions (modified here to show northern Italy only) were included in this post with permission from WikimediaCommons under the following licenses: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.
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