9 October 2024–Today was a cemetery research day for us! The weather was still mostly cloudy, with intermittent drizzle and/or rain, and with some sunshine every now and then. The mosquitoes were hungry, especially because we were trouncing on wet or damp grass. Nevertheless, we were determined to get through as many cemeteries where I suspected our ancestors to be as we possibly could. Because of the rain (we have been pretty damp or down-right wet for about two days now), because of the mosquitoes, and because of time constraints (it gets pretty dark in the mountains, and the roads are narrow and squiggly), we only got through the cemeteries in Loppia, Tiglio Alto again, Castelvecchio Pascoli, and Fosciandora. Basically, our approach was to try to examine every grave/gravestone we saw with the names Marchetti, Bernardini, Carzoli, Ceccarelli, Del Padrone, Bacci, Stefani, Perpoli, Nutini/Notini, and other names I’ve come across as I worked through our genealogical tree. In addition to the gravesites, we wanted to find Nonno Alfredo Carzoli’s street as well as the house where my father’s house (Angelo Carzoli) had been. I had the street name and sometimes the house number. We saw where Nonno Alfredo was born, but it is now a field. We tried to find the house number (#40 Paroli), but the house numbers stopped at 45 a & b, counting backwards. House numbers 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44 were non-existent. There was a walled cliff beyond house #39, suggesting that we had to be satisfied with knowing that his birth house was somewhere close to where we were. As for my father’s birth house, we saw the street, but there was no house numbered 9. However, there was a large seemingly renovated house and a deep lot with fruit trees and so on, with the name Stefani (and a male’s name) on the gate. The brass-looking name plate appeared to have been more recent. Ironically, Stefani is a name in my father’s paternal lineage. First the Stefani’s were in Emilia-Reggiana, but it is possible that they traveled to the Fornaci di Barga region by 1920 when my father was born. I would like to think that this present owner named Stefani is a descendant of the Stefani’s who might have come from Emilia. I do not know for sure. We looked for a cemetery in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana because many of our ancestors and even nonno Pietro Bacci (Mary Lou’s nonno/nonna’s uncle) had strong connections to that region, but, alas, we could not find a cemetery directly in Castelnuovo. We traveled just a relatively short distance to Fosciandora, a small community high up on a mountain, where Mary Lou Bacci’s nonno Pietro was born, but we found no Bacci’s there. We did find a preponderance of Salottis and Luigi’s in that cemetery, however. The Salottis, especially, are represented among relatives of Pietro Bacci. Salotti is even the maiden name of Carla Marchettii’s (a second cousin of Nonna’s and therefore generationally mine, as well) mother was Salotti. Because we had visited the cemetery in Tiglio Alto with Nadia the day before when it poured off and on, and because the quality of the gravesite photos was not as good as I had hoped, we returned to that cemetery and checked every grave, looking for the names I listed above. Even though today’’s weather was spitty at times, as well, we braved the mosquitoes and the rain to get as many clearer photos as we could. A funny thing I think my nonna Lina Ceccarelli (Carzoli) would even laugh about was that when I photographed her gravestone image, I did not see a large fly resting on her ear. Only after we looked at the photos later on did I notice it all but one photo I took of her gravestone! I am hoping that Dad can spin some editorial magic in collaboration with AI and make that pesky fly just disappear. Castelvecchio Pascoli did not have any of the names that we were seeking, which was surprising to us because Nonno Alfredo was born in that town in 1901. I was hoping that someone in nonno Alfredo’s lineage would have been buried in this cemetery. Finally, our B&B host shared a phone number for Elisa Guidotti in Coreglia who seems passionate about the history of Coreglia and about the people who might have lived here in the past. I sent her a What’s App message to introduce myself and to explore who she might have been and more precisely why our Host had suggested her to us. I am awaiting her reply.
Our Travels 