I don’t only work on my clients’ genealogies: every now and then I go back to digging into my own ancestors, even though I have already found a great deal in more than 25 years of research. In this post I would like to show one particular line of my ancestry, which gives me a small group of direct ancestors who came from the Greek islands and arrived in Livorno in the seventeenth century.

Let’s start with one of my great-grandmothers (the mother of my maternal grandmother, Rita Kotzian), Clara Biliotti (1895-1952), born in Ardenza in Via della Torre and died in Zurich. In 1916 she married my great-grandfather Alberto Kotzian (1892-1967).

Her father was Ivo Biliotti (1863-1924), a grain merchant in Livorno and an amateur poet in Livorno dialect: an amusing, sensitive man, deeply in love with his wife Luisa Belliti (1871-1954).

His father, Paolo Biliotti (1827-1902), had been a broker and a dealer in shirts, accessories and later jewellery, and a family friend of the painter Giovanni Fattori, who often came to lunch at the house in Ardenza.

In fact, Paolo’s mother, Cammilla Landi (1802-1865), was portrayed by Fattori himself (as was his father, Giuseppe, “the customs officer”), and so was his wife, Anna Carlesi (1834-1871).

Going further back, we find Cammilla Landi’s mother, Maria Riccarda Nardi (1782-1833), and her mother, Cammilla Orontea Stefanini (b. 1759), herself the daughter of Elisabetta Griselli or Ghiselli (?-?).

Continuing along the female lines, Elisabetta’s mother was Margherita (1702-1761), of the well-known and very large Livorno family of the Martolini. It is from her mother that my Greek branch descends.

Caterina Candachiti (c. 1674-1767) married Antonio Martolini, Margherita’s father, in Livorno in 1700. Caterina was born in Livorno to Francesco Candachiti, from Candia (Heraklion, Crete), and Elisabetta Beltà, daughter of Niccolò (d. Livorno 1677), from Mytilene (Lesbos), and Maddalena Cassari (d. Livorno 1684), both buried, like Caterina, in the church of the Greek Catholics (Greci Uniti) in Livorno.

And so I too have a slender Greek connection, thanks to the extraordinary history of Livorno and its Nations, which never ceases to amaze.