Livorno Gen[ealogy]

Tracing Lives, Reconnecting Stories — Genealogical Research in Italy and Worldwide

Matteo Giunti

Mappa della Toscana a esagoni verdi che mostra dove viveva il cognome Rossi nel censimento del 1841 — Over more than twenty-five years of research we have indexed the entire 1841 Tuscan census, sheet by sheet, thanks in part to a team effort. Today we are opening part of it to everyone: an interactive map showing where every surname lived in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. As far […]

Rossi or Innocenti? Mapping Tuscan surnames in 1841

November 8, 2026 in English / Genealogical Culture by Matteo Giunti

Dipinto di Gioacchino Toma: due donne addormentate di guardia alla ruota dei trovatelli — Between 1817 and 1847, 4,100 abandoned babies in Livorno (Leghorn) received 3,739 different surnames, nearly all of them invented: Chiusalupi, Portapani, Minestri, Millefiori. We have analysed how they came about, between the saint of the day, twins named in pairs and little flights of fancy.

Salmari, Minestri, Chiusalupi: the invented surnames of Livorno’s foundlings

November 5, 2026 in Curiosities / English / Genealogical Culture by Matteo Giunti

Sir Dudley Digges (1583-1639) — Among the hundreds of tombs in the Old English Cemetery in Via Verdi, Livorno (Leghorn), one holds a record: it is the oldest surviving tombstone. It belongs to Leonard Digges, a young Kentish gentleman who died in Livorno in October 1646, aged only 22. Today we can look at it […]

The oldest tombstone in the Old English Cemetery: Leonard Digges ...

November 3, 2026 in English / Genealogical Culture by Matteo Giunti

Over many years of work on the parish and civil registers of Livorno we have often come across well-known figures: artists, publishers, politicians, musicians. And not infrequently we have found that the dates given by encyclopaedias, dictionaries and catalogues do not match those in the original records. Here we gather, […]

Livorno genealogical Zibaldone/1: dates to correct and small archival discoveries

November 2, 2026 in English / Genealogical Culture by Matteo Giunti

Pilade Tevenè e la moglie Corinna Fanny Bonfanti — Some time ago we were contacted by Susanna Tevenè, a descendant of the Tevenè family of Livorno, for genealogical research. She wanted to understand where this unusual surname came from and to verify (or debunk…) some stories handed down in the family for generations, as happens in almost every family. […]

The Tevenès who were not Tevenès: solving a genealogical puzzle

November 2, 2026 in English / Genealogical Culture / Genealogies / Techniques by Matteo Giunti

Edgar Degas, La famiglia Bellelli (1858-1869), Parigi, Musée d'Orsay — Much is known about the Italian family of Edgar Degas (1834-1917), above all thanks to Riccardo Raimondi’s book Degas e la sua famiglia in Napoli (Naples, 1958) and to the studies of Jean Sutherland Boggs. Yet, going back to the original records, some details need correcting, and there is a […]

Genealogical notes on Edgar Degas’s family: a grandmother from Livorno ...

November 2, 2026 in English / Genealogical Culture / Genealogies by Matteo Giunti

Baptism registers, 17th century — Many of the people who write to us from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Australia or France arrive with the same question: “My great-grandfather was Tuscan. How can I find out where he came from?” Often they have a name, a surname spelled in several different ways, perhaps a photograph […]

How to trace your Tuscan ancestors from abroad: a practical ...

November 2, 2026 in English / Genealogical Culture / Techniques by Matteo Giunti

Matrimoni “circensi” a Livorno nel 1840 — Quite by chance we came across a page of the civil marriage registers of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, for the Cathedral parish of Livorno, that certainly deserves a short article. It is October 1840, a month in which no fewer than four marriages took place, one after another, between […]

“Circus” marriages in Livorno in 1840

May 20, 2026 in Curiosities / English / Genealogies by Matteo Giunti

Giovanni March (1894-1974): ascendenza paterna e origini greche. — Much has already been written about the painter Giovanni March, especially his life and artistic career, but little has been said about his family origins, apart from a few scant details about his father and mother and a vague “of Livorno origin”. So we think it worth clarifying once and […]

Giovanni March (1894-1974): paternal ancestry and Greek origins

May 18, 2026 in Curiosities / English / Genealogies by Matteo Giunti

I miei antenati greci: filo genealogico ascendente — 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 […]

My Greek ancestors: a line of ascent

January 12, 2026 in Curiosities / English / Genealogies by Matteo Giunti