My great grandfather (fathers maternal grandfather) was a foundling born December 6 1895 in Rome, Italy and with the help of dna I’ve been trying to figure out who his parents are for the better part of a decade. I have very few matches to Rome, in fact only 1 where I’m sure the match is related via him. That match is 46cm and in their tree has the surname (Pavia/Parisi, it varies by record) which could be the same as the woman who took my great grandfather out of the orphanage and it is in the right area too. All of their other lines, none of them have ancestors anywhere near where any of mine were so I’m certain the connection must be on this line.
The reason I say could be the same, is I’m not sure of the surname. Her name appears to be Maria Parisi on his marriage license. But his adoptive fathers name was Dominico Mastracchio and he put Dominico Ebbo on the same license, which is the surname the orphanage gave him.
Unfortunately there is all of one shared match with this person, a measly 9cm match for me and 27cm for them. I can’t get either of their lines back far enough to be sure how they match each other.
But other than that match every single match that seems to be on his line (by process of elimination) seems to be from the Agrigento area in Sicily. I noticed there are multiple matches connecting me to a Michele Iacono born 1802 and Raimonda Sorrentino born 1805 and a Raimondo Cumella born 1770 and Maria Palillo born 1781 and the last couple, an Antonino Fradella born 1770 and Maria Carmela Muscato born 1776. all born in Agrigento. But some+ of these matches share ancestry from 2 of the 3 couples so I’m having a difficult time determining if I connect to all 3 of the couples or just 1 or 2.
I’m including an image of both couples on my ancestry thrulines, but this isn’t all of the matches because some I cannot trace far back enough and only can tell are related from matching the others and their similar surnames. Matches I wrote in are ones not on ancestry that I match on 23andme that I was able to trace.
Well anyway, I thought since I must have ancestry from all those couples, that if I found a possible grandparent lines for my greatgrandfather that included all of them it would likely mean I solved the puzzle so to speak. However what I pieced together is wrong because it gives my great grandfather a grandmother that would be too young to be his grandmother. That couple didn’t even start having children until shortly before my great grandfather was born. And it would obviously make zero sense for them to be his parents, given they had children both before and after he was born and never seemed to leave Agrigento.
Originally what I put down for his grandparents at first was one of them being a son or daughter of Giuseppe Martorana born 1851 and Concetta Azzara Lazzara born 1872 (descendant of Michele Iacono and Raimonda Sorrentino) and a son or daughter of Raimondo Imbro born 1832 (descendant of Raimondo Cumella and Maria Palillo) and Giovanna Fradella born 1851 (decendent of Antonino Fradella and Maria Carmela Muscato. Only on the Giuseppe Martorana line do I not have multiple dna matches. But, there’s no way, right? You can’t have a grandmother born in 1872 if you’re born in 1895!
I also cannot find any dna link to these Agrigento matches and the Rome match. I did however find that someone with the Pavia/Parisi surname married a brother of Giovanna Fradella, but I can find no link to them having anything to do with Rome in their ancestry or descendants.
What I’m now thinking could have happened is one of Calogero Fradella and Carmela Pavia/Paxia? Children was maybe the birth mother to my great grandfather and maybe sent him to live with Pavia/Paxia relatives in Rome. But I cannot seem to trace back to Rome Pavia line far enough to make a connection. And maybe the matches on the Cumella line are my great grandfathers fathers side? But then that wouldn't explain my dna connections to the iiacono/Sorrentino couple.
What my great grandfather put as his mother on his marriage licence seems to match a woman whose family seemed to have taken him in. The mastracci family. His adoptive father Domenico Mastracchio married a Maria Parisi or Pavia. I cannot find a link to her and the Agrigento Pavia’s if there even is one cause I cant get any of their trees back far enough. I also cannot find a link to her and the dna match I have with the Parisi surname from Rome other than similar surname and location. Were it not for that dna match I’d think there was no relation between the woman who took my great grandfather out of the orphanage and him, but this seems too much to be a coincidence.
There is also a major problem with endogamy that is confusing things further for me, because my fathers entire paternal side comes from Sicily, Lipari to be exact and some of these matches have ancestry from both Lipari and Agrigento and multiple seem to relate to me multiple ways. In particular there is a 98 cm match, a known 3rd cousin once removed on my fathers paternal side, they have ancestry from Agrigento too so I think they could relate via there too. (The Agrigento line would be related via his maternal grandfathers line.) This match has the iacono surname in their tree too. Then there's another match which has Lipari ancestry on their maternal line and Agrigento on their paternal line and also shares matches with several of my Agrigento matches and I can trace their Agrigento line back to the ancestors Michele Iacono and Raimonda Sorrentino which I mentioned earlier. But I must match on their maternal/Lipari line as well because I also am a dna match with their first cousin on that line. Talk about a headache!
I'm attaching images that I got from connecting to thrulines. Some matches that were on sites other then ancestry I was able to find what chromosome they matched on and I marked that ones that I know match on chromosome 18 as red and chromosome 19 as blue. The unmarked ones I don't know where they match. The Rome Parisi match matches me on chromosome 16. Sadly I don't know where any of the Fradella/Muscato ones match, only one of them is on 23andme and its a newer match and 23andme is no longer showing how people match.
And ignore the relationships listed, I was putting my great grandfather in as the home person to get this thrulines so the relationships listed are how the matches would relate to him.
Surely these matches can't be coincidence, right?
Additonal info: There is an Antonino Martorana which is another surname that comes up in a lot of my matches. He married Carolina Giordano on 12 November 1908 and later her sister Antonia Giordano 7 September 1909 both in Rome. He was born in Girgenti on 29 May 1876 Tessa translated the record for me
I think maybe he could my great grandfathers father but I'm having trouble finding his parents marriage record to confirm a dna connection. His parents were Ferdinando Martorana born about 1826 and Angela Martorana born about 1841.
