Help Translate: "Promise of Marriage" page 2

[JOHN08]

This is the second page of a "Promise of Marriage" record.

Appreciate any help with the translation of this record.

John

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/7538 ... page2m.jpg

[Tessa78]

Hi John,

The image is too small to read

Any chance you can upload to postimage.org and copy the THUMBNAILS for Forum1 to post here? It allows us to enlarge and magnify the image...

T.

[erudita74]

I can read part of the top part of the page. It consists of the documents provided by the spouses for their marriage. 1) the birth act of the groom; 2) the birth act of the bride; 3) the death act of the father of the bride; 4) the death act of the grandfather of the bride named Giovannantonio Cervone 5) is difficult to read even when enlarged-but it looks like it was an act of consent drawn up by a notary on Feb 21st in which the mother of the groom(?) gave her consent to the marriage 6) act of notification made in this town which resulted in no impediments to the marriage

Bottom section are 4 witnesses to the marriage. I am having trouble with two of the surnames-
1) Don Domenico(?) Colletti-age 72- property owner
2) Don Biagio S?-age 41-property owner
3) Don Raffaele Palma, age 37, priest
4) Ignazio T? -age 57, property owner

[erudita74]

The surname of the witness Biagio does not begin with the letter S, as I originally thought. I studied his signature, and I now think the surname could be Gentile. I don't, however, see that as a current surname in the town, but it does seem to exist in that province. All of the witnesses resided in the town.

Also, I don't know if you have ever seen the website below. It sometimes is helpful in deciphering surnames in a town's records.

http://www.avitrees.com/town_info.jsp?t ... on=Abruzzo

[JOHN08]

This website is the best.

Thanks for taking the time to help others!!

John

[erudita74]

Happy to help.

Another suggestion for helping with town surnames is to go to http://www.stevemorse.org and use the first option which is the gold form to search Ellis Island records. You can put in just the first letter of a surname, and the town name, and get a list of whoever emigrated to the U.S. from the town. Of course, surnames are often misspelled on Ellis Island, or are often transcribed incorrectly, but you can, at least, get an idea of surnames that existed in your town in the past. I also use the Italian white pages to see if a surname I think I am seeing in a record currently exists in the town.
http://www.paginebianche.it/index_en.html

When you have never researched records in a particular town before, surnames and street names, at least for me, are the most difficult things to decipher.

One more thing I meant to add is about the handwritten part above the signatures at the bottom. The document was signed by us (the town officials), by the groom, by the father of the groom, and by the witnesses. The bride and her mother did not sign, as they did not know how to write. So it was definitely the mother of the groom in number 5 at the top part of this page whose consent document was from a notary.