Count Livio Serra di Gerace's Genealogical Tables of The Di Gennaro Family

[CaptainCatholic]

Hi everyone!

I was able to acquire Count Livio Serra di Gerace's handwritten genealogical tables for two separate "noble" branches of the Di Gennaro Family! See attachments below.

I have been researching my Di Gennaro ancestry for a few years - I've only gotten to 1679. I don't know if I descend from anyone on either of these genealogical tables, but I'm trying to find out.

My question, which probably sounds like a stupid question, haha - but does anyone have any idea how either of these tables is ordered?

I keep staring at it, but it looks like a bunch of random notes scribbled all over the page without any real order to it, hahaha. It's hard to figure out what it means! I was expecting to see the husband, the wife, and all of the children underneath of them... followed by the children of their sons and daughters on the next line, etc. Instead, the notes seem to be all over the place.

Note: I had to reduce the quality of the original images in order to attach them - if it'd be helpful, I can certainly email the original file to anyone interested!

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much!
Tony

[joetucciarone]

It looks like the lower half of the first sheet is divided into four irregular columns arranged chronologically. The left-most column has dates from the early 1600s, and dates in the right-most column are from the late 1700s to early 1800s. Beyond that, I can't tell what's in them.

[JPiedmont]

Really cool & incredible find!

Some of the lines are a bracket, like this {, where the point generally is aimed at the older generation whose descendants are contained on the inside. The problem here is they're pointed in all sorts of different directions. I marked the ones I could figure out. Hopefully you can see what I'm talking about if you put the original image side-by-side.

There's another organizational tool being used, something involving numbers and dividing lines (which lack the points of the brackets). Can't really make it out, but I circled the numbers that I think pertain to it.

And finally the third symbol is hidden in the brackets. What might look like adding on to them after the fact is probably an intentional way of separating the descendants of the bracket into different family groups.

This is definitely going to be tricky to figure out completely, much less read some of the smallest text! Everything I marked is 110% open to interpretation, and I absolutely could be wrong about what the marks mean. I don't think I found all of them either. But I'm confident that they're the signs of different groups that you're looking for. Just an old way of designing the charts/taking notes. I'm a little surprised there isn't a "final" copy with a consistent layout, but paper was expensive and these things are always works in progress so perhaps Count Livio didn't think it worth the investment.

[CaptainCatholic]

It looks like the lower half of the first sheet is divided into four irregular columns arranged chronologically. The left-most column has dates from the early 1600s, and dates in the right-most column are from the late 1700s to early 1800s. Beyond that, I can't tell what's in them.

Hi Joe! Wow, I didn't even notice that! Thanks for pointing that out. It's funny, I was looking at the charts zoomed in - when you zoom out, the columns stand out more. Thanks again!

[CaptainCatholic]

Really cool & incredible find!

Some of the lines are a bracket, like this {, where the point generally is aimed at the older generation whose descendants are contained on the inside. The problem here is they're pointed in all sorts of different directions. I marked the ones I could figure out. Hopefully you can see what I'm talking about if you put the original image side-by-side.

There's another organizational tool being used, something involving numbers and dividing lines (which lack the points of the brackets). Can't really make it out, but I circled the numbers that I think pertain to it.

And finally the third symbol is hidden in the brackets. What might look like adding on to them after the fact is probably an intentional way of separating the descendants of the bracket into different family groups.

This is definitely going to be tricky to figure out completely, much less read some of the smallest text! Everything I marked is 110% open to interpretation, and I absolutely could be wrong about what the marks mean. I don't think I found all of them either. But I'm confident that they're the signs of different groups that you're looking for. Just an old way of designing the charts/taking notes. I'm a little surprised there isn't a "final" copy with a consistent layout, but paper was expensive and these things are always works in progress so perhaps Count Livio didn't think it worth the investment.

WOW! This is awesome work on your part!!! Thank you so much for your help - you spent a ton of time on this! I have no idea how you figured all that out - it looked like such a mess to me haha, but you really understood how it was laid out. I'll be looking over it in detail later today Thanks so much again!!