From Vervio to Australia: brief history of the Veletta family from 1866 to 1929

7 October 2023

Veletta families are quite rare in Italy. According to the website https://www.mappadeicognomi.it, people bearing this surname are registered in only 8 Italian municipalities. One of these is Vervio, in the province of Sondrio.

From Vervio to Australia: brief history of the Veletta family from 1866 to 1929

Intrigued by a very young Australian guest of mine, who came to Italy specifically to see the places of origin of his family, I enjoyed consulting the registry documentation published on the site https://www.familysearch.org/ thanks to which I was able to reconstruct four generations of the four family branches present in Vervio in the early nineteenth century.
The work, of course, has gaps: depending on records ranging from 1866 to 1929, it does not detect the people of the first generation born and died before the first date, nor those born after the last nor even the dates of death of those born before 1929 but died after - with some exceptions, because from a certain moment on during the 20th century the registry officials got into the habit of marking in the margin of some birth certificates - not all and not systematically - the date of marriage and of the subject's death.
Another important thing: the birth year of people born before 1866 is estimated based on their age at death. To clarify, someone who died on February 12, 1885 at the age of 43 was born in 1842 or 1843? If he had died in November the probability of birth in 1843 increases, but only the consultation of the baptismal registers would remove any doubts - but these remained extraneous to my (deliberately narrow, brief partial) investigation.
What other data did I pay attention to? On the following:
- to the residence (district, then street) of the eldest couples of each generation;
- to the fate of emigrants. For some subjects I tried to search through other portals to find traces of their presence and their activity in the States that welcomed them.
In terms of activity and social position in the village context, the research did not reveal any particularities: the Velettas are and remain for the entire period a race of small farmers, struggling - especially the latest generation - with frequent difficulties in feeding themselves and escaping from the poverty of their condition.
Here are the four branches, distinguished by progenitors: Cristoforo, Giacomo, Filippo and Antonio.


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