http://www.faegn.it/html/dnadozione.html
DNAdozione is an information and dissemination campaign, launched in September 2016, to assist, also in Italy, adopted children and parents in using their own autosomal DNA in order to facilitate access and use of this important tool for finding own origins and verify any contacts with parents / brothers / sisters and biological relatives.

Through the new discipline of "genetic genealogy" it is hoped to be able to reunite many families divided by an unjust legislation which prohibits children not recognized at birth from knowing their origins for a good 100 years!
Anyone interested in helping with this project should contact us.
Thank you!
Hashtag: #dnadoption

Carmina Caruso is part of the Chinappi Family Tree.
She is a descendant of the Magliozzi, Spinosa, and Macera family lines.
Originally published on Mornings on Maple Street a collection of articles, stories, photographs, the Lewis Hine Project, and much more by Joe Manning
Thanks to Joe Manning for permission to re post here
original link: https://morningsonmaplestreet.com/2014/11/26/carmina-caruso-page-one/
Lewis Hine caption: A typical view of Carmina Caruso, a ten year old Home Worker as she walks around crocheting as she goes. See also other photos of her and Home Work report. Location: Somerville, Massachusetts, August 1912.

“In Italy, I think she got as far as the second grade. She didn’t go to school at all in this country. But she taught herself a lot. She was tremendous in math. She could figure out every little detail, and she was a great household manager.” -Frances Leccese, daughter-in-law of Carmina Caruso
The following is from Child Labor in Home Industries, by Mary Van Kleeck, published in 1915.


“The present employment of children in tenements in New York City gives no ground for optimism regarding New York State’s method of regulating home work. A casual investigator who chooses to walk through the crowded tenement districts will find children at work who would not be permitted to enter a factory. He will see women and children carrying bundles of clothing or boxes of artificial flowers from workshop to home, and if he should follow any of them he would learn something of the system of industry which makes child labor still possible in New York State.”
“Two days ago one of my fellow workers visited a family living on Thompson Street. It was after school hours. She found a mother and four children making artificial flowers. The oldest girl was eleven years old. Her sister was nine, her little brother was seven, and a little sister was five. The three older children had just come home from school, but the youngest child was too young to go, and worked all day separating the petals of artificial flowers. The oldest child of eleven was deformed. She was not larger than a child of five.”
“The mother and four children have set themselves a certain allotment of work to finish each day, and the book in which their earnings are recorded by the employer says that those earnings are sixty cents a day. To earn that sixty cents a day, they must make six dozen wreaths of daisies, three or four pieces to each daisy, and thirty-nine daisies on each wreath. The father is a ragman earning six dollars a week. The brother is out of work. The mother and children work until ten or eleven o’clock at night, and what they do not finish at night they must get up in time to finish in the morning before school begins. The little girl, Angelina, said she did the work the teacher gave her to do at home before school in the morning. ‘This morning, first I did the writing,” she said, “then I did the two times, and then the three times, so I won’t have so much to do tomorrow. I like school better than home. I don’t like home. There’s too many flowers.’”
**************************
Carmina Caruso was photographed in Somerville, Massachusetts, not New York City, and she was crocheting, not making flowers; but her situation would have been markedly similar.



My caption: Carmina Caruso (center), mother Marie & sister Mary, Somerville, Massachusetts, August 1912. Photo by Lewis Hine.
Lewis Hine caption: Crocheting on underwear at home. Carmina Caruso, 10 years old, a regular worker. Sister Mary, 5 years old, learning; mother sitting out in unkept [i.e., unkempt?] side yard all day long. Sometimes they walk up and down the street as they work. 18 South Street, Somerville, Mass., August 1912.
Somerville is about four miles from Boston. In 1910, the population was about 75,000. According to family history information and various government documents, Carmina Caruso was born in Gaeta, Italy, on January 17, 1902. She was one of at least nine children born to Salvatore Caruso and Maria Antonia Cavicchio, who married in 1891. Most information indicates that Salvatore came alone to the US about 1909, and the rest of his family arrived in 1910. So when Carmina was photographed in 1912, she had been in the US two years and probably spoke only Italian.
Carmina married Cosmo Leccese in 1918. They had five children, including Raymond, born in 1925. I contacted Raymond, who lives near Boston. He had never seen the Lewis Hine photos of his mother. Although he was not able to participate in a telephone interview, I had an enjoyable conversation with his wife, Frances, who provided considerable information about Carmina.


Lewis Hine caption: Crocheting on underwear at home. Carmina Caruso, 10 years old, a regular worker; sister Mary, 5 years old, learning; mother and neighbor sitting out in unkept [i.e., unkempt?] side yard all day long. Sometimes they walk up and down the street as they work. 18 South Street, Somerville, Mass., August 1912.
Edited interview with Frances Leccese (FL), daughter-in-law of Carmina Caruso. Interview conducted by Joe Manning (JM) on July 22, 2008.
JM: Your husband was Carmina’s son. How long did you know her?
FL: I got to know her in 1947, when I started going out with my future husband. She was born in Italy in 1902. I think she came to this country in about 1910, when she was eight years old. She lived in that house in the picture, where they were crocheting. My husband remembers the house. He went into it once. He said it was a two-family converted into a three-family.
When my husband was just one year old, he got pneumonia, and they sent him to live with his grandmother, who had a big farm in Bedford, Massachusetts. The family used to go up there in the summer and help out. His mother would visit him every week and ask him to come home, but he didn’t want to. He broke his wrist when he was 14 years old, and then he moved back home.
JM: Did Carmina work as an adult?
FL: Not when I knew her, but she did work before then in several places. In one of the jobs, she made wallets. I know that many times, she didn’t have the money for the car fare, so she would walk all the way into Boston from Somerville to go to work. They did most of their shopping in the North End (Italian-American section of Boston). She was very frugal. She spent wisely, and she always used to say, ‘Spend a dollar to save a dollar.’
JM: Where did she live when you knew her?
FL: She lived at Caruso Place, which was named after her mother. It was a terrace (row houses) in Somerville with about three houses in it. Then she and her husband bought a three-family house on Mansfield Street, in Somerville.
JM: Could she speak English?
FL: Yes. And she spoke Italian very well.
JM: How far did she get in school?
FL: In Italy, I think she got as far as the second grade. She didn’t go to school at all in this country. But she taught herself a lot. She was tremendous in math. She could figure out every little detail, and she was a great household manager. Her husband just went to work and brought in the pay. He worked in a hot dog factory. It was called Squire’s (John P. Squire & Co) at first. And then it was called Swift (Swift & Co). During the war, he did very well, because they made a lot of the food for the Armed Forces.
Her husband was 15 years older than she was. He died at the age of 88, 15 years before she died. After he died, she lived in the house on Mansfield Street for a few years. One of her daughters lived on the second floor and another lived on the third floor. But when they moved to Arlington and bought their own homes, her grandchildren moved in, so she stayed a little longer. But she starting getting sick a lot with pancreatitis. She finally moved in with her daughter in Belmont, and that’s where she died, at the age of 88.
JM: What was she like?
FL: She was a great cook. She took care of a lot of her nieces and nephews while her sisters went to work. Her husband and other members of the family would go hunting. They would shoot pheasants and squirrels, and she would strip them, clean them and cook them. She always had a house full of company. It was like a party every Saturday and Sunday at her house. They all went to her house, because she was the best cook. She also crocheted very well.
She loved to play Bingo and she loved to gamble. We would take her to Foxwoods (casino in Connecticut). We took her to Las Vegas, and she was in her glory. When she was in her eighties, she would say that she was too old and couldn’t do anything anymore. But just say Bingo or gambling, and she was ready to go. We bought her one of those visor caps that the card players use, and she would wear it to Bingo. She was a very easy-going person. She liked people. She was very generous with her money at the end. She lived a comfortable life. I got along with her very well.
JM: Lewis Hine took Carmina’s picture in order to publicize child labor. Did she ever talk about working as a young girl?
FL: No. She never mentioned that at all to us. So the pictures were a surprise. I never thought that what the children had to do then was so bad, compared to what they had to do on farms. When I went to California, I saw some of the Mexicans and Indians that worked on the lettuce farms. Some of them were only 14 or 15 years old. And the houses that they had to live in were awful. Not that Carmina and her family didn’t have hard times. My husband said that when he lived on the farm with his grandmother, sometimes they had nothing to eat but potatoes. She would cook them every which way. But they struggled through it. They were able to buy homes. They lost them all during the Depression, but they rose above it again.

​

Hi Everyone,
Haplogroups are genetic markers found in DNA. What makes Haplogroups so special is that they are passed down from parent to children and can help identify direct lines of connection.

A father passes on to his son his paternal Haplogroup. So the same Halopgroup marker is in the direct line of all the males of a given family line going back thousands of years.  Knowing what the paternal Haplogroup is, can help adoptess find their paternal birth families and likely the family last name. 

A mother passes on her maternal Haplogroup to her daughters and her sons. 

Daughters do not get passed the paternal haplogroup from their fathers.

I decided to post my paternal and maternal Haplogroup information:

Paternal Haplogroup maker R-L2

Some of the Chinappi men descend from a long line of men that can be traced back to eastern Africa over 275,000 years ago. These are the men of our paternal line, and our paternal haplogroup sheds light on their story. 

Your paternal haplogroup, R-L2, traces back to a man who lived less than 8,000 years ago.
That's nearly 320.0 generations ago! What happened between then and now? As researchers and citizen scientists discover more about your haplogroup, new details may be added to the story of your paternal line.
As our ancestors ventured out of eastern Africa, they branched off in diverse groups that crossed and recrossed the globe over tens of thousands of years. Some of their migrations can be traced through haplogroups, families of lineages that descend from a common ancestor. Your paternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the men of your paternal line.

You share a paternal-line ancestor with Niall of the Nine HostagesThe spread of haplogroup R-M269 in northern Ireland and Scotland was likely aided by men like Niall of the Nine Hostages. Perhaps more myth than man, Niall of the Nine Hostages is said to have been a King of Tara in northwestern Ireland in the late 4th century C.E. His name comes from a tale of nine hostages that he held from the regions he ruled over. Though the legendary stories of his life may have been invented hundreds of years after he died, genetic evidence suggests that the Uí Néill dynasty, whose name means "descendants of Niall," did in fact trace back to just one man who bore a branch of haplogroup R-M269.
The Uí Néill ruled to various degrees as kings of Ireland from the 7th to the 11th century C.E. In the highly patriarchal society of medieval Ireland, their status allowed them to have outsized numbers of children and spread their paternal lineage each generation. In fact, researchers have estimated that between 2 and 3 million men with roots in north-west Ireland are paternal-line descendants of Niall.

This is how we find out
The Y Chromosome
Most of the DNA in your body is packaged into 23 pairs of chromosomes. The first 22 pairs are matching, meaning that they contain roughly the same DNA inherited from both parents. The 23rd pair is different because in men, the pair does not match. The chromosomes in this pair are known as "sex" chromosomes and they have different names: X and Y. Typically, women have two X chromosomes and men have one X and one Y.
Your genetic sex is determined by which sex chromosome you inherited from your father. If you are genetically male, you received a copy of your father's Y chromosome along with a gene known as SRY (short for sex-determining region Y) that is important for male sexual development. If you are genetically female, you received a copy of the X chromosome from both of your parents.Paternal Inheritance
Each generation, fathers pass down copies of their Y chromosomes to their sons essentially unchanged. Between generations, the matching chromosomes in the other 22 pairs make contact and exchange segments of DNA. This process shuffles the genetic information that is passed down from parent to child, making it difficult to trace genealogy over many generations. Except for two tiny sections at the chromosome’s tips, however, the Y skips this step. Instead, a nearly identical copy is handed down each time.
But, every so often, small changes to the DNA sequence do occur. These changes, called mutations, create new genetic variants on the Y chromosome. Because the Y does not recombine between generations, these variants collect in patterns that uniquely mark individual paternal lineages.
Paternal Haplogroup TreeTo trace the genetic history of paternal lineages, researchers compare the variants found in Y-DNA sequences from around the world. The result is a tree of Y chromosomes that shows how all paternal lines are related.
A paternal haplogroup is a cluster of branches on the tree that stem from a common male ancestor and share a particular set of variants. To keep track of all the branches, the major sections of the tree are named with one or more capital letters. Each haplogroup name starts with the letter of the major branch from which it stems and ends with the name of a variant that identifies a particular subgroup.Visit the scientific details to see your lineage in the tree of all paternal haplogroups.
Tracing Male MigrationsBecause closely related haplogroups tend to share geographic roots, researchers can use the modern distributions of haplogroups around the world to trace major migrations, from the voyage to Australia over 40,000 years ago to the peopling of North and South America in the last 16,000 years.
The spread of haplogroup R-M269 in northern Ireland and Scotland was likely aided by men like Niall of the Nine Hostages. Perhaps more myth than man, Niall of the Nine Hostages is said to have been a King of Tara in northwestern Ireland in the late 4th century C.E. His name comes from a tale of nine hostages that he held from the regions he ruled over. Though the legendary stories of his life may have been invented hundreds of years after he died, genetic evidence suggests that the Uí Néill dynasty, whose name means “descendants of Niall,” did in fact trace back to just one man who bore a branch of haplogroup R-M269.
The Uí Néill ruled to various degrees as kings of Ireland from the 7th to the 11th century C.E. In the highly patriarchal society of medieval Ireland, their status allowed them to have outsized numbers of children and spread their paternal lineage each generation. In fact, researchers have estimated that between 2 and 3 million men with roots in north-west Ireland are paternal-line descendants of Niall.
Haplogroup A275,000 Years Ago
The stories of all of our paternal lines can be traced back over 275,000 years to just one man: the common ancestor of haplogroup A. Current evidence suggests he was one of thousands of men who lived in eastern Africa at the time. However, while his male-line descendants passed down their Y chromosomes generation after generation, the lineages from the other men died out. Over time his lineage alone gave rise to all other haplogroups that exist today.Origin and Migrations of Haplogroup R-M269
10,000 Years Ago


Your paternal line stems from a branch of R-M343 called R-M269, one of the most prolific paternal lineages across western Eurasia. R-M269 arose roughly 10,000 years ago, as the people of the Fertile Crescent domesticated plants and animals for the first time. Around 8,000 years ago, the first farmers and herders began to push east into Central Asia and north into the Caucasus Mountains. Some of them eventually reached the steppes above the Black and Caspian Seas. There, they lived as pastoral nomads, herding cattle and sheep across the grasslands, while their neighbors to the south developed yet another crucial technology in human history: bronze smelting. As bronze tools and weaponry spread north, a new steppe culture called the Yamnaya was born.
Around 5,000 years ago, perhaps triggered by a cold spell that made it difficult to feed their herds, Yamnaya men spilled east across Siberia and down into Central Asia. To the west, they pushed down into the Balkans and to central Europe, where they sought new pastures for their herds and metal deposits to support burgeoning Bronze Age commerce. Over time, their descendants spread from central Europe to the Atlantic coast, establishing new trade routes and an unprecedented level of cultural contact and exchange in western Europe.The men from the steppes also outcompeted the local men as they went; their success is demonstrated in the overwhelming dominance of the R-M269 lineage in Europe. Over 80% of men in Ireland and Wales carry the haplogroup, as do over 60% of men along the Atlantic Coast from Spain to France. The frequency of R-M269 gradually decreases to the east, falling to about 30% in Germany, 20% in Poland, and 10-15% in Greece and Turkey. The haplogroup connects all these men to still others in the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia, where between 5 and 10% of men also bear the lineage.
Your paternal haplogroup, R-L2, traces back to a man who lived less than 8,000 years ago.That’s nearly 320.0 generations ago! What happened between then and now? As researchers and citizen scientists discover more about your haplogroup, new details may be added to the story of your paternal line.
R-L2 today is relatively common among 23andMe customers.Today, you share your haplogroup with all the men who are paternal-line descendants of the common ancestor of R-L2, including other 23andMe customers.
*The source of this information is the 23andme account of the author of this website.







Maternal haplogroup marker H29.As our ancestors ventured out of eastern Africa, they branched off in diverse groups that crossed and recrossed the globe over tens of thousands of years. Some of their migrations can be traced through haplogroups, families of lineages that descend from a common ancestor. Your maternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the women of your maternal line.

Your maternal haplogroup, H29, traces back to a woman who lived approximately 6,000 years ago.
That's nearly 240.0 generations ago! What happened between then and now? As researchers and citizen scientists discover more about your haplogroup, new details may be added to the story of your maternal line. 
Haplogroup H and the Royal Lines of Europe
Because it is so dominant in the general European population, haplogroup H also appears quite frequently in the continent's royal houses. Marie Antoinette, an Austrian Hapsburg who married into the French royal family, inherited the haplogroup from her maternal ancestors. So did Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose recorded genealogy traces his female line to Bavaria. Scientists also discovered that famed 16th century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus traced his maternal lineages to haplogroup H. 

Originally published on http://www.conigliofamily.com/Foundlings.htm
In my genealogic research of Sicilian and Italian records, I have been able to trace many families back through several generations, into the early 1800s and even earlier.  I have almost invariably found that there was at least one ‘brick wall’ in each of these families, where the line started with a child for whom both parents were listed on the civil registration of birth in Italian as ‘genitori ignoti’.   On earlier baptismal records,  the parents of these children were listed in Latin as ‘genitoribus incogniti’.  The Italian and Latin terms mean the same thing: ‘parents unknown’.
THE CAUSES:  Infant abandonment was widespread, for a variety of reasons.  For one, unwed pregnancy was a social disgrace, not only for the unwed mother but for her entire family.  Another obvious reason for abandonment was the extreme poverty of most citizens of the ‘Mezzogiorno’, as the southern Apennine peninsula and insular Sicily are known.  And in some regions, large complements of men, often far from home at sulfur, salt, or potash mines brought high prostitution rates and subsequent illegitimate births.
      At least outwardly, church authorities were zealous in protecting the identities of unwed mothers, and saving ‘face’ for them and their families.   A more important motive was that the church considered newborns as ‘Turchi’ (Turks) or heathens, who could not be saved unless they were baptized.  Sadly, its concern for these children after baptism often was not as great, once their souls were saved.

      In addition to the church, civil officials were also concerned with these cases because often the cost of the care of such infants fell to the civil authorities.  The situation devolved to the point that many towns, both on mainland Italy and the island of Sicily, installed a device called ‘la ruota (or rota) dei proietti’: the wheel of the castoffs, or ‘the foundling wheel’.  These wheels could be in the outside walls of churches or convents, or in larger cities, in the walls of foundling hospitals or orphanages.
THE WHEEL:  The wheel was a kind of ‘lazy Susan’ that had a small platform on which a baby could be placed, then rotated into the building, without anyone on the inside seeing the person abandoning the child.  That person then pulled a cord on the outside of the building, causing an internal bell or chimes to ring, alerting those inside that an infant had been deposited.  In the larger towns, foundlings were baptized, then kept in a foundling home with others, and fed by wet-nurses in the employ of the home.  There they may have stayed for several years until they were taken by townspeople as menial servants or laborers, or placed with a foster family.  Or, sadly but more likely, they never left the institution, having died from malnutrition or from diseases passed on by the wet-nurses.
      In smaller towns, the foundling wheel may have been in the wall of the residence of a local midwife.  She would have received the child, possibly suckled it immediately to keep it alive, or arranged for a wet-nurse to do so, then taken it to the church to be baptized and to the town hall to be registered.   She then consigned a wet-nurse living in or near the town to take the child and provide sustenance, for a monthly stipend paid by the town.  If the child was near death when found, many midwives were authorized by the church to baptize the infant, ‘so that its soul would not be lost’.  Civil officials were often similarly authorized.
      Sometimes children were literally abandoned on the street or on a doorstep, but the use of the foundling wheel was so widespread that even these children were referred to as having been ‘found in the wheel’.
The Real Casa Santa Annunziata [Royal Holy Annunciation Home] of Naples was an ancient institution devoted to the reception of abandoned babies. It was created in the fourteenth century along with the “ruota [wheel]”, a kind of wooden cylindrical drum where the children were placed, then gathered inside by nurses ready to intervene at every call. The “wheel” was closed June 22, 1875, but infants were admitted to the orphanage until 1980. 
Residents of the institution were called “sons of the Virgin,” “Children of Nunziata” or “espositi[exposed ones]”, that is, exposed to the protection of Our Lady. Hence the surname Esposito, of which we have the first written evidence in the archives of the Royal House of Naples [in what was then the Kingdom of Sicily] with a “Fabritio Esposito, age two years, cast off” at the Annunziata on 1 January 1623 at three-thirty AM. 
This surname was used for all the “abandoned” until 1814 when Joachim Murat, the French general, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and finally the King of mainland Sicily, eliminated the practice. The surname Esposito is still the most widespread in the region of Campania.
The surname Esposito, regarded as a stigma, could no longer be used: it was the duty of the civil authorities, therefore, who recorded the arrival of the children, having to invent a surname every day. 
The orphanage staff let themselves be inspired by everyday life: if the sun was shining, the orphans of that day would be called Splendente [Shining]; if someone knocked on the door at the time of the first abandonment of the day, the last name would be Tocco “Tapping”, and so on. 
The eminent sculptor and designer Vincenzo Gemito was placed in the wheel on 17 July, 1852 (the day after his birth), and was given the surname Genito (“that which is generated, a son”), which later, due to an error in transcription, became Gemito.
http://www.cognomix.it/paraphrased the above from an October 2013 article in il Mattino which says: “That name, ‘Esposito’, which tells the child’s origin, was considered a stigma, which made life impossible for people who grew up at the Annunziata.” 

Il Mattino adds: “The foundling wheel was created to accommodate only babies, but desperate mothers also left older children, sprinkling them with oil to allow them to fit into the mechanism. Too often, that passage caused fractures and internal injuries; so to prevent abandonment of older children, the space to lay the children was reduced from a hand’s-width to three quarters of a hand’s-width.”

THE RECORDS:  Throughout Europe, church records, dating in some towns from 1540, were kept of all baptisms, even those of foundlings.  Generally, church records didn’t even give any surname for a foundlings, just a ‘given name’ and the notation ‘parentibus ignoti’ as in ‘Phillipus parentibus ignoti’ (Filippo, unknown parents).  Such children went through life with only a first name and the handle ‘foundling’.   Often they simply adopted a nickname or descriptive surname to distinguish themselves from other ‘Filippo’s’.  
       From about 1809 – 1820, influenced by Napoleon’s ‘civil code’, civil birth records were instituted in northern Apennine duchies and principalities like Venice and Genoa and in the Kingdom of Sicily stretching from Abruzzo and Napoli on the mainland to Messina and Palermo on insular Sicily. From that time, not only were foundlings’ baptisms recorded at churches, but each child was civilly registered by the town’s ‘Uffiziale dello Stato Civile’, the Official of Civil Status, in the civil ‘Atti di Nascita’, or Records of Birth.  For ordinary births, such records gave the date; names and occupations of the parents; and the name of the child.  In the usual case, there was no other description of the child, besides its gender.
       Civil birth records for foundlings were different.  The ‘dichiarante’, or declarant (the person presenting the child, in ordinary cases its father) was identified by a title, which varied by town.  In many, as in Serradifalco, on the island of Sicily, the title was ‘ricevitrice dei proietti’, ‘receiver of castoffs’.  In other towns, like Sora on the mainland, it was ‘custode della ruota dei proietti’, or ‘keeper of the wheel of the castoffs’.  But the most poignant, to me, was the simple term used in the Sicilian village of Racalmuto, namely ‘ruotaia’: ‘wheel-lady’, or ‘lady of the wheel’.  In other towns variations such as ‘rotaia’ or ‘rotara’ were used, with the same meaning.
       Rather than simply giving the child’s gender, the civil registration document of a foundling usually stated where it was found: ‘nella ruota pubblica in questa comune’ ~ ‘in the public wheel of this town’; or if appropriate, on whatever street or doorstep it was found.  If the child had evident birthmarks (or none), that fact was noted, along with a description of the clothing or any ‘tokens’ found on the baby.  Some records stated that the midwife had arranged to initially feed the child and that it had then been consigned, according to law, to a ‘nutrice’, a wet-nurse; sometimes the name of the wet-nurse was given.  
       From the early 1800s until 1865, civil records were kept on pre-printed forms in a format originally specified by the Napoleonic Code. The extra information recorded for foundlings did not fit in the blanks, so often the written information did not fit the preprinted category.  The civil Register of Births frequently had a ‘Parte Seconda’ (Part 2) and the foundlings were registered in a section that was filed after the main portion (Part 1) of the register.  These Part 2 foundling records were completely handwritten.  In some towns, including Palermo and Catania, there was a complete separate register for foundling births.  The earliest civil records followed the church’s policy of simply giving foundlings first names, with the suffix ‘foundling’, later, they would give a concocted surname followed by ‘foundling’, as ‘Filippo Faccilorda, esposto’.  Civil records after 1865 gave only a made-up first name and surname, but the body of the record itself clearly indicated that the child was a foundling.
      In some locales and eras, the abandonment of children by their unwed mothers was essentially imposed by civil and church authorities.  Town priests and midwifes closely scrutinized young single women, and if they discovered a pregnancy, the expectant mother was ‘encouraged’ to give the child up, to avoid familial disgrace, and, more importantly to the church, to assure that the infant was baptized before it died.  Though the use of the wheel was nominally secret, many institutions required alms or payment by the mothers, so there was a ‘paper trail’ of evidence even though the general public was supposedly unaware of the particulars.  If a mother was unable to pay alms, often she was required to work for free in the institution as a wet-nurse.  
      Such activities could not long be kept secret from the community, and although the names of foundlings’ parents were not officially recorded, no doubt in small communities the true relationships were known.  In some cases, a mother would volunteer to take her own child to her home to wet-nurse, though ‘officially’ the infant’s parents were unknown.
     Unless an abandoned child’s parentage was officially established at some later date, most commonly by a rectification (specifically, a “legittimazione” or “legitimization) that was filed to give the names of one or both parents, or on the post-birth marriage record of its parents, the child was always officially referred to by its imposed name and as the child of unknown parents.  When such a child married, even though he and everyone in the community might have known who his parents were, if no official correction had been made, his marriage record would list his parents as ‘genitori ignoti’.
     Like those of all citizens, foundlings’ birth, marriage, or death records, or rectifications, are kept permanently in the Anagrafe or Registry Office of each town, with a copy in provincial or tribunal archives.  These records may be searched in person, or in many cases viewed on microfilm produced by the Mormon church, or on-line at genealogy sites.  Records of the disposition of abandoned children to wet-nurses or to foster homes may exist, but they are less easily uncovered and usually require on-site research at the towns, churches, or provinces involved.
    These original birth records often reflect the large proportion of foundling births in a town.  In Racalmuto, for example, in the year 1880, there were five hundred and twenty four legitimate births recorded, and eighty-three infants left in the wheel, a staggering fourteen percent of all births!   Other years, and other towns, show similar statistics.
NAMES:  Although their parents were at least ‘officially’ unknown, foundlings had to be given some kind of name, and this was done by the receiver of foundlings, or the priest baptizing the child, or the civil official registering the event.  On an ordinary birth or baptism record, usually only the given (‘first’) name of the baby was recorded, since its surname was the same as its father’s.  But with foundlings, the given and the surname were recorded.  Both, of course, were ‘made-up’, and in the earliest records, first names were recorded, followed by a word that was synonymous with ‘foundling’, as in Pietro proietto.  
‘Proietto’ meant ‘castoff’ or ‘thrown away’ in early Italian, and consideration of the word’s Latin origin sheds some light on the way foundlings were looked upon.  The origin of ‘proietto’ was the Latin ‘projectus’, and early church baptisms used ‘Projectus’ as a surname for foundlings.  One meaning of ‘projectus’ was ‘cast’ or ‘thrown’.  But Latin dictionaries give secondary meanings: ‘lowlife’; ‘miserable’; ‘deplorable’; ‘honorless’; ‘lamentable’; and many more similar meanings.Such was the view they had of these parentless infants.
 Other surnames clearly meaning ‘foundling’ include Trovato (found), Abbandonata(abandoned), or Esposto/Esposito (exposed).   In the  various duchies, principalities and other states on the mainland, at baptism, frequently a foundling was given a saint’s name or other made-up name as a first name, then a surname that was the Latin possessive form of the same name, for example GenesiusGenesi (Genesius, son of Genesius) or AmatusAmati(Amatus, son of Amatus).  Such ‘first’ or given names were then Italianized in the civil records, resulting in Genesio for Genesius; Amato for Amatus, etc.
       The descriptive ‘foundling surname’ eventually became the person’s official name.  When a foundling boy grew up, was married and had children, the children’s surnames would be the same as their father’s even though they themselves were not foundlings.  Many of these surnames exist to this day, with their bearers having no idea that somewhere in their ancestry there was a foundling child.
      Even the given names of foundlings were often unusual or fantastic, like Cleopatra or Romulo.  When surnames other than Proietto, etc. began to be used, they, too were unusual and often stigmatic, like Urbino (blind); lo Guasto (crippled); Milingiana (eggplant); and Vinagro (bitter wine).  A child with such a name was marked throughout his or her life as one with ‘genitori ignoti’ (unknown parents) and by inference, as a love child, although at least in theory, it wasn’t known whether or not the child was abandoned by a married woman who conceived it in wedlock.  Even children with less insulting surnames were thusly scorned.  Di Dio (of god); D’Angelo (of an angel); del Popolo (of the people); degli Uomini (of the men); di Giugno (born in June) and Gelsomino (jasmine) are all mild enough surnames, but in certain towns they were used exclusively for foundlings, and marked them just as surely as the cruder versions.Eventually, laws were passed prohibiting the stigmatic names, but in small towns, because the names were made up, they were invariably different than the surnames usually occurring there.  Coniglio is a perfectly valid Italian/Sicilian surname, but in a town of only 1,500 souls, where no one else had the surname Coniglio, any child with that name was obviously a foundling.   In some cases, a foundling was simply given the name of his village as a surname: thus, Giuseppe Vallelunga, Rosa Siragusa, etc.    However, it was more common to give foundlings the name of some other town, or a modification of a town name to indicate ‘from the town’, such as Barese, Palermitano, Tirminisi, etc.  This also marked the child as a ‘stranger’ or the child of a stranger.  Place names as surnames, I believe, were more common as foundling names than they were as places of origin. For a more detailed analysis of Sicilian town place-names as surnames, click HERE.
Typical Foundling Surnames and Towns in Which They Were Prevalent

SURNAMEMEANINGTOWN
AbbandonataabandonedSora (Frosinone)
Asinellolittle assMussomeli (Caltanissetta)
CagnazzibitchesSanteramo (Bari)
di Dio[child] of GodCastrogiovanni (now Enna, Enna)
San Piero Patti (Messina)
Valguarnera Caropepe (Enna)
Esposto,
EspositoexposedSerradifalco (Caltanissetta)
numerous others
Gelsominojasmine flowerMontemaggiore Belsito (Palermo)
Mussomeli
GiumentomareSan Cataldo (Caltanissetta)
Serradifalco
MilingianaeggplantSerradifalco
Miller[yes, Miller]Serradifalco
del Popolo[child] of the peopleCastiglione (Catania)
Montalbano di Elicona (Messina)
Linguaglossa (Catania)
Pampinellaleaflet, sprigAltavilla (Palermo)
Baucina (Palermo)
Santa Flavia (Palermo)
PortoghesePortugueseTrapani (Trapani)
ProiettocastoffRacalmuto (Agrigento)
SpaventofrightMussomeli
SpuriospuriousMussomeli
Trovatellolittle foundlingSant’Angelo Brolo (Messina)
TrovatofoundlingAcireale (Messina)
Alcamo (Trapani)
Valguarnera (Enna)
numerous others
TulipanotulipMussomeli
   Local customs for recording foundling births varied.   In some towns, the child was given only a first name and recorded as ‘Francesco Esposto’ or ‘Francesco Proietto’, while in others, they might be listed as ‘Francesco Gallino Proietto’.  In either case, in the annual indices following each year’s records, alphabetically listing births, the names were listed under ‘E’ for ‘Esposto’ or ‘P’ for ‘Proietto’.   Once the use of explicit foundling names like Esposto were forbidden, the infants were usually listed by their concocted surnames.  Regardless when searching the birth indices for the names of children suspected to be foundlings, it’s wise to check for different variations.  
THE FATE OF FOUNDLINGS:  Civil records were and are open to the public, in ‘registri’ or registers. Citizens could go to the town hall and ask to see them.  ‘Unknown’ parents of a foundling could therefore see what name had been given to their child (from the date and the description of tokens or clothing), and sometimes, to whom the baby had been consigned.  They might then reclaim the child, although recorded instances of this are few.  If a legally married couple reclaimed a child, they would then go to the civil authorities for registration of a ‘legittimazione’, a correction which would officially name them as parents, and legitimize the child’s birth.  Tales are also told of many a mother who claimed her child without revealing their relationship, being paid a stipend to wet-nurse her own child.       In the foundling homes, hospitals or asylums of large cities, many babies suffered horrific conditions.  Wet-nurses were often of lower classes and carried diseases passed on to the babies.  Children who survived to early childhood could be ‘farmed out’ as servants, field laborers, or worse.  This didn’t preclude the consignment of foundlings to foster-families that cared for them responsibly and raised them to adulthood.  Because of the nature of these arrangements, easily available public records are hard to come by.  At one point in Italy’s history, foundling homes became so crowded, and the total pay required for the wet-nurses of its inmates so high, that civil authorities hired ‘external wet-nurses’ to care for some infants away from the institutions.  They even sometimes acknowledged unwed mothers and paid them a sort of child support stipend, to nurse their own children.
This led to some bizarre situations.  In the years following the unification of Sicily with northern Apennine states (the ‘resorgimento’), vast church property was appropriated by the state, and church and state were at odds.  Marriages that took place solely in church were not recognized by the civil authorities, and in order for a union (and its offspring) to be legal, a couple was required to be married in a civil ceremony, usually at the town hall by a public official.  When the policy of civil stipends to unwed mothers was instituted, sometimes an expectant mother would marry in church, avoiding family disgrace, but would not take the civil vows.  This made her child illegitimate in the eyes of the state, entitling her to a stipend!
In small towns, the fate of foundlings may have been somewhat better than in large cities.  In smaller communities, they may not have been subjected to the crowding of orphanages, but instead were consigned to the individual families of the wet-nurses.  There, though they may have eventually been required to work in the fields or the family business, the same as the family’s natural children, they may also have found some measure of acceptance and normality.
LEGENDS:  A very common explanation many families were given about a foundling ancestor is a variation on the following theme: A young girl was working as a servant in the home of the local prince (or rich businessman, or priest).  She was impregnated by the man (or his son, etc.), who could or would not marry her, and she left the baby, of noble or upper-class blood, in the wheel.
      Some of those stories may carry a grain of truth; however, there is usually no way to corroborate them, and I believe the great majority were fiction, made up to assuage the shame of families with unwed daughters who had become pregnant.  Hopefully, today the world is less judgmental.
EXAMPLES:  There follow some links to images of original records dealing with foundlings from several Sicilian and Italian towns, in various years.  They’re presented here to show different approaches to the records, to shed some light on the lives of these children, and finally, to celebrate their existence.
The above material is a synopsis of information from my own research of Sicilian and Italian birth, marriage and death records, augmented by correspondence with genealogist Ann Tatangelo (angelresearch.wordpress.com), and by the description of foundling management in the book Sacrificed for Honor, by David I. Kertzer

From https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Italian_Infant_Abandonment
Italian Infant AbandonmentUnderstanding the history of the Italian infant abandonment system and its name-assignment practices may help you understand how some of your ancestors acquired their surnames and possibly help you find and identify ancestors in the records.
Also see Foundlings Article for more info at http://www.conigliofamily.com/Foundlings.htm

History
​From about the thirteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century, throughout the areas that in 1860 became unified Italy, a pregnant single woman, faced with the loss of her own and her family’s honor, would leave her residence to give birth elsewhere and after having the baby baptized, would give (or have the midwife give) the newborn baby to a foundling home (ospizio) to be cared for by others. For about a year after giving birth, the unwed mother, in order to pay for her own infant’s care, often served in the ospizio as a wet nurse for the children of others though almost never for her own child. (Kertzer, pp. 131-33, 162-63.) With few exceptions, she would have no contact with her child ever again.
Other new mothers anonymously abandoned their infants at the “wheel” (la ruota) located in the outside wall of the ospizio, sometimes leaving a sign of recognition (segno di riconoscimento), such as the image of a saint, a foreign coin, a torn piece of cloth, or other talisman, to preserve the mother’s ability, rarely exercised, of returning to reclaim the child, sometimes a year later or even many years later.
Meanwhile, the foundling homes attempted to place the babies with lactating women in foster families, typically in the countryside, though some of the children remained in an ospizio for up to five or ten years or even longer and in some cases for their entire lives. (Kertzer, pp. 85-6, 116.) Naples was an exception; due to lack of funding to pay external wet nurses, the foundling home there attempted to care for the bulk of its abandoned babies within the foundling home itself, without placement with outside wet nurses. (Kertzer & White, 1994, p. 454.) Large percentages of the abandoned infants did not survive infancy. Those who did survive entered a new life in a new place with a new family.
This system — which began in the areas that later became Italy and which spread to France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Poland, and most of the Austrian provinces (Kertzer, p. 10) — was finally abandoned in Italy and elsewhere by about the beginning of the twentieth century. Some aspects of the system have re-emerged today in the “safe-haven laws” enacted recently in all 50 states and the District of Columbia within the United States (Guttmacher, p. 1) and in such other countries as Germany, Hungary, the Philippines, Slovakia, South Africa, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, India, Italy, and Pakistan, all of which strictly govern but to varying degrees permit some form of abandonment of newborns, all with the aim to help stem infanticide and make abortion rare. (Mueller & Scherr, p. 2.)
As conducted in Italy for about seven centuries, with varying degrees of success, the infant abandonment system was prompted by “great concern for the lives of women who found themselves in the desperate position of being pregnant and unmarried, with no one to care for their child.” (Kertzer, p. 37.)
Name-Assignment PracticesThe Italian infant-abandonment system generally but not always included the assignment of a surname to the infant upon arrival at the ospizio. Thus while in the ospizio and later when placed with a family in the countryside, the child bore a surname different from its unknown family of origin and different from the family with which it was placed. (Kertzer, pp. 119-22.) “Until the nineteenth century, foundlings in many areas were baptized with first names only and were not given a last name.” (Kertzer, p. 119.)
But generally, upon arrival at the ospizio shortly after baptism, a new surname was assigned. And once the infant or child was placed with a wet nurse in the countryside, it would be assigned a surname used locally for foundlings (such as Della Casa or Casagrande or Esposito, as shown by a few examples in the table below). For the most part the new surname was used by the child throughout the remainder of its life, though often at the time of marriage or with the births of children to that marriage, the once-abandoned child, even a male child, might assume the surname of a spouse, passing that surname on to the children of the couple.
Samples of Surnames Assigned to Abandoned Infants
 Latin or ItalianMeaning in English
 Della Casagrande“Of the Ospizio” (of the Hospital or Hospice) 
De Domo Magna “Of the Ospizio” (of the Hospital or Hospice)
Innocenti                                       “Innocent One”
Della ScalaName assigned by foundling home in Sienna
ProjettiName assigned by foundling home in Rome
Esposito “Abandoned”
Degli Esposti “Abandoned”
Ospizio Foundling Home
Incogniti “Unknown”
Circoncisi “Circumcised”
PalmaSurname given to child born or abandoned on Palm SundayThus, for example, if an abandoned child named Giuseppe were to have come from the ospizio to a local wet nurse to be taken in by a local family, the child might be raised with the “Casagrande” surname and, upon marriage to a woman maiden surnamed “Risso,” might thereafter in the records of births of their children be referred to as “Giuseppe Risso Casagrande” or “Giuseppe Risso della Casa Grande” or “Giuseppe Risso di Casa,” or the like. Sometimes the surnames assigned in the ospizi were used by the child throughout its life, with no new assignment in the residence location of the adopting family.
Such names were usually unique. In the Florence ospizio, sometimes an elaborate form of the first name was used for the new surname, such as by pluralizing the first name (Amato Amati, Barbera Barberi) or by abbreviating the first name (Serafino Serafi, Anselmo Selmi). In Milan, from 1475 to 1825, every foundling was given the surname Colombo (“pigeon”), still the second most common surname in Milan and the fifth most common surname in all of Italy. Because of the stigma often formerly attached to children of illegitimate birth, and the manner in which that stigma often was perpetuated by the assignment of surnames that signaled the child’s early history of abandonment, efforts sometimes were made to assign surnames that hid that history.
For example, in 1862 in Bologna, wet nurses were ordered to register the births of foundlings and provide them with both first and last names, but it was suggested that surnames be derived from words descriptive of things within one of the three kingdoms of nature (minerals, vegetables, and animals), such as Gessi (gypsum), Sassi (stones), Pietra (rock), Monti (mountains), Foblia (leaf), Rosa (rose), Garofonio (carnation), Colombi (pigeons), Leoni (lions). This practice spread through much of the northern part of Italy.
Parenthetically, the suname “Casagrande,” mentioned in a few examples above, means literally “large house” and is an apt description of the massive Ospedale di Pammatone in Genoa (1766-1942), a location where ever enlarging hospital structures were established between about 1422 and 1942 when the Pammatone was destroyed during the Second World War. It is where, for one example of thousands upon thousands, in about 1761 or 1762 a man named Francesco della Casa Grande was abandoned at the ruota of the ospedale and cared for as an abandoned infant before being placed in the municipality of Lumarzo, 27 km (17 mi.) to the east by north east of Genoa, where he would live until 1849 when he died there at 87 years of age. (Sign in and see his Lumarzo death certificate at https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-26956-14185-2.) Numerous images of the hospital, including paintings and photographs, both before and after its destruction, can easily be found by performing an image search on the Internet.
* Note that the following surnames, identified as ones given to abandoned infants, are discussed in Ettore Rossoni’s “L’Origine dei Cognomi Italiani: Storia ed Etimologia” [“The Origin of Italian Surnames: History and Etymology”] (Melegnano, 2014; 3,379 pages; available at https://archive.org/details/OrigineEStoriaDeiCognomiItaliani), and that source should be consulted for further details:
Abbandonati, Abbandonato, Abbisogni, Abbisogno, Alfeni, Allevato, Alunni, Alunno, Angiolilli, Angiolillo, Aprile•, Aprili•, Ardimenti, Ardimento, Ardimentoso, Attivissimo, Auxilia, Bellavia, Bellinvia, Boccafusca, Bompadre, Bompede, Bonafiglia, Bonasorte, Bonasorti, Boncordi, Boncordo, Boncore, Bonerba, Bonocore, Bonpadre, Bonpede, Buccafusca, Buccafuschi, Buccafusco, Buocore, Buompede, Buonafiglia, Buonasorte, Buoncuore, Buonerba, Buonocore, Buonpadre, Buonpede, Cancelli, Cancellini, Cancellino, Cancello, Canciello, D’Aprile•, Dal Pio Luogo, Dal Pio, De Munda, De Mondi, De Chiara, De Vivo, De Vivi, De Nichilo, De Mundo, Degli Innocenti, Degli Esposti, Degliesposti, Del Pio Luogo, Del Pio, Del Mondo, Del Deo, Del Signore, Del Popolo, Della Ventura, Delpopolo, Demundo, Deserti, Devivi, Devivo, Di Monda, Di Mundo, Didio, Dimonda, Dimondo, Dimundo, Espositi, Esposito, Esposti, Esposto, Febbraio•, Febbraro•, Giubilei, Giubileo, Iddiolosa, Iddiolosà, Incristi, Infante, Infanti, Infantini, Infantino, Iuorno, La Loggia, Lettera, Lo Bascio, Lobascio, Lodeserto, Loggia, Lombini, Lombino, Luggesi, Luggisi, Lunalbi, Malvestio, Malvestiti, Malvestito, Mellucci, Melluccio, Melucci, Meluccio, Mirsi, Misericordia, Monasteri, Monastero, Nichil, Nichilo, Nihil, Orfanelli, Orfanelli, Orfanini, Orfanini, Paradisi, Paradiso, Pensato, Pentecoste, Perchiacca, Portento, Posati, Posato, Poveri, Poverini, Poverino, Provvidenza, Puttin, Puttini, Radif, Ravveduto, Sacro Cuore, Sacro, Salesiani, Santececca, Settembre•, Trova, Trovatelli, Trovatello, Trovati, Trovato, Ulivini, Viavattene, Zambaglione, Zoccola, Zoccoli, Zoccolo.
• Because Mr. Rossoni identifies Aprile, Aprili, D’Aprile, Febbraio, Febbraro, and Settembre (April, February, and September) as surnames for abandoned infants derived from the names of the months in which the infants were abandoned, it may well be that the names of other months were similarly used.

On occasion, a person who was abandoned as a child might learn who one or both of his or her birth parents were, for example, when registering for the military or when marrying. Sometimes the records of the ospizio were coordinated with the birth or baptism record. The above two images show the birth and abandonment records of a baby boy named by the midwife and the priest as “Merico Scherzi”; the certificate of abandonment is interleaved in the volume of records of births facing the page on which the birth is recorded. In this case, in 1902, at a time when the system was virtually ended, the surname was given to the child at the time of baptism, without the mother or father being identified, with the birth occurring on 23 Apr 1902, the baptism occurring on 24 Apr 1902, and the abandonment occurring on 25 Apr 1902, in Chiavari, 12.6 km (13.4 miles) away from Orero.
Tracing An Abandoned Infant’s AncestryThis discussion is comprised of two parts: (1) What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is not found in the records of the town of post-birth residence; and (2) What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is found (which most often is not the town of post-birth residence).
1. What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is not found in the records of the town of post-birth residence
As you trace ancestral lines back into earlier times, you might locate records of vital events in an ancestor’s later life (records of his or her own confirmation, marriage, death and burial). Additionally, you might also locate records of vital events of other persons whose records mention your ancestor’s service as a sponsor (godparent) or his or her service as a witness to the other person’s birth, baptism, death or burial. Yet, as you attempt to locate your ancestor’s birth record, you do not find it. What do you do?
Normally, in such a circumstance you should do as you probably should always do in researching an ancestor, namely, try to find all records that pertain to him or her, especially the record of death. In many cases, the earliest record mentioning an ancestor newly arrived in a town may well mention the ancestor’s place of origin. However, in the case of an abandoned infant, this usually will not be the case. In most all cases of abandoned infants, if the placed child lived the remainder of his or her life in the town whose records you are researching, it may well be that only the ancestor’s death record will mention his place of birth. Hence, for abandoned infants who live to adulthood, the death record is of preeminent importance, for it often will be the only record to mention his place of birth and thus not only may mention that he or she was born of a “padre ignoto” (unknown father) and “madre ignota” (unknown mother) but also may mention the city or town of birth.
Of course, if he or she was born in a large city, that may well constitute the end of conventional page-by-page or volume-by-volume research in registers of births and baptisms concerning that abandoned infant. Learning from his or her death record that the birth occurred in a large city may eventually lead you only to analysis of indexes that may have been or have yet to be prepared for births and baptisms. But page-by-page research in all of the parishes of a large city may not yet be feasible (at least not until the records are indexed).
An example here may be instructive. In the hamlet of Tasso in the community of Lumarzo to the east by northeast of Genova in the northern Italian province of Liguria, there lived a man named Lorenzo Casagrande. His wife was named Anastasia Casagrande, a name she received after having been abandoned and then adopted. (Remember that Italian women often retained and used their maiden surnames throughout their lives, as they often still do today; “Casagrande” happened to be her surname even prior to their marriage — a Casagrande married a Casagrande.) Anastasia’s 1891 death record (Registro degli Atti di Morte, Comune di Lumarzo, Provincia di Genova, Anno 1891, Parte I, Atto No. 56) states that on 18 Nov 1891 “in Lumarzo . . . , è morta Casagrande Anastasia di anni cinquantasei, massaia, residente in Lumarzo, nata in Genova, da padre ignoto, domiciliato in ____, e da madre ignota, domiciliata in ____” (“in Lumarzo . . . Casagrande Anastasia died, of fifty-six years of age, housewife, resident of Lumarzo, born in Genoa, father unknown, domiciled in ____, and mother unknown, domiciled in ____”). Her birth and baptism record, of course, does not appear in the records of the community of Lumarzo (she was born in the City of Genoa, 27 km / 17 mi distant). Her record of birth and baptism, presumably recorded somewhere in Genoa in about 1834 or 1835, possibly but not necessarily will mention her given name as “Anastasia” and her surname as “Casagrande.” However, you may or may not be able easily to find her record of birth and baptism in Genoa. Were you to look for the record in a parish-by-parish search, you would look for a birth record that would not mention parents’ names, of course (though that alone should pose no obstacle and in fact may be quite helpful). But because Genova city has more than sixty parish churches, you might not be able to search the records conveniently, or at all, and you might simply have to await the possibility that someday potential future indexing of such records might yield a result for you.
However, other resources for your research may still be available to you (and they are mentioned in part 2 below).
2. What to do when an ancestor’s birth or baptism record is found (which most often is not found in the records of the town of post-birth residence)
When you do find the birth or baptism record of an ancestor who had been abandoned at birth (which most often is found not in the town of post-birth residence but elsewhere), you still are faced with the task, if you choose, of attempting to trace the abandoned child’s ancestry. Although the post-1865 records of births of abandoned children usually are recorded in Parte II of the birth register for the year in which the birth occurred (as is the record of birth of Merico Scherzi shown above), usually the birth record of an abandoned child did not mention the name of either parent. If, however, the parents later acknowledged the child, a record of the acknowledgement might possibly be found in the Atti Diversi (Miscellaneous Acts).
Similarly, both before and after unification (e.g., from the earliest to the latest times that records were kept in the town or city where you are conducting your research), you might still be able to learn the parentage of an abandoned child from other extant records. For example, when a young man would register for military service or exemption therefrom (at 21 years of age), the entry for him in the Lista di Leva (available at the Archivio di Stato for the province where the town of birth is located) might possibly reveal his parentage.
Similarly, other records should be consulted, such as notarial records (notarii), and tax assessment and census records (catasti or estimi catastali). As to the notarial records, be cautious not to interpret the title “bastardelli notarili” (illegitimate notary records) to refer to records pertaining to illegitimate children. Such records merely constitute a chronological list of the atti (acts) prepared by a notary as a sort of index or set of abstracts he kept of his own work for his own reference, considered and titled “illegitimate” only because they did not constitute legal documents themselves.
References

• David I. Kertzer and Michael J. White, “Cheating the Angel-Makers: Surviving Infant Abandonment in Nineteenth-Century Italy.” Continuity and Change, 9(03): 451-480. (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 10.1017/S0268416000002423).
• David I. Kertzer, Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
• David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli. eds., Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500-1789: The History of the European Family, Volume 1 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001).
• Guttmacher Institute, “State Policies in Brief—Infant Abandonment” (as of September 1, 2012).
• Joanne Mueller and Lorraine Sherr, “Abandoned babies and absent policies.” Health Policy (2009), doi:10.1016/j.healthpol.2009.06.002.
• Ettore Rossoni’s “L’Origine dei Cognomi Italiani: Storia ed Etimologia” [The Origin of Italian Surnames: History and Etymology”] (Melegnano, 2014; 3,379 pages; available at https://archive.org/details/OrigineEStoriaDeiCognomiItaliani)

External Links

• inchiostronline – Interior of a wheel (Webpage in Italian); or here for a rough English translation.
• http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Borgo_-_santo_Spirito_in_Sassia_-_la_ruota_1639.JPG (exterior of a wheel)
• See also https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vx77k, a “Who Do You Think You Are?” episode about Tina Arena’s ancestry (which shows at 20:24 through 26:58 how Ms. Arena’s great-great-grandmother, Carmella, took in foundlings). (Produced by SBS Australia, Serendipity Productions, and Artemis International, © 2010, season 3, episode 3, [1])

Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella written by Cosmo Magliozzi

​I went to visit my mother today to give her some information about the Ciano family tree. My mother’s mother (my maternal grandmother) is a Ciano. While I was there listening to her stories about the history of her family, she started to tell me about her father’s side as well. Her father was a Magliozzi. Specifially, she was helping me name her father’s siblings, and then game me the names of her great uncles (her Magliozzi grandfather’s brothers).
She then told me a story about this particular uncle named Cosmo Magliozzi.
Cosmo Magliozzi lived with his wife Rosina (maiden name unknown…it may have been Patalano). They had no children of their own.
However, as a young child, my mother would take walks with her family and they would come across the home of Cosmo and Rosina. Cosmo loved children and would entertain them and some them kindness. My mother so enjoyed the company of Cosmo when her family would walk past his home.
She was young and did not even know that Cosmo was her great uncle (brother to her grandfather).
Years later she would travel back to Italy and visit with her brother that would tell her stories of the family. Her brother was also named Cosmo Magliozzi (likely a named passed down the family line, and possibly naming him for his great uncle).
Her brother would tell her about their great uncle Cosmo, and continued to describe where he lived, his wife and their friendliness to the local children. That is when my mother learned that “old Cosmo” was actually her great uncle Cosmo Magliozzi. She was pleasantly surprised.
The surprise did not end there.
Her brother went on to tell her that their great uncle Cosmo Magliozzi was the writer/composer of the song: Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella
My mother was shocked. This was one of her most beloved religious songs and to find out it was written not only by her great uncle, but to have it discovered it was a man she adored. Today she showed me a prayer book with the hymn written inside, among many other prayers and songs.
Sadly, as a religious hymn, my great great uncle Cosmo Magliozzi was not credited in the book. I decided to try to locate the origin of the song online, and I was unable to find any information. It was just something that was known in the family, and has been passed down through the generations.
Below are the lyrics of Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella written by the late Cosmo Magliozzi as well as youtube video of various artists performing their interpretations of the song.
If anyone reading this can help me locate a credit to Cosmo, provide me a photo of Cosmo, or a photo of his grave so I can learn more about my artist composer relative, I would be very grateful.
Dell’aurora tu sorgi più bella
Dell’aurora tu sorgi piu bella
coi tuoi raggi a far lieta la terra
e fra gli astri che il cielo rinserra
non v’e stella come te.
Gli occhi tuoi son piu fondi del mare
la tua fronte ha il profumo del giglio
il tuo viso ricorda tuo figlio
suoi tuoi passi nascon fiori.
RIT. Bella tu sei qual sole
bianca piu della luna
e le stelle piu belle
non son belle come te.
Ti coronano tutte le stelle
al tuo canto rispondera il vento
della luna si curva l’argento
si rivolge verso te.
Quando tutto d’intorno rovina e la…

Stemma Di Chinappi

Information provided by Maurizio Chinappi of Rome Italy

Submitted Nov 18 2018 on a Facebook group
This is the Coat of Arms of the Chinappi issued by the Araldica Guelfi in Genova which is considered a very trustworthy Heraldry Research Archive.

The Chinappi’s originate from Lazio Region, hence Gaeta..
The crown indicates they were Nobles.
The Helm that they were Military and the Red Band that they took part in many Campaigns with bloodshed.
The 2 Wine Goblets represent their good wealth as wine was reserved to the high class Nobles.
At the time of issue I only asked for 3 generations back and that’s why it’s only indicated Maurizio (me) Giuseppe (my father) and Angelo (my grandfather)

If you have a different Coat of Arms for Chinappi, please comment below or submit your information to The Chinappi Family Tree

There was a Chinappi named Cosmo-Tommaso. He lived in Gaeta.
He was the son of Marciano Chinappi and Amilia Di Tucci.

Many of his friends called him “Paparome”. Loosely translated it refers to the “Pope In Rome.”
His nickname came about because of the legend that he descended from a family line, that was related to a Pope of the Catholic Church.
Which Pope? No one knows. It was a legend that people tended to believe.
One day, a stranger came into the village of Gaeta. Cosmo-Tommaso was speaking to him, and the stranger asked for someone to vouche for Cosmo-Tommaso so the stranger could know that Tommaso was trust-worthy.
One of Tommaso’s long time friends was near by and he volunteered to vouche for Cosmo-Tommaso.
The friend said, I have known Cosmo-Tommaso Paparome all of my life! We have been friends for almost 20 yrs!
At that moment, Cosmo-Tommaso said to his friend: “Paparome?! My name is CHINAPPI!”
The friend was shocked. “Chinappi? I always thought your name was Paparome!
NO! said Cosmo-Tommaso. It’s always been Chinappi, everyone just calls me that.

This is a story about my grandfather “Paparome”
It was passed down to my parents who shared it with me.
But it did get me thinking.
Growing up, I had heard the legend as well that there was a Chinappi that had become a Pope, or that there was a Pope related to a Chinappi in some way.
I decided to see what I could find online, and figuring that in Chinappi genealogy, all roads lead to Gaeta, I figured I would look for Popes that had roots in Gaeta.
I found one:
Pope Gelasius II

Papacy began 24 January 1118
Papacy ended 29 January 1119
Personal details
Birth name Giovanni Caetani
Born 1060–64 Gaeta, Principality of Capua
Died 29 January 1119 Cluny, Duchy of Burgundy, Kingdom of France

Acting Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church (1088)
Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (1088–1118)
Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church (1089–1118)



Pope Gelasius II (c. 1060/1064 – 29 January 1119), born Giovanni Caetani or Giovanni da Gaeta (also called Coniulo), [1] was Pope from 24 January 1118 to his death in 1119. A monk of Monte Cassino and chancellor of Pope Paschal II, Caetani was unanimously elected to succeed him. In doing so he also succeeded to the conflicts with Emperor Henry V over investiture. Gelasius spent a good part of his brief papacy in exile.
He was born between 1060 and 1064 at Gaeta into the Pisan branch of the Caetani family, and became a monk of Monte Cassino. Pope Urban II, who wished to improve the style of papal documents, brought him to Rome and made Caetani a papal subdeacon (August 1088) and cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (probably on 23 September 1088). As chancellor of the Holy Roman Church from 1089 to 1118, he drastically reformed the papal administration, establishing a permanent staff of clerks for the papacy, overcoming the previous custom of relying on Roman notaries to write papal documents, and introducing the minuscule curial script. His tenure also established the precedent of the papal chancellor always being a cardinal and holding the office for life or until elected pope.
Shortly after his unanimous election to succeed Pope Paschal II in 1118, he was seized by Cencio II Frangipane, a partisan of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, but was freed by a general uprising of the Romans on his behalf.[2]
Henry V sought to enforce the privilege of investiture conceded (and later revoked in 1112) by the papacy, under duress, by Paschal II. He drove Gelasius II from Rome in March 1118, pronounced his election null and void, and set up Maurice Bourdin, Archbishop of Braga, as antipope under the name of Gregory VIII.

source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gelasius_II
Have you heard the Chinappi Pope stories as well?
Do you have a different Pope that it might be?
Ask your grandparents and share your story here.

At the moment, the longest living Chinappi we have on record is
Giuseppina Chinappi
who died at 103 years old and 6 months.
Giuseppenina Chinappi was born in Gaeta, Latina, Italy on
MARCH 19 1895

She is the daughter of
Marciano chinappi (abt. 1875 -1921)
and
Anna Di Tucci ( ? -abt.1898)
She married
Antonio Vaudo ( ? – abt. 1914)
had one child and was then widowed
She then married
Francesco Mitrano (1898-1995)
and had 5 more children
She died SEPT 29 1998 still in Gaeta.
She is in the family tree,
but we are missing photos of most of her children
and have not updated the descendents of her children.

If you are a descendent of Giuseppenina
contact us with updated and photos
for The Chinappi Family Tree
Do you know a Chinappi that lived longer
than 103 years and 6 months?
Contact us and let us know.