Catania, Sicilia.

[HughTornabene]

In Catania is an old church:
Chiesa di Santa Maria di Gesù.
This church has two chapels, one of them is the Tornabene Chapel.
The other is the Paterno Castello chapel, and the two families intermarried long ago.
There just HAS to be some writing on the walls of the Tornabene chapel concerning my relatives.
I wonder if anyone reading this message lives near there, has a camera, half a day to play and could assist me.
There is a Palazzo Tornabene in the city also which has some historic associations, but that would be a secondary target.
Naturally, if anyone has any evidence that Francesco Tornabene, born around 1700, moved from Catania to Palermo, maybe via Messina, like a piece of lost luggage, or an old transportation ticket or whatever, that I would really love to hear about.
The old name spelling does not have to be exact.
Hugh

[JamesBianco]

Hugh... have you worked with the Palermo church records. I realize there are a ton of early parishes to sort through, but if you could find his (Francesco's) marriage in the church, his place of nativity would be so noted (even as early as the 1500s). This could be a great way to prove his origin.. and as you are well aware, Palermo church records exist still back into the 1400s.

[HughTornabene]

Thank you James for the advice.

Those are the tracks I am on.

I just plunked down another $55 for another 10 films.

I am not doing all 1,500 though

Hugh

[Michael31]

http://www.diocesi.catania.it/chiese/?q=node/127
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_di_ ... _(Catania)
http://www.ofmsicilia.it/vita%20parrocc ... atania.htm

S. Maria di Gesù
P.zza S. Maria di Gesù, 1
95123 Catania
tel. 095 438446
email: smg.catania@ofmsicilia.it


www.paginebianche.it
cognome: Tornabene dove: 95123


Tornabene Concetta
95124 Catania (CT) -
Via Solferino, 26
tel:095 7313573


Tornabene Agatino
95122 Catania (CT) -
Corso Dei Mille, 52
tel:095 204780

[HughTornabene]

Great Leads Michael, thank you.

I will do some telephoning.

Hugh

[PeterTimber]

Dear Hugh I was leafing thru my catalogues and came across a book written by Francesco Tornabene (Catania 1887) The Latin Title appears to relate to horticulture. "Flora sicula viva etexsiccata seu collectio plantarum in Sicilia" 92 Euro.

This is merely information and does not relate to your instant inquiry concerning the church chapels in Catania. =Peter=

[HughTornabene]

Thank you Peter.

He actually just might relate to the inquiry.

I think that this is the Priest Francesco Tornabene (about 1813-1897) who was a Benedictine friar and founded the Botanical Gardens in Catania. To whom I would just love to be related.

He is just the kind of man that could be buried or memorialised at that Chapel.

Hugh

[HughTornabene]

For today though, I am back in harness caressing the Palermo Births database.

The 4 books of the Index I am using, although almost a century old, are in such fine shape when compared with the Marriages database books which were published only about 10 years before them.

I have fixed the AI programming glitch that ate the ends off of any mother's surname that ended in di, thus generating hundreds of sawn off mother names.
I have also applied another subroutine that carefully splits each date into three separate columns. Better for sorting.

Probably most interesting and challenging though is messing with the Year and Volume columns.
By sorting the presently finished database it can be discovered that the original Volumes, from which the four volume Index Books are drawn, numbered 173 volumes, numbered from #341 to #513. Each of those volumes held records numbered upto maybe 5,000 in some cases.
Each book was specific to a particular district, though in some cases there were two or three named towns, like Pallavicino Resuttana and Tommaso Natale in separate sections of one book, like volume 367 in 1897.

This means, from a programmers point of view, that there is redundant information. If I know the volume number and the town name, then from the table I have constructed I can derive the year, with high likelyhood.
So this leads to the exotic possibility of correcting the year OCR errors in the database using the AI program. Basically if I can do it, I can teach my program to do it.
This kind of exercise is what makes this task I am doing interesting to me.

I haven't done it yet. It is just a matter of time though.

I will wait till I am out of polishing-up ideas, then apply them all at the same time since I need to do a whole production run to put them into effect.

Thank you, especially if you got this far.

Hugh

While writing this, I kept wondering about the individual birth record numbering. There seemed to be many numbers that were used several times. Maybe OCR errors, I will find out. Certainly in any original record book the numbers are chronological, by section. All of which information became hidden, when the names were listed alphabetically in the index.

[HughTornabene]

That Inscription on the floor in the chapel is so comforting to me.
It makes information drawn from documents real.
Angelo, who established the Sepulcher, is the GGGGfather of Ludovico, who refurbished it after the earthquake.
What is new for me is the date 1551, a year during the life of Angelo.

[nazca]

Hi Great Hugh,
i tried to call some friends in Catania but they are in vacations. I would to say them to take picture of your's relative chapel in S.Maria di Gesù: this is what you need?
thank you for you great job conceirng palermo birth and marriage index.
god bless you.

Vincenzo

[HughTornabene]

Thank you Vincenzo,
Another correspondent friend of mine, who lives in Catania, took the photo for me just a couple of days ago. So I have it now.
I posted it on this site yesterday, I don't see it though, so I will try again right now.
That is how I know those names that I mention.
Hugh

[HughTornabene]

The marble inscription on the floor of the chapel of Santa Maria di Gesu, Catania.