Sometimes family-tree research produces a name, sometimes a date, sometimes a document. And every now and then it produces something considerably more entertaining.
In this case: wine.
I have spent quite a lot of time recently going back through old emails, old family-tree projects, documents that I collected years ago and then effectively forgot about, photographs, civil records and bits and pieces of information scattered across different places.
At the same time, I have been asking ChatGPT to dig through all of this material with me: compare names, look for connections, search historical sources, read old records, identify places, follow collateral relatives and, importantly, keep separating what is actually supported by evidence from what is merely possible.
The result is that my Italian family tree is beginning to look substantially different from the rather sparse version I had only a short time ago.
The Ravera Branch
My maternal grandmother was Alba Giovanna Luigia Severina Ravera.
She was Italian, and the Ravera family is therefore one of the branches I particularly want to push backwards. There is still a great deal I do not know about it.
I currently have her father, Lorenzo Ravera, and before him Luigi Ravera and Teresa. But those earlier generations are still very thinly documented in my database. Names exist. Some relationships exist. What I increasingly want now is the evidence behind them.
I am no longer interested merely in adding people to the tree. I want to know why I believe a person belongs there. A birth should have a source. A marriage should have a record. A handwritten document should have a transcription. A doubtful surname should remain doubtful until something better proves it.
Interestingly, while the difficult direction is backwards, following the Ravera family forwards produced a rather unexpected connection.
Apparently We Have Wine in the Family
Alba had a brother, Fiorino Ravera.
Fiorino married Pietrina Merlano, and their daughter Rossana Ravera married Armando Montobbio.
And this is where the family tree suddenly becomes considerably more enjoyable.
Armando Montobbio is an Italian oenologist and wine producer.
He and his twin brother, Aurelio, became professionally involved in the family wine business around Castelletto d'Orba in Piedmont, continuing an existing Montobbio family tradition in wine production.
We all like wine, for sure.
So I am particularly happy to discover that somewhere in the extended family tree we apparently have a few wine veins. :-)
Lorenzo Ravera
↳ Alba Ravera — my grandmother
↳ Fiorino Ravera
↳ Rossana Ravera
× Armando Montobbio
↳ Monica Montobbio
↳ Michela Montobbio
That alone would already make the research worthwhile, but I am actually much more interested in what lies behind Alba.
Who were Luigi Ravera's parents? Where exactly did the family come from? How long had the Raveras lived around Silvano d'Orba and Novi Ligure? What did they do? Where are they buried? Are there photographs? Are there other branches still living in the area?
These are now active questions.
And I have also begun contacting living relatives. That is a different kind of genealogy. An archive can give me a date. A living relative may be able to tell me who the person actually was.
Names and Dates Are Not Enough
One thing I am increasingly conscious of is that genealogy becomes much more interesting when it stops being simply a diagram.
I want photographs.
I want to know where people lived.
I want occupations, houses, streets, churches, cemeteries, nicknames, stories and family memories. I want to know whether somebody was a farmer, a railway worker, a merchant, a soldier, an emigrant or, as it turns out, a winemaker.
This is also changing the way I use MacFamilyTree 11.
I am improving the structure as I go along. Sources are becoming more detailed. Original documents are being attached to the people and events they support. Transcriptions and translations are being preserved. Research questions are being kept separate from established facts.
Learning and learning.
And I am having a lot of fun with this endeavour.
Then the Dotta Side Produced Another Surprise
The other half of this Italian story comes from my maternal grandfather, Giacomo Giovanni Battista Dotta.
Giacomo died far too young, in 1974.
Perhaps because of that, reconstructing his family has a particular significance for me. There are things I can no longer ask him, so the documents have to do part of the talking instead.
And recently those documents began talking about somewhere I was absolutely not expecting: Argentina.
Two of Giacomo's older sisters were born in Buenos Aires.
Angela Albina Dotta was born there in 1905. Another sister, Maria Dotta, appears to have been born there around 1909.
Giacomo himself was subsequently born in Cairo Montenotte, Italy, in 1915.
That distinction is important.
My first instinct when seeing the Argentine connection was to imagine that Giacomo had gone to Argentina and later returned to Italy. The chronology says otherwise.
It was the previous generation that had apparently gone to Argentina. By the time Giacomo was born, the family was back in Italy.
Gottasecca / northern Italy
↓
Argentina — at least part of the family living in Buenos Aires
↓
Return to Italy before 1915
↓
Giacomo Giovanni Battista Dotta born in Cairo Montenotte
Why Argentina?
This now creates an entirely new set of questions.
Why did the family leave Italy?
When exactly did they arrive in Argentina?
Did Lorenzo Dotta and Maria Teresa Pochettino travel there alone, or were other relatives already there?
Were there larger migration networks connecting families from the small communities around Gottasecca with Buenos Aires?
Why did they return?
And perhaps the most interesting question of all: did everybody return?
Recent research is beginning to expose names from other families — Maggi, Pera and others — appearing on both sides of the Atlantic, sometimes associated with places very close to Gottasecca. There are also old Argentine records in which Dotta names appear as witnesses or godparents.
That is fascinating, but this is precisely where I need to be disciplined.
A matching surname is not a family connection. A nearby village is not proof of kinship. A godparent may be important, but the relationship still has to be demonstrated.
So for the moment some of these people remain research leads rather than relatives.
The Dotta Tree Is Expanding Quickly
The chart above is already much richer than the one I had only recently.
It now includes Giacomo's sisters, their marriages and descendants, and additional generations behind Giacomo that I am working to verify through original records.
It also exposes something I increasingly appreciate about genealogy: collateral branches are not a distraction from the direct family line.
They are often the way you solve it.
A sister's marriage record can identify her parents. A brother-in-law's death certificate can expose another migration route. A godparent can reveal an older family association. A witness can turn out to be a cousin.
The family tree is not a straight line backwards.
It is a network.
And There Are People Helping Me
Another very pleasant part of this work has been discovering how willing some people are to help.
Local researchers in Italy have been looking at records, identifying places and pointing me towards archives that I would probably never have found on my own.
Archivists and volunteers have responded to emails and are checking parish and historical registers. Living members of collateral branches are being contacted.
And sometimes somebody sends me a message saying, essentially:
Then another record appears.
And the tree moves another step.
Two Italian Branches, Going in Opposite Directions
So this is where the Italian research stands tonight.
On my grandmother's Ravera side, I am trying to move backwards from Alba and identify the generations that came before her.
At the same time, following one Ravera branch forwards unexpectedly brought me into a living Italian winemaking family.
On my grandfather's Dotta side, the investigation is moving backwards through Liguria and Piedmont while simultaneously opening another geographical direction altogether: Argentina.
The more I investigate, the less local this apparently small Italian family becomes.
And I suspect there are considerably more surprises waiting in the records.
For now, however, I think discovering a winemaker in the extended family is an entirely acceptable reason to stop researching for the evening.
There are some genealogical discoveries that really should be properly celebrated.
Preferably with a glass of wine.
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