Category: Local history

The women who shaped our villages. In 19th-century Tuscany, it was almost always the woman who moved. When she married, she left her birth village behind and started a new life in her husband’s community; sometimes just a few valleys away, sometimes much further. This tradition, known as patrilocal marriage, was common throughout rural Italy, and…

If you’re researching your Italian family history, you’ve probably encountered mysterious gaps in records, sudden family relocations, or stories passed down about sickness and loss. The 1855 cholera epidemic that devastated the small village of Benabbio in Bagni di Lucca offers a powerful example of how disease could reshape entire communities—and family trees—in just a…