Book Review: Sacrificed for Honor by David I. Kertzer

After I recently discovered that my great-great-grandmother Anna Pace was probably abandoned as an infant in Italy in the 1860s, fellow genealogist Peter Barbella recommended that I read Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control by David I. Kertzer. With a subtitle like that, what person in my position could say no?

It's times like this that I'm most glad to have joined such an active, welcoming, online genealogical community, both through Geneabloggers and on Google+. It honestly hadn't occurred to me, when I saw the records of a number of abandoned babies in the southern Italian towns that my family came from, that there might have been a monograph written about it. Only other people researching the same topics could have brought it to my attention.

Sacrificed for Honor is a book that's specifically about the widespread practice of infant abandonment in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it contains such a wealth of information about Italian social, religious, cultural, and familial practices that I'd suggest it to anyone with an interest in Italian history or genealogy.

The book focuses primarily on northern Italy, particularly the large cities of Milan and Florence, where most of the research thus far has been done. However, it gives enough history of practices in the south to put my Anna Pace's life in context for me. I'm expanding on this by using the records found on Antenati to create my own index of babies abandoned in Grumo Appula in the 1860s (g-g-grandma was born in 1864) to see if I can figure out the local context for abandonment. For example, the book tells us that in the South, many small towns had a "wheel" at which abandoned babies were left. (This in comparison to the North, where babies from small town were brought to nearby cities and left at their wheels.) However, having looked, so far, at 24 babies abandoned in the course of 18 months, there's no mention of a wheel,  and each of the babies is described as having been discovered "behind the door of her house" by one of the 3 local midwives.

Kertzer provides a ton of national context for the practice of infant abandonment. For example, did you know that unmarried parents in Italy were essentially required to "abandon" their illegitimate children to the huge network of foundling homes and foster parents set up to receive them? (The book even mentions one case of a 6-year-old boy, whose parents were unmarried but living together. When authorities found out that he was illegitimate, they intervened at that late date to remove him from the home and send him to a foster family - from which, of course, he promptly ran away.) Or that the vast majority of infants sent to foundling homes perished within the first 2 years of life, most of them within their first months, due to the difficulty of obtaining wetnurses in the days before safe, nutritious formula? This, despite the fact that the entire system was arranged to protect illegitimate babies from the ever-present dangers of abortion and infanticide.

I can't say that I agree with all of Kertzer's conclusions, particularly where he extrapolates into modern moral and political arenas. I won't spend too much time on my reasons on a blog that doesn't have a political purpose.  Suffice it to say that the book makes clear where his beliefs and mine differ on things like women's rights and the sanctity of all life, at all stages of development. Had abortion been an officially sanctioned, accessible option in 1864 like it is today, there's a very good chance that Anna Pace never would have been born, and neither would her 7 children who survived infancy, among them my great-grandmother; or her 7 children, among them my grandfather; or his 8 children; or his 20 grandchildren (myself among them) or his 4 great-granchildren. You don't know my family, but they're pretty fantastic; I can attest my own life would have been least among these losses.

Putting the personal and the political aside, I can recommend Sacrificed for Honor by David I. Kertzer enthusiastically. In fact, I was thrilled to discover that Kertzer's website includes a long list of other articles he's authored on similar topics, and I've added them to my reading list to gain additional context on the childhood, maturation, and adulthood of foundlings like my great-great-grandmother. I don't have to agree with his politics to know that his scholarship has provided context to the murkiest line in my family. With a brick wall this thick, context might be all I have. Anna's parents are described as ignoti on her marriage certificate, and merely as the autori di suoi giorni on the record that describes her discovery behind the midwife's door. I'm thinking about testing my grandfather's mtDNA on the off chance that a match provides some more information, but that's uncertain and even would benefit from the context provided here. The book, though scholarly, is an easy and engaging read, suitable for anyone with genealogical research interests in Italy, and particularly for those of us with brick walls of this nature, and I recommend it highly.


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I think I just hit my first brick wall

I've been spending a lot of time lately - when I can find the time - going through microfilmed Civil Registration records from Bitetto, Bari, Puglia, Italy. 3/4 of my Italian great-grandparents came from Bitetto, so this gives me the most bang for my $7.50.* However, I recently discovered, through the Italian Family History Research community on Google+, that the Italian government is putting these same records online at an Italian genealogy website called Antenati ("Ancestors"). Although only a small portion of these are online so far, Bari is among those provinces that have been uploaded.

I have to admit that I was getting a little bored with this Italian research. The most exciting thing about genealogy, of course, is piecing together stories, solving mysteries, getting to know your ancestors. But Civil Registration is just Civil Registration, and I wasn't doing any of that. I was compiling lists of births, marriages, and deaths, which barely goes beyond collecting names. And yet it's the groundwork that needs to be done before I can move on from Nati, Matrimoni, and Morti to the Atti Diversi that might contain some more of the details that go beyond BMDs. I also have hopes of eventually figuring out what the local newspapers were and how I could gain access to them, but I haven't gotten there yet.

With easy access to all of Bari at my fingertips, I stepped away from Bitetto to the other town where my ancestors originated, the nearby town of Toritto. My great-grandmother Maria D'Ingeo was born either in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, or in Toritto, Italy, and her parents were Domenico D'Ingeo and Anna Pace. Unfortunately, the birth records only go through 1899 and Maria D'Ingeo was born in 1902, so this doesn't resolve the question of her birth. However, I was able to quickly find the birth record of Maria's older brother Vincenzo ("James") because he had listed his 1891 birth date not-too-inaccurately on his American draft registration. This confirmed their parents' names and gave me a good place to start looking for their marriage record, since all reports were that Vincenzo was the oldest child.

I found the marriage of Domenico D'Ingeo and Anna Pace on 31 Jan 1886, and annoyance over boring vital records dissipated.

The first point of interest is the date: 5 years passed between the wedding and their first known child. I'll have to spend more time on birth records in the intervening 5 years to see if there were any other children who didn't survive.

A second point of interest was that neither spouse was from Toritto, although both were living there. Domenico had been born in Terlizzi, and Anna in Grumo Appula. Both are nearby towns, but I'll have to learn more about the area to figure out if there was something in particular drawing them to Toritto.

Additionally, this record complete one additional generation in the D'Ingeo line, introducing me to my great-great-great-grandmother Rosa Rutigliano.

However, the vastly more interesting item was Anna Pace's parents - or lack thereof. The atto di matrimonio is a standard form with blanks left to be filled in. It reads, roughly translated:

"In front of me, [name] official of the Stato Civile, presented themselves:
1. Domenico D'Ingeo, age twenty-four, farmer, born in Terlizzi, residing in Toritto, son of the late Vincenzo, residing in life in Toritto, and of the late Rosa Rutigliano, residing in life in Terlizzi;
2. Anna Pace, age twenty-one, farmer, born in Grumo Appula, residing in Toritto, daughter of unknown father, residing in ________    and of unknown mother, residing in                        . . ."

As I scrolled down the page, I had first read figlia di padre ignoto and I thought I understood. She didn't know who her father was! Maybe her mother didn't even know who the father was! Then I kept reading, and was shocked. Clearly, Anna didn't know the identity of either of her parents. How does that happen?

While my first thought was that she could have been orphaned at a young age, a trip through the Atti diversi of a different town and an unrelated year showed that the majority of those acts recorded the discovery of abandoned babies. I still have to find some time to page through both birth records and Atti diversi for Grumo Appula in the mid-1860s to see when and how Anna Pace makes her appearance, but my guess at the moment is that she was another abandoned baby.

If that's the case, it seems like I'm staring down the brick wall of an impenetrable brick fortress with no doors or windows. Anna could be the beginning and the end of the Pace line in my family.



*$7.50 is the price to order 1 roll of microfilm from the Family History Center.