Until recently, the generations of Pacitti before my Nonno Alfonso remained a mystery with scant information available. It was known that Alfonso’s father was Ferdinando and his mother Mariantonia Pacitti. Mariantonia was Ferdinando’s second wife, his first wife was Pasqua Coia. In terms of Alfonso’s siblings, there were stepbrothers Gerardo and Carmine from Ferdinando’s first marriage and Michele, Pasquale, Gioacchino and AnnaMaria, children with his second wife Mariantonia. Ferdinando’s father was Antonio Pacitto and his mother was Annamaria Pacitto - and that really was the extent of knowledge of the family.

Additional archive material has been made available online and that has enabled me to fill in a lot more information and takes the family back to the late 1600’s in time and from Cerasuolo to Casale d’Agnone (Atina) geographically. The research has also uncovered a very interesting twist regarding Nonna Giulia Tortolano, Alfonso’s wife whose mother was also a Pacitti.

The real breakthrough came when I was able to view marriage records (processetti) that had been loaded up to the beneculturali site of the Italian National Archives. The records from Cerasuolo are still sparse but there was a small tranche from 1829-1840 that provided a treasure trove of information on our family. Apart from revealing a further four generations, the information showed that this part of the Pacitti family originated in Casale d’Agnone, then part of Atina, and now renamed Villa Latina. Members of the family moved to Cerasuolo in the 1830s. The other revelation was that Alfonso Pacitti and Giulia Tortolano, my paternal grandparents, shared a common set of great grandparents!

The extract from the latest family tree shown below gives a line back to Antonio Pacitto who was born over three centuries ago some time around 1680.

See the sidebar for links to other family trees and information about individual members of my ancestors