Finding My Roots

In 2008 I journeyed to Lucca to locate family history. My grandmother was from Montuolo, just outside Lucca. We went to the only Catholic Church in Montuolo. The priest was most cordial. As he led us into his office we saw hundreds of very old books lining the walls. He went to one and drew it from the shelf. It contained the birth, baptism, marriage, and death records of the church. We located my grandparents in the volume from 1865. It was fascinating to see the hand written lettering of the priest describing my grandparents marriage. With that information we were able to find their birth records. It was a joy to go through these old books. Then the priest pulled Volume #1 from off its shelf. It was dated 1520. He explained that this was the first record of this particular church. It was amazing to carefully and tenderly open it to see the listing of the first patrons of the church and the first births among them. Imagine that all Catholic churchs in Italy keep the same type of records. These books were almost 500 years old and yet, there they were, just sitting on a shelf in the priest's office. What a wonderful trip this turned out to be.