Marriage days and signature query

[nrepole]

Hi all

Just noticed from wedding registration records (1895-1920) from my dad's town (Rapone, Basilicata) that relatives were sometimes getting married on other days apart from Saturdays (like Monday, Wednesday, Thursday). Was this a common occurrence during those years? What would the reason be?
Also many also signed at the bottom of documents even though they could not write or read. Is that their signature? or did someone sign on their behalf?

Kind regards
Nick

[PippoM]

Well, first of all, do you mean civil or religious marriages? Civil marriage was felt as an administrative procedure, that could take place "when they had time" or "when the clerks were available". Also, marriage was seldom followed by a party as it is today, so, they did not need relatives (and themselves) to be "free from work".
But someone else might be more expert.

[erudita74]

The 1865 civil code was still in effect between the years 1895 and 1920. This code does not specify what day of the week a civil marriage had to take place-the only day of the week mentioned is with respect to the marriage publications being posted on consecutive Sundays.

https://archive.org/details/codicecivil ... ew=theater

Of course, different regions of Italy and Sicily had their local superstitions, so certain days of the week may have been avoided for a marriage due to superstition.

Erudita

[nrepole]

Thanks Erudita and PippoM. I have attached an example. My great grandmother was apparently registered as being married on 24 April 1895 (4pm on a Wednesday). If this is just a civil recording then where can I find out the actual date that they were married??? I don't think that it is mentioned on attached document?

Kind regards
Nick

[erudita74]

Nick
This is her act of matrimony. She was married at the town hall by the civil official. Yes, the date of the marriage was a Wednesday. The dates of the marriage publications, which were on the 24th and 31st of the preceding March, appear in the handwritten section of the document, and were both Sundays. Those had been previously posted on the door of the town hall to insure that there were no impediments to the upcoming marriage, which did take place on April 24, 1895 at 4 P.M.
Erudita

[nrepole]

Thanks Erudita so much. This is fascinating to me. So does this mean that there was no church marriage?? It sounds so weird that in those very religious times (around the turn of the century) that a marriage would be signed off in the municipal hall and that was it.

Kind regards
Nick

[erudita74]

At this period in time, the only marriage that mattered to the civil state was a civil one. If individuals had previously married in the church and had children, it was only after their civil marriage, which sometimes happened years after the church marriage, that the children born after the church marriage, but before the civil one, were considered legitimate by the civil state. With that being said, having a civil marriage at this point in the history of Italy does not mean that the couple did not also have a church marriage, but in the eyes of the civil law, the couple was legitimately married after the civil marriage was performed.

I have, for example, a sibling of my husband's great grandfather, a female, who never emigrated to the United States, as had her two older brothers. She married in Sicily on May 1,1920. She had a civil marriage at the town hall on May 1st and then also had a church marriage on the same day. So the fact that she had the civil marriage did not prevent her from also having a church marriage. I just don't know what time the church marriage took place. Both were on Saturdays with the civil marriage taking place at 11:30 a.m. There was no time recorded on the church record, nor did the priest indicate the marital status of the bride and groom at the time of their church marriage. The civil marriage indicates they were both never before married. The main difference was that there were three banns of marriage for the church marriage, but only two for the civil one. So the church banns were on Feb 22, 29, and March 7th, whereas the civil ones were only on the two Feb dates. Also the church marriage record is number 54, whereas the civil record is number 55. So, in this case, the numbers do not correspond. So I have no way of telling which marriage ceremony was actually performed first, although the numbers of the records, and time of the civil marriage and the marital status of the couple at the time of their civil marriage, may lead one to believe that the civil marriage preceded the church one.

The thing is that many were still very religious, and religious rites such as baptism, marriage, and even church burials, were still important to those living in Italy, despite the fact that the religious rites were not required by the civil state. So there were still church marriages. So your ancestor probably did have a church marriage, more than likely on the same day, since there is nothing to indicate that their civil marriage legitimized children previously born to the couple. You would have to track down the parish in Rapone though to see if such a church marriage record exists, as those records are not online. I also don't know if there was more than one parish in that town, or if the parish, or parishes that were there in 1895, are still in existence. That will take some research.

Erudita

[nrepole]

Thanks again Erudita for taking the time to explain things. Now I understand how it worked.

I also have noticed that many of my relative's signatures have appeared at the bottom of documents even though they could not write or read. Is that their signature? or did someone sign on their behalf?

Kind regards
Nick

[erudita74]

Nick-

First of all, bear in mind that, in 1877, there was a compulsory education law passed in Italy. Yes, it’s true that few in the southern part of Italy, and Sicily, complied with the law, and that being illiterate did not mean that one could not sign or write his/her name. There were those who were considered to be illiterate who did learn to write their names but nothing more. I’ve read that there were contadini, or peasants, for example, who fell into this category. Of course, considering that those individuals labored some 12 or 14 hours a day, I find it hard to imagine that they had time to learn to write their names, plus who would have taught them to do so? Possibly some rich nobleman on whose estate they worked who himself was highly educated and literate? I really don’t know. But I did find in a book called Italian Women in Basilicata: Staying Behind but Moving Forward during the Age of Mass Emigration that the author, Victoria Calabrese, states on p. 27 that “the ability to sign one’s name on a document was only proof of the ability to write or sign one’s name, and not a true indicator of literacy.”

So, with this being said, I looked at some of my own documents from the latter part of the 19th century. I found, for example, that one of my male ancestors born in 1877, did sign his name on three documents. These were his marriage record in 1894, and then on the birth records of two of his daughters born in Matera Province (the Basilicata region) in 1895 and 1897. The documents specifically state that only he and the town official signed the records, and that the witnesses did not know how to write and did not sign. So I decided to explore this further, as just looking at his signatures in the three records, I admit that I find it difficult to say with 100% degree of certainly that the signatures are an exact match to each other (not that anyone’s signature is exact from one document to another). I’m fortunate though that I have other non-Italian records to confirm that he DID know how to write. On his 1898 passenger list to the U.S., he stated that he DID know how to read and write. His signature appears on his U.S. marriage record in 1905, as he remarried after the death of his first wife. On all U.S. census records he answered “yes” to being able to read and write. The 1940 census even indicates that he had had two years of schooling in Italy. So, even though 2 years is not a lot of schooling by today’s standards, it was sufficient to enable him to learn how to write. So I’m convinced that the signatures on the Italian documents are, in fact, his. He did file his first papers for U.S. citizenship, but he died in 1943 and, as far as the paper trail takes me, he never became a U.S. citizen.

I also know that on Italian records in which an individual signed with a mark, such as a cross, and then there is a signature following that mark, that the signature is not that of the individual. I’ve also read that there were times when a town clerk assumed that an individual could not sign his/her name and just signed the person’s name on a document without asking.

So the question you’ve asked about the signatures of your ancestors is one to which I can’t give you a definitive answer. I can’t find a definite answer anywhere on the internet or in any of the books that I do myself own. Maybe someone else can weigh in on this topic.

Erudita

[nrepole]

Thanks again Erudita for your time and research. I am not sure what parish records exist in Rapone but I will try to find out. I will also check if signatures match on other documents. I note that some signatures are written in almost childlike form (which supports the view that the person at least knew how to sign their name if nothing else).

Kindest regards
Nick

[erudita74]

Always happy to help, Nick. I just found this subject difficult because of a lack of research about it, at least that I can find. Plus I think my handwriting is much more consistent from one document to another than I am seeing on these old records, and I don't want to jump to any erroneous conclusions about that.
Erudita

[cedrone]

Hi Nick.
As said by others, in that time civil marriage and church marriage were completely independent and I think that a couple with only the civil marriage was very rare.
I don't know which was celebrated first and if the same day or not.
(It is possible the use was different in the various regions of Italy).

[cedrone]

However it's easy to verify, you may compare a civil marriage act with the corresponding church marriage and see the dates.
The church marriage should be asked at the parish, sometimes at the diocese archive.
Certain parish registers may be online on Family Search or orher sites.

[cedrone]

Only in 1929 the rules changed with an agreement between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, the cerimony in the church being celebrated by the pastor also as civil official, including both religious and civil marriages.
The marriage act is then sent to the comune and copied in a section of the register, while there remains of course also the civil marriage (alone) in the first section.
(It is still so).

[nrepole]

thanks so much cedrone!!!

Information very much appreciated,

Nick