Ordered a Y-DNA test for my father
I decided to take advantage of Family Tree DNA’s Father’s Day sale to order a Y-37 test for my father.
Y-DNA testing looks at the pure paternal line of a person: the male individual’s father’s father’s father’s father’s, etc. So this test gives a look straight down the Lucenó line.
The Y-37 test is the lowest level of Y-DNA testing. It casts a wide net in terms of matches, but not all the matches are “true” matches. Some of them will be eliminated at the Y-67 or Y-111 levels.
You can think of a Y-37 test as telling you that there are 100 individuals standing on a baseball field. It doesn’t tell you whether they’re standing in the outfield (very distant relatives or people who you’re only apparently related to), the infield (people you’re more likely related to), or at the backstop (male individuals you’re certainly related to). Getting a higher level Y-DNA test—such as Y-67 or Y-111—narrows the focus to the infield and the backstop respectively.
The advantage of a Y-37 test is that it’s a way of finding out what’s out there in terms of matches. If there are Filipino matches or many Spanish matches, this would count as evidence in favor of the Spanish origin of the Lucenós. That would then justify getting a higher level test to see if those matches are “true” matches. This will also require getting those individuals to get the higher level DNA test, if they haven’t already.
If you are a Spanish or Filipino Luceno male and would like to assist with this research, please contact me.
If you are an Italian Luceno male and would like to help, please contact me before ordering a test, as only some male Luceno samples are useful to my research.
Family Tree DNA’s sale goes until Sunday.
The Exorcism of Caterina Doria
When I was about 13, my paternal grandfather told me the story of how his mother’s sister, Caterina, was possessed by the spirit of a dead woman when she was 19 years old. This took place around 1902 in San Vito sullo Ionio, Calabria, Italy.
Recently I came into possession of my grandfather’s handwritten genealogy, and it contains the story in his own words. Between my memory and my grandfather’s diary, I can reconstruct the story.
As my great-grandmother, Maria, and her older sister, Caterina, were going up into the hills to do some work on a piece of land their family owned (or in a second version, as they were going to the town well), there was simultaneously an injured woman being brought down the hill (or just down the road and back into town) on a chair or a stretcher. Probably she had fallen off a horse and was bleeding. Apparently Caterina either laughed at the woman or made some joke to her sister, and the woman gave Caterina the evil eye.
Later on, when they were returning from the well or property (it’s unclear which), they passed a cross on the side of the road. Apparently it was the custom to erect a cross where a person dies on the road, similar to how we do now in the U.S. when someone is killed in a car crash. When they passed that cross, the dead woman’s spirit entered Caterina’s body.
My aunt Caterina was in a park where there is a water fountain. All the women go there to get water in a barrel to used at home. While she was there, they were bringing the lady that was hurt. [Crossed out: “The spirit of the lady when she [indeciperable] that when she pass by my aunt, she [his aunt] laughed at her. [Then when] she went by the cross, the spirit entered her. She was possessed by the spirit.] And when she went by my aunt, she [the dying woman?] looked at her [my aunt?], and she claims that my aunt laughed at her. So when a person dies, that means that she got killed, and they place a cross where she fell. So when my aunt and my mother went to the country, on the way back she passed by the cross, and that’s when her spirit went in my aunt’s body.
It took 2 times in church, the priest praying for hours to let the spirit come out of her body.
Caterina was pregnant with her first son when she was possessed by the spirit. As the priest was performing the exorcism and commanding the spirit to leave Caterina’s body, the spirit threatened to kill the unborn baby as it was leaving the body. For this reason, the priest commanded the spirit to leave through the tips of Caterina’s fingers. At the end of many hours, the spirit left as commanded.
At the end of the exorcism, the priest released Caterina into the care of her parents, my great-great-grandparents Vito and Maria. He instructed them to burn the clothes Caterina was wearing, lest the spirit return. They failed to do this, leaving the clothes at the bottom of a closest. In the middle of the night the spirit returned and repossessed Caterina.
Again she had to be taken to the church, and again, after many hours, the spirit was exorcised from her body through her fingertips. This time her family burned the clothes, and the spirit did not return. But from that day forward, and until the day she died, Caterina’s fingernails were black.
What I learned from the early San Vito death records
A few weeks ago, I learned of the existence of a set of death records from the town of San Vito sullo Ionio spanning the years 1808 to 1864. The keeping of these records probably began with the establishment of the Napoleonic system in Calabria. Since death records indicate not only the birth and death years of the deceased but also the names of the deceaseds’ parents, this offered an opportunity to extend the family trees of three of my great-grandparents (including one Lucenó great-grandparent) back to the beginning of the 18th century.
The records are available online only to members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, so I ordered the microfilm of the records and had it delivered downtown to the Seattle Public Library. When the microfilm arrived, I took the bus downtown to the library to read them.
This is how I spent three hours every day for the next seven days.
What I discovered from over 20 hours of studying these records changed my assumptions about the Lucenós of San Vito.
The Saverio Hypothesis
Before looking at the early death records, I had gotten the impression from reading the birth and marriage records that the Lucenós were not a very large family in San Vito.
Having read thousands of pages of handwritten records at this point, I’m familiar with most of the families in San Vito. Sinopoli, Doria, Ciracó, Rigillo, Polera, Casalinuovo, Zezzi, Perri, Laghani, and Greto are all common names in San Vito.
Lucenó is not.
By the time I had gotten back to the earliest birth records available to me online—records which start in 1825—it seemed as though all the Lucenós descended from four males: Vito Lucenó (born around 1784), Vincenzo Lucenó (born around 1787), Vitantonio Lucenó (born about 1787), and Saverio Lucenó (born around 1795).
I knew the name of the father of Vito Lucenó was Saverio, and I guessed he must have been born around 1764. On the basis of his name, I guessed Saverio Lucenó (born around 1795) was also a son of Saverio (born circa 1764). The fact that autosomal DNA testing shows Vito descendants and Saverio descendants to be about 4th cousins seemed to bolster this conclusion.
Maybe all the Italian Lucenós were descended from this one guy Saverio who was born around 1764.
The Saverio Hypothesis Refuted
As it turned out, almost none of these assumptions was correct.
I was right that the father of Vito Lucenó was Saverio Lucenó. My guess of 1764 was close; he was born around 1761.
Vito’s mother and Saverio’s wife was a woman named Rosa Asciutto. Rosa is my fifth great-grandmother.
Saverio’s death record revealed his parents to be Giuseppantonio Lucenó and Catarina Vasta. Saverio had at least one sibling, a sister named Maria who was born a year before him.
Based upon Maria’s year of birth, Giuseppantonio Lucenó and Catarina Vasta were probably born no later than 1744, though it’s possible they were born as early as 1720.
I reasoned from this that I had also discovered the parents and grandparents of Saverio (1795), thus tying together all the Lucenó branches.
Not so!
Marriage records revealed the parents of Saverio (1795) were Vitantonio Lucenó and Maria Laghani.
Okay, that was unexpected. But I figured Vitantonio must be a brother of my ancestor Saverio (1761).
But in fact Vitantonio’s parents are Francesco Lucenó and Rosa Ciracó. Vitantonio’s death record gives a birth year of around 1764. I have found no evidence for siblings of Vitantonio, so going off his birth year, I estimate Francesco and Rosa to have been born about 1746. But it’s possible they were born 20 years prior to that.
So what about the autosomal DNA results?
Autosomal DNA results showed the descendants of Vito Lucenó (1784) and Saverio Lucenó (1795) to be so closely related that Vito and Saverio could not have been more distantly related than siblings. But genealogical evidence shows them not even to be first cousins. How is this possible?
One possibility is that the historical documents are wrong. Vito and Saverio really did share the same parents, but this is not reflected in the marriage and death records.
Another, more likely possibility is that the autosomal results are being thrown off by the fact that San Vito is a very small town. My grandfather described it as a town of about 5,000 when he lived there in the 1930s. It had to have been much smaller in the late-18th century.
As I said, one tends to see the same names again and again in the San Vito records. Two of my great-grandparents were Dorias. As I got further back into all three of my great-grandparents’ family trees, I tended to see the same names repeating themselves on both sides.
The upshot of this is that the autosomal results are technically correct. Vito descendants and Saverio descendants really do share that many SNPs in common. But the shared SNPs aren’t only coming from Lucenós. They’re also coming from Ciracós, Dorias, Rigillos, etc. (It’s impossible to see this on Ancestry DNA results, because Ancestry only gives you the total amount of genetic information shared in common, not the total continuous amount of genetic information shared in common. It’s a subtle but important difference, and another reason anyone with Ancestry DNA results should export them to Gedmatch.)
This makes it difficult to tell how closely any two Lucenó ancestors are related based upon the genetic overlap of their descendants as represented by Ancestry DNA.
What about Vitantonio and Vincenzo?
Earlier I mentioned the two other Lucenó patriarchs, Vitantonio (born about 1787) and Vincenzo (born about 1787).
I found a death record for Vincenzo. His parents are listed as Saverio Lucenó and Carmela Santaguerda.
I’m provisionally assuming that this Saverio is the same as my Saverio, the son of Giuseppantonio and Catarina Vasta, but there’s really very little justification for it. Carmela would not have been a second wife of my ancestor Saverio; he and Rosa Asciutto had children both before and after the birth of Vincenzo in 1787. Either Vincenzo was illegitimate, or there were two Saverio Lucenós in the mid-18th century. As far as I know, no descendants of Vincenzo and his wife Angiola Fani are alive today, so there is no way to solve the relationship between him and the other Lucenós at present.
(Incidentally, the origin of the Fanis is unknown. The only other Fani I have found is Chiara Fani, my fourth great-grandmother. The death record of Chiara Fani is missing, and the death record of Angiola does not indicate her parents. It is possible they were not from San Vito.)
As for Vitantonio (born circa 1787), I found no death record for him. I surmised his birth year from the death record of his daughter, Elisabetta, who was born around 1807. (Neither are currently represented in my family trees as I am unsure how they are related to the two main branches.) But it’s entirely possible Elisabetta’s father is the father of Saverio Lucenó (the one born in 1795). It’s also possible Elisabetta’s father died after conceiving her but before she was born circa 1807. The death records don’t start until 1808.
More Lucenós in the 18th century than expected
While the Lucenós are a small San Vito family, I discovered more Lucenós in the 18th century than I expected.
These Lucenós are not represented on the two main branches featured on this website, because they are merely “stubs” at this point. They were Lucenós alive in the 18th century whose parentage I do not yet know but whose descendants I have not been able to trace down through the 19th century.
They could be sons and daughters of Giuseppantonio and Francesco, or they could represent different lines. At present it is impossible to tell.
The path forward
There are two main problems to solve:
- How do the Giuseppantonio and Francesco branches connect to one another?
- Where do the Lucenós come from?
I still have some early birth and marriage records to go through. I plan to order and read these microfilms in the coming months. While these records may help connect some of the “stubs,” they are unlikely to give me a look further back in time than the death records have.
Right now the best shot we have at resolving either of these two problems is through Y-DNA testing of male Luceno descendants with the last name “Luceno”.
Welcome to the Luceno Origins Project!
The website is finally UP!
The purpose of this website is to share the results of my research into Luceno origins and hopefully to attract interested individuals to it with the aim of acquiring more genetic results. These results will help shed light on the origins of our family, the Lucenós from San Vito sullo Ionio, Calabria.
Please view the About page for more information, and please feel free to contact me with comments or questions.